Recognizing World AIDS Day

"I won't get it."

That's just one of the thoughts college students often maintain when it comes to HIV.

In an effort to change that thinking, students and a well-respected member of UCF's staff have joined forces to bring awareness to World AIDS Day on Thursday.

The Student Government Association, the Multicultural Student Center, the Office of Diversity Initiatives, Delta Lambda Phi, Lambda Sigma Upsilon, Sigma Lambda Gamma, the African American Student Union and Equal at UCF have worked to put three events together for World AIDS Day.

"Since I've been here, this is the most intentional, cooperative and collaborative process around World AIDS Day," said Michael Freeman, training coordinator for the Office of Diversity Initiatives and clinical intern for the UCF Health and Wellness Center.

Freeman, who will be the speaker for the workshop titled "30 Years Later: ‘Why we still need to talk about it,'" put on by SGA's interactive workshop series called Conversation for Change, will be discussing, for the first time at an open event at UCF, his personal battle with HIV. The conversation will be held in Engineering II, Room 102, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

"I want to try to use my journey to be able to talk about why am I still here 17 years later," Freeman said.

Freeman, who found out on his daughter's 21st birthday, was his general practitioner's first patient with HIV. His doctor told him to get his life and finances in order because he probably had a year to live.

"You begin to sort out your life, quickly," said Freeman, who left the doctor's office thinking he'd never see his children get married or that he would never get to be a grandfather.

Over the past 17 years, Freeman has nearly died on three separate occasions, which is something he said drives his passion to do what he does at UCF.

Though not in his job description, he has taken upward of 30 students to be tested for HIV and has seen common reactions from those who found out they tested positive.

"To a younger person, it is, ‘I'm not going to be able to date. I'm not going to be able to find someone to have sex with.' … I don't think they look at it as terminal," Freeman said. "I think folks diagnosed later in life … you look at it as, ‘What are some of the dreams I have that I won't get to share?' and that there's an end point."

Trevor Persaud, SGA's diversity initiatives coordinator and the treasurer for UCF Pre-Med AMSA, first heard Freeman was HIV positive when Freeman spoke to the pre-med organization.

"I'm hoping when he speaks on the topic of 30 years later … that more people move away from that stigma of, ‘He has HIV, I don't want to be his friend.' It needs to be, ‘He has HIV, I'm going to treat him like a normal person,‘" Persaud said. "It's a disease. Someone wouldn't look at a cancer patient and say, ‘That person has cancer, I don't to be their friend,' or ‘I don't want to be around them,' but if someone has HIV, they might say that."

Persaud and others who helped organize the day's events will be handing out more than 1,000 condoms from noon to 2:30 p.m. in front of the Student Union.

Rene Martinez, the secretary of the Lambda Sigma Upsilon fraternity — whose national philanthropy is HIV/AIDS — said he hopes students take advantage of the free condoms and make the decision to have safer sex.

"We're giving out a crap load of condoms, so there's no reason why people shouldn't be able to wrap it up," Martinez said.

Free HIV testing will take place in the Multicultural Student Center in the Student Union during the day. The testing — sponsored by SGA, MSC and UCF Health and Wellness — will be done from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. by trained counselors with an OraSure oral swab. The counselors will also conduct pre-test risk reduction counseling that will consist of questions about sexual history and habits. Test results, which will be given in person, will take about two to three weeks.

Melissa Westbrook, the student director of MSC, said she hopes students realize the disease doesn't pick and choose who it affects and that students should get tested, especially when they can do so for free.

"We make a lot of poor choices in college," Westbrook said. "I think most of your poor choices in life probably come in college, so you don't want to leave and realize that you left with something [more than] a degree."