College students have sex. It's an age-old phenomenon.
As long as there have been institutions of higher education, with their high-minded ideas and relativistic morals, there have been 18- to 22-year-olds getting to know each other in the Biblical sense.
Auburn's no different. Certain members of the Auburn family are very close indeed.
Which is why it is depressing to learn Auburn finished 136 out of 141 schools in the recent Trojan Sex Health Report, "which grades 141 universities around the nation based on the availability of sex health information on campus" (from "Trojan releases sex health report," B1).
Auburn ranks in the bottom 10, officially scoring a D, with a GPA of 1.33, because it has poor health center options, doesn't offer students free condoms or HIV tests on campus and because its sexual health website is far below average.
Alabama ranks as the worst state in the country. Four Alabama universities inhabit the bottom 30.
Concerns over the validity of Trojan's report aside, that's embarrassing, but also fitting.
Alabama--bright-shining buckle of the Bible Belt, where sex is still a closed-curtain secret, a word almost taboo--would be last in sex health information because we are a state in perpetual denial.
Don't talk, think or look at it, and it isn't happening.
That type of thinking leads to abstinence-only education.
The forced close proximity of school, both high school and college, coupled with inescapable biological urges, leads to the inevitable. Denying that inevitability does no good.
Granted, the Trojan study does not report on the prevalence of STDs or premarital pregnancies.
But, it stands to reason, Alabama would not fair well based on the report and Alabama's lack of funding for sex education programs state-wide.
All of that is not to say the University should encourage cohabitation between students.
Knowledge of safe sexual practices should be explained and encouraged, both at Auburn and other colleges all over Alabama but also at high schools.
Instead of ignoring the problem, admit there is a problem and make strides toward correction.
We're a family here at Auburn.
Let's be a healthy family.
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