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With the holiday season fast approaching, the Saluki Rainbow Network is giving SIUC students the sweet chance to wish someone they love a safe and happy holiday.
SRN began its Safe Sweet fund-raiser in the Faner Hall breezeway Monday. For 50 cents, SIUC students could purchase candy canes with condoms attached to them. All the proceeds from the fund-raiser will be used to buy toys for children who have either contracted AIDS or the HIV virus or whose parents are living with the disease.
"We are hoping to raise money so that children will have a good Christmas," SRN co-director Bradley Wilkins said. "Everyone should have a nice Christmas."
SRN's fundraiser is in conjunction with both World AIDS Day, which was Monday, and the Student Center's AIDS Awareness Week.
Although SRN has collected toys for the Jackson County Health Department HIV Consortium for several years, members of the RSO decided to do something different this year.
"I think this is a fabulous idea. I am very proud and very happy to see them come up with a creative concept to help a good cause," faculty sponsor Paulette Curkin said.
Curkin said she believes promoting AIDS with candy canes and condoms sweetens students' motives to become involved.
"People are always quick to pick condoms up when we give them away," she said. "By selling the candy, we are drawing attention toward an issue that affects everyone."
Wilkins said it is important to not be afraid of those who are affected but instead raise awareness.
"You don't run from somebody with cancer," he said. "You are just scared of them dying. I think the whole point of this week is to raise awareness and prove this could happen to anybody. It has been 20 years since it was introduced, and it astonishes me that this disease is still affecting so many people. It shouldn't be that way."
Once SRN has collected the toys, Southern Illinois Regional Effort for AIDS will disperse them to the children. Though SRN made $33, Wilkins said he would like to see them double those sales.
"I would really like to make it seem that SRN and SIUC are making a difference in that situation," Wilkins said. "The whole point behind this is not to just help the children and raise awareness, but to prove this disease is out there.
"If we take all those toys over there, and SIUC proves that we care and that we are not just a bunch of heartless college students that are going about their business and going to parties, we would like to be able to make an impact."
SRN will resume selling candy canes Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
