After the news that Take Back the Night — an annual on-campus tradition to foster awareness and solidarity for survivors of sexual assault and gender-based violence — would not be held this year, attendance for the 18th annual BARCC Walk for Change was proposed.
Held near Constitution Beach, this year was the 18th Walk for Change held by the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC). Monique Cueto-Potts, Director of the Community Engagement Office, spoke on the goals of BARCC, and emphasized the varied ways they provide support to the Greater Boston community and support survivors.
“[BARCC] provides free services to survivors and their loved ones. They have a whole team of volunteers who work at a 24/7, 365-day-a-year hotline, either [by] phone or chat. There’s a survivor’s speakers bureau, where survivors go into different settings so that people can learn about their experiences. They have medical advocates, [who are] people who are trained as volunteers, who go into emergency rooms with survivors in emergency situations, [and] they have a whole advocacy piece of their organization that works with local and national legislation from sex ed in schools to survivor-centered legislation,” said Cueto-Potts.
After hearing speakers present, which included people both inside and outside of BARCC, attendees took a loop around Constitution Beach. Additionally, the event had yard games, t-shirts, art displays, and overall aimed at being family-friendly, centered around solidarity and fundraising. Carolina Tieppo ’24 emphasized the importance of strength in numbers and shared a quote from a speaker at the event.
“One of the speakers before we went on the walk said, ‘You know survivors are watching us today, right?’ They’re tuning in to see who’s showing up to walk to support them. Who can they count on? Not just a couple of days after an incident of sexual abuse or rape, but for their entire life? And for years and years after? And with the people that are showing up, and telling them: ‘We’re here to support you, We’re here early on a Sunday morning to support you and you can count on us,’” said Tieppo.
Michela Rowland ‘24 spoke on the importance of attendance as a basic form of support for those in need. They stressed the necessity for younger students to get involved with events such as the BARCC walk as a way to show solidarity and pass down knowledge to future generations.
“It’s super necessary that people show up. I think we’ve been seeing a decline in turnout for so many things including Brace Scholar talks, CaMD talks… and events like this. And I think that’s something that’s so imperative especially to get the younger students involved since we had a lot of older students and seniors [get involved]… I think people really do have to show up because that’s how we get that solidarity, that’s how we get that kind of knowledge passed down too about these things,” said Rowland.
Cueto-Potts emphasized the opportunity for the Andover community to appear and be in the march as a way to see and learn more from the world and the experiences of others.
“One important reason to get out there [is] just so that you see that it’s not only students at PA who are thinking about these topics and trying to support people in these ways. There are a lot of people out there, it’s a very diverse and inclusive crowd of people, and we thought it was important for our students to see that they are part of something much larger… Another reason it was important to get students out to a walk like this was just to see how people are involved in their community differently. So we heard from some people who, you know, their full-time job is to work at BARCC. We heard from other people who have totally different jobs during the day… It was important to expose students to the various ways that you can be involved in your community,” said Cueto-Potts.
