MU condom plan has many details to be worked out yet

After months of debate, opponents and supporters of the MU condom initiative can now agree: Students shouldn’t expect to see condoms in the residence halls anytime soon.

The plan was first proposed in September 2006 by the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. Reports that implementation was imminent provoked a flurry of comment from supporters as well as opponents. Chancellor Brady Deaton halted the plan in early October, and MU officials requested that the MU Difficult Dialogues Program conduct a series of forums on campus and offer recommendations.

Deaton received the group’s report in December and subsequently approved the “concept” of the plan. Now all that’s left is to work out the details.

Susan Even, director of Student Health, and Frankie D. Minor, director of Residential Life, will be in charge of figuring out how to distribute the condoms in the residence halls without inviting tampering or vandalism and how to supplement the availability of condoms with sexual health and safety information.

“We must first form the working group, which is nearly complete, and from there begin to review the charge that we have been given, outline the process we would like to follow, determine the key issues that must be resolved, and begin to identify a range of options to address those,” Minor said in an e-mail.

That information will then be sent to Cathy Scroggs, vice chancellor for student affairs, and Deaton for review and recommendation. Scroggs said there is no timetable for when the plan will be implemented but predicts that the process will be long.

“We want to do this right,” Scroggs said. “We have been talking a lot to students in the residence halls about their feelings, and one thing they mentioned more than once was their reluctance to approve of a plan that would make the res hall bathrooms look trashy and cheap. They told us they didn’t want the bathrooms to look like public rest stops, with condoms just lying around. And we said, ‘Well no, of course not!’ We want to make sure that the condoms are not in their face, but available. It’s going to take planning.”

MU’s Difficult Dialogues team sought to solicit more diverse opinions on the issue. Its report cited research that shows that about 70 percent of the population “favors condom availability as the primary method of preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unplanned pregnancies among sexually active youth in America.” That research echoes a study done by Heather Eastman-Mueller, sexual health advocate peer education coordinator, who randomly sampled 6,000 MU students in a confidential survey about their personal sexual health histories.

Of the 1,234 students who responded, 911, or 74 percent, reported having been sexually active in the past 30 days. The majority of respondents noted that condoms were their preferred method of STI prevention and birth control.

The Difficult Dialogues report also noted that among the major concerns addressed at the forum, the possibility that condoms could be tampered with was at the forefront. And although the report stated that “the vast majority of participants acknowledged the potential significance of the moral issues involved,” participants who opposed the plan strictly on the moral grounds that it would encourage sexual promiscuity among students were in the minority.

Meagan Rippee, the president of Missouri Students for Life, participated in the Difficult Dialogues forum. Her organization opposes the initiative, and Rippee said she attended the forum in hopes of permanently halting the initiative.

Now that the plan seems to be going forward, however slowly, Rippee is disappointed.

“I still disagree with it and don’t see that anything has been resolved regarding the problems that were voiced,” she said.

In addition to the small number of individuals who expressed staunch opposition to the initiative, some participants indicated that although they were morally opposed to the plan, they recognized the “public health values associated with the plan and, contrary to their own values, would support the plan as a means of promoting public health and preventing STIs or unplanned pregnancies,” providing that educational materials on safe sex as well as abstinence were available with the condoms.

Scroggs compared the condom plan to STRIPES (Supportive Tigers Riding In Pursuit of Ensuring Safety). STRIPES, a student-run designated driver program offered by the Missouri Students Association, is offered to all MU students, regardless of age, no questions asked.

Scroggs said that offering free condoms to students in the residence halls is similar.

“It’s a safety net — a way for us to say, ‘Here’s how you can be safe,’” she said. “Are we condoning it? No. But it’s available, because the reality is, we would rather students be safe than not.”