Emily Showalter, a Wonders Hall mentor, decided to participate in Olin Health Center's Condom Connection program because she wanted students to have "positive sexual health habits."
"Even though the parents don't think the residents (have sex), mentors know what happens when parents aren't around," said Showalter, a general business administration and pre-law junior.
According to the 2004 National College Health Assessment, 76 percent of MSU students are sexually active, which Dennis Martell, Olin health education services coordinator, defines as having intercourse.
Martell helped create Condom Connection about five years ago, and since then data have shown the number of students using condoms has increased.
In 2002, the health assessment showed 49 percent of students always or mostly used condoms. By 2004, the number had risen to 57 percent.
"We attribute the rise in condom use to availability and increased knowledge," Martell said. "Even with a lot of education, if (condoms are) not accessible, then (students are) not going to use them."
Residents are interested. Showalter said many of the students on her floor have asked about the program.
"A lot of people joke about it as a cover," she said. "But joking is better than not asking."
Showalter is on the waiting list for Condom Connection, which with 180 mentors participating has Olin officials seeing more interest than expected.
At the start of the fall semester, Olin Health Center e-mailed mentors and invited them to participate in the program.
The mentors who accepted were provided with a box of 40 condoms and literature about safe sex to distribute to their residents.
Martell said Condom Connection was actually a response to the demands many mentors received from residents for condoms.
But Kashif Syed, a no-preference sophomore in the Residential Option in Arts and Letters program, said he thinks the Condom Connection program calls for awkward conversations with mentors and promotes sex itself, not just safe sex.
"I know (my mentor) pretty well, but I wouldn't ask him for a condom," Syed said. "It makes it seem okay to have promiscuous sex."
Martell said he disagrees, and accessibility to contraception does not lead to sexual activity.
"Providing condoms does not lead to increased sexual intercourse; there is no data that shows that," Martell said. "There has not been any real increase in the number of students having sex."
Kim Beaubien, co-vice president of MSU Students for Life, said the student organization did not have problems with Condom Connection.
The group only stands against contraceptive forms that could act as an abortion drug, which they believe includes birth control pills, Beaubien said.
Condom Connection is part of Olin Health Center's Healthy Campus 2010 goal. The goal to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is bolstered by an attempt to increase the MSU student-retention rate and help students' academic lives, Martell said.
"We want to make the students academically successful, because getting sexually transmitted infections reduces that," Martell said. "It's not our job to tell people to have or not to have sex; it's our job to help people make healthy decisions."
