Quilt Event Spreads Awareness of HIV/AIDS

Mason hosted the largest collegiate display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Dewberry Hall yesterday as a function of the The NAMES Project Foundation’s effort to spread awareness about HIV and AIDS.

Twenty-eight Mason and Washington D.C. area organizations including ManTech International, The Entertainment Industries Council, Inc. and Mason’s own Communication Department Insight Committee came together to sponsor the event.

See more photos from the AIDS Quilt. Click here for the full gallery.

Photos by Student Media Photography Manager Peter Flint.

Steven Smith, President of the Mason chapter of Public Relations Student Society of America, worked with the Communication Insight Committee for over five months to organize the event.

Dr. Gary Kreps, Chair of the Communication Department and member of the Insight Committee also played an important role in the event bringing together area organizations to support the event.

“This is a way of increasing a sense of understanding,” said Kreps in his opening remarks at the event. “In the last decade or so there’s been a drop off our understanding, awareness, and interest as a general public for AIDS is the problem. We hope this is an opportunity to highlight this issue and increase our vigilance and thinking about AIDS and HIV.”

According to a pamphlet for the AIDS Memorial Quilt event, World AIDS Day was established in 1988 and is an event recognized around the world on December 1 as an opportunity to raise awareness of the growing epidemic.

“I think the call to action is timely and appropriate,” said Provost Peter Stearns at the start of the event. “This is an opportunity to look at a really interesting memorial effort that was designed to have future impact. This was not just a mourning of lives taken, this was an effort to use these lives to galvanize efforts in the future is what this event is all about.”

Guest keynote speaker Hydeia Broadbent spoke at the event focusing on the need for awareness. Broadbent, who is living with HIV, contracted the disease at birth. 

“In the year 2009, it’s really time for us to wake up and make a change. All the education and information that we have, there’s no reason should have to choose HIV/AIDS for some us, the choice was made,” said Broadbent while holding back tears. “We need to get tested and know our status, knowing our status means we will not knowingly infect anyone.

Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry provided free HIV testing in Student Union Building II and will continue to provide free testing on December 2 from 7:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. in Eisenhower, located in President’s Park and on December 3 and 4 from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. in the Johnson Center Rooms G and E.

“It’s moving, its thoughtful, I really like the quilt and I want to go around looking at more quilts because they’re all real interesting,” said freshman Cindy Quach while on her way into Dewberry Hall.

The quilt was conceived in 1985, with its first inaugural display on October 11, 1987. Each square is 12 feet by 12 feet, and a typical block consists of eight individual panels that are three feet by six feet wide. The AIDS Quilt is the largest community arts project in the world.

The quilt weighs 54 tons, has 91 thousand names on the quilt, and is 1,293,300 square feet and growing.

“This is what people need to know, the weight. That’s what makes it so real. My mother was a seamstress and when you talked about the weight of the quilt – I get that,” said Entertainment Industries Council Executive Vice President Marie Gallo Dyak. “The weight can be interpreted as the weight of the issue, the weight of people’s hearts, the weight of our loss, just knowing those kinds of facts, they’re more than facts. you can’t ignore 54 tons.”

Gert McMullin, an integral part of bringing the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the NAMES Project to Mason commented on the massive display. “When this first started and we were driving the quilt around we would stop at the weigh stations and the people would say ‘what are you guys hauling?’ It’s that heavy,” said McMullin. “And these pieces are not even the heaviest.”

With more than three percent of the Washington D.C. population living with HIV, makes the area’s HIV rates higher than those of West Africa, according to the pamphlet.

“It’s inspiring,” said freshman athletic training major Christian Asinero. “Even though I haven’t really been affected by AIDS I think I should be more aware that it’s all around us and it can happen to anybody.”