Brit Sharon / Roundup
It was AIDS Awareness Week last week?
I didn’t even notice.
Unfortunately, seems like many of the 22,000 students at Pierce College didn’t either.
I had no idea that it was AIDS Awareness Week until a Pierce staff member complained that the Roundup did not have one article about it in last week’s paper.
This bothers me.
A poll taken by the Roundup on the mall near Lot 1, adjacent to the Freudian Sip, three days after AIDS Awareness Week, showed that out of 500 students, 341 of them were unaware of that weeks happenings.
Beth Benne R.N., director of the Student Health Center, has been hosting the AIDS Awareness Week every semester for the last 17 years.
Benne, who understands the importance of HIV and AIDS awareness, feels as though this semester AIDS Awareness Week was a success.
“We had a great turnout,” said Benne. “Bienestar, [an mobile AIDS testing center] had 98 test in two days.”
Regrettably, I don’t feel AIDS Awareness Week had the effect on the Pierce students that it should of had.
As my generation gets older and starts or continues to have promiscuous sex we need to be aware of the consequences and the necessity of using protection.
“Everybody needs to wear a condom when having sex with someone they don’t know,” said Steve Bolan a HIV and AIDS awareness speaker with “Being Alive” and who has been HIV positive 27 year.
Sadly, Pierce wasn’t able to or didn’t find it important enough to touch upon the realities of having unsafe sex.
And yes, I will give them credit, I saw the mobile AIDS testing being provided in Lot 1.
I did see a number of people using it, but what about the people who don’t walk on that side of the campus?
“I’m on campus Monday thru Thursday but I don’t park in this lot,” Tarini Khurana, 21, a marketing major, as she refers to parking Lot 1.
What about the people who see the mobile AIDS testing center but didn’t think twice about it?
“I saw the vans, but I didn’t know what they were for,” said an unidentified student who commented during the poll.
There should have been more information available to the students at Pierce. AIDS testing is important but it is not the only means of educating.
Other options in providing awareness could have included pamphlets, an interactive exhibit on the mall, or the distribution of red ribbon pins, all provoking the conversation that so many people did not have.
AIDS is no longer a death sentence; it simply requires awareness.
We’re the first generation to be raised with AIDS as a reality.
We should be educated.
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bsharon.roundupnews@gmail.com