A busload of DePaul University students will travel through the night to Washington, D.C. in order to be among the 8,000 students from around the country expected to participate in a “Student March Against AIDS” that gets underway at 11 a.m. on Feb. 26.

The students are rallying in the nation’s capital to demand that the president and lawmakers turn their attention to fighting the growing HIV/AIDS pandemic.

“The 8,000 students will convene in front of the White House and march to the Capitol to represent the number of people worldwide who die every day from AIDS,” said Bridget Crowell, a junior and co-coordinator of the DePaul Aids Project (DAP), a student organization that for 10 years has served to increase AIDS awareness and education on DePaul’s campuses. “We are taking some specific demands with us, two of which are: that the Ryan White Care Act be reauthorized and fully funded and that debts owed by poor countries are cancelled so that those countries can channel funds into health care services and combating AIDS.”

The university’s contingent of marchers was organized by the DAP. The group recently became a chapter of the Students Global AIDS Campaign, an international organization responsible for organizing the march. DePaul students attending the march raised enough money through university funding sources and Chicago AIDS organizations to reduce the cost of travel for each student to just $20.

According to Gary W. Harper, faculty advisor for the DAP and psychology professor, there are enough students at DePaul interested in attending the march to fill a second bus, but time does not permit them to raise the funds needed to make the trip. “Students at DePaul have been thinking about how AIDS impacts them and how it impacts people globally for a long time,” said Harper. “This march allows them a first opportunity to join other students and have their collective voices heard on Capitol Hill.”

Traci Ackron, a junior and co-coordinator of the DAP, is hopeful that the groundswell of support for the march will carry over into AIDS Awareness Week, held annually in April at DePaul. She said that the level of interest in the AIDS march is unprecedented for the DAP. “DAP wrote letters to nearly 200 organizations on campus asking them to support the march,” said Ackron. “The response came from a diverse cross-section of organizatons. We’ve got students going to Washington from the Black Student Union, DePaul Young Democrats, sororities, fraternities and all grade levels. There are more than 15 people on the alternates list.”

Ackron and Crowell both plan to one day become physicians and to work in health environments that serve disadvantaged people and children. In keeping with DePaul’s mission that incorporates community based service learning into its curricula, both students have participated in spring break service trips to disadvantaged countries in Central America, South America and Africa.

The DAP, as part of myriad outreach initiatives of DePaul’s Community Services Association, provides student volunteers for Children’s Place, a residential facility in Humboldt Park for children whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS.

DePaul University is the largest Catholic university in the United States and the largest private, non-profit college in Chicago. The university enrolls 23,570 students who reflect a diversity of ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds. The university’s mission emphasizes academic excellence, service to the community, access to education and respect for the individual.