A proud moment

When I found out I was accepted into Millersville University's Art program, I wasn't sure I was going to attend; I had my heart set on another school. MU offered a weekend where the prospective new freshmen had the chance to tour and hear faculty give presentations about their classes. Boring science speech after boring math speech, FINALLY an art professor stepped up to the podium and I was hooked. Professor Ben Cunningham and his class in Public Art was the reason I chose Millersville University for my undergraduate degree. As my luck would have it they had not offered it in the five years I attended MU and I NEEDED this class. So I talked to the chair of the department and Ben and filled out paper work for an indpendent study. We were uncertain at first if it would be approved but a couple weeks before classes started I found out that it was a go.

In his "class" I had the chance to really take on my own subject matter, medium, and message in a public domain. I chose to take on my generation's casualty with sex and HIV. I did a lot of research on the disease, the medicine, and the statistics. So many people my age think that, because HIV and AIDS rates are decreasing, that it's nearly impossible to contract HIV. Wrong. Sure the rates for newly infected persons with HIV are decreasing as a whole, but in fact, the CDC reports, they are increasing in people 15-24 years of age.

I designed several different pieces trying to come up with the best means to catch college students' attention. I settled on simple, clean postcards. Postcards are a metaphor for the communicable aspect of the disease. Each person who touches these postcards are in effect touching each individual that touched it previously; just like sex partners are essentially having sex with all of the former partners of their current bedfellow.

Front view: "You've just been infected."

The back features stats and a facebook link

One thing I wanted to achieve was a way of tracking just how many of my postcards reached my target audience. After some debate I decided to self address (blurred for privacy) and pre-stamp 100 postcards. Another problem I faced was how to distribute the postcards anonymously. You can't tell if an individual (or yourself) has HIV just by looking, so I wanted to play on that. After bouncing ideas around, long after the class ended, we came up with the school newspaper. I contacted the editor and he agreed to personally stuff my postcards into 100 issues of the paper.

The first returned postcard

I received my first, of hopefully many, returned postcards today. It was a very proud, exciting, and thrilling moment for me. My project was a success. Even if this is the only postcard that makes it's way back to me, I have reached at least one person. Maybe that one person will think deeper and choose to practice safe sex, if they aren't already, in the future.