Free HIV testing!

The amazing people over at ASHA (AIDS and Sexual Health Awareness) and the Oasis Center are sponsoring free HIV testing for Wesleyan students all the time. Jon Short '09 sends in the info:

The Oasis Center on Main Street (located in the Community Health Center) has agreed to provide year-round, free, anonymous/confidential HIV testing for all of Wesleyan. Call (860)-347-6971 x3908 to make an appointment. They cannot take walk-ins. All visits are confidential, anonymous, and take 20 minutes. They use the rapid HIV test, which gives you results in 20 minutes.

Where: The Oasis Center on Main Street. Located in the Community Health Center (near Eli Cannon's and O'Rourke's).
When: All year and forever by appointment.
Cost: FREE!!!

A Closer Walk at PAC

Friday event:

This weekend Students for Social Justice will be showing A Closer Walk. A Closer Walk examines the underlying causes of AIDS; the relationship between health, dignity, and human rights; and the universal need for action, compassion, and commitment to counter what has become the worst plague in human history. The film's director and producer, Robert Bilheimer, is an Academy Award nominee and the film was conceived with the late Jonathan Mann, architect of the World Health Organization's response to global AIDS.

What: Screening "A Closer Walk"
When: Friday at 6:30
Where: PAC 001
Plus there will be snacks! See you all there!

Talkin' AIDS with Kids!

If your parents were like mine and neglected to ever give you a straight up facts of life talk, your sex education probably consisted mostly of 7th grade health class, "special episodes" of your favorite shows in which someone gets molested by a creepy neighbor, and/or a lot of furtive time online. But chances are, no matter how open-minded and liberal your parents were, they didn't go into much more detail than what euphemism goes into what other euphemism to produce the magic that is you until you were at least in imminent danger of going all pubescent on them.

In the new documentary "Please Talk to Kids About AIDS", the adorable kindergarten-age daughters of two filmmakers tag along with their parents to the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto, where they were filmed interviewing top AIDS experts, gay activists, condom distributors, drag performers, and sex toy salespeople, resulting in a lot of awkwardness and interesting connotations about how much explicit information kids can safely handle. Apparently the girls took most of it in stride:

Sevilla did say she was scared twice — once by an African guerrilla theater skit showing a village massacre and an orphaned girl forced into a sugar-daddy relationship, once by learning what a sex worker did. “I know it’s a job,” she said, “but it’s a weird job.”

From the mouths of babes! You can watch the entire 26-minute documentary here for free.