Two of my friends, Britt and Jessica, participated in the 10th annual Hill Country Ride for AIDS this weekend. The ride is 50 miles long and they had been training for a really long time to do it.
A large part of participating in this ride involves raising money for providing services for people who are HIV positive or have AIDS. Britt and Jessica actually raised a lot of money for the cause, but when they were first planning to do the ride they wanted to spend more of there effort on educating people about AIDS and HIV and sparking conversation about related issues. One way they decided to do this was through a “HIV/AIDS Awareness Movie Series”.
The first movie they showed (back in February) was a PBS frontline documentary called The Age of AIDS. They showed the movie at their apartment and the group made panini sandwiches and ate together. The movie was very informative even though it was a bit dry in some places mostly it was really fascinating. It was actually part of a mini series that is incredibly long so we ended up skipping certain parts of it. Because the movie was so long the party ended up being a sort of come-and-go atmosphere, which was really nice. I also got a really great chance to have several really interesting conversations about these issues with SU people that I had not really gotten a chance to know before, so that was exciting too.
The next month Britt and Jessica showed the movie Philidelphia, which is a particular favorite of mine. It has Tom Hanks, Denzel Washinington and Antoinio Banderas in it and it is about a guy who has AIDS and is fired from his law firm when they find out, so he sues them. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go to this movie night, but I heard that there was a pretty good turn out and that everyone had fun.
The next movie night I did get a chance to stop by was last week, when Britt and Jessica hosted a burger cookout and RENT sing-along in the DLC community room. I couldn’t stay very long because I had to go to a test review but it certainly seemed like quite a promising event when I did stop by.
I really enjoyed the movie nights that I was able to attend and I think that this program was such a good idea as a way to raise awareness and bring HIV/AIDS issues into the forefront of conversation. I am often impressed by how civic engagement and academic thought and discussion are so readily available to me as an SU student through my classes and various lectures that are made available on campus. However, this also makes me wonder about how I will be able to find and/or create such discussion in the communities in my later life. The fact that Britt and Jessica were able to do this so successfully with dinner and a few movies now and t
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