AIDS Campaign Holds Vigil

The Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) held a candlelight vigil in John F. Kennedy Park this weekend in the hope of inspiring others to join the crusade against AIDS, and to help students form SGAC chapters on their own campuses.

The vigil was part of the group’s New England conference. The conference also sent 250 letters to Congress, calling on members to support a $1 billion pledge to the Global AIDS and Health Fund.

SGAC co-founder Benjamin M. Wikler ’03 said the Harvard AIDS Coalition plans to hold a city-wide rally and push Senators Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy ’54-’56 and John Kerry to champion their cause in Congress. Wikler said he expects the rally to be held on either Dec. 1 or in early spring, at the beginning of the congressional session.

“The amount of energy and passion makes me think this can become a movement that defines our generation,” Wikler said.

Nearly 80 people attended the Saturday vigil, during which they shared their thoughts on AIDS.

SGAC, headquartered on Brattle Street above Wordsworth Bookstore, is the main project of Global Justice, a youth group supported by the Carr Foundation and Center for International Development at Harvard. The group was founded last February. Since then, the campaign has expanded to 188 high schools, colleges and graduate schools.

The Harvard AIDS Coalition is the founding chapter of the national campaign. Wikler, also the president of the Harvard AIDS Coalition, said he established SGAC because he realized that AIDS-related deaths are completely preventable.

“The only reason it is happening is becuase people aren’t taking actions to stop it,” he said.

The conference, the first of 10 expected to be held within the next year, featured Dr. Glaudine Mtshali, South Africa’s health representative, and Eric Sawyer, co-founder of the AIDS activist group ACT-UP New York, as guest speakers. SGAC addressed the scale of the AIDS crisis and its connection to gender, drugs and debt in developing nations. It also provided information on how to build coalitions, deal with media and motivate people to write letters to Congress.

McKenna I. Morrigan, a sophomore at Brown University who served on the conference’s planning committee, said the conference was a success.

“We were entirely student-run and we pulled off a professional conference,” Morrigan said. “We offered tangible steps and options that everyone can take to make a difference.”

Students from across New England and from developing countries, as well as HIV-positive students, attended the conference.