Tusculum students, faculty, staff launching effort Tuesday to defray medical costs for seriously injured student

Tusculum College students, faculty, and staff members are teaming together to help defray medical expenses for the family of Lisa Cannon, a Tusculum College student from Florida who was seriously injured in an automobile accident in Georgia while she was returning to Tusculum for the new academic year.

Local people will be given the opportunity to help the Cannon family through various donation "roadblocks" on Tuesday, Sept. 10, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. The roadblocks will be manned by Tusculum students and will be at several key intersections and roadways. Because Cannon is majoring in education, some roadblocks will be near local elementary schools. Donation points will also be at some local shopping areas.

Since the Aug. 18 accident, which involved three vehicles and injured nine people, the 21-year-old student has been in treatment at the Savannah Memorial Health University Medical Center. She remains in a coma but is now breathing without a respirator. A family spokesman on Friday informed Tusculum College Dean of Students Scott Mashburn that doctors are growing increasingly optimistic about her prognosis, but her responsiveness level is still very low and physicians say significant recovery will take at least a year.

Several other members of Cannon's family who were injured in the same accident are returning home to Florida, but Lisa will remain in Savannah Memorial.

Police reports say the accident was caused by a drinking driver in another vehicle. Medical expenses related to the accident are very high and climbing. Money raised through the roadblocks will go toward helping pay those costs.

Students to man the collection sites Tuesday are currently in three "Our Lives in Community" classes at Tusculum College. These freshman classes explore the concepts of living as part of a cooperative community, with a strong emphasis on concepts of service and citizenship that Tusculum College designates as the Civic Arts.

A simultaneous fund-raising effort will also take place on the Tusculum campus itself, and further efforts are to take place later this month during Tusculum's Homecoming 2002 on Sept. 20-21.

Tuesday's fund-raising effort is being overseen by a committee made up by Tusculum College faculty members Corrine Nicolas, Mary Barkley-Ballard, Jennifer Brooks and Elizabeth Gordon, along with college staff members Scott Mashburn and Robin Crabtree, and three students: Noah Grunzweig, Sue Lewis, and Jessica Smith, who was Lisa Cannon's roommate.