The health services have also made available safer sex kits containing informative booklets, a rubber dam, lubricant and a condom. During the rest of the year, "We make condoms available at no cost and those are going like hotcakes," she adds.

Several universities, including Tufts, MIT, and Wellesley, have installed condom vending machines in the dormitories, a move that community members says provoked little controversy.

AIDS Policy

Many universities have created special policies to deal with the AIDS issue.

At UMass., the official policy stresses "noninterference," Kraft says. Anyone with AIDS will be allowed to live and work on campus as long as health permits.

A similar policy is being implemented at Columbia, where Lehecka says, "the basic policy we have is to take things on a case by case basis. No one here is going to lose a job [if they have AIDS]."

At Brigham Young University, where students must sign an honor code which prohibits pre-marital sex, administrators are in the process of forming a policy which will stress education and empathy, says Bruce H. Willey, director of BYU's Health Service.

"I think [the AIDS scare] has increased homophobia that people have because the majority of students see it as a gay disease," Orcutt says.