AIDS patient speaks to campus group

I would hate to see anyone waste their dreams. So said Kevin Dickerson, in an intense and personal discussion about the deadly disease AIDS, the disease which is slowly killing him. Dickerson spoke to about 60 students at an Alpha Phi Alpha-sponsored forum last night at DuBois College House, talking about his experiences with AIDS, and what students can do to prevent contracting the disease. The racially-mixed group of students seemed moved and affected by Dickerson's talk. Dickerson helped start the Inner City AIDS network in Washington, D.C. to renovate AIDS education. His approach to discussing AIDS is directed at the black community. "[AIDS education] has been geared toward a white, middle class community," Dickerson said. He added that AIDS education today fundamentally consists of distribution of condoms and flyers -- an approach which does not seem to work within the black community. "An Afrocentric approach to combating AIDS would be to establish some kind of [personal] contact," Dickerson said. Black support groups for AIDS, Dickerson pointed out, are scarce. This may account for the fact that such a large percentage of the AIDS population is black. Dickerson said that one reason for this is the silence surrounding AIDS in the black community. He said that black lifestyles tend to center around churches, which condemns homosexuality, a practice frequently associated with AIDS. "We don't come out and talk about things that the church doesn't want us to do or say," Dickerson said. Dickerson spoke of his experience with AIDS in such a matter of fact way that he belied the severity of his story. He described his life in military schools and in living with a successful family. "I lived in a glass bowl for quite a while," he said. After attending University of Notre Dame and being ordained as a Baptist minister, he worked first with Prudential Savings Association and then with a consulting firm, traveling all over the country for his work. "I want to set the picture for where all of you will be in a few years," he said. He divorced his wife in 1986, and soon lost all contacts with the church, his job and his family when they found out that he is gay and has tested positive for AIDS. Dickerson said that he now has to live on $700 a month from his work in support groups and Social Security -- an amount of money that was half a week's salary in his previous job. He told the story of participating in a support group of 19 people with AIDS at Georgetown Hospital. "I'm the only one left," Dickerson said. He has tried to commit suicide five times. Dickerson has devoted himself to educating black youth about the AIDS virus and how to prevent contracting it. Dickerson advocated testing college students for the HIV virus at an anonymous center, citing the statistic that one in every five university students is at risk. "My hidden agenda here is to hopefully get 50 percent of this audience to get themselves to a confidential clinic in the next three weeks and be tested for the HIV virus," Dickerson said. "It's a real issue."

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