As a still somewhat-recent graduate, I want to commend BU for its recent decision to put condoms in dorms. I think this is a great step toward promoting responsible sex practices. For those who seem to think that more access to condoms may lead students to something they may “regret”: wouldn’t a pregnancy or an unwanted STI be far more regrettable? I’m all for teaching responsibility, but putting condoms in dorms makes that lesson even easier and allows students who might be too uncomfortable to approach a human cashier to still make the choice to use a condom. I can only hope that BU will make the next logical step and start providing free condoms in the dorms.
However, on the note of personal responsibility, I’m extremely disappointed at the recent changes the administration has made at the BU Pub in order not to be seen as “promoting drinking.” It’s ironic that in a semester where the administration is finally starting to allow students to take more personal responsibility in their sex lives, they feel their of-age students must be curtailed
when it comes to legal drinking. For those of you unfamiliar with these changes, the
“Lord’s Quest” — the Pub’s traditional beer-trying challenge — has been abolished, and the number of beer offerings has been reduced by almost half. These measures are being viewed as a “compromise” on the way to the complete closure of the Pub. As an alumna who still makes it a point to visit the Pub on her once-a-month trip back to Boston, the idea that this BU landmark might be closed feels absurd. For myself and many others the Pub was a fun place to go during our senior years for a sandwich or a plate of nachos and a drink or two.
For me the Pub has extreme sentimental value – it’s where I first started dating my boyfriend, who still lives on BU’s campus and indulged me in a trip to the Pub for our anniversary. Its traditions and warm associations like this that keep alumni interested in coming back and in giving back to their alma mater, and if the powers that be thinks that they’re going to somehow curb drinking by sending its students from The Pub and into the arms of other bars, they’ve clearly had one drink too many.
Beth Cimini, CAS ’07