Tucked away in the Steger Student Life Center is the small office of an organization striving to make a big difference on campus; a place many students know simply as “that office with the free condoms.”
The Student Wellness Center is a university organization tasked with promoting awareness of health and well-being in many areas, ranging from fitness and nutrition to alcohol use and financial security.
Regan Johnson, SWC director, said the two most important issues regarding sexual health on UC’s campus are the stigma surrounding testing for sexually transmitted diseases and the lack of condom use. A person can have a contagious STD with no apparent symptoms that later becomes a disease with obvious symptoms.
To raise student awareness of the dangers of STDs, and to help prevent and treat them, the SWC offers free HIV tests twice a semester and other tests throughout the year. Information about STDs and local testing centers is offered on their website.
One of the easiest ways to look out for one’s health while sexually active is through condom use, according to the SWC; not only are they an effective means of birth control, but they also help prevent the spread of STDs. And yes, condoms are available in the SWC office, as well as a host of other sexual health materials such as dental dams, lube and female condoms.
The problem is that not everyone needs a condom between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The SWC’s answer to this is the Gotcha Covered program, a student-based resource and education initiative. With this program, the SWC’s rubber hits the road, with volunteers acting as distributors of condoms among fellow students.
Gotcha Covered is one of the SWC’s most effective ways of informing students of the importance of using a condom. Volunteers undergo an hour of training to become Gotcha Covered representatives, and are provided with information and resources, including condoms, to help their peers maintain sexual health.
Since its inception in the 2013 Fall semester, 12 Gotcha Covered sessions have been conducted, training 155 people, Johnson said. The trainees often include resident advisers and members of Greek life.
In addition to Gotcha Covered representatives, the SWC employs students called peer educators to act as student health ambassadors on campus. The SWC is predominantly run by students and the faculty staff act mostly as facilitators and guides, said Francesca Urbina, a fourth-year dietetics student and peer educator.
Urbina said her job is “not to encourage anything but healthy practices.” Her role is not to judge students’ decisions, but to help them keep their health in mind while making them.
The peer educators have several functions, Urbina said, including designing the posters and flyers seen around campus and running various programs for UC organizations. These events are requested by students, student groups, Greek organizations and even professors, who sometimes ask them to cover a topic in their class.
“Those programs are the literal way that peer-to-peer education happens,” Urbina said.
The programs focus on a variety of topics that are often interrelated, like sexual health, alcohol and stress management.
“Whenever we do alcohol awareness programs, we also talk about sexual health, because those tend to go hand in hand,” Johnson said.
Sexual health is an important topic at UC and one often filled with rumor and misinformation. The SWC is trying to change that.
As Urbina said, the SWC is an “underused resource,” and one that students can put to good use for their well-being.
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