The selection of Stephen Lewis as this year’s Massey Lecturer signals AIDS to be as familiar a topic as tuition hikes. But this is not to be taken for granted.
The first World AIDS Day was held on December 1, 1988. But Varsity coverage of the annual event, now so extensive since the millennium, has been notably dwarfed in past decades by issues of local and national import: coverage of what we now acknowledge to be an immediately dire issue was conspicuous in its absence.
“Policy bans AIDS discrimination on campus” made the first page on the actual date of the first World AIDS Day, but there was no specific mention of the event. There was, however, a piece on a new “Phone book due in December.” Explicit coverage of the event was not featured, or even a real presence on campus, until 1995.
Last year’s Varsity of December 7th featured four separate articles relating to World AIDS Day. This, and Lewis’s highly publicized Massey Lectures from October, attest to the triumph of increased dialogue-and, hopefully, progress-for AIDS awareness seventeen years after the creation of World AIDS Day. Participate in this year’s event to continue the fight against AIDS stigma and silence.
