No.1 Op-Ed: Why Colleges Should Teach Sex Ed - Women Compus - Women Campus
You have graduation requirements, right? Math, writing seminar, something science-y that makes your GPA plummet like an anchor to the bottom of the sea (damn you, Astronomy 001!) Unless you go to Brown where you can major in underwater basket weaving with a minor in shoelaces and be left to your own merry liberal artsy devices, your school likely has at least a few graduation requirements.
One requirement you probably don’t have is sex ed. But I think you should.
“Graduation requirements! Don’t make me laugh,” says Emma Watson, typical Brown student.
A university’s primary aims should be to educate and promote the welfare of its students, and comprehensive sexual education is essential to meeting both of those goals. Colleges aren’t just institutions of higher education; they’re home to thousands of teenagers and twenty-somethings for four of the most formative years of these young people’s lives. Schools have a responsibility to ensure that each student has an adequate foundation of sexual knowledge, from the basics of STDs and birth control to the definition of consent. In the event that students choose to be sexually active (sorry, Juno), colleges have an obligation to prepare and inform.
Schools might oppose sex education for any number of reasons. It’s possible that colleges are secretly invested in students hooking up, accidentally getting pregnant, and sending the surprise spawn to be double-legacy graduates of the Class of 2034. For some reason, I find this unlikely.
