Concern that students aren’t receiving enough sexual education in high school has one campus group planning to pick up the slack.
Students For Choice will team up with Planned Parenthood to present “Sex in the Dark,” an activity with condom relays and “sextacular minigolf” on Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Union East Panorama Room.
“It will be fun, entertaining and really educational,” said Justine Sheedy, co-director of Students For Choice.
The student group will address a problem with sex education that it thinks is gripping Utah.
“A lot of Utah high school students don’t get sex ed in high school. We feel it’s important to teach it,” Sheedy said.
About five years ago, in response to parents’ complaints, lawmakers decided to give parents and communities control over sex education instruction in Utah.
The law allowed school boards, with parental involvement, to choose human sexuality materials stricter than state guidelines. The spectrum of sex education in Utah schools now includes abstinence on one end and adoption on the other.
Many high schools cannot teach birth control by use of contraceptives unless parents give written permission.
Planned Parenthood blames the current sex ed high school curriculum for “scary” trends in teen pregnancy.
According to the organization, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world, and American adolescents are contracting HIV faster than almost any other demographic group.
The teen pregnancy rate in the states is at least twice the rate of Canada, England, France and Sweden, and 10 times that of the Netherlands, the organization said.
Sex in the Dark is free, open to everyone and will have many experts from Planned Parenthood to answer questions.