Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) adviser Spring Cooper thinks only when students are cognizant enough to tackle a Rubik's Cube are they capable of having sex.
"Wait until you can do the puzzle, then you're safe to have sex," Cooper said.
Starting this weekend, FMLA, an on-campus organization that works to develop strategies and programs to advance women's equality, will distribute Rubik's Cubes, among other puzzles and toys, in an effort to promote awareness about safer sex.
The campaign, called Sober Sex is Safer Sex, is funded by a mini-grant from the Penn State Commission for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) and will run for several weeks to raise awareness about safer sex, Cooper said.
The toys will have messages attached to them about practicing safe sex while sober. The idea behind the toys is that people need cognitive processing skills to solve the puzzles, Cooper said.
Activities that raise awareness and get students thinking and talking about their sexual behaviors are a good thing, University Health Services Marketing Manager Beth Collitt said.
"Certainly the toys that they're handing out will do it because it will help you stop and think for a minute about how impaired you really are," Collitt said.
Fliers with redesigned road signs with sayings such as "Do Not Enter While Intoxicated" will soon be prevalent throughout campus and downtown to remind people of the campaign's message, Cooper said.
"A lot of people don't really think of a drunk hookup as a problem ... because it was when they were drunk, so they don't think of it as counting," Cooper said. "Things that could possibly happen are still there."
Pregnancy, sexual assault and rape are several consequences Cooper outlined that relate to having unprotected sex or having sex while intoxicated. From 2004-06, 282 Penn State students sought assistance for sexual assault, according to "Policies, Safety, & U," a university publication that reports statistics about crime in the Penn State community. Of those incidents, 217 involved drugs or alcohol.
"We have a huge problem with drinking and sexual assault, rape and not using condoms," Cooper said. "We wanted to do something about that."
The toys will be distributed in areas downtown that usually have an accumulation of intoxicated people, Cooper said, though she was not sure of exact locations.
She discussed two aspects of the group's goal: the immediate and the long-term. Primarily, the group wishes to raise awareness about unprotected or intoxicated sex. After a while, she hopes there will be a decrease in the number of unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and sexual assault cases among students.
The group is also trying to eliminate the connection between alcohol and sex, FMLA member Noopur Pathak (senior-mathematics) said.
"Something like sex is important enough to be aware of," Pathak said. "You should know what you're doing."
The campaign also hopes to educate women that they "should be aware that they are confident enough without needing alcohol" to have sex, Pathak said.
"It's not only more risky in terms of consequences, it's also unpleasureable and not as fun," Cooper said.
