Fighting Back : Students Launch AIDS Awareness Week at High School

It used to be that a high school football player with a bloody nose was cleaned up and sent running back into the game, his blood-spattered shirt worn like a badge of honor.

In today’s climate of communicable diseases, that player is out for the game. Student athletes and coaches are cautioned to avoid contact with body fluids to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

This week, to help other students learn more about acquired immune deficiency syndrome and its transmission, Thousand Oaks High School’s Associated Student Body is staging AIDS Awareness Week.

“Most kids don’t believe they are susceptible to such a thing,” school health clerk Bonnie Rossborough said. “I see it most with athletes and treating of injuries. Kids tend to think if it’s another student or someone they know that they don’t have AIDS or hepatitis or are not HIV-positive.”

Erez Lev-On, 17, one of the students who organized the awareness campaign, said students are still not informed about AIDS.

“A lot of people still have grave misconceptions about the disease,” he said. “It’s amazing to me that people still think it doesn’t affect women and young people.”

School administrators and public health officials praised the effort to teach students more about the transmission of the deadly virus. But others questioned whether a high school campus is the appropriate place for AIDS education.

“I think most of it can be done at home or in the community,” said Conejo Valley Unified School District board member Elaine McKearn. “Schools are overburdened with a lot of character building that in the past has been taken care of by the parents and churches.”

Nevertheless, McKearn said she approved of the program as long it stresses “self-control, responsibility and abstinence” as a means to protect students from AIDS, and as long as parental permission is required and attendance is voluntary.

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The week of activities includes an AIDS video that was shown Monday, a panel discussion Tuesday, a quilting bee Thursday and a display of the AIDS quilt Friday.

The group had planned a campus talk today by two men ill with AIDS along with a nurse from Los Robles Regional Medical Center, but that forum was moved off campus to the Thousand Oaks Teen Center by order of Principal Keith Wilson.

Jean Gordon, dean of students at the high school, said she planned to attend tonight’s forum program, which is open to the public.

“I support the kids in this effort,” she said.

Erez said the principal’s decision to move that forum off-campus was unfortunate but understandable.

“I can understand where they’re coming from since we live in a very conservative school district,” he said. “But the thing that is the most annoying is that we’re not allowed to advertise on campus for the Teen Center event.”

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That event is planned from 6 to 9 tonight at the Teen Center, 1375 E. Janss Road. The first 90 minutes will include a talk by two AIDS sufferers and Margie Richey, a registered nurse epidemiologist at Los Robles Regional Medical Center who also volunteers as a facilitator for an AIDS support group.

The second half of the program will be a play about AIDS, a presentation of the Moorpark College improvisational theater group.

Public health officials said any activities that raise awareness on how AIDS is transmitted are important because new national statistics show that one of every four new infections of HIV are occurring among people under 20.

Dr. Gail Simpson, an internist and infectious disease specialist at Ventura County Public Health Department, said the most common method of transmission is still sex among homosexual males. Other major forms of transmission involve unprotected sex among heterosexual partners and shared needles among intravenous drug users.

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Simpson said parents as well as students need to know about the dangers of contracting HIV.

“Parents need to be informed so they can do everything they can to protect their children, just as they would in any other circumstance where their children are in danger,” she said.

Monday, students decorated the campus with huge red ribbons twisted into what has become the insignia for AIDS and posted large signs around the campus with facts on AIDS.

A video on AIDS was shown at noon Monday, but it drew only 10 students.

The program, involving a 10-year-old short film produced as an after-school special, had poor sound and did not deal with sexual-transmission issues.

“This was the one the school board would approve,” ASB advisor Ruthann Ritter said. “There was a new video produced this fall that was available, but it had to go through the Family Life Committee before we could have it on campus.”

That committee, made up of parents, teachers, administrators, clergy and board members, previews all material before it can be used on campus. The committee meets only periodically, however, and could not review the new material in time for the awareness week this year.

She called the problem “frustrating. But it does help raise their awareness and that’s the important thing,” Ritter said.

Simpson, the public health official, agreed the main thing is getting the word out to take precautions, particularly during sex.

“Kids just think they’re invincible at that age,” she said. “And if there wasn’t that much HIV in the general population, they could probably get away with it. But this epidemic is still spreading like wildfire and the possibility of encountering someone with HIV is much greater than it once was.”