California College Guide : Coming of Age in the Era of AIDS : Health: The disease has shaped the sexual development of today’s college students. But officials say young people still aren’t doing enough to protect themselves.

In 1981, when the first reports of AIDS frightened the populace, Sandy Lee was 8 years old, a carefree third-grader not yet concerned about a disease that has since claimed the lives of more than 150,000 people in the United States alone.

Now, Lee and her former classmates have grown up--and together they belong to the first generation to undergo an adolescence in the shadow of the deadly disease. For these young men and women, now scattered on college campuses throughout the nation, AIDS has been an ineluctable factor in their sexual development and expression, an ever-present yoke that some may try to ignore but none can completely shake.

“We don’t know what it’s like to have sex without (the threat of) AIDS,” said Lee, 19, a junior at UCLA. “For the large part, most college people today didn’t have sex when AIDS wasn’t an issue.”

Thanks to a gradually increasing emphasis on AIDS education and prevention in schools, young people--particularly those in universities--are among the more informed about the disease. Many have adopted safer-sex practices and take precautions to reduce the risk of contracting the virus.

But the numbers are still alarming. A national study two years ago found that as many as one in every 500 college students is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At USC, college health officials estimate the rate may be as high as one student in every 150, compared to a general population infection rate of one in 250.

Teen-agers and young adults remain a group at risk, inclined toward sexual exploration and experimentation, sometimes without thinking about potential consequences.

Experts say, however, that education has spurred some encouraging changes.

“The first thing to realize is that condom use has increased among college students,” said Susan D. Cochran, a psychology professor at Cal State Northridge who has examined student sexual behavior. Condoms, whose use was once “very rare,” are now used 40% to 50% of the time, according to a number of recent studies.

With the specter of AIDS always hovering, many college men and women also have begun to make modifications earlier in the mating game--during those age-old rituals of courtship and dating.

While picking up potential partners at parties and in bars or clubs remains a staple of collegiate life, students say they are exercising greater care than before in seeking out significant others.

“My selection of women has changed a lot,” said Jonathan Sinegra, 21, a Cal State Northridge finance student. “I’m looking for women not at bars and stuff. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet people at work.”

Mutual acquaintances now are seen as more trustworthy channels for meeting new people.

“I think there’s a logic behind feeling safer with people you’re introduced to by friends,” said John Wu, 19, who co-chairs a gay and lesbian student group at UCLA.

But experts warn that the sense of reassurance may be a false one, bred by the notion that one’s friends--and other college students in general--comprise a safer subset of society. On university campuses, there is a tendency for students to believe that their peers are intelligent, self-assured and therefore “less suspect” in terms of AIDS risk, said UCLA psychology professor Vickie M. Mays.

Michelle Inouye, 21, a creative writing and journalism major at USC, said such thinking is widespread.

“The university is like an island, and it’s like, ‘Everyone in this island is OK,’ ” said Inouye. “If everyone is like me, it’s OK.”

To help guard against that mentality, she and other upperclassmen staged skits for incoming USC freshmen over the summer highlighting the need for safer-sex practices. They advised new students that condoms are readily available on campus and are free from the university health center and from dormitory advisers.

More women are apparently buying condoms and insisting that their partners use them, students say.

“I’ve been in situations where she’s pulling out one and I’m pulling out one, and it’s, ‘Which one do you want?’ ” Sinegra said.

According to Sinegra and his CSUN fraternity brothers, condoms are stowed in all likely places: under alarm clocks, in night stands, in backpacks, in glove compartments and, for Sinegra, in a wallet specially designed for carrying only condoms.

But female college students complain of a double standard that paints them as loose and on the make if they supply the condoms, whereas men are considered thoughtful and prepared.

“If women carry condoms, hey, they’re a slut, they’re a sleaze-bag,” USC senior Michelle Campbell said. “She’s looking like she’s too forward if she has a condom.”

The burden should be shared by the partners, most students agree. They also think partners should be concerned with each other’s sexual history, although many women believe they are more apt than men to initiate such conversations.

Such talks are often awkward--and too often occur after sex, students admit.

“It’s kind of rude to bring that up. It’s prying into their business. It’s still not accepted to sit there and say, ‘How many people have you slept with?’ ” said Campbell, 20. “It shouldn’t be that way. I would love it if it were OK to talk about it.”

“By asking, it’s almost like saying you think they have something,” added USC junior Julie Gabler. “People get defensive really quickly.”

If recent surveys are correct, college students are prone to lying to their partners about previous experiences.

In 1988 and 1990, Cochran of CSUN and Mays of UCLA co-authored studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing “strong evidence that undermines faith in questioning partners as an effective primary strategy of (AIDS) risk reduction” among college students. Responding to questionnaires, about one-third of the 196 male students polled reported having told a lie in order to have sex. One-tenth of the 226 women also admitted lying.

Such lies are not necessarily told maliciously and may even be considered by the teller as harmless, Mays said. For example, someone may strongly believe he is HIV-negative and therefore fabricate what he considers to be a plausible tale of being tested for AIDS and declared safe.

“I think people lie,” Gabler, 20, said. “You meet so many guys who say, ‘I’ve slept with three people.’ Three seems to be the going number. Three seems safe.”

“I’ve lied,” confessed Suzie Hodges, a media management student at CSUN. “You have to be suspicious. And you have to practice safe sex.”

Even long-term relationships, experts warn, should include safer-sex practices, especially in light of the fact that more than 40% of college men and a third of the women said they would never disclose an episode of sexual infidelity, according to Cochran and Mays’ 1990 study.

Unfortunately, the threat of AIDS can still seem removed and abstract to young people, many students say.

“Until people know a good friend of theirs has AIDS, unless people have seen someone die of AIDS, it won’t hit home,” said Matt Wingard, 19.

A study released in 1988 showed that a greater number of young people reported changes in their sexual practices if they knew someone with AIDS.

Bryan Brooks, a 24-year-old history student at UCLA, can attest to that.

“A friend of mine tested positive about two years ago, and he has AIDS now,” said Brooks, who is gay. “He lost his friends, his parents shunned him, and his life is a living hell. . . . Sometimes I cry about it. I’m paranoid. I’m going to avoid this at every cost.”

Like several of his gay friends, Brooks has already undergone more than one AIDS test. At UCLA, USC and CSUN, such testing is anonymous and free, or provided at low cost.

But many heterosexual students have not used the service, although most of those interviewed admitted to having an unprotected sexual encounter. The prevailing reason was fear.

“If we’re going to find out, we’re going to find out the hard way,” Christine Wilson says of herself and many of her sorority sisters at CSUN. “We’re too scared.”

Students’ Sexual Practices AIDS has changed sexual practices on campus. Here are some statistics comparing the prevalence of AIDS and HIV infection among college students and in the general population.

COMPARING HIV/AIDS INFECTION RATES * General Population: 1 in 250. * On College Campuses: 1 in 500.

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American College Health Assn.

A survey of 1,153 students at 12 Southern California universities, colleges and junior colleges about condom use asked, “How often do you (or your partners) use a condom during sex?” The results were:

USE OF CONDOMS BY STUDENTS * Never: 26% * Rarely (1%-24% of the time) : 10% * Sometimes (25% to 49%) : 5% * Frequently (50% to 74%) : 4% * Usually (75%-99%) : 8% * Always: 10% * Not applicable (No sex in past year) : 33%

Source: California Sociologist / Winter-Summer, 1988.