LETTER: For His Sake

To the Editor: Although Stephen Jamison (DP 10/15/92) professes to know about AIDS because he can cite a few statistics and throw some numbers around, those numbers mean nothing when they are divorced from the people they attempt to characterize. To people like Jamison who think they understand the AIDS epidemic because they have read books about AIDS, I offer a suggestion: get to know someone with AIDS, and talk to them, and comfort them, and help them fight the disease, and laugh with them, and then watch them die while the rest of the world continues to live their lives as if noting has happened. Jamison implies in his column that the odds of contracting AIDS at Penn are low because "how many people do you know that can match Magic's estimate of 200-plus sex partners?" Although "the studs in the Glee Club" may not have slept with 200 sex partners, they only have to sleep with one to get AIDS. It is poor logic to assume that one must sleep with hundreds of people before happening upon someone with the virus. Charles Rosenberg, in his essay "What is an Epidemic? AIDS in Historical Perspective," accurately explains the attitudes exhibited by people like Jamison. He writes, "When threatened with an epidemic, most men and women seek rational understanding of the phenomenon in terms that promise control, often by minimizing their own sense of vulnerability." Jamison might feel less vulnerable, but he's not. If Jamison were to contract AIDS heterosexually -- a "relatively inefficient" mode of transportation according to him -- would he comfort himself with the knowledge that "the vast majority of those infected with the AIDS virus are inner-city IV drug abusers and male homosexuals"? AIDS affects everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, and until college students realize that, the disease will continue to spread among young adults. I suppose that people like Jamison will not comprehend the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic until they find someone close to them has the virus. Will Jamison finally understand when a roommate or a close friend contracts the virus? Or will it take a drunken "hookup" to show him that AIDS is not just a gay disease? For his sake, I hope not. KIM ACQUAVIVA College '94