The College Professor

“History is a race between education and catastrophe” – H. G. Wells 

Several months ago the College’s Allied Health Student Club (for which I serve as the faculty advisor) agreed that commemorating World AIDS Day would help raise awareness of the need to be screened for HIV and reinforcement to prevent transmission of the virus. Commemorating World AIDS Day would also provide validation to the distress and grief experienced by those students who have lost loved ones to AIDS, as well as to our students presently living with the virus.

Foremost were the dual goals of prevention education along with HIV screening. The idea was to do a “tabling” event – that is, presenting materials and other media attractions at a table located in an area of high traffic within the college. Behind the table would sit student club members, representatives from the local department of health and mental hygiene, and allied health faculty. As appropriate and within legal parameters, their roles would be to distribute prevention literature, direct students to the private area within the college where HIV screening would take place, answer content questions, and provide referrals for counseling and follow-up care at health centers within the community.

As the day drew closer to December 1, the Club members developed a larger “wish list” for the day’s event. Included on this list were memorial services, a poetry contest, rental of the AIDS Quilt for the day, candle displays, a memorial signature board, condom distribution, red ribbon awareness pins, pencils with a World AIDS Day inscription, red bracelets, and tee shirts for the students working the table.

Due to cost and time factors, several of these ideas had to be ruled out. First, the poetry contest, although an excellent idea, was determined to be too labor intensive and timed too close to final exams. Second, (lit) candle displays in a high traffic area would be deemed to be a fire hazard. Third, the rental fees for the AIDS Quilt were prohibitively expensive. The red ribbon pins, pencils, and tee shirts appeared to be doable, and the red bracelets remained under consideration.

After consultation with the community health center HIV counselor, we learned he could provide red bracelets for those who completed HIV screening and tee shirts for the student volunteers. The College’s student services club advisor would be able to provide the red ribbon pins, pencils, and condoms, as well as balloons, tablecloths, and a canvas memorial board with colored markers. This memorial board would permit students, faculty, and staff to write tributes or other notes to those who have passed from complications of the virus. Finally, the IT department agreed to hook up a laptop with Wi-Fi access so students could view displays of related videos, photo stories and documentaries, and ongoing HIV/AIDS counts internationally.

HIV/AIDS no longer seems to lead the news headlines as it did decades ago. But when your community is identified as having among the highest death rates in the United States due to complications of AIDS, venturing into new territories in an academic environment to achieve objectives of awareness is the least we educators can do.