College hard enough without sex worries

"College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?"

-David Woods

Staff Editorial

 Truer words have never been spoken.

For many, college is the embodiment of everything they ever have denied themselves as "good kids."

Just about anything is possible on a college campus, from all-night drinking sessions to all-night cramming at IHOP to actually learning something in class. But for some people, the college experience doesn't end at college.

Many carry a memento of it for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for females to drop out of college is due to pregnancy, whether it is planned or unplanned.

School is hard enough as it is - adapting to life away from home and by yourself for the first time.

Course loads, a job and everything else that college entails is bad enough; adding a child to that just doesn't seem to work.

It is not to say that abstinence is the only way to go in life, because come on, let's be practical: humans and dolphins are the only two mammals that have sex for fun. You just need to be careful and be the responsible adult that many keep insisting to the world that you are.

While sex is a touchy subject, especially here in the center of the Bible Belt, it's not something that, if ignored, will go away.

According to Facts in Brief: Teen Sex and Pregnancy, by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, four of 10 women in the United States end up pregnant at least once before the age of 20.

Just because it may be a little embarrassing admitting to the world that you may have fears or insecurities about being sexually active does not mean you are the only one.

There probably are a dozen people that you pass by every day on your way to class who have many of the same insecurities you feel right now. Speak up and tell the Student Government Association that we need a real, honest dialogue among students about sex, how to keep it safe and how to avoid bringing a child into the world to be raised by two people who are barely more than children themselves.

Yes, there are people who won't take this seriously and see it just as a joke, a chance to put free condoms on their friend's car antennas. But to others it might actually be beneficial.

Talk to someone - it doesn't matter who - before you get too wrapped up in the whole college experience and in too far over your head.

College is supposed to be fun; it's all about freedom before being chained to the nine to five.

But keep in mind that there is a life after college. And college isn't like Vegas. What happens here doesn't always stay here.