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AIDS in Indiana County Project One: Perceptions
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Perceptions |
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I admit that before I researched my data, I did not know where Westmoreland or Armstrong Counties were, or what their demographics were. However, I know the ins and outs of my town and my county very well, which is certainly not a large feat in such a small community. So my perceptions of AIDS in my community come from what I experienced there—very little pertaining to AIDS. All my knowledge about AIDS has come from secondary sources—things I read, what I’ve been told, movies I’ve watched—not from what I’ve witnessed with my own eyes. Most of my scant HIV/AIDS education came from my high school health class my junior year (Appendix B). As mandated by the Pennsylvania Department of Education4, we learned that STD’s were infectious diseases spread through “sexual contact,” and that AIDS was one such disease. It was drilled into us that the surest way to avoid contracting AIDS or any other STD was through abstaining from sex and drug use. Also noted in our STD unit was that having multiple sexual partners, unprotected sex, and high-risk partners greatly increases one’s risk of becoming infected. Specifically regarding HIV, we learned that it was the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, and that it attacked the immune system and reproduced in T-helper cells. HIV, as we found out, is not transmitted by swimming with an infected person or through a mosquito that has bitten a person with HIV. We were also given a very informative “HIV Disease Continuum,”5 which showed the different stages of HIV (Acute Infection, Asymptomatic, Symptomatic, and AIDS) and approximately how long they lasted. We learned that the symptoms of AIDS included night sweats, fever, fatigue, diarrhea, weight loss, purplish growths on skin, swollen lymph nodes, sore throat, and white spots in the mouth, but it was never explained that most of these symptoms came from the infections proliferating in the weakened immune system, not actually from AIDS itself. However much I learned about AIDS in school though, I always did feel as if it were a far-away problem, something that didn’t really touch me. We never had speakers with HIV/AIDS come in to talk, and in general it was assumed AIDS was a disease we couldn't and wouldn't get. When I spoke with my health teacher recently, though, she was able to tell me multiple places I could go to get tested; surprisingly, there are three options for testing centers in Indiana alone. She also explained that when she taught in a more urban school in Florida years ago, they had an HIV-infected mother and teenage son come in to speak to the class; this visit really made the students realize how close to home AIDS was6. They were also one of a few schools who got to display the AIDS quilt when it went on tour. But since the AIDS quilt and AIDS survivors remained invisible to us at my high school, my supposition was only reinforced that AIDS was not a problem here. Ironically, the most and best educational information on AIDS I received in high school came from watching And the Band Played On in my AP Biology class; that was the day when it first really hit home how much of a problem AIDS is, and that movie, not anything I experienced first-hand, is what inspired me to become so passionate about AIDS. Local media coverage of AIDS only furthered my conceptions of AIDS being a global, not local, issue. I found this most poignantly apparent in an article printed in our local newspaper, The Indiana Gazette, on World AIDS Day this past year7. The large black-and-white photograph was of Indonesian activists in Jakarta, the article was written in London by an AP writer, and what's even better, it appeared on page 7, the first page of the section boldly titled, "ELSEWHERE: News from the nation, world." This piece alone sums up Indiana County's outlook on HIV and AIDS; it says better than I could that "AIDS isn't a problem here." In fact, as I searched for articles pertaining to AIDS in The Indiana Gazette, I struggled to find anything on the topic not taken from AP sources. The closest I came was one article, from Scranton, PA, about a man who was convicted of fraud after charging people thousands of dollars for the use of an "ozone enema" that supposedly "inactivated HIV"8. What I did find on the local level, however, were some blatantly biased opinion pieces reflecting the conservative nature of my area. One local man wrote scathingly about how homosexuals don't belong in Boy Scouts or the military, citing the "alarming increase of deadly AIDS among homosexuals" as a reason that "their kind do not belong"9. Another, and Indiana woman, disdainfully wrote about the irresponsibility of an NEA resolution stating that education employees "should not be fired, non-renewed, suspended, transferred...solely because they tested postive for...HIV/AIDS or have been diagnosed as having HIV/AIDS"10. In general, then, Indiana County is vastly uneducated, unaware, and unconcerned with the AIDS epidemic. From what I can tell, there are no clubs or groups devoted to AIDS activism on the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) campus, the college located in the county seat, like there are here at Colgate. We weren't allowed to watch "Rent" in high school because its dealings with AIDS and homosexuality were considered too mature and inappropriate for teenagers. And when I searched every bookstore, including IUP's, I could not find a copy of And the Band Played On anywhere. AIDS in Indiana County is not considered a problem, and that's exactly what could make it one.
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 Homer-Center High School, Homer City, PA |
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 Main Street Homer City |
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 Homer City Power Plant |
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Map of Indiana County from Wikipedia.org[21] |
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