(A two-part post)
Berkeley High's condom club
A student can get a 12-pack, free food
G. Pascal Zachary
Sunday, November 13, 2005
My son is settling into his first year of high school and, like all parents concerned over a teenager's future, I'm wondering whether, besides keeping up with his classes, my son is getting involved in a diverse range of school activities.
He's trying out for the soccer team. He's eyeing a spot on a barbecue team that serves lunches to students once a week. He's considering joining a club. Maybe the Environmental Club. The Snowboard Club. Or the Outdoors Club.
For now, he's ruled out joining one club.
The Condom Club.
Let me tell you how I found out that my son's school even has a Condom Club: e-mail.
I learned my son's high school has a Condom Club through an e-mail.
Not an e-mail from a concerned parent. An e-mail from Berkeley High. The news was contained in the Student Daily Bulletin.
The kind teachers and parents at Berkeley High dispatch this report to everyone who's signed up for it. Most of the entries are mundane. The high school has a canned food drive. There are after-school jobs available from the city. The Jewish Student Union is meeting for lunch in room A105. Interested in joining the Mountain Bike team? Go to Room H301 next Thursday.
And, by the way, having sex? Join the Condom Club.
No exaggeration. My son was invited to join the Condom Club by his high school, which even broadcast the invitation a few times over the loudspeaker system.
Now, perhaps because my ninth-grade son is my oldest child, I have not yet confronted the fact of life that all parents must face someday: the thought of our own child having consensual sex. So I was startled when I read these exact words in the Berkeley High bulletin: Having sex? Thinking about having sex? Sign up for Condom Club now! Bring your lunch and come to classroom G103 on Wednesday, October 12th to join. Come once and get a sticker for the back of your student ID. Show your ID at the Health Center and receive 12 free condoms a week. Free food.
Now after I read this -- and after I stopped laughing -- my first thought was not about the offer of "free food," presumably made to induce the students to join club. My mind did not linger over the sticker that gets attached to the back of a student I.D. (wondering, like, what's the logo look like for the Condom Club?) What stopped me, what left me pondering the ingenuity of high school administrators, was the number of condoms on offer. Please, read this line again, slowly: Show your ID at the Health Center and receive 12 free condoms a week.
Where did they come up with the number 12?
Twelve condoms a week! I don't know sex workers who need that many condoms. Certainly none of my middle-age friends need 12 condoms a week. High school students do?
Wait a minute. Maybe we have a situation where the school district gets the condoms cheaper by the dozen and so doesn't want to bother breaking open a pack. So sure kid, the whole box, but show me your sticker first.
I hope the students appreciate what a good deal they are getting. At Long's or Walgreens, a condom 12-pack goes for at least $10. What a deal the high school is giving -- and this is from a school that cannot give away books to students. Indeed, students can't even bring some of the textbooks home overnight. But condoms, take 'em away.
I was stewing over the Condom Club for a few weeks when I finally got the nerve to ask my son whether he joined. "No, dad, I didn't." I wasn't sure whether to be glad or sad, since I didn't have the nerve to ask him whether he's having sex.
I just told him that his teachers are right: When he does finally have sex, he must wear a condom.
When I tried to demonstrate how to use one, he stopped me and, shaking his head, said, "Dad, they taught us in sixth grade."
Oh. You never mentioned it.
Then I told him one other thing. I told him if he ever needs 12 condoms in a week, he'll be a very happy young man.
G. Pascal Zachary is a writer and longtime Berkeley resident. Contact us at
insight@sfchronicle.com.
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Part 2:
November 12, 2005
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IU survey of rural men stirs sex education debate
Reports of condom misuse raise question of whether schools should teach such practices
staci.hupp@indystar.com
By Staci Hupp
Men who live in rural areas often use condoms incorrectly, according to a study out this week that Indiana University researchers say underscores the shortcomings of sex education in Hoosier public schools.
Almost half the men who answered IU survey questions about their latest sexual encounters with women admitted they waited too long to put on a condom or took it off too soon.
Researchers say the study of 75 men statewide stands apart from other condom research because it focuses on how men use condoms instead of how often. Rural men were singled out as part of broader attempts to track AIDS prevention efforts in those areas.
"We did these studies to find out, are people actually making mistakes?" said William Yarber, a researcher at IU's Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. "And if they are, of course, those mistakes expose them to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases."
Yarber said the study, which was paid for by the university's Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention, shows schools should teach students how to use condoms. The idea, however, turns off supporters of programs that encourage children to delay sex until marriage.
"We think, by exaggerating the safety of sex, that many young people end up trusting their health to a piece of latex that may not protect them," said Esther Meier, director of Creating Positive Relationships, a Carmel nonprofit program that teaches abstinence to about 50,000 children statewide through schools and churches.
How responsible Hoosiers are about sex isn't clear. The teenage pregnancy rate dropped by 11 percentage points from 1999 to 2003, according to the Indiana State Department of Health.
But reports of chlamydia and other sexually transmitted diseases jumped about 12 percent in the same period, according to the Department of Health.
State law requires schools to emphasize abstinence outside marriage as the only safeguard against pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Teachers legally can include information about birth control and safe sex, but exact lesson plans are up to local school boards.
"Many schools don't talk about condoms for pregnancy and STD prevention, and even fewer talk about the details of correct use," Yarber said. "From a public health perspective, we feel that information leads to less risky behavior."
Bob Klitzman, former president of the state's Small and Rural Schools Association, believes safe-sex lessons belong outside the schoolhouse doors.
"The schools cannot do everything," said Klitzman, superintendent of Eastern Pulaski Schools in Northwest Indiana. "I would rather have the education, the efforts, the money, go to organizations and have them educate parents on what to do, what to say and how to say it."
Students at Sheridan High School watch videotapes that show the physical damage of sexually transmitted diseases. Melody Rosenberger, 17, said the tapes would have persuaded her to avoid sex if she hadn't already vowed to wait for marriage.
"That really grossed me out," said Rosenberger, a senior.
She doesn't believe lessons about condom use belong at school.
"If they're going to have sex, they need to research how to use condoms themselves," Rosenberger said. Then she added: "But honestly, I don't think they would."
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