In light of World AIDS Week last week, the GU AIDS Coalition organized several awareness and fundraising events but focused its efforts on campus despite the city-wide response of other D.C. activists.
Katy Berglund-Schlesinger (GRD ’09), World AIDS Week Coordinator, said World AIDS Day on Saturday was the focal point of their efforts.
“Dec. 1 is recognized by the [United Nations] and other organizations as World AIDS Day, and we in the AIDS Coalition feel that the week surrounding World AIDS Day is the perfect time to host events that focus on our cause,” she said.
The AIDS Coalition, along with the D.C. organization Food and Friends, invited students to join them that day to deliver food to people who were unable to leave their homes due to HIV and AIDS.
A day earlier, students from The George Washington University’s chapter of the Student Global AIDS Campaign took to the streets in a rally for World AIDS Day, during which 40 people, including 25 students, were arrested outside the White House, according to GWU’s student newspaper, The Hatchet.
Erica Manta (COL ’10), treasurer and Center for Social Justice liaison for the AIDS coalition, said the group did not participate in Friday’s protest, but instead directed its focus on a host of on-campus awareness and fundraising events.
“We didn’t have the manpower for additional events, so the volunteer opportunity was our focus,” she said.
Tucker Landesman, a senior at GWU and a member of the SGAC who was arrested in the protest, said that his organization similarly sponsored a wide variety of educational events and discussion on campus, but that direct action is essential.
“Education is extremely important and should always remain a top priority of any grassroots organization, but direct action is also an effective messaging tool,” he said. “We chose to get arrested to represent the dire need for policy change.”
Instead, the GU AIDS Coalition focused on awareness and fundraising in its on-campus events.
On Monday, students attended a film screening in the Leavey Center of “Life Support,” which stars Queen Latifah as a woman struggling with AIDS. Additionally, Miguel Aguero (SCS ’11) discussed his battle with AIDS and his work with UNICEF in Venezuela, and Gigi Thomas, a representative from Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, spoke about the stigmas of AIDS and her own experiences with the syndrome.
Tina Belsito (COL ’10), director of the GU AIDS Coalition, said she was inspired by Aguero’s story.
“What is truly inspiring is how he has developed since then. Instead of giving up on life, he has embraced it,” she said.
Throughout the week, the GU AIDS Coalition sponsored events that helped to raise money for different AIDS organizations. On Tuesday, the Black Student Alliance took on the NAACP in Red Square for Project Oven: The Bake-Off. The BSA won the crowd’s support with its creation of Oreo cheesecake, peanut butter brownies and pecan pie bites, and raised the most money – $106.17 – making a total donation of $255 to an AIDS organization of its choice.
The UnityLIVE concert was held in Gaston Hall on Friday, featuring performances from Groove Theory, Georgetown Gospel Choir, Superfood, Ritmo y Sabor and others. According to Jane Yu (COL ’08), publicity director for the AIDS coalition, the concert raised about $2,000 for the featured organization of AIDS Week, the Whitman-Walker Clinic.
Yu said that the Whitman-Walker Clinic plays a large part in HIV/AIDS treatment in the District.
“[The clinic] takes on a huge role in the metropolitan area as a center that bears the massive burden of AIDS cases in D.C., the city that has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS cases in the United States,” she said.
Kat Lang (COL ’08), vice president of on-campus affairs for the AIDS coalition, said that this was a landmark AIDS Week for the GU AIDS Coalition.
“We were really, really happy. We have made such great strides in growing and being active on campus,” she said. “This year was the biggest World AIDS Week so far.”
Yet Lang also said that this is only the beginning of the kind of outreach that the AIDS Coalition hopes to do in the future.
“So many students [still] don’t realize the pandemic of AIDS. We would just like to reach as many people as possible,” she said.
