We spoke to the cancer survivor behind frat initiative Cuck Fancer

If you haven’t seen Cuck Fancer’s lime green tent at your school, you’re either missing out or have seriously bad eyesight.

Cuck Fancer was started in 2009 by Ben Teller, after receiving his first diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at age 18 the summer before he was supposed to start college at UC Irvine.

He went on to go into remission and be re-diagnosed twice more, as well as receiving two life saving transplants.

While undergoing this terrible experience, Ben realized the lack of support for young adults with cancer, and Cuck Fancer was born.

Cuck Fancer at UCD

Cuck Fancer, which is a non-profit, aims to make any and every resource available to those struggling with their diagnosis. Whether it’s rent money, a car, or money to pay medical bills, Cuck Fancer will donate it to those who need it. Cuck Fancer raises money through sales of merchandise as well as through donations.

Cuck Fancer is perhaps best known for going to different universities and colleges across the nation to spread their message and shave heads. Lines for haircuts often stretch across entire quads and there are multiple barbers on site to assist in the process.

UC Davis has a standing donation page on the Cuck Fancer website where students can start a fundraiser to sponsors pay a certain amount for you to shave your head in solidarity with those fighting cancer.

Members of AEPi getting their heads shaved at UC Davis

Ben himself is a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) and as such, fraternities have become a huge part of Cuck Fancer’s outreach program. Fraternity members often man the tents, sell merchandise, or recruit people to become bone marrow donors through cheek swabbing.

Cuck Fancer at UC Davis

We were lucky enough to get Ben on the phone and ask him a few questions about Cuck Fancer and his personal experiences.

Ben Teller, Founder of Cuck Fancer

What was it like receiving your first diagnosis?

I remember it really clearly. I remember sitting in the waiting room at the doctor, waiting for my mom and doctor to finish talking. I didn’t know what was going on. Finally, my mom came out and I stopped her in hallway and asked her what the doctor had said. She told me that she was going to wait to tell me until we got to my dad’s work, and that’s when I knew something was wrong.

When we got to my dad’s work, she told me that they’d found a mass on my chest. I didn’t really understand what that meant and she told me that we were going to an oncologist later that night and would know what was going on then.

I was 18 years old, I mean, I really didn’t understand how serious this was until I asked my parents if I was going to be able to start college in 4 days, like planned. When they looked at me and said, “no,” it really hit me. I fell down and started crying. All I wanted was to have a normal life and it just wasn’t going to happen. By the end of the night we had the diagnosis of Hodgkin’s.

In the years since you first started Cuck Fancer, is there one experience that has stayed with you the most?

I don’t know if it’s one experience really, but I find it so impactful when people who don’t really know what we’re doing will come up to us and ask questions and then before they walk away, they’ll say, “thank you for what you’re doing, because it’s making a difference in people’s lives.”

As a cancer survivor, I often get lost in wondering what I find meaningful in my life, or why I’m doing what I’m doing, or how I can find purpose and what matters to me, but on a campus, I’m really trying to help as many people as I can. It’s nice when people find me and tell me the work that I’m doing is really helping. I don’t think I’d be able to keep doing it if I wasn’t reminded why I keep doing it.

Our new campaign where we approach people and ask them how cancer has affected their lives has been incredible. People are sharing their experiences with us and crying and letting go and it feels so amazing that what we’re doing is helping people. It’s such a mutual experience. That to me is absolutely the best feeling in the world.

What’s your favorite part about visiting college campuses?

The best part is empowering the students on the campus to make a difference. I come with this vision of wanting to help young adults who are affected by cancer in whatever I can, I mean, there are a lot of ways that we can affect change through my organization. But I think for me, it’s easy because I’m so connected to what I stand for since I lived through cancer and I beat it.

I think when you’re young it’s hard to find what’s meaningful, but through my organization I like to know that I’m giving young people and their families a way to make a difference. When they sign up to shave their head and their parents are supporting them, or they make the choice to sign up for the registry, they know they are signing up to potentially save a life. I think everyone wants to help really badly, but they don’t always know how.

I love helping people, but at the end of the day, what I love the most is that when I’m done, a certain amount of people, can go home and say, “I am better off now than when I started today.”

What are your goals for Cuck Fancer in the next year?

I’d like to double the amount of schools we’re able to visit to 15 or 20. My main goal is to figure out how Cuck Fancer can start to become the go-to organization for cancer awareness on college campuses. I want to assimilate Cuck Fancer with college awareness cancer organization; I want them to be the same. We’re definitely making an impact, but there’s a lot of universities and people out there.

I would like to be at more schools, swabbing more people, executing more. My other main goal is to remove the taboo on talking about caner. Fighting cancer is hard and I think it’s difficult for people to talk about it. I want to get an open conversation going about cancer on college campuses.

If you could send one message to everyone out there who just got diagnosed, what would it be?

There’s no beating around it. This is going to be the hardest time in your life. But if you focus on the good while you feel good, it will be easier. If you rely on your community for support when it’s hard, you’ll be able to get through the hard times. It’s so cliché, but at the end of the day, as hard as it’s going to be, I believe we have the ability to get through things that we didn’t think we could. We are all unique individuals, we are stronger than we think, and as a community, we can rally together.

Follow Cuck Fancer on Facebook to see when and where they’ll be next.