Nope! Free Condoms!During the Undergraduate Government elections at Boston College (BC) last week, students passed a “sexual health referendum” by a wide margin. BC’s student leaders are promising to promote to the administration the referendum which demands access to free birth control and condoms on campus.
What started as a campus petition, reportedly receiving the needed 1,000 student signatures in less than 24 hours, the sexual health referendum made it on the ballot due in large part to the efforts of BC Students for Sexual Health, according to The Heights, BC’s student newspaper. The referendum calls on Boston College to offer support for “affordable sexually transmitted infections testing, the availability of prescription birth control medication, and condoms on campus.” The actual text of the ballot language is available on the Boston College website.
Eighty-nine percent of the students who participated in the election voted in favor of the referendum.
“Clearly Boston College, as a Catholic institution, should not give in to student demands for free contraception, and I would be shocked if they did so,” said David Costanzo, spokesman for The Cardinal Newman Society.
Link (here)
2 comments:
Here are some important quotes from The Heights, the student newspaper:
"One of my responsibilities is to introduce students to the value system of this university so that students might engage in dialogue and compare these values to their own and that of their peers," Rombalski said in an e-mail. He said there seems to be a need for more discussion of BC's Jesuit, Catholic values, before attempting any comprehensive changes. "It seems many people are familiar with the rules and are acting to change them without an equal effort to understand the richness of our values and traditions. It seems we first need a conversation on the values and that the University should help to facilitate that."
Rombalski said that the referendum will play a role in ongoing dialogues about health and sexual health on campus. He said that contraception, perhaps one of the most problematic issues raised by the referendum, is not the place to start this dialogue. "I do not believe we should be asking for contraception right now. We should be engaged in conversations on new approaches to sexual health on campus," Rombalski said.
Part of addressing the issues in the referendum will be finding a "common language and starting point," Rombalski said. "My commitment is to lead this dialogue and be open to where it leads us. I will not start with an action - allowing the distribution of contraceptives - that is clearly in conflict with this institution's values on human sexuality. But I hope we can soon being a conversation regarding these values."
Jesuit John,
Thank you for adding an important truthful counter balance.
JMJ
Joe
Post a Comment