CAMPUS/AREA UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, December 1. 1995
3A
AIDS quilt panel honors KU graduate
Museum to display tribute to alumnus who died in 1993
Two panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt are on display at the Spencer Museum of Art. Throughout the country, 26,000 panels are on display.
Brian Flink / KANSAN
By Craig Lang
Kansan staff writer
Kendall Simmons wants the whole world to know how she felt about Gregory Barker.
"To me, he was the nicest person you'd ever meet," said Simmons, library assistant at the Government Documents and Map Library.
That's why Simmons spent three weeks organizing a 6-foot by 3-foot panel to be added to the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt commemorating Barker, a 1986 KU graduate who died of complications of AIDS in 1993.
The panel will be presented this afternoon at 12:30 p.m. at the Spencer Museum of Art in recognition of the eighth annual World AIDS Day. Two 12-foot sections of the quilt are on display at the museum until Dec. 10.
The panel was created by Simmons, who worked with Barker at the library, and seven other friends and family members. Simmons said the panel was made up of little quilt squares surrounding a large middle section that contained an illustration of Kansas with Barker's hometown, Sterling, indicated in the center.
"He always called it 'the center of the universe.'" she said.
Andrea Norris, director of the art museum, said this was the fifth year that panels of the quilt had been on exhibit. Norris said the Douglas County AIDS Project had been helpful in getting portions of the quilt to appear at the museum.
Norris said the museum also was showing a video on the making of a quilt section dedicated to Jamie Stile, another 1986 KU graduate who died of AIDS complications. Norris said the museum was unable to get the panel that had Stile's section because it was on display at another museum.
The entire AIDS quilt is long enough to cover 12 football fields. The quilt started in 1987 and was nominated for a Nobel
Peace Prize in 1989.
Norris said the quilt was not made to mourn the loss of AIDS victims but to express joy that they had blessed the world with their presence.
"We're commemorating their deaths by celebrating their lives," she said.
Carolyn Chinn Lewis, assistant to the director of the museum, said it was important for students in Kansas to see the quilt because it would convey that the disease hit close to home. She said that is why the museum displayed portions of the quilt every year.
"We want people to know how it affects everyone," Chinn Lewis said. "Everyone is touched by this disease."
Simmons said that after knowing someone who died from complications of AIDS, she has realized the importance of the AIDS Quilt to make everybody more aware that not just AIDS patients suffer from the disease.
"Anybody who goes to see it ends up in tears," she said. "I hope people go to see the quilt and realize this is a problem we all face."
Class,race complicate AIDS epidemic
Numbers indicate higher infection risk among minorities
By Hannah Naughton Kansan staff writer
Numbers released last week show the AIDS virus is hitting young men hard — one in every 92 men between the ages of 27 and 39 may be fighting the AIDS virus, according to the most recent estimates.
The report in last week's Science journal also show that one in every 33 young Black men and one in every 60 young Hispanic men are estimated to be infected.
"It doesn't have a thing to do with race," said Dennis Dailey, professor of social welfare. "It has to do with economic and class disadvantages. It probably has a lot to do with racism in fundamental ways."
Dailey said poverty and economic disadvantage pushed people toward the drug subculture and higher-risk lifestyles. That doesn't mean that white people aren't using drugs, but people in lower economic classes, who are often minorities, don't have the same resources to keep them as safe as people in the higher classes. For instance, the disadvantaged often don't have money for syringes or sufficient education about AIDS.
Duran also said people could feel apathetic when they perceived that they didn't have power. This can translate into
"I've always believed socioeconomic factors contribute to the lack of education concerning AIDS," said Matt Duran, Salina junior and president of the Hispanic American Leadership Organization. "These factors cause the Hispanic community to be less aware and make the disease more powerful and effective."
One in every 33 young Black men and one in every 60 young Hispanic men are estimated to be infected.
But AIDS should not be viewed as the minority or poor person's problem, he said. College students still think they can't be touched. It's a problem for all college students, not just Hispanic or Black people.
fatalistic behavior.
years old. It did not have the numbers on how many people were infected with HIV at that time or when the people had been infected, which generally is estimated to be 10 years prior to the time when symptoms first show.
In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that AIDS became the No. 1 killer of people 25 to 44
Marlon DeRouen, St. Louis senior, said AIDS was a world disease.
DeRouen said the numbers might suggest the disease only affected people of color.
"I take offense when I read numbers like this, and I know others will take them verbatim. It's a world problem."
People from all different walks of life get the disease, he said. Many people go out and get drunk and act irresponsibly, and it's an individual's choice whom to have sex with and what precautions to take, he said.
DeRouen said that presenting AIDS statistics in terms of race and class obscured that it was a world disease.
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