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“If I get to the end of the block and I’m still alive, that’s the future. The future in my eyes is as far as the end of the block.”

And with those words the Be Active in Self-Education Conference began Tuesday morning in the Turner Recreation Center. Students who attended the conference came from area schools including Bonner Springs, Bishop Ward and Turner high schools.

The conference, which was meant to educate high school students about how to keep themselves safe in the face of HIV and AIDS, kicked off with a duo monologue performed by professional actor Herbert Moore and medical student Rachel Frische, who both also serve as AIDS peer educators. The monologue is regularly performed for area youths as part of the Dramatic AIDS Education Project, sponsored by the Coterie Theatre, in Kansas City, Mo., the schools of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the School of Nursing at Kansas University.

Moore and Frische portrayed two un-named teenagers dealing with becoming HIV-positive and recalling how they came to be infected by the virus. Moore’s character’s quote about his future being only as far as the end of his block illustrated the short-sightedness often exhibited in young people as they become sexually active without considering the consequences of unsafe sex.

“I wish I could go back in time. I wish I could do things differently,” as Moore’s character says later in the monologue that outlines growing up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother and finding out about his status through trying to give his plasma to a plasma bank.

Following the monologue, both actors introduced themselves to the audience. Moore said that, while the stories illustrated in the monologue weren’t true of himself and Frische, they were real-life stories of actual people dealing with HIV.

Moore and Frische opened the floor for the students to ask any HIV or AIDS-related question they wanted. Questions ranged from where AIDS came from in the first place to when a person infected with HIV can be considered to have AIDS. Moore said that to date, the only information known about where AIDS originated is that it came from Sub-Saharan Africa. Frische said characteristics that prove someone’s HIV status has transitioned into full-blown AIDS include when a person’s white blood cells, which make up the immune system, drop below the 200 mark, and if a person gets an opportunistic infection, such as pneumonia, that can only be existent in a person with an already lowered immune system.

BSHS junior Kathryn Clark said the presentation gave a truer meaning to a subject she hadn’t before felt comfortable discussing.

“This topic, for me anyway, is kind of a hush-hush thing,” Clark said. “So the fact that we get to hear from people who know exactly about it, it’s a real eye-opener … it makes it even more obvious why you should be safe.”

More of this story can be found in the Feb. 11 issue of the Chieftain.

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