6B
Thursday, April 28, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
AIDS professor uses humor to teach serious topic
By Mark Eagan
Special to the Kansan
He comes to class equipped with the essentials: a leather "chasityt" belt, a flashlight, a bar of Ivory soap, a worn McDonald's bag, a bottle of lemon-fresh Joy and an unwrapped condom.
These are all part of Phil Huntsinger's "Prevention Kit," which he uses early in the semester to demonstrate preventive techniques and increases transmission diseases.
But perhaps the most important thing hunsinger brings to class is a sense of
"It is hilarious," said amie Burger, Kansas City, Kan., junior and a student in the class. "It really breaks the ice. Then, when he finishes, he gets into the more serious side of it.
Indeed, Huntsinger, associate professor of health, physical education and recreation, has a teaching style all his own, and he needs it with a subject as sensitive as AIDS.
"I like to get people involved and not just lecture," he said. "My field melds itself to this because people's feelings are involved. The main thing is that I want the students to learn the material and remember the information and not just resummitate it for a test."
And he does it through humor. The "Prevention Kit" routine lets him show some of his best.
"I use it at the beginning of the semester to lighten things up a bit," said Hunsinger, who bean teaching the AIDS and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases course last fall. "I show them the belt and say that the best way to prevent diseases is through chastity, and I show them a condom and explain how to use it. I usually get a few laughs."
Jill Bolamperti, Omaha, Neb. senior and another student in the class, likes his humor.
"He's a comical guy," she said. "AIDS is a hard topic to talk about, but he puts the students at ease by joking around. He really makes the class open up."
Huntingster recalled the time he showed a video in class that featured Ron Reagan, the president's son, explaining how to wear and tie a tie. Ron Reagan said was extremely difficult to break.
"In the video, they stretched one over a broom handle." Huntingser said. "But when I stretched one with my hands in class, it snapped in two. Everybody laughed."
But there is a serious side to the class, which meets from 4:15 to 7 p.m. Thursdays in 252 Robinson Center. Huntsinger said that AIDS was a national problem that would plague society for a long time and that education was the best solution for now.
He said that the public possessed many misconceptions about AIDS and that underemployees were a major source of infections.
san go to school.
The main thing people need to understand is that there are certain ways to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus. Huntsinger said. Among the best are abstinence, monogamy and use of a condom.
"You can't get AIDS through normal household contact," he said. "You can work with them (AIDS victims), and your kids can still go to school with them."
stopping it.
The same holds true for other sexually transmitted diseases, which are running rampant at KU, he said. To emphasize a lesson he used the phrase "gimmie" question on the class' first exam:
Sexually transmitted diseases are spread by:
a) intimate sexual contact
b) intimate sexual contact
c) intimate sexual contact
a) intimate sexual contact
b) intimate sexual contact
d) all of the above.
"I wanted to make sure they got it," he said.
Hungstein also gives the class interesting facts about the diseases to emphasize their impact.
"He gives us startling facts that make you jump back and say 'Whoa!'" Burger said. "He told us that, according to present statistics, everyone in the United States could have died from AIDS if people who will have died from AIDS annually than were killed in the Vietnam War."
"Those kinds of things stick in my mind," she said. "I find that, before a test, I need to look over my notes once, and I'm ready."
Huntingster also brings in guest speakers, including experts in the field and actual AIDS brunch.
"I think they show the kids that it's not just statistics but that real people have the disease," he said, "something that you would like to see in time." "It's something different,见它 in person."
Huttinger had two AIDS victims speak to his class in both the fall and spring semesters. One of the men, Jay, actually had the flu. He was in school, he had the virus but showed no symptoms.
"It was a very sobering experience," Huntsinger said. "These are guys who knew they were going to die, and Jay had already done so." He added that it really put everything into perspective."
But Huntsinger's classes also feature guests who speak on lighter topics. In his Health and Human Sexuality class, which he has taught at KU for 15 years, former men's basketball coach Ted Owens and his wife used to talk about natural childbirth.
"It was really funny," he remembered. "Ted would come in and take his wife's place in the demonstration. He would up on the table and ask, 'Who will play physician. I think the kids
enjoyed having a prominent figure come in and be that outgoing with a class."
Huntingstier had a natural bond to Owens, who coached at KU for 19 seasons before Lavery Brown took over in 1983. Huntingstier coached basketball and baseball at Madison College, now James Madison University, during 1969-70.
"I wasn't as successful as Ted," said Huntingston, who had a career 21-21 record in basketball to Owens' 348-182. "But I had a great time doing it."
he started the baseball program at Madison, and it didn't fare as well. "We used to schedule doubleheaders with every team because we thought we'd have a better chance of winning," he said.
Still, Huntsinger would not trade places with the glamorous coaches in collegiate sports.
"They're like a movie hero," he said. "I'm
the one person. I wouldn't want to live
my life, that way."
Now, Huntingster is committed to trying to spread knowledge about AIDS. He is chairman of the Lawrence Campus AIDS Education Commission.
And Huntinger is taking his AIDS class on the road this summer, giving weekly lectures at various Kansas colleges to better inform the public about the disease.
Memories of family in Vietnam still haunt immigrant student
"We can't stop it medically, yet — not during this century," he said.
Bv Kim Lightle
Kansan staff writer
The shooting in Vietnam stopped on April 30, 1975, but the war is far from over for Sonny Ha.
His battlefield has shifted from the concrete streets of Saigon to the shadowy corners of his heart and mind. The weapons have changed from bullets to the memories of his two children and the country he left behind.
Ha, LENexa senior, joined the Saigon police force, which was equivalent to the army, when he was 18 years old because of the fighting in his country. It was his first job.
some miserable things daily."
He was later assigned as a bodyguard for the police commissioner.
Ha said he was more fortunate than many of his countrymen, who had to take jobs at the age of 5 or 6 to help support their families. Growing up in the small middle class, he was entitled to more privileges than most people. He attended school. He had completed a third of the work required to get his law degree by the time he entered the police force.
Although he was more privileged than many others, life was not easy. His job flying helicopter missions to spot communist camps required him to be away from his wife and children for weeks and sometimes months at a time.
"It was a dangerous job," he said. "I saw
He sighs and closes his eyes while he talks about his three older brothers and six sisters. He cannot remember exactly when and how some of them died during the fighting. The confusion and panic that gripped the city just seemed to swallow people up, he said.
the city he had grown up in was ripped apart by mortar shells and soldiers. He could do little as he watched his friends and family members added to the list of casualties.
"I don't know for sure how many are left," he said. "There are only two brothers and two sisters that I know of."
"I didn't know we had lost for sure," he said.
As the fighting escalated during late April 1975, things got confusing. Families were separated as they tried to move away from the fighting, and most of the South Vietnamese, including the soldiers, didn't know whether the government was still intact.
A guard he befriended at the U.S. Embassy told Ha that he had to get out of the city or he would be killed by the Communists. The guard got Ha into the embassy, where he
He had been on duty and had not seen his 4-year-old daughter or newborn son for months when his government surrendered to the North Vietnamese on April 30. He did not return until he was released, but it was difficult for him to decide whether to stay and keep fighting or flee for his life.
took refuge.
He spent several tense hours sitting in the embassy thinking about what was happening to his wife and children and what he should do next.
He did not want to leave. He believed he would be able to return to his country and travel.
The decision was made for him as he was loaded into a U.S. Army helicopter at 2 a.m. the next day from the embassy roof. He couldn't even get a last glimpse of his home from the helicopter in the early morning darkness.
"I was shocked that I had to leave my two children, my wife and my mother who are always in my heart," he said. "I thought maybe I would run away and come back."
Thirty minutes later, the helicopter landed on the deck of a U.S. Navy ship. As he stepped out on the deck, he was surrounded by gunfire. He was killed. Ha was carrying were taken from him.
As the soldiers pushed the helicopter over the side of the ship, Ha turned to ask with the little English he knew what was happening. No one could tell him much except that he was being taken to a U.S. military base in Manila.
"I don't want to leave," he told the soldiers. "My family is still there. I must go
It was too late. The soldiers told him he
could not return to his country.
Almost 13 years later, Ha still cannot forget the faces of those he left behind. They haunt him every day when he eats, sleeps or is studying for a test in one of his engineering classes. Some days he can barely make it through the lectures in his classes because all he can think of is his family and whether they are all right.
He has no idea what has happened to his family. Occasionally, he will get news about his children and mother from a cousin who lives in Paris, but he can't be sure whether they are alive. No one has been able to find out what has happened to his wife. He did not know if she was dead or alive for a long time. He filed for divorce six years after coming to the United States.
He has never received an answer to the letters he has written monthly since he left. He does not know whether his family has been sending them for food and clothing.
"I tell myself that he get the letters and it helps them," he said. "Maybe they just can's send letters out to me. Pretending they are all right is all I can do."
"I know if I can get my degree and make enough money, I can bring my family here," he said. "If I just give up and let this grief go, it will be nothing and my children will be lost."
When Ha first came to the United States, he
lived in Dubuque, Iowa, and worked at a service station. He moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to attend a community college, where he earned an associate's degree in science.
Then Ha transferred to the University of Iowa. There he met his second wife, Lisa, who has encouraged him to keep working in his engineering classes.
"She has been the one to keep me going," he said.
He said he gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer when he came to the United States because he had a problem mastering English and understanding the way the legal system works.
"I speak English all right," he said. "I could never master it well enough to argue complicated issues."
Ha came to the University of Kansas in 1984. He estimates it will take him about three more years to complete his degree. The University were devoted to studying English.
He grew quiet for a moment and then said softly, "I cannot give up. I want to see my mother and children before I die."
Although getting a degree sometimes seems like an impossible dream, he said that
Tellers rolled down his cheeks as he said, "I would not even recognize my children if I saw them."
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