SF State celebrated World AIDS Day 2005 and 20 years as a leader in confronting HIV/AIDS on college campuses on Thursday with a daylong lineup of presentations by the university community.

The international theme for this year’s day of observance was “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise,” which according to Michael Ritter, the chair of the SF State AIDS Coordinating Committee, refers to the promise of wealthier countries to help provide medicine and education to poorer nations afflicted with HIV/AIDS.

A video diary chronicling SF State’s response to the AIDS epidemic over the past 20 years was shown in the morning and late afternoon, while the lawn in the quad was littered with tiny blue flags, each representing one of the 40,000 people in the world living with HIV.

The first speaker of the day was Rita Melendez from the Human Sexuality Studies Department, who examined how women of color and transgender women are of disproportionate risk for HIV. According to Melendez, discrimination against marginalized groups lead to a lack of housing and employment, which in turn leads to a lack of healthcare and prevention services.

Melendez also stressed the need for smarter approaches to public health messages and the need to eliminate stigmas.

“It’s very important to have African Americans coming up with HIV prevention techniques for African Americans. Especially in terms of delivery of the message,” Melendez said. “There are many doctors who would like to treat transgender people but don’t know how to do it.

“But there are also many healthcare professionals who will just refuse to treat you if you’re transgender.”

Albert Angelo, a health educator in the Student Health Center, was on hand to administer oral swap HIV screenings. For students who would rather test another time, Angelo was also distributing coupons for one free HIV test through Student Health Services, redeemable Dec. 5-8 or any time in January.

Other tables in Jack Adams Hall included representatives from the Counseling and Psychological Services Prevention Education Programs, the Student Health Advisory Committee, the SF State AIDS Coordinating Committee, and the AIDS marathon training program.

Other presentations included short South African films addressing denial, stigmatization and discrimination in correlation with AIDS. Ann Auleb, from the Biology and Human Sexuality Studies Departments, gave a brief overview of the HIV/AIDS pandemic from 1980 to the present, and Andrew Jolivette, from the American Indian Studies Department, looked again at the social factors related to increasing rates of HIV/AIDS infection in communities of color.

“All of our World AIDS Day speakers are from San Francisco State and that’s partially because we have such rich resources on our campus in terms of people who are working or active in the field,” said Ritter, who also works in Counseling and Psychological Services. “Secondly, we’ve been doing this for 20 years and this is a way of also celebrating that.

“We’ve been on the front lines and were probably the first university in the country to address HIV/AIDS in a formal way.”

The event also included a commitment tree, organized by the AIDS Coordinating Committee and the Student Health Advisory Committee. Paper leaf cutouts were available for campus community members to place on the tree after writing their names on the leaf and pledging to protect themselves and others from the HIV/AIDS.