The national awareness campaign “Does HIV look like me?” was brought to Oberlin Wednesday night, the eighth stop of the coast-to-coast Road to Hope tour. This program is the result of collaborative efforts of the organization Hope’s Voice and the Student Global AIDS Campaign, aiming to motivate young adults to instigate the necessary social change to end the epidemic.

Duane Quintana, an Idaho native, was the first of the panel to relate his story. Quintana was 20 at the time of his diagnosis in February 1999. His family’s initial reaction to his HIV-positive status was one of unforgiving denial. Quintana’s father refused to speak about the matter and would leave the room as soon as Duane entered. Similarly, Duane would leave if his father walked into the same room. His attempts to use medication failed twice, so he decided to stop taking them. “I don’t feel like I need medication,” he said. Now at 26, Quintana has been married for close to a year and is hoping to have children.

All the speakers were slammed with misery when breaking the news to loved ones. After receiving a call from the county health department on July 24, 2003, 21 year old Lantz Smith from Oklahoma felt like “the walking dead.” His parents were not prepared for the news. It was difficult for Smith to see his father cry after learning the status of his son. “That was a shock, because it was my fault. I had broken my whole family and it was my fault,” Smith said.

Rather than dealing with the situation, Smith created his own reality by abusing illicit substances. It came to a point where he was using $1,000 of cocaine per week as a costly distraction. When he returned to school in the fall, the news spread quickly among fellow students.“I didn’t know why God had done this to me,” he said. “They looked at me like a dog.”

Amira Hikim of Washington, D.C. was lucky enough to receive the proper care. Hikim was informed of her HIV-positive status after taking a series of prenatal tests while pregnant with her third child. After discovering that her fiancé at the time had infected her, the trust was immediately broken in their relationship.

“It was a hurtful feeling,” she said. With the help of medication, however, Hikim was able to withhold passing the virus to her child, who was born HIV negative. “I tell my family and close friends. I tell everyone who I think should know,” she said, referring to her story and how she determines who to inform about her status.

Executive Director of Hope’s Voice Todd Murray’s story was just as dramatic. His first thought after being diagnosed was, “I was not supposed to be the one with HIV.” Telling his family proved to be an ordeal. “My mom was hysterical; my dad didn’t really talk to me,” said Murray. For the one year following the diagnosis, he took no action. After a while, however, his shame turned into anger. “I woke up one day and realized I had a choice.”

The program concluded with Healy Thompson, national coordinator of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, speaking about the current position of HIV/AIDS in the world. Presently, there are 45 million people in the world with HIV and another five million are added every year. Three million people die from AIDS a year because they do not have access to “care, compassion, adequate nutrition and clean water,” Thompson said. “Fifteen thousand people are affected every day, because we live in a world that has stigmatized this disease.”

The Road to Hope tour is a project of Hope’s Voice, founded by Murray. After testing HIV positive at age 20, he was frustrated about fighting alone, since “there were absolutely no faces and no voices with this disease.”

Between April 3 and May 7, the Road to Hope tour will visit a total of 22 institutions, promoting awareness and inspiring young adults to fight against this epidemic. The title “Does HIV look like me?” aims to emphasize the fact that HIV status cannot be determined merely by physical appearance and that HIV can infect anyone, regardless of race, sex, sexuality, demographic or economic status.

Students are invited to visit Hope’s Voice’s website, www.hopesvoice.com, where they can submit a message to be included in the Student Voices on AIDS Mural to be created by Miami artist Xavier Cortada.