It’s Saturday night, 3 a.m., but the dorm hallways are busier than the Sargent omelette station on Sunday morning. Slamming doors echo and drunk students totter noisily, laughing at the way their shoes stick to the beer-covered floor as they walk.
You, however, don’t hear a thing. You’re tucked inside the room of the guy you’ve been eying in econ all quarter, wearing nothing but your new matching Cosabella bra and panties. You’re — gasp! — finally in his bed, in his arms, pressing up against the perfect six pack you just knew he’d have, making out, and it’s hot. It’s bliss — better than straight-A’s, your dream internship and a life’s supply of free lattes rolled into one. And in one instant, it gets even better: He whispers in your ear that he wants to have sex.
Being the responsible Northwestern student that you are, you inquire about his stash of condoms. And then, he opens his mouth and drops your GPA off a cliff, gives all your lattes to your mortal enemy and leaves you flipping burgers behind a drive-through: There is no condom.
What do you do? Well, under the university’s current condom distribution policies, you’re fucked — but unfortunately not literally. It appears that even in our random hookups we must plan ahead because condoms are not available in most dorms, and unless you’re ready to dash to the nearest 24-hour convenience store (which definitely isn’t near), you have two options: unsafe sex or no sex at all.
It’s not as if we’re living in some puritanical lair, where administrators argue over the best ways to rob us of our youthful pleasures. The university does in fact have a system of providing students with condoms. The biggest condom distributer on campus is Searle Health Service, where students can access free condoms during regular hours (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.). If you ask for condoms at the front desk, you’ll be directed downstairs to Jessica Sempek, the Alcohol and Drug Prevention Coordinator, as well as condom-distributor extraordinaire.
Sempek organizes the creation of condom kits, which are exactly what they sound like. Each kit contains two lubricated condoms, one unlubricated condom, one flavored condom, one lube, an information sheet and a mint. The information sheet has instructions for using condoms correctly and diagrams to help you identify symptoms of STD’s in men and women. It also has useful emergency contact numbers like Planned Parenthood, Health Services, Counseling, Rape Crisis Hotline and the Women’s Center. Sempek keeps the kits in a basket outside her door, so you can take them anonymously or stop in her office to have a conversation and ask questions. Searle typically gets 4,000 kits per year and according to Sempek, the majority are usually given out to students by the end of school year.
In addition to Sempek’s condom kits, most Searle practitioners keep condoms in a jar on their desks that students can take at any point during an appointment. Sempek also distributes condoms and kits at firesides, activities fairs — “basically any time I leave the building,” she said. The university also stocks condoms in vending machines in Bobb-McCulloch and Allison, but this practice may soon cease, as the vending machine company complains that Snickers sell better than Trojans.
Some NU employees and students are dissatisfied with the current system of condom distribution.
“Not many people know it’s possible to get free condoms at Searle and not many people know of the condoms in the vending machines in Bobb and Allison,” said Weinberg junior Kamardip Singh, co-president of College Feminists.
Singh said she would like to see condoms available in every dorm.
“It is widely acknowledged that the availability of condoms increases the use of protection, something that the school should be promoting,” she said. “Decreasing condom availability does nothing to stop sex, but only increases the rate of unsafe sex.”
Sempek acknowledges that current methods of distributing condoms could use improvement.
“This probably isn’t the most effective way and I’d love to come up with some new ideas, but for now we just try to encourage students to plan ahead and pick condoms up at fairs and when they are here,” she said.
Donald Misch, executive director of Health Services, agrees that the current system isn’t flawless, but said there aren’t many alternatives.
“I can’t just leave a thousand condoms in a box somewhere because they’ll also disappear and be used for water balloons,” he said. “Is the current system perfect? No. There is no perfect system, but I think we’re doing a pretty good job.”
While he said it’s important for the university to make condoms available to students, he also said that part of being a responsible adult is planning ahead.
“I acknowledge that the need for a condom might arise suddenly and unexpectedly,” he said, “but I’m a little resistant to condone an attitude that ‘It’s somebody else’s job to take care of my health and I have no responsibility for it.’ This really shouldn’t be coming up lots of times.”
This quarter, College Feminists took action to distribute free condoms to dorms by instituting
“condom nights,” during which the group slips condoms under every door.
“I just don’t agree with the mentality that you have to think about it in advance,” said SESP junior Katie Wright, co-president of College Feminists. “I mean I do, but not when it means that people are going to be having unsafe sex because they don’t [think about it in advance],”
Wright and Singh stress the importance of making students aware of where they can access condoms on campus. Weinberg sophomore Sasha Shaikh said, “I live in McCulloch and I didn’t know we had condoms in our vending machines until just now.”
Many students say that the longer they’re on campus, the more easily they know how to locate condoms, but some say that having them on campus isn’t really a big deal.
“I know from my friends that every guy always has condoms and they just get them from CVS,” said Communications sophomore Marlene Jia.