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Credit: Tom Goodhart
Visitors reflect at a 1993 display of
panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt
exhibit, held at the Rutgers Athletic
Center. More than 7,500 visitors visited
the exhibit; thousands are also expected
when quilt panels are displayed Dec. 1
at the Rutgers Student Center.
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Each year, about 20,000 adults age 25 or younger nationwide are diagnosed with HIV, accounting for half of all new HIV infections in the nation. To boost awareness of these troubling statistics, and to honor the memory of those who died, the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display in the Rutgers Student Center Dec. 1, in observance of World AIDS Day.
The exhibit opens at 10 a.m. with a ceremony followed by a daylong reading by state and local officials, faculty, staff and students of names memorialized in the quilt. The display, free and open to the public, will include 24 panels, each containing eight quilts. Deceased Rutgers alumni and family members of university employees will be among those honored by quilts in the display.
“This exhibit will be a place of quiet contemplation with an urgent purpose – to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS as a serious health threat to people of college age, who are very much at risk,” said Francesca Maresca, coordinator of health promotion with University Health Services-New Brunswick/Piscataway and chair of a universitywide committee planning the event.
A concluding vigil will be held at 8 p.m. across the street on the steps of Brower Commons. Speakers will include a university student and her mother, who is living with HIV. The exhibit will close at 10 p.m.
Begun in 1987 by a group of San Francisco activists led by Cleve Jones, the AIDS Memorial Quilt contains more than 44,000 panels, each honoring the life of one or more victims of the disease. The quilt includes tributes to several university alumni, including Lionel Cuffie, founder of the Rutgers Student Homophile League, the second such organization formed in the nation. Cuffie, who died in 1984, is also remembered by an annual university award granted to a student who is active in the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered communities.
The exhibit is sponsored by Rutgers University Health Services; the Rutgers Panhellenic Association, a women’s organization; the Nursing and AIDS Care Association; Rutgers College Student Development and College Affairs; Bristol-Myers Squibb; and Gilead, a biopharmaceutical company. Previous AIDS quilt exhibits at Rutgers in 1990 and 1993 each drew more than 7,500 visitors.
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