Students skate to raise AIDS awareness

  Photos by COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin Anderson School
student Clifford Biesenow skates around cups at
the Roll-AIDS benefit. About 50 students attended Tuesday’s
event.

By Ivy Dai
Daily Bruin Contributor

Bumpin’ music and 50 roller skaters transformed the
Ackerman Grand Ballroom into a jazzy ’40s roller-skating rink
Tuesday at the eighth annual Roll-AIDS UCLA.

“(You’re) not only skating, but doing something more
““ promoting a cause and raising AIDS awareness,” said
Peter Trinh, the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s
student welfare commissioner. His commission sponsored the
event.

A portion of the proceeds from skate rentals and donations from
several organizations ““ including the UCLA AIDS Institute,
Women at Risk, UCLA Radio, IKEA, Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention
Team and URB Magazine ““ went to Project Angel Food, a
non-profit organization that prepares and delivers free meals to
people with HIV and AIDS.

“The bulk of our volunteers come from UCLA, and seeing
young people’s faces is rewarding to our clients,” said
Project Angel Food volunteer operations coordinator Stacey
Monn.

AIDS educator Sherri Lewis, who was diagnosed with AIDS at age
33, shared her story with skaters Tuesday night. She said her
lifestyle of recreational drug use and unsafe sex put her at high
risk for the disease.

Lewis, who was HIV-positive 12 years before being diagnosed,
said the news shocked her because she had felt perfectly fine.

“Everyone walks around with a broken heart,” Lewis
said with tears in her eyes, quoting a Buddhist philosopher.
“I walk around with a broken heart … carrying the loss of
my friends who died from AIDS, the loss of never being able to have
children.”

  Students form a chain on rollerblades in the Ackerman
Grand Ballroom for Tuesday’s Roll-AIDS, sponsored by the Student
Welfare Commission. Lewis, who is on experimental AIDS treatments
called “cocktails,” ““ a combination of protease
inhibitors, Azidothymidine and other drugs ““ said the disease
has actually helped her serve the community.

The losses endured have been immense, Lewis said, but she values
the opportunity to educate others.

“I see my affliction as a gift, being able to help so many
people and their children who could be infected through birth, by
speaking out across the country,” Lewis said.