Imagine a condom dispenser on Locust Walk. Picture a vending machine selling Coca-Cola and Trojans in Huntsman.

That’s exactly what the City of Madrid has proposed to do: install machines that vend condoms in some of the most popular metro stations in the city. Brown has installed similar machines on its campus as well.

So why is Penn so behind on the game?

With such a big campus, touting a supposed “work hard, play hard” mentality, promoting sexual health should be on the list of the administration’s to-do list.

Buying condoms is a delicate matter. And snide remarks from the cashiers at the Fresh Grocer are not conducive to students going out of their way to purchase safe-sex materials.

Free condoms from RA doors are, indeed, free, but that supply runs out quickly. Getting them at Student Health or a store involves time, effort, and money, a daunting troika that many students probably do not overcome.

Few things would encourage students to use protection more than the idea that the condom machine is just down a flight of stairs.

Making condoms more accessible and removing human interaction from the buying process reduces the discomfort that buyers may experience. Mixing the condoms in with machines that vend more standard confectionery goods like Coke and candy bars would further increase the sense of anonymity.

Similarly, placement is key: more public areas might not be as attractive at Penn as in Madrid. College Houses would especially be a good place to locate the machines.

There is no reason that the school should not make a minor investment such as this to promote better sexual health. After all, they’ve spent a lot of money moving Student Health Services to its new location, potentially even further from students (e.g. Quad freshmen). Couldn’t they could drop an extra couple of bucks from the Logan/Cohen fund to help out the students as well?

If the city of Madrid, with its population of five million, decided it was time to get the condom machines out there, why can’t Penn, too?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.