POTSDAM -- For World AIDS Day 2011, SUNY Potsdam's AIDS Education Group (PAEG) is bringing nine panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt to campus.

This is the fourth time that SUNY Potsdam has hosted or co-hosted the quilt.

SUNY-PAEG will hold World AIDS Day recognition events from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 29 and 30, and from 9 to 11 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 1.

The display will be in the Barrington Student Union Multi-Purpose Room at SUNY Potsdam. This event is free and open to the public.

Started in 1987 as a remembrance and tribute to loved ones who died from AIDS-related illnesses, the quilt now contains more than 91,000 panels and names, and is more than a million square feet, too large to be shown in its entirety.

The nine panels reflect those areas of the state most SUNY Potsdam students call home, the New York City area, Western New York and the North Country. Two of these areas -- New York City and Rochester -- are centers of HIV infection in New York State. In addition, New York City is one of the 12 major centers of HIV in the U.S.

To learn more about the AIDS Memorial Quilt, visit www.aidsquilt.org. To find out more about AIDS, visit www.cdc.gov/hiv.

For more information, contact Dr. Patricia Whelehan, SUNY Potsdam professor of anthropology and campus AIDS education coordinator, at 267-2048 or whelehpe@potsdam.edu.

SUNY-PAEG was created in 1988 by faculty, staff and students interested in promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and education and developing interventions to reduce the risk of infection. Since then, their activities have included networking and working with local, regional, national and international groups to achieve this goal.

This year marks 30 years since the first case of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was first diagnosed in the United States. It is also the 23rd official observation of World AIDS Day, organized by UNAIDS, an international AIDS intervention organization.

The first case of AIDS was diagnosed in Los Angeles in 1981, even though the name for the syndrome had not yet been coined. Since that first diagnosis, more than 33 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus, and more than 1 million people in the United States have become HIV-positive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated in 2009 that about 25 percent of the people in the U.S. who are HIV-positive do not know their status.