First-Year Student Will Carry the Torch
4/12/04—BC Law first-year student John Bauters entered the contest on
a whim, taking no more than 10 minutes to fill out an online form he found on
ESPN.com. He didn’t even remember doing it when he got the phone call
a few weeks later telling him he’d won. “I almost hung up on her,”
Bauters recalls. “I thought she was trying to sell me something.”
Now, as a result of that 10-minute essay, Bauters will be one of around 380
people who will carry the Olympic Torch across America in June.
What he found out from that phone call was that he had beaten out some seven
or eight thousand people who had entered Samsung’s and ESPN’s online
contest to carry the torch. The essay he wrote related the way he tries to live
his own life to the story of the Olympic rings, the linking of the five continents,
and the Olympic values of participation, brotherhood, and peace.
“I wrote about how -- having been blessed with a number of different gifts
and talents -- I have taken those skills and shared them with people around
the world, including work with abused children here in the U.S., teaching AIDS
and leadership workshops in Africa, working at an orphanage in Chile and a year
as a Red Cross Disaster Relief worker back here,” said Bauters. “It
is my belief that by using our gifts to experience the heritage and diversity
of culture, we continue to expand our education and have an obligation to celebrate
those experiences by incorporating them into how we live, using them to educate
others, pulling the world together through the common experience of the human
condition.”
ESPN and Samsung selected 20 essay writers from the thousands of entries, and
the winners were given all-expenses paid trips to one of four cities --L.A.,
St. Louis, Atlanta or New York-- to run the torch through downtown New York
on June 19th (Bauters will run in New York). There will be roughly 380 Americans
who get to carry the torch this summer as it makes one day stops in 4 U.S. cities
on its way from Sydney to Athens.
“It’s been my experience that as one person, I can make a difference
in the world and that I continue to pursue this belief with the hopeful anticipation
that my example will lead others to do the same,” Bauters said. “I
said in my essay that I chose to attend law school after witnessing the many
social needs of people throughout the world. My goal in attending law school
is that these experiences will serve as both the motivation and focus of my
studies so that someday I may return to many of the places I have already been
with something new to share.”
Bauters’s latest project is one very close to his heart. He is currently
getting ready to participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life,
which will take place April 23-34 in Boston. Typically, people form teams of
12-15 and take turns walking the 20-24 hour event as a team, raising pledges
for cancer research. Last year, Bauters walked the entire event alone. He’s
planning to do it again this year.
And he’s dedicating his participation to his grandfather, who died of
pancreatic cancer in February. He has already received over $1,500 in donations.
Out of the around 500 participants he is currently setting the bar for fundraising
for this event in Greater Boston.
For more
on the ACS University Relay for Life, click here.
To
visit Bauter’s ACS homepage or make a donation to his cause, click here.
More about the Olympic Torch contest from Samsung.com:
In honor of the return of the Games to Athens, the ATHENS 2004 Olympic Torch
Relay will mark the first-ever truly global journey of the Olympic flame. For
the first time ever, people around the world will have the opportunity to participate,
experience, and celebrate the Olympic spirit- a chance to touch the light.
On March 25, 2004, as soon as it is ignited by the sun's ray in Olympia, Greece,
the flame's global journey will commence. On June 3, its global journey will
start in Sydney, the host city of the 2000 Olympic Games. The flame will travel
through 34 cities in 27 countries over the course of five weeks. Inspired by
the theme " Pass the flame, unite the world," the flame will bring
together communities worldwide in a global celebration of the Olympic values
the Olympic spirit.
The Relay will travel to all the Summer Olympiad host cities since the modern
Games began in 1896, as well as cities of special significance, including New
York City, home of the United Nations, Brussels, European Union and Lausanne,
Switzerland, home of the International Olympic movement. In addition, for the
first time ever, the Olympic flame will visit Africa and South America. The
relay will visit all continents represented by the colors of five Olympic rings.