By Laura Spencer Editor-in-Chief
October is national Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and a new project at Hood College aims to work closely with students in order to increase awareness and overcome difficulties surrounding domestic violence. “CARE stands for Campus Awareness Response Education, and it focuses on relationship violence, dating violence, and stalking as it pertains to the Hood College community,” said Nina Carr, CARE project coordinator at Hood. “The project focuses on improving the response to these types of things and how we respond on campus and as a community.” The CARE project is still growing and developing on campus. However, Carr is fiercely dedicated to bringing more attention to these sensitive topics, as well as connecting individuals with any other resources that may help them. “When we talk about domestic violence awareness it’s really pinpointing a relationship between two intimate partners. They don’t have to be marital partners, they don’t even have to have a label on the relationship, but there’s a degree of some type of intimacy,” said Carr. “So if you’re not sure whether something is abuse or not, or maybe it’s unhealthy, not abusive but an unhealthy behavior, there are people that you can talk to confidentially on campus. There are people you can talk to if you wanted to make a report, or you can even reach out to local community resources like Heartly House , which is a confidential resource; their hotline runs 24/7.” Heartly House is local to Frederick County and provides services to domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and child abuse survivors. The Heartly House location is not disclosed to the general public in order toensure a safe and confidential place for people to stay when they need it. The number for their 24-hour hotline is 301-662-8800. Everyone is encouraged to learn to recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy behaviors. The CARE project will be setting up a banner on campus accompanied by sticky notes for individuals to label healthy behaviors on one side and unhealthy behaviors on the other so that members of the Hood community can identify what is or is not acceptable. “There’s still a notion that it’s solely physical violence, but very much so it can be emotional, mental abuse, certainly verbal abuse as well,” said Carr. “Whether it’s isolating somebody socially, whether it’s intimidating them, threatening them, maybe getting in the way of the positive things that their partner has going in their life, maybe it’s preventing you from studying, going to classes, destroying your books, a number of different things.” Students can get involved with the CARE project to help create an inclusive program that can better address student needs as it continues to develop. Students do not have to have been personally affected by domestic violence to participate. “This project really wants to come about this in an approachable way because either people are unfamiliar with the topic and so they don’t want to get involved, or maybe they have experiences, or maybe they are concerned that they’re on the other side of that behavior, maybe they’ve done things that are unhealthy and they want to avoid that discomfort,” said Carr. Members of the Hood community can expect to see more activity from the CARE project as it grows and establishes the best ways to reach individuals on campus. “One of which will be starting a social media platform, probably an Instagram, around this topic where information about healthy relationships, consent, tips for how to do something or say something if you see something problematic going on, also light approaches to this information because it can be a very heavy topic and we know that a lot of people have experienced things like this before they even come to college,” said Carr. Carr urges people to contact her by email at carrn@hood. edu or stop by her office in Alumnae Hall with any questions.
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