Editorial: Students must push hard for condoms
Nov. 18, 2008
Just last week, we called for administrators to speed up the timeline for condoms in residence halls and urged student leaders to keep pushing them to do so. A week later, we're doing it again.
The Residence Halls Association postponed plans to pass legislation encouraging speedier implementation of condoms in residence halls last week because they wanted to more closely examine why the timeline had stretched, touch up wording and achieve a strong, unanimous passing vote at a congressional meeting. This week, the Sexual Health and Safety Products Taskforce in charge of the project asked RHA Speaker of Congress Blake Lawrence to postpone passing legislation even longer, asking that he hold it until Dec. 1. Lawrence agreed to attend a task force meeting on Thursday to hear out their reasoning and said that if their reasons aren't good enough, RHA will be pulling funding.
We're glad to see Lawrence putting up a fight and holding the task force accountable, but pulling out is definitely not the right way to do it.
It's obvious that the administration isn't jumping to get the machines installed and they'll take any excuse to keep implementation from happening. If they're told "fine, well we're pulling our funding" by RHA, we have no doubt the administration would say "OK, fine, no condoms." And that's something we can't let happen.
So, RHA, we appreciate your efforts - it's just that pulling funding isn't exactly a threat to administrators. Without your funding, this project can't happen, so please stay on board. And after Lawrence attends the meeting on Thursday and RHA passes legislation, the Missouri Students Association and Legion of Black Collegians should follow suit and draw up their own resolutions.
It's taken us long enough to get this close, and we're almost there. The condoms have been delivered and once the machines come in, we want to see installation happen as soon as possible.
We just have to keep pushing and reminding administrators that we must have this, and no matter how long it takes, we will see it finish.
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