In order to spread awareness about this year’s AIDS Walk, 12th graders Juliana and Christina Orman, with the support of Director of Studies Jonathon Allen, organized an ASM on Oct. 10, five days before the AIDS Walk on Oct. 15. During the ASM, the Ormans hosted two speakers from the AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), an organization that is dedicated to advancing LGBTQ+ rights, as they converse with the Marlborough community about the AIDS Walk.

The AIDS Walk is an annual event that strives to to fight the stigma and lessen the impact of AIDS and HIV on the LGBTQ+ community. The Ormans set out to support the walk by organizing the group of attendees last October and continued to do so this year. 

“I want people to know that there’s a community out there,” Christina ’24 said. “If you go [to the AIDS Walk], you can feel the energy of people who dedicate their lives to educating other people about this issue.”

This was the first time that Marlborough has had a communal discussion about the issue of HIV and AIDS, which some students and faculty see as a salient topic to address. The Ormans and Allen hoped that the ASM will encourage more students to participate in the AIDS Walk this year.

The AIDS Walk itself brings together a variety of people to talk about subjects related to AIDS and HIV. It aims to raise awareness of the various socioeconomic issues that play a role in the impact of AIDS and HIV on those who contract the illnesses, while also attempting to reduce the stigma that surrounds the diseases.

“Given that we are recently recovering from a global pandemic, I think we are all more sensitive to public health concerns,” Allen said. “It seems like the right time to discuss an epidemic that often flies under the radar and that has been, certainly in our own nation’s past, purposefully ignored and highly stigmatized.”

The money that APLA raises from the event will be donated to resources that work to help people cope with contracting AIDS and HIV to help target the health inequalities that emerge with the illness.

“We really wanted to highlight the AIDS crisis in the US right now because a lot of people think it’s a 20th century issue,” Juliana ’24 said. “A lot of people don’t realize that it’s still a really prevalent issue because of healthcare and the lack of access to healthcare.”