It started with a single red ribbon tied flimsily around the rails in Lerner.
Moments later, a passerby dropped a dollar, and then there were two ribbons knotted in unison. As the day passed, the ribbons multiplied until, by the afternoon’s end, GlobeMed’s project, Link On, was complete: a chain of 110 bright red ribbons visible to anyone who walked through the student center.
“The chain is meant to represent solidarity in the fight against AIDS,” Livy Low, BC ’13 and co-president of GlobeMed, said. The group also used the activity as a fundraiser to help lower the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in northern Uganda.
Link On was one of many activities organized by two student groups—GlobeMed and the Student Global AIDS Campaign—to raise awareness of the disease on World AIDS Day on Wednesday.
Members of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, seated next to GlobeMed in Lerner, asked students to sign a petition urging President Barack Obama to increase funding for HIV/AIDS research. In addition to the petition, the students also put in calls to the White House to promote their cause.
Columbia’s demonstrations were held alongside similar rallies from HIV/AIDS groups at Harvard and Yale, SGAC Vice President Amirah Sequeira, CC ’12, said. The groups have focused on holding the president to his campaign promise of increasing HIV/AIDS funding to $50 billion over five years.
Along with its petition, SGAC encouraged people to sign a card setting a date by which they would get tested for HIV. Sequeira said SGAC plans to display all the signed cards in a visible place on campus.
Sequeira estimated that between 300 and 500 people signed the petition and that over 100 pledged to get tested for HIV.
“It’s really exciting,” she said. “People were legitimately listening to what we had to say. They were picking up our fact sheets; they were picking up our resource sheets. They were engaging dialogue with us.”
Unlike SGAC, GlobeMed focuses on other public health issues in addition to HIV/AIDS. Co-president Liza Plafsky, CC ’12, and four other students recently visited northern Uganda with GlobeMed’s partner organization, Gulu Women’s Economic Development and Globalization.
“We found through all of our interviews and question-asking that HIV and AIDS was by far the biggest burden, which we already knew from the statistics,” Plafsky said. “But to see it right there and to hear from each and every person—we decided right then and there that our project this year had to focus on HIV and AIDS.”
In addition to Link On, GlobeMed sponsored a trip to a colloquium on HIV/AIDS held by the Mailman School of Public Health. This Saturday, GlobeMed will host a party called “GlobeRED” at Mel’s Burger Bar, with all proceeds going to its work in Uganda.
SGAC concluded World AIDS Day with a candlelight vigil on Low Steps for those affected by HIV/AIDS.
“The vigil is a really important part of the week,” Sequeira said. “We use World AIDS Day to educate and bring awareness ... but at the end of the day, World AIDS Day itself is about remembering all the people we’ve lost.”
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