AIDS awareness: Our November 27, 2000 issue was published during international AIDS week. Fear of AIDS was still prevalent at the time and many Nexus writers discussed in this issue how this had impacted them personally, mostly in regard to their sex lives. Sarah Petrescu wrote about how people were becoming much more cautious with their sexual relationships and ensuring they got tested regularly, adding that this was the start of liberating ourselves from the fear of AIDS. The Round Table, a column moderated by Genevieve Mutschler, featured a discussion on AIDS and its impact on the love lives of students. Mutschler talked about how this increased awareness seemed to be making people afraid of intimacy and that she wishes she could have been born a generation ago in the free-love hippie era instead.
Cullen’s campus adventures: Concerns were being raised to the Camosun College Student Society over the presence of an unleashed dog on campus. But there was no need to worry: that’s just Cullen. His human, Scott Amos, was a student at Camosun’s Lansdowne campus and Amos frequently brought Cullen along for classes. Unfortunately, this was illegal as Cullen was off leash, and Amos knew this. Despite concerns, Cullen was still allowed to be on campus and enjoyed making friends with students. Amos appreciated the concern for Cullen’s well-being, but said that his fellow students had no reason to worry. All he asked was that people stop trying to feed Cullen M&Ms, which is fair enough.
Full of pride: This issue spotlighted The Camosun Pride Collective, whose Pride Lounge was in the Fisher building at the time; it can now be found on the ground floor of the Richmond House. The lounge provides 2SLGBTQ+ students a place to relax, as well as support, resources, and information that they may not have easily been able to access otherwise back in 2000. Sadly, there wasn’t a lot of support for the Pride Collective or the lounge then, but that has changed for the better over the years, with the lounge now a mainstay at Lansdowne.