By Sanjana Jain, Staff Writer
On Saturday, May 21, Atholton High School’s PTSA organized a silent auction and fundraiser concert called ‘Concert to Cancel Cancer’. The event began at 7:00 and ended around 8:45 p.m, and took place in Atholton’s auditorium. The fundraiser was dedicated to an Atholton freshman Jamie Caswell, who, along with the struggles of his first year in high school, is also battling pediatric sarcoma. Sarcoma is a rare type of cancer that grows in connective tissue like bones, tendons, muscles, nerves or blood vessels of arms and legs. Jamie has already undergone years of painful treatments, but unfortunately his cancer recently relapsed.
“We just really wanted to tell Jamie’s story, help him out a little bit, and of course raise money. There’s not much that we can do for him but every dollar counts and whatever we can do and just make him feel loved,” said Jasmine Dong, a sophomore at River Hill who is one of the lead singers in the performing band.
The event began with the silent auction. There were several tables in the auditorium that had the bidding items – things like rollerblades, chocolate buckets, JBL devices, small pieces of student-made artwork, and even boxes filled with jewelry – placed on them, along with sheets to sign your name and your bid price. Each item had a starting bid price, indicating that if someone wanted to bid for an item, the minimum bid had to be at that starting price and increase in at least $1 increments. There were 14 different companies that were involved in the event: some notable ones being Revamped Fitness and Zoot Sports. The companies either helped with providing some items for the silent auction or contributing to the donations being made. There were 15 families and individuals who also contributed to the auction item and/or donations.
As an additional component to the auction, around a third of the way through the concert, one of the two PTSA Vice President’s, Joanna Lake, announced that the band themselves was going to be available for being auctioned at a starting price of $150.
The Coughdrops was the band that performed during the concert. The band consisted of students from River Hill (sophomore Jasmine ‘Jazzy’ Dong, sophomore Andy Davis, sophomore Trisha Singh, freshman Rishab Jain), Atholton (Ashwin Hazarika) and even Clarksville Middle School (8th grader Siyuan Dai), along with the 7th grade geography teacher, Mr. Ilenda. Jazzy, Trisha and Ashwin were the lead singers, Mr. Ilenda, Andy and Siyuan were on the electric guitar, and Rishab was on drums. Ashwin’s father is the band’s technical coordinator, and is responsible for managing the electrical equipment and the control panel during performances.
The band first came together right before the beginning of the pandemic. In 2020 at Clarksville Middle, Mr. Ilenda heard Jazzy and Trisha sing at the school talent show and approached them soon after with the prospect of starting a band. “Mr. Ilenda seeked us out and told us that he really liked our voices and that he had always had the dream to start a band and he wondered if we were interested… Ashwin joined the band around two weeks later; he had heard us rehearsing during one of our small practices and we knew he was amazing,” explained Trisha. Initially, the band wasn’t extremely serious about their practices and would only meet bi-weekly or even monthly to rehearse, but as time went on and the COVID pandemic began, “for like 6 months all of our practicing was online and we couldn’t really do much,” said Jazzy. But a few months later, they began rehearsing “at Jazzy’s house for the longest time. We started outside…and then we went inside to rehearse in her basement…and we started doing a few vocal practices,” said Trisha.
The origin story for the name of the band is an interesting story. “Before I got any vocal training, I would tear my throat apart at rehearsals and I would bring this entire bag of cough drops to practice and I was like ‘hey, how about we name ourselves The Coughdrops,” said Jazzy. Funnily enough, their name is not related to the pandemic like most people presume.
Atholton’s PTSA was the main organizer of the event, but the driving force behind its origin and those that pushed for it to be approved were Ashwin and his family. Ashwin has been good friends with Jamie since 7th grade, but found out about Jamie’s relapse in February. His first instinct was to do “some sort of fundraising…I was going to set up multiple social media platforms, but then thought ‘why not make it a school wide event since we go to the same school,’” said Ashwin. “I know Ashwin and Jamie are close friends, and I know that Ashwin and his family were really hands-on-deck with this whole thing. I think they approached the PTSA and probably Jamie’s family to try to organize something for him,” recalled Jazzy.
The initial goal of the band and the PTSA was to raise between $6,000 – $7,000, but the event started the night off with $5,000 already. After the first few songs, the money from the auction items whose price had been finalized was counted, and the total amount generated had already accumulated to $6,650. However, by the end of the night, the total funds came to around $12,000. This final amount was much higher than the number that the PTSA had expected, and everyone was overjoyed.
The entire sum generated from the event will be donated to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, as per the Caswell family’s request. The Dana-Farber organization is a renowned cancer treatment and research institute, one of the 15 clinical affiliates and research institutes of Harvard Medical School. Established 75 years ago by a man considered to be “the father of modern chemotherapy,” Sidney Farber, the organization has made significant headway with their “Crompton Lab, [which] focuses on identifying new treatment approaches for patients with pediatric sarcomas.” The funds will be used to focus on research specifically for pediatric sarcoma; Jamie’s illness. He is currently being treated there, and hopefully will make a complete recovery. At the end of the night, Jamie was presented with a card which had been signed by the majority of attendees. Inside it contained positive and uplifting messages of encouragement, aiming to make him feel better. Atholton’s as well as River Hill’s students send him their best wishes.