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The Berkeley Campus AIDS Memorial Committee will host a reception and fund-raiser today to kick off the fund-raising campaign to build the memorial, and all the campus and local community are invited to attend, learn more about the memorial plans and help make the proposed memorial a reality. 

The event will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Morrison Room of the Doe Library on the UC Berkeley campus. Patricia Rhee, designer of the selected memorial concept, will be in attendance. 

All of the memorial competition entries are on display in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, adjacent to the Morrison Room in the Doe Library. The exhibit, which is on display through the end of June, also features the stories and memorabilia from campus staff who have died from AIDS. 

The committee held a nationally publicized competition to design a memorial for the Doe Library north lightwell. The judging of some 48 entries was held in April, and the design by Rhee was selected, along with three other designs of honorable mention. 

“The memorial will honor all campus community members who have died of AIDS, and also those who lost husbands, wives, partners, children and friends over the two decades since the pandemic began,” Jonathan Winters, a member of the Berkeley AIDS memorial committee and a person living with HIV, said in a news release. 

Now that a winning entry has been selected, the memorial committee will need to raise approximately $100,000 to make the proposal a reality. 

The committee will be working with the California Alumni Association to identify potential donors. 

Those wishing to donate to the memorial can send checks, made out to UC Regents, to: Berkeley AIDS Memorial Project, Fund #44229, Library Development Office, 188 The Library, 94720-6000. 

Organizers request that donors note the fund number on the check memo.