This post was updated April 7 at 12:17 a.m.
Black men comprise the demographic group most impacted by HIV. Awareness advocate Dontá Morrison specifically focused on this statistic at Dance Marathon, speaking with five other men about their experiences with the disease.
“As someone living with HIV, I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your empathy, your compassion, your love and your efforts to get the message out,” Morrison said to the audience. “HIV stops with you. If you don’t contract it, guess what? Nobody else will contract it; guess what? Your generation can rid it.”
Lauren Solouki, a second-year psychology student, said she was impressed with the speakers’ courage in sharing their stories with the audience.
“They’re okay with telling hundreds of people here, and I think they were all very enthused which made it really easy to listen,” Solouki said. “(HIV) affects a lot of people and people still view it as a joke, but it’s not a joke.”
Morrison also spoke about consent and a woman’s right to deny a man’s sexual advances. However, first-year undeclared student Kavya Atluri didn’t think his speech hit all the right notes. She was happy that he was initiating this conversation, since not everyone has a complete sex education, but felt that Morrison’s bit did not reflect the nuances of reality.
“Sometimes it’s not always the men who are pressuring the girl, and he made it seem like that,” Atluri said. “He villainized guys a little bit.”
Lorelei’s performance, however, impressed Atluri. The campus drag queen danced and lip-synced to a number of songs on stage.
“That was the biggest crowd I’ve seen come up to the stage for any performance so far,” Atluri said. “(Lorelei) really empowered everyone.”