North Carolina colleges racing to teach `HIV 101′

Knight Ridder Newspapers(KRT)Gregory Johnson lost two uncles to AIDS, so when he hears of fellow students at Johnson C. Smith University dallying with casual sex, he wants to stop them. “That’s one of the hottest issues on campus _ sex,” Johnson said. As a dorm advisor, the 20-year-old junior from Woodbridge, Va., talks to students about the risks and tries to host AIDS-related events. “HIV doesn’t affect you until it hits someone you know. When it hits home, that’s when you care more.” AIDS has hit home. At JCSU and colleges across the Carolinas. North Carolina researchers found a spike in HIV infection among black college males during the last three years. Since 2000, at least 84 N.C. college men _ including 73 blacks _ have been diagnosed with HIV. The HIV-infected students attend 37 N.C. colleges and universities, but the study also identified HIV-infected students at seven schools in five states who were linked to the N.C. outbreak. Now, health officials at the schools are racing to make students aware of the danger.In interviews with health officials, 60 percent of the HIV-infected male college students said they had sex with other men; 40 percent reported having sex with men and women. Most said they didn’t consider themselves at high risk for contracting HIV. At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, AIDS educators are seeing more professors and student groups asking for programs on HIV and AIDS. They’ve plastered dorms, academic and recreational buildings with posters about the virus. And they’re creating a partnership between the counseling center, sports and recreation and the housing departments to expose more students to the information. “We try to make it real to them, because there are a lot of false senses of security,” said Rosemary Ferguson, a health educator at UNCC. “We try to approach it from a campuswide perspective, instead of focusing on a certain population” like black men. “Just because these men are having sex with men doesn’t mean they’re not having sex with women.” At JCSU, counseling coordinator Maya Gibbons said students have become more sobered to the realities of unprotected sex. “There has been more of a buzz … more of a sense of responsibility among students,” Gibbons said. Last fall, the school started requiring freshmen to attend “HIV 101,” and when one campus group sponsored free, confidential HIV testing on campus, they had more demand than they could handle. This weekend, 300 students from a dozen historically minority colleges across North Carolina will gather in Durham for a conference called “Stomp Out HIV/STDs.” The event is a product of the state’s “Project Commit to Prevent,” aimed especially at African American and Native American students, because minorities contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases at disproportionately higher rates. State health officials asked college students to help plan the conference, which is designed to get student leaders educated about HIV and motivated to lead prevention programs on their campuses. The program has been in the works since before the jump in campus HIV cases was discovered, said Phyllis Gray, project manager for the state’s HIV and sexually transmitted disease prevention branch. In Charlotte and elsewhere across the state, church and civic groups are quietly attacking risky behavior. Pastor Johnny Brown of the Rhema Covenant Worship Center in northeast Charlotte has beefed up his outreach to Smith students and uses Bible studies and fellowship times to talk about sex and HIV. Brown lost a brother to AIDS. When he read of the epidemic among black college males, he got involved. “I preach abstinence; don’t have sex until you’re married,” Brown said. “As churches, we haven’t done enough. We have to step up our game and let them know, `We don’t want to bury you.'”