Four million teenagers contract sexually transmitted diseases, and 1-in-9 female teenagers become pregnant each year, said Josh Mandelbaum, a Des Moines Roosevelt senior and Student Council member. This week, students from Roosevelt began their push to have condom machines installed in the school restrooms.

This proposal met with resistance from faculty, administrators and parents who feel dispensing condoms in school sends a message to kids that having sex is OK. I have a wake-up call for these adults — kids are already having sex.

When I graduated from Urbandale High School in 1993, in a class of 223, there were three girls who became pregnant before graduation.

Since then, it seems like pushing a stroller is in style, as more and more young women become pregnant. The number of young people, especially young women, who contract the AIDS virus is also on the rise.

We can see all around us that teenagers are not only having sex, but are having unprotected sex. So the question is: How do we provide birth control and STD protection for these students?

Obviously, it would be ideal for students to talk to their parents about their decision to have sex and discuss birth control options with them. That way, parents could try to convince their child to wait on sex, if they feel that is the best decision.

Parents could also make sure their child has access to proper protection and the knowledge to use it.

Unfortunately, not all teenagers feel they can approach their parents about birth control.

A second alternative would be for students to visit their school nurse to pick up a condom and talk with her/him about the dangers of having unprotected sex. But, honestly, is this really going to happen? If a student is faced with the options of: A) letting a teacher, faculty member or administrator know he/she is planning on having sex, or B) avoiding the confrontation and not using a condom, which will be easier for the student?

What if the school nurse distributing condoms was, say, your mom’s bridge partner? In this case, getting a condom would involve a student sharing his/her sexual intentions with someone who could in turn, share these intentions with the student’s parents.

Presumably, if students wanted their parents to know they were having sex, they would seek their help in getting birth control.

What if the school nurse was also your volleyball coach? Would a student be willing to risk the disapproval of his/her coach, just to get a condom? I don’t think so. If these students can’t get a condom some other way, they are just going to go out there and do it without one.

Using the same naive logic as the Roosevelt administrators, many other school administrations have decided to dissolve their Students Against Driving Drunk, or SADD, chapters because they think the organization may promote underage drinking. Wake up, folks!

Kids are drinking in high school, and if they are not taught that driving under the influence of alcohol is life-threatening, they will die or kill someone else.

After looking up SADD on the Internet, I discovered a high school that had changed the name of its SADD club to Students Against Doing Drugs.

This is an interesting change for the organization, and I hope the club succeeds in educating students about the pitfalls of drug use. However, I hope this club also teaches students that if they do drink or do drugs, they should not drive.

The Roosevelt students’ proposal calls for an increase in the amount of sex education taught in the high school. Though it is great that most school districts teach sex education at the middle school or junior high level, continuing sex education is equally, if not more, important at the high school level, when kids are more likely to have sex. This increased sex education would teach kids how to use the condoms dispensed in the school restrooms.

The students at Roosevelt have got their act together. They not only have statistics to back up their claims, but they know the minds of their fellow students. Who better to understand the needs of teenagers than teenagers themselves?

It is time for administrators and parents to realize they are not as in touch with today’s teenagers as they think they are. Instead of asserting a powerful grip on these kids, administrators would be better served by providing them with the tools they need to defend themselves against pregnancy and STDs.

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Erin Walter is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.