2008 Woodie Awards
Colgate Students Join Fight Against AIDS
Stephanie Tanguay
Issue date: 9/30/05 Section: News
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The Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) is a national movement with more than 75 chapters at high schools, colleges and universities across the United States. SGAC is a nationwide student effort to end HIV and AIDS in the U.S. and around the world through education, informed advocacy, media work and direct action.
Cooperrider, Inbusch and Emmett recognized that many Colgate students are affected by the devastation AIDS is wreaking globally.
"It is becoming clearer and clearer that HIV/AIDS is THE crisis of today's world," Inbusch said. "We felt that we needed to do something at Colgate to help fight it. It is important that Colgate students get involved because, with the resources available to us here, we have a unique opportunity to make some real changes."
With only three meetings held so far, SGAC has already actively started its fight against AIDS. Letters have been sent to Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton asking for her continued support of victims of the AIDS crisis. Members have also written AIDS statistics in chalk along campus paths to increase awareness and stress the immediacy of the action that needs to be taken.
Last week SGAC had a COOP table letter-writing campaign to get as many letters into Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office as possible, urging him to support the U.S.'s proposed $840 million for the Global Fund this year.
The Global Fund is a partnership formed by governments of the developed and developing world that provide grants to service those suffering from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Such an amount of money could service many people suffering from AIDS around the world.
The campaign resulted in 200 letters. So many letters were signed that the SGAC could not send the letters directly to Frist and ended up sending them to the SGAC headquarters to be forwarded. Currently, the Colgate chapter is working to write the story of the success of the letter-writing campaign to send to other SGAC chapters.