GALWAY RTC is likely to become the first RTC to establish a lesbian, gay and bisexual officership following a recent USI road show and awareness day in the college.

Representatives from a number of groups, including USI, Outyouth and SECSI, the IFPA initiative for young people, held workshops on safer sex, disability and sexuality and coming out in college.

Galway was the first RTC to stage the road show, part of a larger USI initiative to raise awareness of LGB rights issues.

"We won't actually set up an LGB officer position this year says Galway RTC students' union deputy president Kara Hanley, "but what we found out last week was that there are an awful lot of people in that group here. I think it had never been addressed here before, not because people didn't want it, but because it was overlooked."

The officer position will probably come into being in 1997/98, but an LGB group will be formed as soon as possible.

According to a spokesperson for USI, the response was largely positive, with only one unfortunate incident.

USI claim that a member of staff distributed posters marked, in handwriting, "the other side of the story" and detailing how "over 100,000 people have died from AIDS since its first appearance in 1981, and over one million people are currently infected with this deadly killer".

The poster was accompanied by a section from Romans. "Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion... They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity...

"Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them".

All very well, of course, but why doesn't he get off the fence and say what he really thinks.