May 3, 2006

AIDS Activism 101: Campus Crusaders Bone Up

Melissa Haas, a 22-year-old senior at Central Connecticut State University, took a bite of her sandwich, eyed the clamor of college AIDS activists networking around her in a New York University lunchroom and grinned. “Inspiring” is how she described Saturday’s “Young Global Leaders Summit: Fighting AIDS.” “I hate to say it,” she said, “but AIDS is passé at my school.”

Haas and the 250 to 300 other students attending the daylong summit hope that the organizing tools and the contagious energy passed around will translate into HIV awareness campaigns at college campuses throughout the country (and the world), where apathy is just one of many challenges. By lunchtime, it was looking good.

Matt Unrath, a freshman at Boston College, was excited about making contact with Americans for Informed Democracy, a national group that gets young people involved in public-policy debates. “They want to bring in a very diverse set of opinions and backgrounds under the banner of informed citizenship,” he said,
“which is exactly what we need at Boston College.”

And Mohamed Lotfy, a medical student in Egypt, said the lecture on new approaches to fighting AIDS in the Middle East—with a focus on Iran’s successes—was chock-full of information he could use back home. Stigma and a shortage of HIV research are huge concerns for Egyptians, he said, and the size of the epidemic there is underreported. “They don’t want to get tested or disclose. There is ignorance.”

Summit participants were nominated to attend Saturday’s conference by teachers and other mentors who happen to know their abilities as leaders, as different as their paths to leadership may have been.

While Haas got her wake-up call when she went to Zambia with Habitat for Humanity, for instance, it was a Howard University lecture on the debate about down-low sex in the black community that sparked Melinna Alleyne’s interest. The second-year pharmacy student says the reality of living in Washington, DC, with one of the country highest HIV rates, has raised the consciousness of female students especially. “We socialize with peers with very promiscuous lifestyles,” she says.

With HIV rates soaring for U.S. youths—15- to 24-year-olds make up half of all new HIV infections—Alleyne is not the only one feeling a sense of urgency. Students traded e-mail addresses Saturday with their newfound allies and placed calls on their cell phones to pave the way for projects to come. “I already notified one of the directors of HIV at the Howard University hospital,” reported Alleyne, eager to “go back and incorporate what I learned from the Summit.”

And when the last session let out at 4pm, students from the conference released their excitement into a YouthAIDS rally right outside in Washington Square Park—but not before covering their backs with provocative little signs showing HIV statistics and other messages. “Eye-catching slogans and shocking stats can make a huge difference,” said Haas, her wheels spinning already about just such a “great event” at Central Connecticut State.