PSU groups plan AIDS Week observance

Gorillas In Your Midst, a peer health education group; Student Prevention & Wellness, the Women's Studies Club at Pittsburg State University and the AIDS Resource Network of Southeast Kansas (ARNOSK) will sponsor a variety of activities in observance of World AIDS Week, which begins on Nov. 24th and culminates with the internationally observed World AIDS Day on December 1. The theme for this year's observance is "You, Me, Us."

Activities begin on Friday, Nov. 24, with an AIDS quilt display at Meadowbrook Mall. Sections of the AIDS quilt, which has memorial panels dedicated to the memory of lost loved ones, will be on display at the mall Nov. 224-26 and at the Overman Student Center Nov. 27-29. The quilt is on loan from the Tulsa Area Names Project. Information on the NAMES Quilt, brochures on HIV-AIDS and its prevention, red ribbons and posters will be available.

Wednesday, Nov. 29
A memorial World AIDS Day Observation will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 29, in the Governor's Room of the Overman Student Center. It will include an presentation titled "Stories From the NAMES Quilt" by Terry Klein, president of the Tulsa Area Names Project chapter, and Ray Chance, NAMES Project western area representative; poetry and musical presentations; and a candlelight remembrance of all who have died from AIDS as well as those who continue to live with the disease.

Thursday, Nov. 30
"The Day My God Died," a feature-length documentary that presents the stories of young girls whose lives have been shattered by the child sex trade, will be shown at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 30, in the Balkans Room of the Overman Student Center. In places such as India, sexual servitude is a virtual death sentence. In Bombay, for example, 90 new cases of HIV are reported every hour.

Donations received during the World AIDS Week observance will be directed to Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel-prize-winning medical relief organization, with the stipulation that the money be used for AIDS relief in developing countries.

For information about the PSU observance, call J.T. Knoll, PSU prevention and wellness coordinator at 620-235-4062 or send him an e-mail at: jknoll@pittstate.edu.

To contact Terry Klein, president of the Tulsa Area Names Project or Ray Chance, NAMES project western area representative, call 918-663-0820 or 918-828-4712.

---Pitt State---