Walk With the Ones You Love Oct. 6

Members of the University of Maine community are invited to participate in Walk With the Ones You Love at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6 starting on the steps of Fogler Library.

As part of Coming Out Week, the 10-minute walk around the Mall aims to show support of a campus that embraces diversity.

The Christian Chenard Walk With the Ones You Love is a statewide action to promote a vision of a Maine where all people — regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity — should feel safe and respected to walk hand-in-hand with their significant others.

Chenard earned a Ph.D. in nursing from UMaine in 2006. He passed away the following year from pancreatic cancer. He had worked as a nurse practitioner with the city of Portland’s Public Health Positive Health Care program, providing primary health care and HIV specialty care to people living with HIV/AIDS. The walk he co-founded in 1998 with his life partner, Eliott Cherry, was renamed in his honor in 2007.

The UMaine walk is organized by Athletes for Sexual Responsibility and Male Athletes Against Violence.