While February's highly publicized Festival of Life may have led many people at Harvard to consider the impact of the AIDS crisis for the first time, the threat of the disease is nothing new to the Harvard gay community. For some, the specter of AIDS has dramatically altered individual mind sets as well as behavior.

Already at Harvard, three staff people and one graduate student have contracted AIDS since early last year, says Dr. Warren E.C. Wacker, director of University Health Services. Three of those patients died as a result of complications stemming from the AIDS virus.

But in terms of the disease's emotional and social dimensions, students and administrators alike say the impact of AIDS on this campus clearly exceeds these four isolated cases.

"It is psychologically very difficult to think of potential partners as potential infectors," says Suzanne E. Litke '87, an Adams House resident who thinks that AIDS has made finding a relationship "a lot scarier."

"AIDS puts a whole new level of gravity into sex...Gay people have had to think about death as they think about sex--which is not a welcome combination for people our age. I definitely see this at Harvard," says one member of the Gay and Lesbian Students Association (GSLA), who asked not to be identified.

Lorelee Stewart '87, GLSA co-chairman, says the AIDS threat has inhibited some gays from opening up to others. "I've seen some people with very good and natural attitudes towards sex become closed off," the Cabot House resident adds.

"Among my small circle of friends, I see a lot of anxiety. They feel inhibited. They have opted for close friendships rather than sexual relationships sometimes," Stewart says.

Other students, like Jake Stevens '86, say that more people today are practicing "safe sex."

"[AIDS] has probably cut down on promiscuity," says Ann Pellegrini '86, adding that at Harvard, those who were promiscuous were in the minority.

The AIDS threat also has contributed to an increased tendency toward monogamy in the gay community, says James A. Sanks '86, who with Stewart co-chairs the GLSA. "There have always been emotional risks in being non-monogamous, but now there are clear health risks," Pellegrini says.

Sanks says he is particularly concerned about the impact of AIDS on "a lot of gay people who have not yet come out of the closet." Other campus leaders concur with Sanks, citing a reluctance in some undergraduates to take steps toward becoming "openly gay" because of the AIDS stereotype.

Noting that college is often a time when a gay person first acknowledges his homosexuality or has his first sexual experience, one student agrees. "At Harvard, people are more reluctant to label themselves as gay because of AIDS. You frequently hear people say it's too dangerous," he says.

Harvard's health services' director emphasizes that AIDS is not merely a disease of gay men, despite a recent assertion by the Centers for Disease Control that 73 percent of AIDS patients are gay or bisexual men. "To say that this is a disease of gays, hemophiliacs, and intravenous drug-users is untrue. There is a potential for the virus to get into the whole community," Wacker says.

Protecting Patients

Given this potential, university administrators have been compelled to think about the need to develop policies to protect people with the disease as well as others on campus. Yet Wacker says that Harvard has no set policy concerning students who contract AIDS.