If you were ever confused about how to put on a condom, don’t miss your chance to watch the Peer Health Educators volunteers perform their annual skit at the Condom Fashion Show this Friday as part of the University’s AIDS Awareness Week.  
Wednesday is World AIDS Day, and University students from various campus groups are working together to bring awareness to HIV prevention and the importance of safe and healthy sex through fun demonstrations and one fancy fashion show.
Participants in the Cultural Forum’s Condom Fashion Show are making costumes out of condoms to be worn and presented in front of a live audience Friday night.
Health Center Health Promotion Director Paula Staight stressed the importance of students’ awareness about HIV and AIDS.
“The Condom Fashion Show is fun to see all the different creations, but we don’t want the message to be lost,” Staight said. “People are continuously effected by HIV. We want all students to get tested.”
Condoms are the top method of STD, STI and HIV prevention.
The Health Center provides latex-free condoms, bands, finger cots and lube free of cost.
University student and Cultural Forum organizer Lingheshwari Kakkanaiah is in her first year running the Condom Fashion Show. She touted the Health Center’s services as valuable for students.
“There are safe places for students to go to,” Kakkanaiah said. “There are resources here if they need them and if they have questions.”
HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic affecting the lives of millions of Americans.
Over one million Americans are estimated to have HIV, and one in five of those people is unaware that they have it. The disease kills more than 18,000 Americans every year.
Human immunodeficiency virus, can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. HIV destroys a specific type of blood cell that helps the body fight off diseases. AIDS is the last stage of HIV, when a person’s immune system is greatly damaged and can no longer fight off diseases or cancers.
HIV can be spread through unprotected sex, having multiple sexual partners, sharing needles or syringes and being born to an infected mother.
The Health Center has HIV and STI testing for students for a minimum of $12.
The Condom Fashion Show is also sponsored by One Condoms, the Women’s Center, LGBTQA, the Heath Center, Students for Global Health, Students for Choice, SWAT and HIV Alliance.
The Cultural Forum set up a table in the EMU this week with a time line of the history of HIV and AIDS in America. HIV and AIDS are relatively recent pandemics in American history. They became widely discussed in the 1980s after 31 Americans died of HIV in 1980. In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first case of AIDS. In 1995, more than 500,000 cases of AIDS were diagnosed and 332,249 Americans died from HIV and AIDS.
Staight said that just because students today have known about HIV and AIDS for much of their lives, there should not be a lack of awareness efforts.  
“We don’t want students to become complacent,” Staight said. “We want them to protect themselves and not assume that their partner is safe.”
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