AIDS Quilt Is Wrapped Up in Rules : Memorial: The exhibit, opening today at CSUN, is governed by policies on everything from security to volunteers’ clothing.

If you want the quilt, you have to follow the rules.

“When we first got the idea of showing the quilt, we didn’t know what we were getting into,” said Amy Reichbach, a staff employee at Cal State Northridge’s student health center. Since last September she has headed the project to bring a portion of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt from its headquarters in San Francisco to the campus.

The quilt, which is made up of panels commemorating people who have died of AIDS-related diseases, will be on display at the University Student Union today through Saturday as part of AIDS Awareness Week on campus. An estimated 6,000 people are expected to view it.

“We contacted the people at the quilt project to tell them we were interested in displaying part of it,” said Reichbach, whose job includes coordination of a student AIDS speakers bureau on campus. “They sent us this whole book of rules and regulations.”

That book, “The Quilt Display Handbook: A Guide to Help You Successfully Display the Names Project Memorial Quilt in Your Community,” is a highly detailed tome describing how fund raising, banking, security, publicity, transportation, volunteer training, public ceremonies and a variety of other matters involving the quilt must be handled.

The handbook even specifies the color of clothing that must be worn by volunteers handling the quilt during ceremonies.

“Our first reaction,” Reichbach said with a laugh, “was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ ”

The book is evidence that the quilt project has grown in just five years from a simple commemorative gesture to a world-wide phenomenon.

“We have not been around for all that long,” said Scott Osten, who is the Names Project Foundation’s education and special displays coordinator. “But we’re steeped in the history of those people who created this quilt and developed it.

“For us, it’s a short tradition, but it is tradition and we keep it going.”

Many of the rules were simply born of necessity. When the quilt was first unveiled in 1987 on the Capitol Mall in Washington in connection with a rally for lesbian and gay rights, it included 1,920 panels, each designed and custom-made to commemorate a person who has died. The quilt then toured the country to raise funds for AIDS service organizations. It was last shown in its entirety in 1989, again in Washington.

All along the way, quilt panels were added by those wishing to commemorate friends, relatives or lovers, including some famous names--Rock Hudson, Liberace, Roy Cohn, Ryan White, Perry Ellis and Michael Bennett.

The panels now number almost 16,000 and if the entire quilt were to be displayed it would cover more than six football fields. At least one more full showing is being planned for Washington in October, by which time the quilt is expected to have 20,000 panels.

Since 1989, the Names Project Foundation has allowed numerous partial displays--at the rate of about two per week--to benefit AIDS organizations. The host group has to begin the application process by showing it has an appropriate venue for a showing.

“We had to send blueprints of the student union,” said Reichbach.

And they had to agree to strict rules on fund raising.

Admission to see the quilt is always free, but donation bins--designed and provided by the Names Project--are always on the site. No money collected in these bins can go to the local sponsor to help defray expenses; all funds must go to predesignated, local AIDS service organizations.

The CSUN event will benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles, the Minority AIDS Project, the Women’s AIDS Risk Network and the Shanti Foundation.

Fund raising by the host organization, which must be a nonprofit group, is allowed before the quilt goes on display. The CSUN effort received $5,000 in a Community Partnership Award given by the Los Angeles Times. The balance of the almost $9,000 budget (including a fee of $3,000 that went to the Names Project Foundation), was raised from fund-raising events, individual solicitations and in-kind donations.

“All of the shipping of the panels from San Francisco and back again was donated by Sureway Air Express,” Reichbach said. This in-kind donation by the Los Angeles-based shipping company is worth about $1,300, she said.

Part of the funds were used to pay the air fare for a quilt display coordinator--or QDC--from San Francisco to inspect the CSUN site. “The QDC came with her 100-foot tape measures and measured off our space to the quarter inch,” Reichbach said. “She asked about smoke detectors, if the area can be locked, is there secure storage, is there a room for counting the donation money, what is the electrical power source.”

The QDC, who has returned to oversee the display at CSUN, determined that the site had space for about 2,400 panels, including the walkways needed for visitors to circulate among them.

The handbook took the local organizers through a week-by-week timeline of tasks that have to be done, including the training of the 300 volunteers. That group includes about 90 speakers who will be reading names of people commemorated on the quilt all the time that it is on display.

The required structure and content of opening and closing ceremonies were developed out of a desire to make the event meaningful, but also out of practicality and happenstance.

“The main thing is that it should be kept simple,” Osten said. “It is not a time for speeches or politics. This is a memorial.”

At the beginning of the opening ceremony, the panels, which are sewn together in 12-by-12-foot sections, sit at the center of the display area in a shape resembling a lotus blossom. They are unfolded by the volunteers, all dressed in white, as the reading of the names begins.

“At the first display it was decided that the people unfolding it should be dressed in white so that they do not detract from the colors of the quilt,” Osten said.

Once the sections are in position, they are to be turned by the volunteers so that they resemble a series of diamonds in a grid of squares. “This was not the original plan,” Osten said. “But when the quilt was first unfolded, the volunteers got turned around and they ended up with the diamond shape. Then all the other sections had to be set down to conform to that.

“The organizers decided they liked it that way and it became part of the tradition.”

With the opening at 10 this morning, Reichbach will have come to almost the end of the handbook.

“There was so much that we had to deal with, that when I first looked at the handbook I did not know if we could ever get it all done,” Reichbach said. “But it walked us through everything, even things I thought were just common sense.

“Now I can say we are actually pulling it off and I am incredibly proud of what we have done.”