As event co-chair of the 2011 Syracuse University and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry Relay For Life, I owe it to my committee to write a response to Monday’s story ‘Relay For Life: Teams Raise More Than $150,000.’ The headline is factually correct yet misleading and not representative of our total fundraising efforts. At the 4:30 a.m. Closing Ceremony, in front of a few hundred students, we announced we had raised $165,753.04 , and the total has crossed $170,000 since.

The $152,214 figure in The Daily Orange article was grabbed from our website’s ticker, which represents online fundraising only, and included none of the money raised from the dozens of on-site fundraising events or the 238 attendees who registered at the door. We are so proud to have reached $150,000 online before the event kicked off Saturday night. One other news organization made the same mistake but immediately corrected its article when we reached out Monday morning.

Two years in a row, The Daily Orange has neglected in its post-Relay coverage to mention that the fundraising total has broken the previous Syracuse Relay record. I am so proud of my committee and Relay’s 2,400 participants for breaking last year’s record Closing Ceremony total by more than $13,000, a fact that I hope does not go unnoticed.

Janae DeRusso

Senior public relations and political science major