Community in a Time of Crisis: Yale, New Haven, and HIV/AIDS, 1981-1996

Student Activism

The 7 Days of Action event featured musical performances, visual arts, live theater, a charity walk, parties and dances, panel discussions, and cultural events. Proceeds from these events benefitted AIDS organizations across New Haven, Connecticut, and the Northeast. The week was supported by Yale and New Haven organizations and businesses.

Poster advertising “7 Days of Action” at Yale University in response to AIDS, c. early 1990s.

Though known colloquially as the “Gay Ivy” since 1987, Yale was slow to recognize the impact of HIV/AIDS on campus. The student community at Yale, especially undergraduates, worked throughout the 1980s and 1990s to hold the university accountable. Queer student organizations fought for access to adequate health care, provided peer education and support, and demanded that Yale address the epidemic on campus. 
 
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Yale Gay and Lesbian Co-Op held rallies and dances on Cross Campus to raise awareness and fight homophobia. Safer sex workshops proliferated on campus as student organizations took it upon themselves to educate fellow undergraduates about HIV/AIDS prevention. Posters such as these visibly affirmed queer desire at Yale at a moment when popular and scientific discourse often blamed the sexual culture of gay men and other men who had sex with men for the epidemic. 

This poster, which reads "hotter safer sex for me: what every man needs to know about AIDS" features an image of a cowboy and a horse. The workshop was held at Yale's Dwight Hall.

Poster advertising a workshop organized as part of Bisexual Gay Lesbian Awareness Days at Yale, 1990.

In November of 1986, AIDS Prevention Week at Yale featured fundraising events like dances and "jamborees," as well as workshops about safe sex, managing AIDS-related anxiety, the impact of AIDS on marginalized groups, caring for AIDS patients, and about the future of AIDS research. The event concluded with a prayer service and educational forum.

Flyer advertising events for AIDS Prevention Week at Yale University, 1986.

This poster for AIDS Prevention Week at Yale features the word AIDS, in black, against a white abstract shape.

Poster for AIDS Prevention Week at Yale University, 1986.

The Yale Lesbian and Gay Studies Center’s second annual conference, held in 1989, turned out to be a flashpoint for AIDS activism on campus. Yale Police arrested conference speaker Bill Dobbs, a New York-based lawyer and member of the prominent AIDS activist group ACT UP, for hanging posters described as “obscene” inside Yale Law School. New Haven police subsequently arrested several members of the Gay and Lesbian Co-Op who challenged Dobbs’ arrest. Protests erupted when Yale President Benno Schmidt refused to comment on allegations of homophobic police brutality. The posters in question contained erotic illustrations and the words “Sex is,” and “Just sex,” and had been created by the San Francisco guerilla art collective Boys with Arms Akimbo in the wake of a federal ban on AIDS education. 

The first in this series of two posters features the text "Sex Is" under a nude man. His genitals are prominent. The second poster reads, "Police Were Violent, Benno is Silent. Speak out. Act Up."

Left: Poster designed by art collective Boys with Arms Akimbo, distributed throughout Yale Law School by visiting speaker Bill Dobbs. Right: Poster protesting lack of action by Yale President Benno Schmidt, in response to homophobic police violence. Both 1989.

Prev. Page Next Page