Too often we think that we don’t see any results from organizations like IRHA and GSB. They often try their best to do good things around campus and IRHA is starting off very well this semester.

One of the first issues to come up is putting condoms in the dorms, or at least in a more accessible location for students. On the surface this seems almost on the high school level of putting condoms in bathrooms. But let’s face it, the maturity level of many students isn’t exactly beyond high school.

Providing condoms in a machine in the dorms, or even in the C-Stores, would be a good move.

There are those who will claim that if students aren’t mature enough to go out and buy them, they shouldn’t be having sex, but let’s get real. There are times that come up when a condom is really needed and we have mistakenly forgotten to get any, and driving out to Target or Wal-Mart isn’t exactly a viable option.

The only logical reason for not putting condoms at a location easier for students to get would be in hopes that the girls become pregnant and have to drop out, thus solving the housing situation on campus. Chalk up one more great idea to the Master Plan.

It is, however, a concern that by allowing students to purchase condoms on campus the school would be sanctioning student sex. The claim is ridiculous at best to assume that condoms give students the “proper tools” to have sex.

What this would do is allow students to be safer in anything that might happen during those late night visitations in the dorms so many students are all too familiar with.

But providing condoms worries some people that it will cause all the students on campus to suddenly start having sex in front of the Campanile, but that doesn’t happen now anyway.

Even if the sudden appearance of condoms in C-Stores did cause a majority of the students there to start having sex, where is the real problem? Even if every student started having sex as a result of the move, the fact that all of them would be protected would make it outweigh any sort of “moral decline” that would occur.

There are of course the students that do have unprotected sex, but seeing condoms in the C-Store is hardly a green light to these people to get it on with the first person that crosses their path. Chances are then better that students who normally are less responsible in this manner would take a few moments to go to the nearest C-Store.

Safety is supposed to be the No. 1 concern with the university, and yet their focus seems to be on the obvious threats.

The university even tries to protect students from some of the unseen dangers, like alcohol poisoning, or just plain over-consumption that can lead to fights.

Maybe it’s time for the university to try and do something about the situations that come up on campus – dealing with sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Trying to pretend that it isn’t there is not a way to make a problem on campus go away, and yet that seems to be the current response.

Luckily, IRHA has had the insight to do something with an issue that actually effects students rather than pretending they know what is best, because they talk to other students.

We should all be thankful that there is an organization of students on campus that care for our well-being, even if staff members of the university choose to be irresponsible.

Blaine Moyle is a senior in English and secondary education from Des Moines.