Roses are red, condoms are clear

The Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) is selling Valentine’s Day condoms and candy in Frist Campus Center today and tomorrow. Both the condoms and the candy will come with an SGAC message on STD prevention, and some of the condoms will also come with AIDS ribbons.

SGAC president Shannon Mercer ’11 said the campaign’s aim is twofold. “Contrary to popular belief, [the point] is not to spread condoms,” she said. “[I]t’s a fundraiser, and … we want to spread awareness. We want to educate.”

Mercer said the initiative is a departure from the SGAC’s typical campaigns.

“Usually, we focus on countries that would need aid from the U.S., but this year, we are helping the U.S. itself,” she said. “We need to be able to educate people on this campus first … to have a right to educate [some] other people.”

The students had originally planned to hold the sale during the Global AIDS Week of Action last May, Mercer said, “but we had concerns about the message we would be sending out, so we decided to wait.”

Despite the potentially controversial nature of the campaign, Mercer said the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students has not expressed much concern.

“We have made it clear that there is no judgment. It is purely about health,” Mercer said.

Mercer added that the message that will come with the condoms and candy will include the statement that “the only way to guarantee no [sexually transmitted diseases] is abstinence.”

Still, Mercer said that she anticipated a potential backlash against the campaign, noting that she believed that “[for] some people who have very strong beliefs on contraception, offering condoms in association with Valentine’s Day would be some way of condoning sex, but that is not what we are doing.”

Anscombe Society president Brandon McGinley ’10 expressed his opposition to the SGAC’s Valentine’s Day sale of condoms and candy.

“The cause for which the Student Global AIDS Campaign is raising money is obviously a noble cause that Anscombe supports,” McGinley noted. McGinley is also a columnist for The Daily Princetonian.

McGinley explained that the Anscombe Society does not have an official position on the morality of condom use, but he added that the society “strongly disagree[s] with the message sent by this campaign, which will normalize the hook-up culture that is prevalent on this campus and other campuses.”

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“The message it sends is quite unhealthy,” McGinley noted, “and it continues to spread the misunderstanding that condoms are some sort of panacea against [sexually transmitted infections].”

Mercer stressed that the point of the campaign is not to promote sex.

“We want to make clear that we are not passing any type of judgment,” she said. “It’s not our place to make moral statements.”

Condoms are provided by RCAs and University Health Services during the academic year, and “Valentine’s Day is one of the days we can [help],” Mercer said. “Health is a good present to give.”