It would be rather prudish and even potentially dangerous to pretend college students aren’t having sex.

Why dangerous? Abstinence-only sex education in the United States has been a disaster. The country has higher rates of both sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy than any other developed nation. On the other hand, Canada’s rates of both dropped 37 per cent in a decade of increased access to birth control and better sexual education.

So when the University of Toronto Sexual Education Centre threw a “sex club adventure” meant to introduce students to the sex club scene in a clean, safe and affordable way, they were offering a public service. A service very much worth support from student fees (which, it should be noted, come in the form of an optional 25-cent charge) and from the campus community.

Sex is an inevitability. Safe sex is not. By offering peer support and, as SEC co-ordinator Dylan Tower posted online, a “myriad of safer-sex supplies” at the event, the organizers created a rare environment truly built for the health of its participants.

Much less socially valuable campus club events often pass without scrutiny: happy hours, keggers, massive parties. This one challenges our comfort-zone, sure, but that’s not a bad thing.

Ultimately, personal morality shouldn’t matter. People will do as they do, and if you aren’t interested in participating in a sex adventure, no one is asking you to. Rather, this sort of event encourages the more conservative among us to accept the reality of different sexual attitudes, and offers the more adventurous an opportunity to learn about their interests with minimal risk. In the end, we all benefit a little bit.

Back here at home, the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union is hosting a Sex Week of its own, starting this weekend with tickets to the Taboo sex show. While the events planned for Saskatoon don’t have quite the same sense of adventure as the event our Toronto counterparts participated in, the week acts in the same spirit.

We, after all, don’t even have a sex club to get students into. Instead, we have lectures about orgasms, a themed trivia night and a sex toy party. Oh right, and a Carnival of Sex at Louis’ on Feb. 9. It’s a drag show! With pole dancing! And gender-conscious spoken word! All in all, there’s something to be found on our campus next week for any sex-curious student, which is great. It’s not about the potential for student-fee-sponsored orgies. These events are all about something much less exciting: education.

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Photo: je@n/Flickr