People around the globe marked World AIDS Day on Dec. 1. At Oberlin, Student Health Services promoted a rather interesting initiative. For two days all mirrors on campus were covered with white sheets to emphasize the importance of the event.

Also on Thursday in Wilder Bowl, students were given the opportunity to send a condom with a letter to President George Bush.

In the past year over 5 million people have been infected with HIV, and 3.2 million died from AIDS so far this year. Ninety-five percent of the people were from Africa. Last year AIDS was declared a national disaster in Kenya.

Information from the UN inter-agency task force on HIV/AIDS says that over 40 million people worldwide are either infected or HIV carriers, leading to the same number of AIDS casualities as if a jumbo jet crashed every hour and a half.

--Milena Evtimova