AIDS Talks on Campuses Discouraged, Teachers Say

Students listened attentively to three people with AIDS speak of their triumphs and pain.

They were moved by the story of 37-year-old Felice Jones of Thousand Oaks, who got acquired immune deficiency syndrome from her former husband and is now not only living with the disease but is married again and working as a model.

They listened to Camarillo resident Bill Greene, 32, who got AIDS through unsafe sex while a teenager, tell of how his stomach bloats because of the myriad of medications he takes.

And they heard from a woman who asked to be called Sarah, who got the disease in the 1980s as a health-care worker.

“I’m really touched by hearing you speak,” said 16-year-old Sarah Canales, a junior at Thousand Oaks High School. “I wish you could talk to some of my friends at our school,” she told the three panelists, who described their experiences to about 20 students and one parent at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center last week.

But such speakers are discouraged--unofficially, at least--from speaking on campuses, say many teachers in the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

Even talking off-campus, the panelists said they are wary of using words like “condom” or “homosexual” for fear of who might be in the audience and what they might think.

“Last year we were attacked by some board members,” said Sarah, who said her husband’s employers don’t know he is infected with HIV or that she has AIDS. “So we’re real careful on what we say.”

Some who attended the Teen Center discussion said they plan to tell district trustees at their meeting Thursday how important firsthand AIDS information is to students.

“A lot of people in Thousand Oaks think that teens don’t have sex,” Canales said. “But I know a lot of teens who have sex like it’s nothing. With a lot of people. This has to get promoted in the high school. You can’t stop it completely if you can’t educate.”

Confusion reigns on Conejo Valley campuses regarding AIDS education. It seems many of the players are not sure of school policy about speakers.

Supt. Jerry Gross said there is no districtwide ban on people with AIDS speaking on campus.

The district, however, often prefers to avoid controversy by asking medical experts to discuss AIDS. People who live with the disease are not necessarily trained educators, he said.

And getting parental permission--which the law requires--to bring AIDS speakers on campus can pose a logistical nightmare. For these reasons it’s easier to hold these kinds of talks off campus, he said.

Rule or no rule, board President Mildred Lynch said she wants to steer Conejo Valley students clear of firsthand AIDS speakers based on what she saw at a county program a few years back.

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She described the talk by three men who had AIDS as “outrageous” and “highly improper for our high school classes.”

“To teach about AIDS is one thing,” Lynch said. But students “don’t need to know all the particulars of how these people get AIDS. They don’t need to hear all these wonderful love stories.”

Teachers say they get the message.

Thousand Oaks High School health teacher Jennie Lyle said she has the distinct impression she should stick to the books when teaching about AIDS. Or, if she wants to bring in a speaker, she said she gets a strong feeling from higher-ups that she should only invite doctors or nurses.

“If what Dr. Gross says is true, then my impression has been different,” she said.

Elizabeth Dee, a counselor at Thousand Oaks High School who organized the AIDS lecture at the Teen Center on her own time, said she has never officially been told she cannot have AIDS speakers come to the campus. But she said the school has given her the runaround, scheduling and then canceling several dates to bring in certain guests, like Jones.

Columbia Los Robles Hospital nurse epidemiologist Marjorie Richey, who brought the three speakers to the Teen Center, said it is too bad more people with AIDS don’t speak at schools.

“We’d like to go to the schools where we would get a captive audience,” Richey said. “At the Teen Center, we’re preaching to kids who are already aware.”

Conejo Valley isn’t the only Ventura County school district to be wary of AIDS patients speaking on campuses.

“It’s a lot easier to control your own [staff members’] statements,” Ventura High School Principal Larry Emrich said. “It’s not worth it sometimes to have an outsider speak. You never know what they’re going to say.”

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But Gross said there is no reason an appropriate speaker would not be approved.

Many who would like to see AIDS patients speaking on campuses say they suspect the Family Life Review Committee, a group of 13 parents, board members and others, is responsible for forbidding AIDS speakers.

Not true, Gross said. The committee only makes recommendations on written sexual education materials, not speakers.

Gross said speakers would only be denied access to schools if principals deem them to be out of line on a case-by-case basis.

Schools interested in real-life AIDS speakers who lead age-appropriate discussions and are approved by the county can go to the Ventura-based AIDS Care and pick someone from the group’s “Positively Speaking” pool.

Last year, 17 schools in the county asked to hear these speakers. The list included public schools in Oxnard and Ventura, as well as private school Grace Brethren High School in Simi Valley.

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Whether there is an official policy, AIDS speaker Greene said it’s a shame more people aren’t open to as much information as possible about the deadly disease.

“In this part of the world--the eastern part of Ventura County--AIDS doesn’t exist,” he said. “We want to try to break through into this community.”

AIDS does exist in Thousand Oaks.

According to Richey of Columbia Los Robles Hospital, 600 to 700 people are infected with the virus in the Conejo Valley. A few of those victims are Thousand Oaks High School graduates who became infected as teens. Richey is aware of this because the people are part of a support group she created several years ago. She said they are afraid to come out because of the trauma it would cause their younger brothers and sisters who still attend school in the district.

Doug Green, the executive director of AIDS Care, said the truth about AIDS must reach as many people as possible, especially to the the next wave of people getting infected: young women.

“And they have the information,” he said. “They just don’t believe it can happen to them. There needs to be a change in the belief and values. And this can’t happen without an emotional exchange.”

Emotion doesn’t have a place in the schools, argues school board trustee Elaine McKearn.

School is a place for academic learning that can be gleaned from books and medical experts, she said.

Aside from expertise, McKearn said most people with AIDS are not usually good role models.

“I’m sure there are lessons to be learned from these people but it’s more important to see others who succeed in life and who do follow ethical and moral lifestyles. . . . Speakers should be inspirational, ones who have always kept themselves on track,” she said.

Although some people with AIDS are “truly victims,” McKearn said her “morality should not have to be jeopardized” by listening to “others giving testimony about their lifestyles.”