Fresh Check Day, an event on the South Campus quad sponsored by UMatter, raised awareness for the importance of mental health as well as many other issues around campus, such as suicide prevention.
UMatter began “four years ago to help raise awareness of suicide prevention,” said Jackie Keeves, who not only is envolved with UMatter, but also works for the Office of Student Affairs as the Assistant Director for Violence Prevention.
Much of the event centered around the theme of promoting self health, and encouraging students to take more opportunities to destress, and to talk about struggles that they are having. Keeves said that every student encounters struggle, and “whatever you’re going through, there is probably someone who’s going through something similar, and we need to talk about that.”
At the event, many booths were set up around the quad of South Campus that were themed around self health, one of which was specifically centered around suicide prevention. The Nine out of Ten organization is dedicated to making the public alert of the high number of individuals with suicidal thoughts, a number as high as nine out of every ten people, hence the name.
At their booth was a large pledge that attendees got to sign to document dedication to helping raise awareness of the frequency of suicide. The pledge had many signatures by days’ end.
Other booths at Fresh Check day raised awarness for other issues, such as mental illness, rape and sexual violence and body image. There was also a raffle for several prizes including a television, shirts being given away for peope who participated in at least five booths, and a live performance by the Hawkettes, and on campus a capella group.
One popular booth at the event was sponsored by Active Minds, a group dedicated to issues around mental illness. At their booth, participants got to anonymousely write down any secret, no matter how trivial or how serious, and they would be displayed in a collage later on.
Another popular booth, in conjunction to the theme of suicide prevention, was Look for the Good. This booth had people write down something that makes them get up in the morning, and their responses were posted around the booth to display to passerby. A similar group were 100 reasons to stay, where people got to write down their favorite thing or reason for living on a piece of paper designed to look like a leaf, and they were posted with everyone’s other “leaves” on a collage next to the booth.
A large number of UMass Lowell students were seen at the event and enjoying all it had to offer. According to Keeves, however, reaching a high attendance was not as important a goal as raising the awareness and helping students. “If only ten people showed up, I still would have been thrilled,” said Keeves.