No sexual safety on campus

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UVU stopped giving out condoms on March 1 due to germs and low demand. Gilbert Cisneros/UVU Review

Yes, students can still have sex, but UVU will no longer provide the condoms to keep it safe.

 

UVU’s Health and Wellness center has stopped offering its students access to contraceptives as of March 1, 2012. After much discussion regarding the government possibly cutting funding for contraceptives, contraceptives have been made unavailable to the student body.

 

The Wellness Center is nonprofit, but the 2011 – 2012 Student Affairs Operating Budget shows that an allocated amount of $613,888 goes to Student Health Services, which is one of the largest portions of the operating budget.

 

The director of the SHS department, William Erb, had this statement regarding why this service has been stopped: “The Mission of Student Health Services is to provide services and education that will promote and ensure health within the student body.

 

The provision of education and prophylactics has been a part of SHS for many years. Many forms of birth control are available at SHS upon request. SHS is continually reviewing each service we offer to students in an effort to maximize the impact of our goal to promote health.”

 

However, when students went to the SHS office a week after this statement was made to see if they could get condoms, they were turned away and told that the service is no longer offered.

 

One employee at the center, who asked to remain anonymous, said, “I would say about half of the students use them, maybe a little less than half.”

 

Another member of the staff, who also wanted to remain anonymous, said the reason why contraceptives have been made unavailable to students said that it was due to “poor distribution.”

 

This service has not been requested a lot, per se, but if it is a matter of “poor distribution” then it should be made available upon request.

 

“As we reviewed this service we found that it was used infrequently,” Erb said in his statement. “We also found that a few students would come in and take multiple handfuls. We were noticing that this service would go unused for days then one or two students would come in and take over half of the contents in the container.”

 

This does not exactly conform to previous statements made by employees of the department stating that “around half the students” that came in used them. This also conflicts with the following statement where Erb talks about the need to clean the jar daily, despite it going unused for a day or two.

 

“Another issue was that an open container, in a health center lobby, where multiple hands are accessing the same jar increases the risk of passing on sickness,” Erb said in the statement. “We clean our furniture and magazines but effectively disinfecting this jar was far from possible or practical. SHS is continuing this service. At the same time, we would like to ensure that we are using student funds appropriately and effectively within the center.”

 

So there may be two different arguments that contradict each other. They need to clean for the many students or there are too few students that need them.

 

Despite either argument, the fact remains that now students will have to provide their own condoms.

 

By Clay Neville
Staff Writer