Members of the WKU community affected by cancer are coming together to raise money for cancer research.

The American Cancer Society Relay for Life is an all-night event that features games, music and activities at Houchens-Smith Stadium. This year’s Relay for WKU’s main campus will be on April 27 from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m on April 28.

Participants are grouped into teams, keeping one person walking around the stadium at all times in a relay to represent how cancer doesn’t sleep.

So far, the relay has 482 participants, 32 teams and has raised more than $9,000.

Each relay has a theme.

Sam Knott, who is in charge of team development for WKU’s Relay for Life committee, said this year’s theme is Relay at the Movies.

Knott said that each hour will be a different genre like sports or horror. Each group will also represent a different movie, he said.

Knott will participate in Phi Gamma Delta fraternity’s (Fiji) Relay team. Fiji’s movie will be Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

“Except it’s Snow White and the 62 FIJIs,” he said.

He said they are looking online to figure out emotions to represent the 62 of them.

Colby Osborne, chair of WKU’s Relay for Life Committee, said the committee is hosting many fundraising opportunities for the event.

Click for a Cure was a fundraising event last week in which participants could email their friends and families for donations and support for their relay.

The Chi Omega team has raised the most of all the teams with more than $2,200 collected so far.

Louisville sophomore Natalie Broderick, a member of Chi O, raised a lot of the money she’s received so far from Click for a Cure.

Broderick said two members of her family have been affected by cancer — an aunt who survived and a grandmother who passed away from the disease.

“So it’s still really close to my life,” Broderick said.

Broderick said she sent 45 emails asking for donations, including one to her aunt.

WKU’s main campus isn’t the only one to participate in the relay.

Hannah Thurman is the staff advisor for the Volunteerism in Progress group at the Owensboro campus. Thurman said the group has taken on Relay for Life for the second year and is actively raising money.

“For $20, they are selling the chance to deliver a purple toilet on someone’s lawn,” Thurman said.

The toilet sits on the target’s lawn for 24 hours before it’s picked up and taken to the next house, she said.

Earlier in the week, it was put on the lawn belonging to Gene Tice, the director of the WKU Owensboro campus.

“So they are going to high-profile people,” Thurman said.

Thurman said the group was able to raise $2,500 for the event last year. She said the new goal is to raise $4,000.