The AIDS Memorial Quilt displays more than 83,000 names of people who have died from the disease.
Union Programs displayed several sections of the quilt in the Union Ballroom Thursday in honor of World AIDS Day. World AIDS Day is Dec. 1, which is a Saturday this year, so Union Programs decided to recognize it beforehand.
“When I see the quilt, there’s just an overwhelming feeling of loss,” said Associate Union Director Ryck Luthi. “It represents things and lives that could have been better, but weren’t.”
The quilt consists of 6-by-3 panels, the same measurement as a grave, Luthi said.
Families and friends of people who have died from AIDS create the blocks, and the state or national quilt foundation puts the quilts together.
In the past five years, there has been one case of AIDS reported on campus, said Tricia Bishop, health educator for Student Health Services.
In order to prevent more cases on campus, health services handed out information and condoms to students.
Health services and Union Programs worked together to decorate the Union with 15 large red ribbons?each one representing a Utahn who has died from AIDS between January and September of 2001.
“To me, the very fact people die from AIDS is what makes World AIDS Day important,” Luthi said. “But when people die from AIDS because they didn’t know better, it’s doubly sad.”
Union Programs has hosted many other activities in the Union, including the quilt display and screenings of the films “And the Band Played On” and “Philadelphia.”
“The film ‘And the Band Played On’ is one of the first efforts made about how AIDS got started,” Luthi said. “No one wanted to deal with it then.”
The event has taken place for at least the past eight years, and at the first AIDS Day, the Utah AIDS Quilt made its debut, according to Luthi.
The event has grown bigger every year.
“I wish we could do more, but I think that’s the general feeling in the world,” Bishop said. “People think HIV is a manageable disease, we need to inform and educate more people about it.”