Students and staff have been participating in the event widely known as “Movember” or “No Shave November”, a month-long, world-wide campaign in which individuals sprout mustaches and grow their hair to raise awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer.

Movember was started by the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, to raise funds in 2003. With only 30 registrants to begin with, the campaign has grown to 447,808 registrants and raised 80.7 million dollars by the end of 2010.

“You hear a lot about breast cancer, which is great because the word’s out there, but there’s less communication about the men cancers … It’s a reminder that you need to take care of yourself,” math teacher Colin Anderson said. “I’m working on the trucker moustache right now; I’ve had the goatee for nine years, so I haven’t had to see my chin since 2002 or so.”

Inspired by this campaign, individuals have been motivated to participate in this event for other reasons such as bets from friends or simply to experiment with growing facial hair.

“It’s my last year of high school, so it’s really just for fun … I prefer to be clean shaven, but it’s a great opportunity and a bunch of people around me are doing it too,” senior George Geha said.

Teammate and friend of Geha, senior Aravind Sridhar, chose to participate in No Shave November because Lance Armstrong was one of his favorite athletes growing up.

“I respect him a lot. He inspired me to do ‘No Shave November’ about 20%, but the 80% is just me wanting to grow a beard,” Sridhar said. “Another reason for both [Geha] and me is that our [basketball] coach last year didn’t allow us to have any facial hair, so now that he’s not here, we decided to grow it out.”

Some other students have even taken a twist on “No Shave November” by participating in “No Hate November,” a goal to write blog posts about loved friends and family throughout the month of November.

A correction was made on Nov. 25.