Here's Your Syllabus and Your Condoms

The beginning of the school year is when companies have peak sales on school tools such as computers, backpacks, composition notebooks, and condoms. It is in the college years when campuses and companies increase the promotion of condom use to create a habit in incoming freshmen, geared towards the prevention of unplanned pregnancies and the contraction of sexually transmitted infections. Although many campuses oppose these views due to cultural or religious reasons, many others demonstrate a peak in condom distribution to their students.

Our UTEP campus is a particular case for it is the Healthy Miner Sex Positive Peer Education Program who has been in charge of distributing condoms throughout the UTEP campus. The importance of teaching students the proper way to apply a condom, the different characteristics of condoms is covered by the Healthy Miners. It is effective to use condoms in preventing the transmission of HIV as well as STDs, and unplanned pregnancies when used properly and consistently.

Similarly, the NY Times article, at Oregon State, “safer sex” kits are filled with condoms, lubricant and Hershey’s Kisses; at Stanford, each student receives 12 free condoms from the student-run Sexual Health Peer Resource Center, which is also beginning its annual educational “field trips” on which freshmen are escorted from their dorms to the center for an introductory talk.

All in all, we are trying to provide our students with tools to effectively communicate safe-sex practices with their partners and to create a culture geared towards a sex positive mindset. Condoms and consent (as stated in our Healthy Miner workshop) are the two most important factors in a healthy sexuality.

By: Peer Leader Geneva Nieto