Dance AIDS Away

Free condoms, safe-sex pamphlets and the music of Christian and the Infidels were featured at a fundraiser held Friday night by the Harvard-Radcliffe AIDS Benefit Committee.

The benefit, which took place in the Adams House dining hall and attracted several hundred people, raised money for future events and provided information to students about the AIDS epidemic.

"I think most people here still think if the [AIDS] as a gay problem. It's not a moral question: the bottom line is one bad f--- will kill you," said Judith R. Barish '88, one of the event's organizers.

Reactions to the two jars of the free condoms at the front door were mixed. Many people found the hand-out amusing, said George E. Hicks '88-89 President of the AIDS benefit committee, adding that response was not disturbing.

"I think that's fine, because the worst thing that could happen is for everyone to become paralyzed with fear about the AIDS epidemic," he said.

Funds raised by the committee will be given to various AIDS-related groups, including the Boston AIDS Action Committee and the New England Deaconess hospital.

A Little Bit of Italy

An Adams House tutor won a pre-doctoral fellowship in Classical Studies from the American Academy in Rome last week.

T. Corey Brennan, a fourth-year graduate student in Classics, is one of 27 American students awarded a scholarship to study at the Academy in one of 10 different fields for a year.

Brennan will work on his dissertation about high-ranked government officials in ancient Rome while he is at the Academy. He said he plans to complete the bulk of it next year and return to finish it in 1988-1989.

Since he only has a "reading knowledge" of Italian, Brennan said that his other goals for his year in Rome would be to "improve Italian and meet Italians."

As Leverett Turns

Despite what the flyer called "certain unintentional similarities between From Here to Eternity and Days of our Lives, Dallas, Dynasty and Love Story," the first episode of the Leverett House Soap Opera, directed by Adam Schwartz and Cliff Goodstein, was in fact amusing.

Most of the jokes were in-house, but to the audience which packed the dining hall, that seemed to be the best bit. "It was great fun" said Leverett Co-Master Judy Dowling, who played Mandy the cleaning lady. In her final scene, Dowling cleaned up the body of the promiscous house-master, J.D.(like J.R.: get it?), her real-life husband, killed by a jealous wife. And Mrs. Dowling's epitaph for her murdered husband? "I wonder which one of his 50 bastards did him in?"