Marika Lee, vice president of Allied in Pride, lobbies senators Josh Goldstein and Cory Grever to sponsor a condom dispenser bill. File photo
The Student Association unanimously approved a resolution Monday calling for the University to install and maintain free condom dispensers on campus.
Sen. Josh Goldstein, U-CCAS , wrote the Be Safe Act after Allied in Pride members lobbied for the program at last week’s senate meeting.
“The bill is the easy part,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein, the chair of the SA Student Life Committee, met with his committee and members of Allied in Pride Sunday night to finalize the proposal. The bill calls for University action to fund and maintain condom dispensers, but does not include a timeline for when this program should be implemented. SA resolutions have no binding power for the University, so for the condom program to go forward, GW must implement it.
The D.C. Department of Public Health will supply the condoms for free, Allied in Pride’s vice president, Marika Lee, said. She estimated the program would cost a few thousand dollars to start up, including the cost of the dispensers and installation, but did not provide a specific breakdown of expenses.
Fourteen campus groups also support the proposal – including GW College Democrats, Organization of Latino American Students and the GW chapter of the National Organization for Women – Lee said.
The senate also passed a bill clarifying language in the Finance Committee bylaws.
Finance committee chair John Bennett, U-At Large, said the previous wording made it appear that the committee would allocate a full 85 percent of its budget during the first round of funding allocations.
The bylaws now state the committee will allocate “up to, but no more than 85 percent” of the SA budget.
may I suggest that the senators concern themselves with more pedestrian issues in the residence halls such as ensuring that the dorms are clean and free of mold, that the decrepit and mold filled air conditioning units be cleaned and maintained or replaced. this will have a greater impact on student health than free rascal wraps.
Senator Grever looks mighty fratastic!
Disgusting.
College life is supposed to be about obtaining an education and make connections for your professional and social future. Fostering students’ private sexual escapades, which this bill necessarily does, removes this emphasis and instead bills college as a place to slut it up. After all, regular apartment buildings don’t have condom dispensers.
You know who else gets free condoms dispensed at their convenience? Prostitutes. That’s right, there are non-profit orgs right in dc that drive around at night giving condoms to hookers. Glad to see the GW student government places their peers in the same category.
Don’t you care about your university’s reputation? Will you be proud to tell your future employers that your impact on GW was giving students free condoms and same sex housing?
Students who are elected to the Student Senate are more likely than most to be outgoing, popular and sexually active. Maybe they should ask themselves how they’d feel walking past a condom dispenser every day if they were were not sexually active due to having a disability, disorder or other issue that makes dating a serious challenge. It’s not a given that everybody who wants to have sex at college is having sex.
Instead of voting yourselves free condoms, why not consider dating, or even having a conversation with someone you’d normally consider “below” you – not in your league? Think of all the people you’ve rejected, made fun of behind their backs, or simply IGNORED, and plan an initiative to be kinder to and more inclusive of those people in your lives. Look around. You know who they are.
Believe it or not, there are worse things than not having free condoms at your disposal.
(Also, anyone smart enough to get into GW is smart enough to know the importance of safe sex. There’s a CVS in the middle of campus for a reason.)