Members of the AU community had the largest college team at the AIDS Walk Washington for the fifth year in a row with 276 participants on Oct. 29.
Carmen Rios, a senior in the School of Communications and Director of Women’s Initiative, said morning rain did not seem to discourage participants from showing up to the 25th annual AIDS Walk.
“Our contingent is small this year because of the rain, but registration was still sky-high, which was great,” she said.
The “AU Fights AIDS” team raised $10,600 for the Whitman-Walker Health Clinic this year, according to AU Women’s Initiative’s HIV/AIDS Taskforce Co-Directors Eliza Brashares, a senior in the School of International Service, and Julia Dieperink, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
AU has participated in the Walk since 2007, according to Mariel Kirschen, senior in the School for Public Administration and Deputy Director of AU Women’s Initiative. WI has organized AU’s team every year.
Participants met in Mary Graydon Center before the race for a free breakfast sponsored by Women’s Initiative. Of the 33 students who woke up early for the breakfast before the 5K walk, three students were also participating in the timed run at the event.
Students from the “AU Fights AIDS” team also marched with their friends or in groups and attended the event separate from the group gathered by Women’s Initiative, according to Brashares.
The walkers left from Freedom Plaza at 9:15 a.m. The “AU Fights Aids” team continued through the heavy rain, huddled close together in ponchos and rain boots. Hundreds interlocked umbrellas in an attempt to keep out the rain, but they still got soaked.
“I guess I really liked seeing everyone come together for this cause, even in this kind of weather,” said Maggie Cassion, a junior in SOC and president of the Lambda Zeta Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which participated in the walk. “I even saw some faculty along the way.”
Student participants said coming together for the AIDS Walk has become an AU tradition.
“A lot of people just sign up because they do this every year: sororities and fraternities and clubs and teams,” Brashares said.
The AIDS Walk began in 1987 to fundraise for the treatment and care of people living with AIDS, to bring awareness to the disease and to dispel its negative stigma, according to Whitman-Walker Health Clinic Deputy Director of Communications Chip Lewis.
“It was also something of a political statement then [in the 1980s],” Lewis said. “It was a way to try and get the government, and society in general, to respond to an epidemic.”
One in 20 adults in D.C. is HIV-positive, according to Lewis.
“This is an event that not only helps raise funds for the care of people living with HIV, but it’s the chance to raise greater awareness for people here in D.C.,” he said.
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