Education

University of New Mexico Pro-Life Student Group Offers ‘Real Sex Week’ To Combat Misinformation

Jeremy Beale Contributor
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The University of New Mexico Students for Life chapter will host a sex week of their own March 7, to combat the STD infested, assault stricken, abortion filled, polygamous relationships running rampant across their campus.

The chapter hopes to build awareness among a misinformed student body with “The Real Sex Week,” after two seemingly unsuccessful years. (RELATED: Expert: Sex Education Is Still Taboo In America)

“In the past, Sex Week at UNM has encouraged students to have threesomes and open marriages, and given students false information on hormonal contraception, while hardly dealing with the STD outbreak, nor providing support to students who become pregnant or are sexually assaulted,” said Students for Life UNM President, Sade Patterson.

According to Patterson, rather than over-hyping the act of sex and making it out to be solely a physical act, sex week should discuss the emotional and potentially consequential side of sex — whether that be contracting an STD, facing an unplanned pregnancy, or offering support to students who have faced assault.

However, during Sex Week 2014, Vice President of Student Affairs, Eliseo Torres gave a public apology to UNM News, stating The Women’s Resource Center and the Graduate and Professional Students Association were well intended but did not have adequate oversight or supervision to prevent sensational and controversial topics.

“While the university administration believes that it is important to offer opportunities for sex education to college students, it should be done in a careful and respectful manner,” Eliseo said.

But Eliseo’s apology resulted in a petition by one of the sponsors of the event claiming it was undeserved. (RELATED: Michigan Admits It Screwed Up By Suspending Student For Rape)

The petition, created by Matie Fricker, owner of Self Serve Toys, a New Mexico sex toy retailer and education center specializing in sexual experimentation such as kink and bondage, received over 1800 signatures.

“By calling topics of normal adult sexuality ‘sensational and controversial,’ University administrators and officials promote fear, shame, and judgment,” Fricker said in her petition to UNM.

She further expressed the prevalence of such an apology leading directly to societal sexual assault.

The end result of the petition was the school losing the right to host future sex weeks, thus leaving it in the hands of the student body.

The event was reestablished in 2015 by the UNM Student Alliance for Reproductive Justice chapter, a Planned Parenthood affiliate, with expressed purpose of educating students about abortion, while aiming to reduce the risk of sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy and STIs.

In the interview with Patterson, she told The Daily Caller Albuquerque is considered the late-term abortion capital as the state holds no restrictions on abortion, thus making abortion legal up until the day of birth. In addition, minors can have an abortion without parental consent.

“This truly affects college-aged women who are at the highest risk to have an abortion,” she said. “Our campus is surrounded by several abortion clinics—the most prominent being Planned Parenthood, the Southwestern Women’s Options, and the UNM Center for Reproductive Health.”

There are approximately seven abortion clinics located near the school.

According to her statement, the UNM Health Science Center is currently facing a lawsuit for withholding documents in regards to using fetal tissue for research.

Nevertheless, the only thing that changed about Sex Week 2015 was the name — SexUality Week.

Where 2015, remained less risqué in nature, focusing on factual information about safety and consent, the predominant conversation remained around pleasure, inclusivity, intersectionality and pro-choice information.

However, not every student was offended by the event. In a letter written to a local newspaper, a student expressed her satisfaction with the 2015 Sex Week.

“By teaching students what enthusiastic consent and healthy relationships look like, ‘Sex Week’ turns the focus of sex education to pleasure and empowers students to recognize when something is not right,” Lalita Russ said in her letter.

Russ also expressed that, Sex Week also explored the sexuality behind race, religion and the LGBTQ through an intersectional lens. (RELATED: USC Forces Students To Disclose Sexual History To Sign Up For Classes)

“The university setting is designed to facilitate learning and to expose students to new ideas,” Russ said. “I think that accurate, fact-based information about sex is an essential part of the college experience.”

Regardless, Patterson still believes, that students deserve a more unique sex week experience that offers life-affirming resources, thus providing proper sex education and support to students who face difficult situations.

In this year’s Sex Week, the event will offer experience workshops on contraception and STI education, greener birth control methods, pregnancy and parental support, sexual assault and abortion healing, and self-defense training from an amateur MMA Fighter. Confidential STD and pregnancy testing will also be provided.

“Students need proper sexual education,” Patterson said. “They need to know about the consequences sex can bring and they need to be supported when they face these consequences.”

“Our goal is to change the norm,” she said hoping “The Real Sex Week Movement will gain traction among other Student for Life chapters around America.”

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