Celebrating Sex Education
Food, games and condoms were compiled Tuesday evening to create an event based around sex education, the Condom Carnival. Held in Dede 1 of the Indiana State University Hulman Memorial Student Union, the Condom Carnival was hosted by Student Health Promotion with an objective of educating students on safe sex and where to find help and more information on campus.
“It’s to get students comfortable talking about the topic of sex and appropriate sexual health practices,” graduate assistant in Student Health Promotion, Nicole Martens, said.
Martens was the overseer of the 2020 Condom Carnival and explains how this annual event is so important for educating students and faculty on healthy sexual practices.
“If they choose to engage in sexual practices, we can ensure that they are being as safe as possible,” Martens said.
Additional organizations based around sexual health and guidance collaborated with Student Health Promotion to add more diversity to the event. Some of the other organizations present were Title IX, CODA, Victim Advocate, and the Union Health clinic which offers free STI testing.
“We are trying to accumulate all of the resources in the community for everyone based on sexual health,” Martens said. “It’s really to get that exposure out there and to show students what’s available to them.”
A student run LGBTQ+ organization, Spectrum, was also present at the carnival to educate students on safe sex in all different kinds of relationships. Their booth gave away mugs and rainbow lanyards to whomever wanted to learn more about their organization.
“The main focus of Spectrum is to create a safe space for LGBTQ+ students and faculty here on campus as well as certain areas of outreach in the community,” sophomore Spectrum member William Edwards said.
Through-out the event, along with the buffet and candy giveaways, there were games and activities for attendees to participate in while learning more about safe sex and healthy practices.
“It was really interesting to walk around and take part in all of the activities that different organizations had about sex education,” senior Kayla Trinka said.
Each booth had something new to learn, from putting on a condom correctly, to where to get a free STI test, to even finding which dating site is the safest one to use.
“I feel like there is a lot that students don’t know about sex and the Condom Carnival was really eye opening for me,” Trinka said.
Though the event made good headway with a couple hundred people turnout, there are still students on campus who could know a little bit more about having safe sex. Martens hopes that the next campus survey they do will have more promising results.
“We need to have more conversation about how important it is to protect yourself and to have safe sexual practices,” Martens said. “We just had a survey go out and I want to say less than 50% of students said they use a condom. It is something we have to continuously educate students on.”