Under the Button
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| Here’s the solution - condoms in the vending machines! |
From what I can tell, finding condoms as a freshman on Penn’s campus is a bit like finding WMDs in Iraq in 2003: everyone knows they’re all over the place, but no one can tell you exactly where.
Penn students, and their sex education experience, differ greatly in background due to parents, school, and religion. So some freshmen get to Penn with years of bio and health education experience, while others show up with only the message, “Sex is bad, don’t do it.” Kind of like alcohol, right?
However, while Penn requires tedious hours of alcohol education in the form of AlcoholEdu, the school apparently expects the freshmen to figure out sex all by themselves. The freshmen I talked to all agreed that, if they really needed the information, they’d turn to their RA or GA. But no one has told them exactly where to find condoms or where to go for contraception, and no one seems sure exactly how much the freshman class knows about safe sex.
“We’re all from difference places, with different experiences,” said Engineering and College senior Dhinakarau Chinappen. Upon entering Penn, “We’re small fish in a big ocean.” He thought that everyone had the information by the end of their first year, but felt that there should be more of a “formal approach” to disseminate it. College freshman Yana Toporovskaya commented, “based on the people in my hall, I doubt [freshmen] are really well informed.”
Penn must spend large sums every year buying condoms and maintaining the Office of Health Education, an amazing go-to source for all your sexual health issues on campus. But do signs on Locust really count as informing people?
Penn needs a program similar (but not identical) to AlcoholEdu to educate Penn kids before school. If that’s not feasible, one session of sex ed during NSO could do some good. As a sorry last resort, an information session simply listing campus and Philly resources could help keep the number of unplanned pregnancies and interesting diseases down to a bare minimum.
Without passing on this important knowledge, we essentially leave the freshman class up a creek without a rubber. After all, no one can deny that Penn students subscribe religiously (or, well, not) to the motto, “Work hard, play hard.” The school teaches us how to work safely, so why not how to play?
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September 14th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
i’m getting sick of this already
September 16th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
are people really unaware that you can buy condoms at wawa, cvs, and every other convenience store and supermarket in the city?
September 17th, 2007 at 4:12 am
wow. this is even dumber than your last article. but luckily, this time you overcame the stupidity threshold where i don’t have to point out what u fucked up because its immediately evident to anyone who reads this.
voting is cool because overall its preferable to have a society where people have a say, and good for those people who think that their individual vote has any significance because they make the system work. they are too caught up reveling in the feeling they get from following the rules that are imposed on them to think for themselves and realize what a giant waste of time voting is.
and in this respect, voting is the same as purchasing condoms. like yay for you, u did what u were told and bought condoms, if most people do that it stops the outbreak of giant std epidemics. but for any individual, its not really that beneficial and is pretty much a big waste of money. why? 1) u prob wont want to use them on whatever gross stuck-up slut u pick up at a penn frat party. 2) if u r screwing someone, pull out. pulling out, in conjunction with birth control, brings impregnation chances down to zero. plus, pulling out and spraying ur shit everywhere is way more fun. 3) std’s? r u serious? im glad everyone else gives in to the constant fear mongering, but only because it makes my observation of u more humorous. use ur fucking brain. if uve known the girl for an hour, she prob bangs tons of guys, so put on a condom. if uve dated her for a while, like in most sexual relationships, u prob dont need a condom. people overestimate the chance that their partner has an std because of all of these fucking warnings that we are bombarded with everyday. STDS are everywhere! ur in serious danger! 4 billion people have HPV, OMG!!! wear a condom! please see wikipedia’s ‘cognitive biases’ article for more information.