The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) failed to put condoms in the Fall Orientation Week packages due to a delay with a new supplier. To make matters worse, the Department of Housing also delayed providing residence fellows with condoms to give their students.
This means that for several days during orientation week, condoms were not readily available to Carleton’s new students.
It is absolutely ludicrous that CUSA and Housing did not do something to fix this situation immediately. Providing condoms is the most basic form of promoting safe sex on campus and neither CUSA nor Housing provided them.
Whatever the cause for the missing condoms, someone should have headed over to Costco and picked some up. It’s really a simple error that could have easily been fixed.
It is true that there were other ways for students to find condoms, including some service centres on campus, and that not providing condoms doesn’t take away from students’ responsibility to protect themselves. But for many first-year students, it is their first time at Carleton and in Ottawa, and some may not have been able to or know where to go.
Both CUSA and Housing need a written policy that states who is responsible for supplying condoms, and when this does not happen, something should be done immediately to ensure that condoms are available from the very first move-in day.
There may be condoms now, but it doesn’t change the fact that there weren’t any for several crucial days. It’s far more important than putting t-shirts in a frosh kit.
