For almost a decade, Joel Goldman has traveled to college campuses and delivered his message of safe sex to about 500,000 students.
And Goldman shocked Northwestern students into reality Sunday night with a flood of statistics: One in four college students has a sexually transmitted disease. Ten of 11 HIV-positive people are unaware that they’re infected. Dance Marathon invited Goldman, who is HIV positive, to speak at NU as the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation’s liaison to DM. The foundation is DM’s primary beneficiary this year.
Goldman got a laugh out of a relaxed, friendly group of about 50 students Sunday night at Technological Institute LR2. He set the mood with videos such as Madonna’s “Vogue” and Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”
“You think it’s bad having to dance to ’80s music for a couple of hours at Dance Marathon – try doing it for a whole decade,” said Goldman, who graduated from Indiana University in the ’80s.
Two DM representatives introduced Goldman with a video of his college years. Picture after picture, flashing to the beat of the song “I Get Knocked Down,” showed a younger Goldman surrounded by liquor bottles and smiling girls, holding a variety of drinks.
“I’m not doing shots as I’m speaking to you, by the way,” Goldman said Sunday night as he drank Tylenol cold syrup out of a small medicine cup. “I can just see a reporter for The Daily noting that I’m drinking during my ‘Sex Under The Influence’ speech.”
The last picture in the video was taken at 3 p.m. on a day that he woke up naked with no recollection of what he had done the night before. Alina Huang, a Weinberg freshman, said she appreciated the personal stories that brought Goldman to his main message. “When we throw in alcohol with sex, we make choices that we wouldn’t make if we were sober.”
Many of the students came to the presentation because of their involvement with DM. Dancer Dale Vieregge, a Weinberg sophomore, said he admired the way Goldman “taught without preaching.”
Students such as Emily Robinson, a peer health educator, were representing other NU student groups. “His story really hit home,” said Robinson, a Weinberg junior. “His lifestyle may have been a little wilder than the average NU student’s, but it makes you think that it could really happen.”
A second video showed college students voicing their opinions on mixing alcohol and sex. One admitted that he goes drinking to find sex and said his biggest risk is “hooking up with a fat girl.” Even among those who seemed more aware of the dangers, one student came to a dismal conclusion.
“Although we’ve been taught about these dangers since middle school, we still aren’t consciously aware of the risk of HIV,” she said. “It’s always somebody’s cousin, but usually no one close.”
Although Goldman first started giving speeches in 1992, it wasn’t until 1994 that he met a college student who was HIV positive. By now, however, that number has risen to 13 among the campuses he’s visited.
“Everyone walk around the aisles and meet three new people,” he said. He then proceeded to show how these handshakes, had they been sex, could have spread the virus that causes AIDS from a handful of people to the entire audience.
Growing up in an upper-middle-class family that had dinner conversations about everything from drugs to sex, Goldman said, he never thought the reality of HIV could come to him. Suffering fever, swollen glands and stomach problems, Goldman went to his doctor, who recognized the symptoms as common in men infected with AIDS.
“It was definitely the worst day in my life,” Goldman said, moving away from the humorous tone that had dominated his presentation. “When the doctor said, ‘Joel, you’re HIV positive,’ that was all I could hear, even though he continued to talk for over an hour about hope and medications.”