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Credit: Nick Romanenko
Nearly 1,000 people visited the Rutgers
Student Center’s display of the AIDS
Memorial Quilt, the largest community
art project in the world. The AIDS quilt
remembers more than 44,000 victims of
HIV/AIDS, each with a panel designed by
family members and friends. Men, women,
husbands, brothers, sisters, fathers,
mothers and even infants are represented
on the quilt.
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The many faces of the AIDS pandemic hit home on the Banks Dec. 1, when nearly 1,000 participants visited more than 25 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, on display at the Rutgers Student Center. The panels, each containing eight quilts, were stretched out on the floor of the center’s multipurpose room and mounted on the walls of the Fireside Lounge. Volunteers, including state officials, read more than 10,000 names of people who have died from the disease who have panels in the quilt, including Rutgers faculty, staff and alumni.
“Every day should be World AIDS Day,” said Francesca Maresca, coordinator of health promotion with Rutgers Health Services-New Brunswick/Piscataway and chair of the planning committee. “There is a real need to provide students with the information they need about the risks of HIV so they can make intelligent decisions.”
While medical treatments can prolong the life of patients, they have also contributed to a feeling of complacency about the once-dreaded disease, Maresca said. Young adults under age 25 account for more than half of all new cases diagnosed in the United States. “HIV is a preventable infection if people take the necessary precautions,” added Fern Goodhart, director of health education, who helped bring the quilt display to RU in 1990 and 1993.
The exhibit, the first at Rutgers since 1993 and the largest in the Garden State, also included an evening candlelight vigil. Student groups hosted separate programs, ranging from films to fund raisers, geared to the global day of activism and remembrance. Of the 40 million people worldwide infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, about 3 million are expected to die of AIDS this year.
The panels on display at Rutgers were just a small portion of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt, more than 44,000 panels each honoring the life of one or more people who have died of the disease. Begun in 1987 by a group of San Francisco activists led by Cleve Jones, it is the largest ongoing community art project in the world.
The quilt includes tributes to several university alumni, including Lionel Cuffie, founder of the Rutgers Student Homophile League, the second gay and lesbian student organization formed in the nation. Cuffie is also remembered by an annual university award granted to a student who is active in the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered communities. The display included a panel honoring Jack Bier, a Rutgers College graduate who was involved in the first committee to bring the quilt to Rutgers and New Jersey. That exhibit was held in 1990 at the Rutgers Athletic Center.
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