Week to focus on sexual health

Information, free condoms to be provided

By: Amanda Grosgebauer

Posted: 2/11/08

Texas A&M Student Health Services, SHS, will sponsor Sexual Responsibility Week as part of the national campaign, Pass the Test, that focuses on making healthy decisions about sexuality.

The BACCHUS network, which means Boosting Alcohol Consciousness Concerning the Health of University Students, a coalition of university- and community-based organizations, coordinated the campaign message and offered ideas for programs that urge participants to make sexual health a priority on campus.

The week of activities at A&M are centered on the promotion of healthy relationships, said Adrian James, a health educator who has been with the SHS since 2005. She said it is meant to create a visible spark for a commitment to sexual health issues and to programming that creates a pro-active education.

With Sexual Responsibility Week's focus on healthy relationships, James said, the SHS aims to help develop the desire in students to want to create healthy, supportive and honest sexual relationships.

Along with the Residence Hall Association, the SHS sponsors a Sex in the Dark program that encourages students to speak out in a darkened room and ask questions about their sex-life that they would otherwise not ask.

After sponsoring the program, James said most questions posed by students have to do with the silence in relationships surrounding past partners, sexually transmitted infections and the dangers of a lack of communication.

SHS will have an information table in the hallway of the Memorial Student Center on Monday, to hand out student-friendly sexual health information on the importance of communication, the connections between alcohol abuse and unhealthy sexual decisions and general guides for making healthy sexual choices.

SHS will have a Battle of the Sexes at 6 p.m. on Tuesday in

Rudder 407, an interactive game to create conversations between students to question and assess their own attitudes about society, gender and sexuality which will help in acquiring skills to make healthy decisions in the future.

The most popular event of the week will be on Thursday, said James, when SHS will hand out condom roses in the MSC hallway to celebrate National Condom Day.