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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.

Held annually for the past 13 years, the conference is meant to educate high school students about how to keep themselves safe in the face of the HIV and AIDS epidemic. This year’s conference 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 unnamed 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,” 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.

After 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.”

During the rest of the conference, which was led by student AIDS ambassadors with BASE, the students listened to another presentation from a woman with the Good Samaritan Project in Kansas City, Mo., who is actually living with HIV. They also took tests of their knowledge of HIV/AIDS and found out where they might get tested and how the testing works. Additionally, the students took part in activities that allowed them to see the far-reaching effects of the HIV virus. In the activity “My Chemical Romance,” each student was given a glass of clear liquid and asked to switch their liquid with three random people in the room. Steve Walker, coordinator of the event, said three students in the room were given a liquid with an additional chemical. Once all the students had exchanged liquids, another chemical was added to each person’s glass, which turned the liquid bright pink if it contained the original additive.

“At least a third of the room ended up pink,” Walker said, noting the point of the exercise was to show how far and how quickly HIV can spread. “If you’re going to be sexually active, you have to be aware that you’re messing with everyone that person’s ever been with.”

Activities like these left quite an impression on BSHS sophomore Tony Sanchez.

“I think this really opened my eyes to how much five minutes of doing one thing could change your life forever,” Sanchez said following the event.

Walker said following the conference, the students who attended will submit a proposal to BASE toward the funding of an HIV/AIDS educational project their entire school can take part in.

“So they take from what they see this day and then replicate it at their school to pay it forward, sort of, to even more people,” Walker said.

He said there was no time like the present for this kind of outreach, as one out of four new HIV cases in America are those under the age of 20.

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