Last weekend, Brandeis hosted a national Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) leadership retreat, with approximately 40 people attending from all over the United States. SGAC is a national organization with a Brandeis chapter that sponsors Global AIDS Awareness Week and other on-campus AIDS awareness events.According to Deirdre Mooney '05, the leadership retreat began Friday evening with a film screening at Harvard. The 20-minute film "Voices from the Earth: The Dirty War in Guatemala" was shown, and was followed by a speech by one of the film's participants.

Saturday, the retreat met on the Brandeis campus. "All day Saturday, we discussed previous campaigns and how they were successful, and how they could have been better," Zach Goldman '04 said. "The participants then outlined the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the SGAC in order to evaluate what aspects of our structure had to be reformed. This was quite a long process, as you can imagine."

This was the first time Brandeis hosted a SGAC retreat. Last semester, the leadership retreat was held at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. Seven Brandeis students attended that conference, according to Goldman.

Sunday, the retreat attendees looked toward upcoming campaigns. "We finally ended up with a consensus-based decision regarding how we're going to reformat SGAC to take us into the future," Goldman said.

According to Mooney, past successful SGAC campaigns include one last semester that targeted Coca Cola, the largest employer in Africa, asking them to supply medicine for workers. Now, she said, Coca Cola is spending $5 billion on medicines, and a vice president of the corporation phoned SGAC leaders to confirm this.

Goldman said Brandeis' SGAC chapter is already planning events for the current semester. "This semester, we plan to strengthen the Brandeis chapter of SGAC through information sessions about the AIDS pandemic, movie screenings and speakers," he said.

Both Mooney and Goldman said they are encouraging as many Brandeis students as possible to attend the SGAC National Conference, which will be held from Feb. 28 to Mar. 2 in Washington, D.C.

Mooney said she was pleased with the turnout at the leadership retreat. "It was really invigorating to see all of these people coming to Brandeis," she said. "It is nice to know that Brandeis is getting back on track with the advocacy it is known for."