Each year, a study sponsored by Trojan Brand Condoms ranks 140 colleges in the United States according to accessibility of sexual health resources on campus and relevant information available to the student body. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Georgetown has been ranked 93rd in the latest 2014 study.
The Trojan Sexual Health Report Card is, according to its rankings methodology, designed “to inspire students to make tangible changes, and to take their schools’ sexual health into their own hands.” While this is an admirable goal, there remain limits to what students can accomplish on their own.
At a certain point, it becomes necessary for the university to recognize that there is something wrong with its system and change it. Unfortunately for Georgetown, that day may be far off, judging from the current state of its approach to sexual health on campus.
It is no secret that Georgetown’s Catholic system of ethics has qualms about supporting healthy and safe sex among its students.
This has been demonstrated in various ways, from the university hospital’s refusal to fill prescriptions for the birth control pill, to the administration’s denial of official recognition to H*yas for Choice, to the student-led anti-abortion groups that do receive access to benefits.
Certain aspects of this larger system of this willful avoidance are inconvenient, rather than overtly harmful. For example, the Student Health Services page on the Georgetown website has a subsection devoted entirely to sexual health issues. This subsection has a grand total of two articles, one containing basic information on STI prevention, the other detailing the steps of a testicular self-exam.
Apparent misogyny aside, the amount of information on this website pales in comparison to what can be found on any of the websites of the top 10 schools on Trojan’s list. For example, the sexual health web portal of the No. 1 ranked school, Oregon State University, includes links to dozens of articles, peer health programs and advisory groups.
However, any student has access to all the information that other universities — and the Internet at large — have to offer, so Georgetown refusing to address certain intricacies of sexuality is not crippling, in this case. There are other examples of Georgetown’s sexual health constraints that are far more troubling.
Although Georgetown’s meager sexual health page advocates condoms as “the best way to prevent STIs,” the university does not provide them to its students, whether free or at cost.
Clearly, Georgetown’s Catholic identity renders the school incapable of providing basic sexual health services like distributing condoms to its students. But, students have access through non-university channels, as H*yas for Choice has taken up the slack in this area, providing this valuable sexual health resource to students for free.
However, there are certain things a student organization cannot conceivably do, which the university absolutely should be doing — like providing Plan B in the standard hospital rape kit given to survivors, or perhaps providing options other than the Crisis Pregnancy Center to students concerned about having a child. These lapses do not constitute “care for the whole person,” and, Catholic identity or not, are just plain wrong.
We are, fortunately, not ranked last. Nevertheless, placing in the 40th percentile among peer schools in an environment in which sexual assault is common on college campuses is a pressing and alarming truth that we as students of this university can no longer afford to ignore.