Many times on campus, people will come up to us and ask, "What does that ribbon mean?" referring to one of the red ribbons on our jackets. At first we thought it was just the naivete of the person asking the question, but it began to occur with alarming frequency. It seems that many students on this campus do not know that the red ribbon stands for AIDS/HIV awareness and that it is a symbol of the many who have died due to complications arising from the virus.
This lack of knowledge about something we thought was a commonplace symbol in our society, coupled with the lack of knowledge many students displayed when discussing safe sex, is quite disturbing. An example of this was when we argued with one of our peers over the safety of unprotected oral sex; the student believed that this was a safe practice and could not lead to contraction of HIV.
We realized that many students on this campus are somewhat, if not fully, unaware of the worldwide AIDS/HIV crisis and of how to protect themselves from acquiring the virus. Something needed to be done, so we decided to start a new campus group centering on AIDS/HIV awareness.
Before our group existed, AIDS/HIV awareness was a task usually taken up by the Queer/Straight Alliance and/or the Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgendered Alliance (now the Queer Union of Amherst College). It seemed unfair for these two groups to be burdened with these added responsibilities, because the AIDS/HIV crisis is not a uniquely "gay" disease or a problem for the LBGT community alone.
We began to meet as a group early last year by finding other people on campus who were also interested in working on the subject, and immediately put out a number of informative table tents, and tabled for World AIDS Day. We had an HIV positive speaker come to Amherst; co-hosted the Masquerade Ball, which helped to raise over $1000 for AIDS Care Hampshire County (a local non-profit organization which helps those with AIDS/HIV), and sold raffle tickets to benefit riders in the Alaskan AIDS Vaccine Ride. Finally, we decided to apply for funding from the SFC so we could do even more and become an official student group.
The resistance we met while attempting to secure funding was remarkable. We were asked questions such as, "Why AIDS?" and, "If we give you funding, should we give funding to a group concerned with syphilis?" We ultimately got funding and, this semester, are known as AHAA (Amherst HIV/AIDS Awareness). We are planning events including a panel on the AIDS crisis in Africa, events for and around World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 (such as tabling, speakers, and a display of sections of the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt), and are planning to release a number of informational table tents and posters.
We hope to continue to inform the Amherst College community about AIDS/HIV issues and hopefully challenge some preconceived, incorrect notions surrounding the crisis and prevention methods. Your help would be greatly appreciated and we encourage everyone to join us at our weekly meetings Tuesday nights.
Michelle D. Remsen '02<br>Kristin Swedish '01<br>Eric M. Thalasinos '02