University Launches AIDS Awareness Week

Harvard-Radcliffe AIDS Education and Outreach (AEO) kicked off the third annual Harvard AIDS Awareness Week yesterday by distributing red ribbons, free condoms and AIDS-related literature from a table in front of the Science Center.

The week of AIDS awareness events, organized by the umbrella group Harvard-Radcliffe Arts Committee on AIDS, is intended to educate the student community about AIDS and to bring home the realities of the illness to student, organizers said.

The week will culminate in a commemoration of World AIDS day on Friday.

"It is a health awareness issue," said Pratima Gupta '96, AEO co-chair. "There are a lot of misconceptions out there that we want to counter."

"Students generally have all the facts about HIV, they have the knowledge, but they don't use it in their everyday behavior," Jeanne L. Kwong '96 said. "We are trying to show that AIDS can hit anyone."

The week's events include a faculty talent show at Paine Hall on Thursday night. Acts in past years have ranged from stand-up comedy to Beavis and Butthead imitations.

This year, Director of Harvard Dining Services Michael P. Berry will do a "dramatic reading" of student comment cards. All proceeds from the event will go to a Boston AIDS charity.

Students said that the show gives faculty members an opportunity to help the community and at the same time to express their more humorous sides.

"Usually we see professors only as lecturers," Kwong said. "They get a chance to act silly and do something for the community."

A more serious commemoration will take place on Saturday, when the Schuman Endowment will sponsor a Marlon T. Riggs '78 film festival at the Sackler Museum Lecture Hall.

According to Jacqueline A. Malony, project manager of the Schumann Endowment for Helpful Living at Harvard, the festival will review the work of an openly gay, African American man with AIDS.

"Most of his [Riggs'] work looks at the realities of black life, rather than the usual media caricatures," Maloney said. "What a better time to remember this man than during a week of prayer for the healing of AIDS."

Other events scheduled this week include panel discussions, several plays and a $125 per plate benefit dinner at the Harvard Club of Boston on Thursday honoring Richard Gere and Mary Fisher.

For more information on AIDS Awareness Week events call 496-6354.