[media-credit name=’Teh Eng Koon/Associated Press’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Sex Out Loud staff member and World AIDS Day coordinator Amy Martin points out issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS Day seem distant to students’ daily lives until one considers University Health Services diagnoses two or more University of Wisconsin students with HIV annually.

Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist at UHS, said this data represents only the students who are diagnosed by UHS, not family doctors, adding rates on campus are small but not entirely insignificant.

“World AIDS day coordinates a cultural response to the disease locally and globally,” said Daña Alder, head of the UHS Campus Community Partnership Team. “The effort is a coming together of many campus organizations who represent communities who are affected or are concerned by the disease.”

Today is the 19 campus-wide recognition of World AIDS Day but events have been held all week, starting Monday and ending Saturday.

Martin and Alder both expressed bringing a section of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was one of the emotional highlights of working on the event. A small section of the memorial was displayed Monday in the Memorial Union.

The Quilt will not be shown today, as World AIDS Day is also a Day Without Art. Artwork in the Memorial Union and other locations around the city of Madison will be displayed in recognition, Martin said.

Other events today include a display of 7,000 flags on Bascom Hill, representing the number of lives lost to AIDS on a daily basis, free HIV testing, a speaking engagement by two men living with AIDS and an interfaith worship service at Grace Episcopal Church.

As UHS employees interacting with students in a health services capacity, both Alder and Roberts said they feel there is high awareness of AIDS. Alder, however, said students still see the risk as being contained to certain groups.

“I think our mistake from the beginning was to fail to categorize HIV as resulting from behaviors,” Alder said. She added she hopes events work to change perceptions that certain groups contact the disease to “something that is caused by high-risk behaviors.” “These behaviors are also not restricted to certain groups,” Alder said. “White, straight men participate in what the African-American community calls the ‘down low.’ They just don’t have a name for that behavior.”

Alder has been involved with World AIDS Day, campus awareness and prevention for six years. As a health professional, Alder feels the biggest transformation has been the bipartisan U.S. response to African pandemic.

Patrick Emmanuel, a Sex Out Loud staffer who coordinated bringing longtime HIV survivor and educator Bob Bowers to speak at UW for World AIDS day, said the biggest problem he perceives in student perception of the disease is “people think that you can go on like a walk in the park.”

Alder and Emmanuel feel this perception has been precipitated by Magic Johnson’s suppression of the disease and continued high profile.

“When you listen to Bob Bowers he’ll tell you that not a day passes without him vomiting violently,” Emmanuel said.

Roberts said awareness among U.S. college students is high, resulting in lower infection rates and interest in understanding the global crisis.

Caroline Skolnik of McGill University is currently working with a team of recent alumni from other U.S. and Canadian schools researching HIV and AIDS. Skolnik said meeting the AIDS crisis face-to-face in Africa is harrowing, noting that even though awareness is high, the disease takes the largest toll abroad.

“Compared to Rwandans, we as Americans have never had to experience the purposeful raping and infection of our country’s women and girls with HIV/AIDS,” Skolnik said in an e-mail from Tagali, Rwanda days before World AIDS Day.