By Arden Berry | Staff Writer
In the spirit of the season, the Beauchamp Addiction Recovery Center hosted a pumpkin painting competition this week.
The first pumpkin painting event took place on Oct. 24 with pizza and the movie “Coco.” Events followed throughout the rest of the week, and the pumpkin-painting champion featuring designs from “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” was announced on Friday afternoon.
Havelock, N.C., junior Harley Bonner is a BARC Recovery Support Peer Specialist. Bonner said the point of the event was to build community within BARC and keep people from “life-controlling behaviors.”
“We can be here together and have fun together,” Bonner said.
Monday through Thursday of this week, BARC combined a different food item with pumpkin painting each day, including boba tea, popcorn, coffee and candy bars.
Sugar Land sophomore Charlotte Tran said she enjoyed drinking boba tea while she worked on her pumpkin.
“It was a mental reset,” Tran said. “Right after midterms, you need something to do when you want to take a break. It was nice, really relieving.”
Bonner said BARC also hosted this event last year, but only for one day.
“This year we decided to extend it for about a week and have different events along with it so that students can come and hang out with each other and build a community while doing something fun,” Bonner said.
Beyond having fun, Jose Vallejo, assistant director for collegiate recovery, said the purpose of the event was to introduce students to BARC.
“We want to create access roads for students to see the BARC … and this is just a great opportunity for students to just see the BARC and hear about us and see what we do,” Vallejo said.
Bonner said the BARC is peer-based as students lead the center which exists for the student body.
“We’re here for people to just come and hang out or if students want to come talk with another student, we’re here for them and we love to build community,” Bonner said. “We want every student who is in recovery, an ally or any student in general to feel like they have a place to go and to feel like they’re included on campus.”
Vallejo said this supportive student community is meant to support students struggling with “life-controlling behaviors.”
“The reality is I think we are all, whether we want to say it or not, [struggling] with what I would consider life-controlling behaviors, so the playing field is very equal, and what we want to do is create a space and a place where students can walk that out,” Vallejo said.
The BARC holds events like the pumpkin painting to help students create community and reduce these life-controlling behaviors.
“There’s this phrase that says, ‘The opposite of addiction is connection,’ and we always want to create spaces where students can connect,” Vallejo said.
