When Kate Shindle arrived for her freshman year at Northwestern University three years ago, she had driven 16 hours in a van with her parents.
She returned to school Friday in a limousine.
Shindle, the reigning Miss America, came back to serve as grand marshal of Northwestern’s homecoming parade Friday night. In her first appearance on the Evanston campus since winning the crown in September, she said she was thrilled to be back.
“It feels like home,” she said.
Shindle, 20, a senior majoring in theater and sociology, is taking a year off from school to fulfill her Miss America duties, focusing her efforts on AIDS prevention.
Shindle continued her AIDS education campaign Friday, telling 375 students at Hinsdale Central High School that abstinence remained the best safeguard, calling it “unquestionably the best way to protect yourself from the HIV virus.”
“Congratulations if this is you, because you have taken a really big step toward living a very long and happy life,” she said.
But Shindle noted that 80 percent of 20-year-olds are sexually active, and called the distribution of condoms in school health programs a “necessary evil” to help fight AIDS .
Shindle has drawn fire for that stand, but she said condom distributions should be conducted only along with an active health education program.
Shindle will sing the national anthem at Ryan Field before the Northwestern-Michigan State football game Saturday. The last time she sang before a Northwestern game–at the Pigskin Classic at Soldier Field in August, when she was the reigning Miss Illinois–the Wildcats beat Oklahoma 24-0.