Drake University - Quax Yearbook (Des Moines, IA)

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S ST T ST .x Os AIDS: AIDS is no longer simply a problem affecting homosexuals in San Francisco. Cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome have been diagnosed in all 50 states and around the world, with 72 cases in the state of Iowa. He- terosexuals, recipients of blood transfusions and even infants are among the rising number of AIDS victims. Responding to growing con- cern and interest in the AIDS epi- demic, Drake offered its first course on the topic of AIDS this fall. More than 150 students took the minicourse, taught by Profes- sor Wayne Merkley. The course involved lectures, videotapes and class discussions on the many fac- ets of the AIDS epidemic. An AIDS patient, his physician and his social worker came to one class session, allowing students to interact with those directly affect- ed by the crisis. A disease ot our time AIDS is caused by a virus that attacks the immune system and damages the body's ability to fight other infections. The person becomes susceptible to bacteria and other viruses which can cause pneumonia, cancer, meningitis, or other life-threatening illnesses. The AIDS virus is found in an infected person's blood, semen or vaginal secretions and is spread chiefly through sexual contact or the sharing of hypodermic nee- dles. It is estimated that 1.5 mil- lion Americans are infected with AIDS today, and all are capable of transmitting the virus. As of the fall of 1987, 42,000 Americans were tested positive for the AIDS virus. A main problem is many people are unaware they have been infected and are unknow- ingly transmitting the virus to others. Surgeon General Everett C. Koop says that abstaining from sex and intravenous drugs are the only guaranteed means of preven- tion against AIDS, but this is not realistic or practical for most peo- ple. Having a mutually monoga- mous relationship, or using con- doms to prevent contact with body fluids, are effective precau- tionary methods. Society has yet to resolve the problems of mandatory testing, health care for victims and those treating them, the distribution of condoms to high school students or to penal inmates, and the teach- ing of sexual negotiating skills to high school students. The out- come of these issues can only be determined by time and money. In an age where people expect bullet cures for illness, how will society be affected by a disease with no forseen cure on the im- mediate horizon? All data as of October 1987. TSO Q Known AIDS emophiiiacs 1 - non Ugjpom 27 pediatrics M Cases ln IOWQ blood recipients 204, 30 heterosexual artners ndetermlned Im T0taI:72 'from other catggories 21, 25- IV drug abusers 20' 2 2001 O 15- 'EI mm. eifiimhcw homosexuailbisexual males E5 lo' E A HU een 2 We nfa L 5- 1 Distribution of AIDS victims 0 '83 '84 '85 '86 '87 year reported I

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y now, every Drake Student has had some experience with a Mac. No, not the opular fast-food hamburger, Ehough surely there have been ome interesting experiences with hose too, but the Apple Macin- osh computer. It has quickly be- come a permanent fixture on cam- us and proven to be a great aca- emic supplement and aid to all who take advantage of it. Still, it does seem as though some exper- 'ences have been more fortunate han others, and there are still lenty of bugs to be worked out y Dial. Drake's computer-enriched urriculum began in the spring of 986 when the administrators hose the Apple Macintosh as the ampus computer. By the follow- Lng fall, Dial Computer Center nad installed several labs across ampus, including ones in Aliber all, Olmsted Center, Goodwin- Kirk Residence Hall, Dial Center nd Howard Hall. The journalism nd psychology departments also ave mini-labs where students End faculty can work. Each lab omes complete with a monitor who must have enough computer snow-how to help those who were computer literates. The first computer lab systems were fairly simple, comprising approximately 25 Macintoshes inked by Appletalk communica- :ion cables to five dot-matrix Erinters. The computer loaded the rogram into temporary memory, imiting the user to one program it a time. Students and Dial Computer Center found this system to be madequate since the computers pften ran out of memory and mal- iunctioned. Also, the system al- lowed students to save documents nto the computer memory acci- lently, rather than onto their per- sonal disk. Therefore, when the :ompouter shutdown, files saved n temporary memory disap- peared and data was permanantly lost. The fall of 1987 brought new equipment to the Mac labs. Dial doubled the memory of each com- puter, then installed one external disk drive for each Mac and one hard disk drive for every dozen computers, enabling students ac- cess to a greater variety of pro- grams. Finally, two laser printers were installed in the Olmsted lab, enabling students to print docu- ments in near-typeset quality. Students must now show their Drake ID to the lab monitor who enters it into the main computer then issues a disk. This disk is inserted into external drive and the student is given access to the needed programs from the hard disk such as Word 1, Word 3, Ex- cel and Pile. But there are still other prob- lems lingering in the lab. Stu- dents who cannot afford to pur- chase a MAC of their own, or those who don't feel the need to purchase one, are forced to use one of the 90 computers available on campus. This was sufficient until more and more professors began issuing student's assign- ments on the MAC and they be- came popular. Now overcrowding is a common dilemma, especially during midterms and finals, and students often must wait in lines for more than twenty minutes in order to use the MAC. In addition to the over-crowded conditions, the new external disk drives are bulky, loud and slower than the internal drives, and may cause what the computer calls a system bomb, where disks are damaged and data is lost. It is typical for Dial to send about five malfunctioning disk drives back to the manufacturer each month. But aside from all the quirks still in the system, the Apple Ma- cintosh has proven to be an in- valuable resource for students, faculty, administrators, and staff alike. In the near future these problems will most likely be solved and the frustration will cease. With so many people hav- ing access to the system, it may be impossible to develop one that is completely bug free. But even so, Drake must still be considered fortunate to have such a program available. It is because of this computer-enriched program that Drake has clearly jumped ahead of its competitors.

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esscay ulvlosquiios Don'T was returning from a weekend trip to the west coast, headed back to school in Iowa, wishing for another day in Northern California. I had spent four days in the company of old and new friends, progressive people with an ope- ness to the world. As I ventured down the Dallas airport terminal, an electric passenger car announced, Please step to the side. I dodged the cart and found myself directly in front of a white sheet of mural paper which read in big black letters, Quarantine AIDS victims, mos- quitos don't wear condoms. I found the sign irritating as well as amusing. Could these people really be- lieve this? I felt well read on the disease as I had completed a mini-course on AIDS at school. I knew mosquitos wer- en't probable mechanisms for transmit- ting the disease. It became clear to me that some people were still making as- sumptions based on ignorance. Even reputable research groups like Master's and Johnson were leading the American public astray. I spotted the small group of people responsible, they were attempting to se- duce weary travelers into signing a peti- tion calling for the quarantining of AIDS victims. Where did they think they would send them - some Leper's colony in Hawaii? On the sideline, I was able to interpret the argument to quarantine stemmed from the belief that all AIDS victims were homosexual, immoral scoundrels who didn't deserve rights to a normal life. It occurred to me this quasi- religious group had a distorted concep- tion of saving humankind. I crawled in- side their minds for a moment and heard their logic, Isolate persons with AIDS and destroy the decadence of the zorh century, AIDS, the root of all evil. I-Iardly. I walked past the sign and then stopped. I felt the need to defend my point of view. I felt a calling to illumi- nate the closeminded assemblage with an educated rebuttal. I wanted to set the record straight for them - for myself. Foolishly, I thought they would at least listen to meg and, with some blind faith of my own, I hoped they might come to accept their blunder and might stop ex- ploiting their nonsensical notions. I hesitated, unsure if I had the confin- dence to take verbal action. Then some- thing inside me nudged. I did an about face and headed back in the direction from which I had just come. A rather tall, plain-looking woman stood expression- less in front of me. I approached her in a low key, unthreatening way, prepared to stand up for myself and those with the disease. I opted to get straight to the point, and in a one sentence statement politely said, Ma'm, it isn't possible for mosquitos to transmit the AIDS virus. She looked straight through me, refus- Weor Condoms ing to make eye contact and said, That's your opinion. My hopes that she might listen vanished. To her, I was invisible. I lost my energy to continue further with the conversation. I knew she wouldn't hear unless I agreed with her. How could she push more hysteria into an already confused public? She and the Master's and Johnson report! I didn't hate her, but I did hate what she stood for - an un- willingness to open herself up to the fact tthat she might be wrong. Suddenly it dawned on me the importance of receiv- ing new ideas receptively. Roots of un- derstanding remain buried until we or someone else uncovers the soil which buries them. We may then choose to ig- nore the overturned soil and let it dry, in effect killing the roots. Or, we can culti- vate the soil and grow in it. Growth is derived through understanding. Until then, we are ignorant. Ignorance feeds fear, and fear leads to fallacious action. The problem lies not in the unknown, but rather in untangling the overwhelm- ing amount of roots available to us. But once the roots are uncoiled and digested, we are then led toward enlightenment. I remembered what my friend had said to me when I saw her a few months earli- er. She had recently graduated from Stanford University. Educated yes, but still naive in some areas like anyone else. She recounted to me a trip she took to New York with friends that year. They stayed in an apartment which belonged to the lover of one of the friend's de- ceased uncle. She said to me, Nobody actually came out and asked how he died, but we speculated. We were thankful to have a place to stay without having to pay for a hotel, but we couldn't help thinking her uncle had died of AIDS. I felt weird being there, like if I touched something, I might get AIDS. I reassured my older friend that she was safe and would not find herself infected. I shared with her what I knew of the mysterious disease, and she was glad to better understand some of its fal- lacies. I played her sage and felt triumph knowing I had helped to assist in the giving of understanding. But less than a year before, I had been as green as the next. It was June, 1987 and I was working in the mountains of Yellowstone National Park. I had become friends with a 27- year old man from California. We were playing basketball one afternoon and he seemed unusually fatigued so we sat down for awhile. I-Ie put his hand behind his left ear and felt a small lump. Shortly thereafter, when he told me about it, we half joked that he had AIDS. I-Ie wasn't gay, and as far as I knew, he wasn't a user of IV drugs. We laughed at our de- mented diagnosis. The next morning he came to work with dark circles under his eyes and what looked like a bad case by Carla Weiner of adolescent acne on his face. It was obvious something was seriously wrong. I-Ie came over to me and said, I feel awful. I'm really tired, I've lost weight, I have a rash all over my body and a lump behind my ear. I think I better go to the health clinic. My heart stopped. My God, I thought to myself, he really does have AIDS. I had lightly skimmed through brochures on the disease, and his ailments fit al- most perfectly into the list of symptoms. At noon-time the clinic called the restau- rant and reported his condition. He did have disease. I-Ie had the Chicken Pox. I was eased with the knowledge of a sickness I was familiar with. But seconds later my paranoia - society's paranoia - crept back inside of me. I began envi- sioning that his bout with the pox was the first sign of his immune system breaking down and that he had AIDS as I initially feared. It didn't help that I was reading The Metamorphoisisn by Kaf- ka at the time. I wasn't thinking ratio- nally and most of all, I didn't understand what it meant to have AIDS. I was hesi- tant to go and visit my quarantined friend. I had drawn premature conclu- sions based on ignorance which, in this case, falsely fed off the fact that Geoff was from California, a state known to have many reported AIDS cases. A day later, another waitress came down with the chicken pox. I still think about the episode. I played a large role in caring for Geoff, able to empathize with the discomforts of ill- ness away from home. To this day, I don't know how that lady in the Dallas airport could justify shipping a bunch of sick people to some foreign land where they undoubtedly would suffer and die alone. I never probed her with the possi- bility that someone close to her could someday acquire the disease. I regret that I didn't question her more. I-Iowever, through her ignorance, I learned some- thing about myself. She unburied my courage to challenge, exposing my own roots, which left me both vulnerable and victorious. I have one question now about the in- cident at Yellowstone which, I am not completely able to answer. It is this, if Geoff would have been diagnosed as having AIDS, how would I have treated him differently? With ignorance and fear, or with understanding and compas- sion?