Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 11/18/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Jackie Borowski

Sex is everywhere.

But on a college campus, some may not want to talk about it publicly.

Graduate student Kimberly Bonner is trying to change all of that. Bonner has created a chapter of the Campus Coalition for Sexual Literacy on the campus, a group that aims to create an open discussion about sex and sexual issues at the university.

"Sexuality empowers, and people need to know that," Bonner said. "We hope to be key players in the growing social movement where progressive knowledge about human sexuality and positive sexual literacy empowers people over their entire life course."

But while Bonner expected about 30 people to show up to the group's first meeting yesterday, no one attended.

"I'm heartbroken right now," Bonner said. "But I've gone to many start-up organization meetings, and it was just the organizers."

Bonner is not giving up, blaming embarrassment to discuss sex and lack of sexual education for the lack of students. Though CCSL is comprised mostly of graduate students studying sexuality for their master's theses, they have attempted to reach out to undergraduate students, with a table in front of Stamp Student Union and the meeting yesterday. She plans on holding another meeting early next month.

The Campus Coalition for Sexual Literacy is a national organization based in San Francisco, Calif. There are chapters on college campuses across California, Indiana, Texas and Maryland as part of a drive to get college students to talk about sex. Each chapter is led by one of the four 2008 to 2009 national interns at the University Consortium for Sexuality Research and Training, located at San Francisco State University.

The coalition "wants people to think about sexual knowledge as necessary to live our best lives and to be our healthiest," Bonner said.

Bonner hopes to apply these principals to the campus by spreading knowledge about new sexual drugs and procedures, as well as by informing students about the consequences of abstinence-only education.

"Students are new consumers," she said. "When new, unregulated surgical procedures become popular, groups like CCSL offer untrammeled information on what really drives questionable surgical procedures such as female genital cosmetic surgery: money."

Even though no one showed up to the group's first event, Bonner said she is going to keep working to spread the word about sexual literacy. CCSL hopes to continue to boost its membership through a meeting on Dec. 3 from noon until 2 p.m. in the Pyon Su room in Stamp. At the meeting, Bonner plans to discuss hosting some sort of guest speaker in collaboration with a few other student groups.

"I'm going to do the exact same thing again," Bonner said. "This is a good place to start."

pmorrowdbk@gmail.com

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