Hannah Jones/Winonan
For those of us who didn’t know, last week was Safe Sex Week at Winona State.
From condoms to chlamydia, the university, in partnership with SEMCAC, put on a series of informative presentations and campaigns about playing it safe when it comes to reproductive health.
Protected sex is a paramount issue when it comes to physical as well as emotional health.
Unprotected sex risks a dangerous dance with pregnancy as well as STIs, which can both have a negative effect on our bodies—not to mention our relationships. Therefore, it’s important that once in a while, whether it’s through an instructor, a peer, a medical professional or with partners, that we talk a little bit about sex.
This turned out to be easier said than done.
At last week’s Healthy Mondays presentation, representatives from SEMCAC attempted to get the conversation rolling on the risk of STIs and the advantages of periodically getting tested.
A crowd of students gathered in the Integrated Wellness Complex that evening, packing every available chair, couch and beanbag to hear the presentation. However, in the upset of the century, it proved almost impossible to get a room full of college students to talk to one another about sex.
After an informational video with real testimonies from some of their classmates about their habits and experiences with getting tested and having safe sex, the audience sat in a silent, awkward mire, as if a conversational black hole had erupted in the center of the room.
The two presenters, Tucker Blegan and Charlie Bach, made earnest attempts to get people talking, passing out papers with diagrams of cartoon trees on them and asking the audience to determine the “root” causes and “leaf” effects of having unprotected sex or choosing not to get tested.
Groups of three or four muttered nervously to one another and halfheartedly filled in the blanks on their trees, but when it came to sharing, the most the program directors could get out of them were a few murmurs of “pregnant” and “syphilis.”
Unsurprisingly, no one was ready to jump in with a personal anecdote about syphilis to share with a room full of practical strangers, though a few timid references were made to historical sufferers such as Benjamin Franklin and Bram Stoker.
Nonetheless, Blegan and Bach did an admirable job getting their message out to this impassive, sheepish crowd.
In the vacuum of the silence, they pointed out that based on campus studies, one of every four people has chlamydia. In our wordless audience, they reasoned, that meant four people sitting among us had the disease, and furthermore, three of them were asymptomatic.
Everyone made furtive glances at one another, seeing their couch mates, for the moment, in a new light. When we are all this tight-lipped about our sexual health and other intimate parts of our private lives, it’s no shocker that our school has a week dedicated to curbing the stealthy spread of sexually transmitted illness.
The presentation ended on a proactive note, especially for those thinking about how “four” was a pretty big number under the circumstances. Blegan and Bach informed their audience that the student clinic on the second floor of the Wellness Complex offers STI testing with an appointment, and SEMCAC, found on Main and Third Street, offers testing without appointments on an income-based payment, adjusting based on the patient’s financial means.
After the presentation, we all filed out as quietly as we came in, shuffling papers as we turned in our surveys and tree diagrams. No one was about to shout or make a fuss or wear a sign declaring their sexual health, or even speak much further on the subject once they left the room, but as long as the information is got out into this reticent public, perhaps Safe Sex Week could have made a difference. Maybe the conversation is uncomfortable, but hey—so is syphilis.
Just ask Bram Stoker.
Contact Hannah at [email protected]
