AIDS Game Poster Draws Attention--and Complaints--at College : Education: The placard at Pierce was designed to counter ignorance, but some health professionals call the format offensive.

An AIDS board game--in which players could “advance” to night sweats, weight loss and cancer--was pictured on posters at Pierce College last fall as an attention-grabber, aimed at students who ignored traditional AIDS instruction.

But the plan to shock the junior college students with images of death has proved excessively shocking to some people who work with HIV-positive patients, who call it insensitive and say it portrayed the life of an AIDS patient as hopeless. Colleen Rooney, a counselor who heads the AIDS Awareness Committee at the school, said there were no complaints about the poster when it was distributed. In recent weeks, however, she and other campus officials have received letters and phone calls complaining about it.

“This is so offensive,” said Marsha Marcoe, director of the AIDS program at Valley Community Clinic in North Hollywood, which offers AIDS testing. “It does not promote hope. It promotes hopelessness.”

“The way you stop AIDS is not to scare people to death,” added Mary Thompson, director of Cosmos Circle, a Los Angeles organization offering psychological support for people with HIV infection.

The “AIDS--Is Not a Game--Game” was created by a local artist as a poster using a game board format, and was not meant to be played. Several thousand of the 11-by-17-inch posters were distributed at the Woodland Hills campus during AIDS Awareness Week in November, said Rooney.

If the poster were used as a game, players would move around the playing surface, beginning at birth. The Puberty Swamp presents the first challenge. In the Teen Years maze, players would confront the dangers of unsafe sex, drugs, leaking condoms and sexual assault by an HIV-positive person.

If they got through the maze safely, players would reach the Highway of Life and find love, a job and material wealth. Those sidetracked by one of the pitfalls in the maze would be thrown into the Vale of HIV, where they would be bashed by bigots, lose weight, develop cancer and die.

“No disrespect is intended by this depiction of human suffering,” says a disclaimer on the poster.

But according to Marcoe, “The immediate message is HIV and AIDS equals death. We don’t know if that’s true. Twenty percent of those infected are living 10 to 12 years.”

Marcoe also said that the poster failed to educate students properly, pointing out that “players” in the Vale of HIV face the threat of losing jobs and medical insurance.

“There are laws about discrimination against AIDS patients,” she said. “They should empower people with the correct information.”

Thompson said she worries that the poster doesn’t help people learn how to avoid AIDS. “What it says is AIDS is real scary. That alone will not keep the disease from spreading.”

Nicole Russo, media coordinator for the AIDS Project Los Angeles, the second-largest AIDS service organization in the country, said the poster contains misinformation.

The possibility of infection from an assault by an HIV-positive person is “not one of the things associated with the transmission of AIDS,” she said. “I find that offensive and unnecessary.

“The game has no hope whatsoever,” she said. “We do want to concentrate on the positive, but some of these things are reality, unfortunately.”

Robert Garber, dean of student services at Pierce, said he was sorry if any HIV-positive patients found the poster insulting. “I’m sympathetic,” he said. “I think the people criticizing us are making good points.”

But he and Rooney said the poster was created not for HIV patients, but for students who may be convinced that they are in no danger from AIDS.

“We have a very difficult population,” said Rooney. “We have a college student body that is at the stage in life where they feel they are invulnerable, and they’re sexually active at the same time.”

Besides using traditional educational methods to get their attention, administrators thought they needed to “try to scare them a little bit,” Rooney said.

“I think it definitely caught people’s attention,” said Auriana Koutnic, 20, editor of the campus newspaper, the Roundup. “I remember people saying, wow, look at this.”

The college has sponsored AIDS Awareness Week for four years. Besides distributing the AIDS poster, officials have brought in performance artists whose shows focus on the disease. They have also passed out condoms and invited HIV-positive people to address classes.

Garber said the controversy is moot because the poster is no longer being distributed. Rooney said she could not be sure the poster will never be used again, but said that if it is, it will be reviewed “in the context of these criticisms.”