STDs with cranberry and vodka, our most popular campus cocktail!
I go to the gym during the week and always admire how many students I see working out while I’m huffing and puffing away on some machine (I wasn’t built for exertion).
I admire these students because they have taken it upon themselves to look after their physical health for the duration of their time at UT.
Allowing them to truly enjoy college life without being inhibited by many sicknesses, exhaustion and general moodiness like other students.
I’m more than a 100% sure that students do not hesitate to gorge and satisfy their sexual appetites, that much is evident.
But do they bother to wonder what risks they are taking when doing so?
When I first came to this university, I realized it was commonplace to act upon one’s sexual appetite with whomever seemed to be the target (at the time).
It was deeply shocking to me—priggish as I am—how easily people exchange bedfellows here. Just a little too easily in my opinion.
What keeps me awake at night is the thought of what we’re all passing around to each other!
Last week there was a talk on STDs in Vaughn on the third floor where we played a game: each person took an envelope and exchanged it with another person.
When we opened these envelopes—voila!—we had just received gonorrhea from the person who passed us the envelope.
And not just gonorrhea, but a whole range of frightful diseases like herpes of the mouth, Hepatitis B & C, syphilis, intestinal parasites, genital warts—the list of grisly diseases goes on!
People think it won’t happen to them because it’s not that easy, guess what—it just happened because it is that easy.
All this makes me wonder how anyone has sex without having nightmares just at the thought!
Another horrifying thought is the percentage of students who have these diseases and are unaware and nonchalant of the fact that they’re passing them onto other students!
How is it that people who concentrate so wholly on their physical health and aesthetic beauty can be so blissfully unaware of this most critical part of our health that we’re just throwing away?
Such frivolity is simply inexcusable! What good is physical beauty with poor sexual health?
The college experience is about having fun, but I don’t think anyone’s aiming to graduate with a degree and a STD.
The health center offers testing and check-ups for these things, the tests aren’t expensive. After all, how much is your health worth to you?
Why not go with your partner before you have sex, rather than afterward when you realize that they gave you chlamydia?
There are so many brilliant, vivacious students in this university, why not utilize our intelligence when it comes to sex?
You’ll be thankful you did it!
Sex is about more than just fulfilling your own needs; the decade of free love is over.
It takes courage to make good choices. We all have that courage.
Philppa Hatendi can be reached at phatendi@ut.edu.