This week's issue: Condoms on campus

Should the college give them out to students?

This week, Matthew Coughlin argues against having Cabrini giving them out while Julia Marie Teti debates for their distribution.

Battle 3

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Sexual issues are a touchy topic at a Catholic college, but here we are tackling it anyway. Even though I am not Catholic, along with a percentage of Cabrini students, I am aware of the reasons why sex before marriage is a no-no. But the reality is that this is the year 2001. I don't know very many chaste college students. For those of you that have held on to your virginity, I respect you highly and I encourage you to hold on to it until you meet the right person, or even better yet, decide to get married.

On the other band, the pressures of sex are not always easy to resist. Hence, teen pregnancies, abandoned children, angry families, accusation, STD's and other problems that sex can cause. The need for constant protection is ever-present. Overall, protection against stupidity and bad situations.

Unless it's planned, I don't know very many 17-20-something-year-olds who are eager and looking to be mammas and poppas. College is hard enough to get through as it is, let alone toting a toddler around. Being responsible for ourselves is sometimes a challenge without the demand of a young child that most of us would not be able to handle.

I remember back in high school, between tenth and eleventh grades, walking down the hall to see a fellow female student or two, waddling her way to wherever because she had a one-night stand or just made a general bad decision in her relationship. It made me wince then as it does now thinking about all the needless changes that this 15 or 16-year-old girl had to deal with before she was ready. Babies having babies. Sad.

Just because we are in college now doesn't mean that we are past "getting caught" or finding out just a few short years after graduation, that we too, could die of AIDS just like so many others have because of unprotected sex.

All of us are considered adults once we reach the age of 18. Regardless, not all of us act the way adults are expected to act. Because of this, certain forms of birth control, such as condoms, should be available to college students. It doesn't make a difference if you are in a long-term relationship like yours truly, or just messing around here and there. If you are going to have sex, and many of us will and do, protect yourself and protect your partner. I'll reiterate the idea again: Condoms are a good start.

Imagine how much different Cabrini would be (and how enraged the Vatican would be) if condoms were easily accessible in the bathrooms, in the nurses' offices, from guidance counselors, the bookstore, Dixon Center, and anywhere else on campus you could think of. Crazy thought, I know. But I bet that our student population would be making much healthier choices with their bodies.