According to The Columbia Daily Spectator, Barnard College will soon install a vending machine outside of its health care center that will dispense emergency contraceptives.
Nice gesture, Barnard, but you folks are a bit late to the party. While you’ve been mulling over this decision for God-knows-how-long, here’s what other schools have been doing:
— On every floor of every dormitory at Syracuse University there is a small cabinet mounted in the hallway that is clearly marked, “Break glass in case of sex.” The cabinet contains three condoms and a CD by Drake. According to Dean of Students Lyle Blenz, “we used to have traditional vending machines that stocked condoms, but there’s nothing sadder than seeing a couple of naked sophomores, draped in an afghan knitted by one of their grandmothers, arguing loudly in front of a vending machine at 2:00 a.m. about who forgot to bring quarters. It’s a whole lot simpler to just give the damn things away.”
— At Colby College in Maine they’ve taken things a step further. Every Purell Hand Sanitizer Dispenser on campus has been retrofitted so that a swipe of a student’s ID card produces a single, university-strength, steel-belted-radial Trailblazer condom manufactured by Trojan. Students love the convenience. As junior Haddon Twenny put it, “You never know who you might connect with in any given class on any given day. This way, I’m all set for whatever happens. Having sex after an 8:00 a.m. Stats class rules!”
— A more holistic approach is taken by the University of Southern California, where its Office of Enhanced Student Life offers a Partner Identification Service (PIDS) to assist students in finding out the names of the individuals they slept with the night before.
Staffed by retired police detectives, PIDS claims to have an 84% success rate in identifying partners. According to Senior Investigator Charles “Biff” Cranley, “I’m 72 now, but I was young once. I understand. These kids gets all excited and forget to ask for the basics, like the name of the other person. We help them retrace their steps so they can narrow down the possibilities. It’s a great feeling when you locate the right individual, and the student smiles at you and says, ‘Yep, that’s the one. Thanks so much!’ Hell, sometimes the two of them even go out on an old-fashioned date after being reunited. I worked in Homicide for 35 years, but right now I’m having the time of my life!”
— Of course, not every school moves at the same speed when it comes to addressing sexuality and young people in the 21st century. At Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, for example, the administration is proud of its new “Where Do Christian Babies Come From?” curriculum, featuring instructional videos in which key concepts are demonstrated by kittens, otters, and (for Seniors only) African bush elephants. In the words of Winifred “Winnie” Frohlstrom, Vice President for Student Chastity, “at Bob Jones we’re committed to graduating students who display a mature attitude toward physical intimacy with the opposite sex while also being wildlife-sensitive.”
Now there’s a goal that University Life hopes we can all endorse.