Although panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt displayed last week in Scales Fine Arts Center have left campus, one panel still remains and will become a permanent fixture at the university. During the five-day exhibition sponsored by the Gay-Straight Student Alliance, viewers were invited to record their thoughts and feelings on a signature panel that was set up in the gallery.

The six-by-six-foot canvas panel resembles those that individuals make in contribution to the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The NAMES Project Foundation, the organization that sponsors the quilt, provides the signature panel to hosts of the AIDS Quilt.

"The NAMES Project always sends a square to allow people that come to see the quilt to sign it," said sophomore Amanda Miller, GSSA secretary and treasurer. "We laid it on the floor with a lot of colored Sharpie markers for people to come and write things."

According to Miller, the exhibit's guest book contains as many as 600 names, but the gallery has not yet determined the official number of visitors that came to view the quilt.

"People either left their names, or took up big spaces with drawings or messages to someone they know who has been affected by AIDS," Miller said. "They wrote what the felt, the emotions that they were going through after seeing the quilt."

One of the most poignant moments for many GSSA members was when a group of children who had either lost someone close to them to AIDS or knew someone living with AIDS or HIV came to sign the panel.

"They just laid down and drew pictures. One drew a huge sun in the middle with the phrase 'We won't forget' inside," Miller said.

"It was very moving what the kids wrote. They had things like 'I miss you daddy' and 'I love you,'" GSSA president senior Jason Brown said. "The big sun in the middle brought it all together."

The NAMES Project gives hosts of the AIDS Quilt panels the choice of keeping the signature panel, or returning it to NAMES to be incorporated with other signature panels made at other displays. GSSA chose to keep the panel as a reminder of the event that it worked tirelessly to bring to campus.

"We wanted something to remember this event by," Brown said. "We think it would mean a lot more to people on campus and to the local people that came to sign it to have it here than for people anywhere else to read and see what's on it."

"It was more of a personal experience for us so we wanted to keep it here," Miller said. "People will relate more if it's here on campus."

GSSA has not yet decided where on campus it will display the signature panel. The organization was allotted space in the Benson University Center for a new office next year and is considering hanging it there.

"It would be a lot more meaningful to us to keep it in our office," Brown said. "But it would also be nice to put it in a public place on campus for everyone to see."