For four days in mid-February, residents of Pepper in Chaplin Commons played host to Jody Hartley, a 28-year-old man from Portland, Maine, who has been HIV-positive since he was 14. Hartley's educational outreach, sponsored by Maine's HIV Residency Program and coordinated by Wendy Rice '99 of Colby's HIV/AIDS Task Force, included living and dining with students and guest lecturing in several classes. Becky Golden '98, head resident in Pepper, says living with an HIV-positive person provided unexpected insight on the disease. "Jody had to go to Mid-Maine Medical Center one night while he was here because he was having a reaction to some new medication," she said. "A student from Pepper chose to go to the hospital and spend the evening with him there. His visit showed us that AIDS isn't a distant disease." In Professor Frank Fekete's Bacteriology and Immunology class, Hartley told students that even though treatment with new protease inhibitors has reduced his viral load to an undetectable level, the cocktail of drugs is expensive--$1,800 each month--and has harsh side-effects, including kidney stones and loss of control in his hands and feet. Hartley says the drugs are no defense against predjudice associated with HIV and AIDS. His mother didn't speak to him for 11 years after learning of his condition, and, even now, she won't use the same bathroom. "He gave us the emotional issues of the disease, not just the technical/biological information," Golden said.