By Jonas Miller
Opinion Editor
On Wednesday, the school will be holding a viewing of the movie “50 Shades of Grey” in St. Joseph’s auditorium. I haven’t seen the movie myself; instead, I decided to be an innocent bystander in the war that ensued when the film came out.
“This movie glorifies and romanticizes sexual assault,” stands in one corner, while “Christian Grey can do whatever he wants to me,” holds strong in the other. I’m sitting somewhere in the middle of the ring, trying not to lean one way or the other, in fear that I might upset the other side.
Since I am the Opinion Editor, I am supposed to take a side, and I choose neither.
Instead, my issue lies in the fact that a movie that is almost entirely about sex is being shown at a school that does not supply any form of birth control to its students.
I do not know the official policy or rule; so before someone jumps on my back about saying something wrong or untrue, just know that I will do my best with the phrasing.
So, it is my understanding that the college is unable to provide any kind of birth control because of its Catholic background. If this is true, it brings up the issue of students who are not Catholic being forced to live by Catholic rules.
Simply because the Catholic religion forbids sex before marriage AND birth control does not mean that all of us who are not Catholic should be stripped of our ability to obtain said birth control.
In a previously-written article about this topic, one of the arguments presented was to simply not have sex. You cannot tell anyone to just “not have sex,” especially college students with more freedom than they know what to do with.
Another argument that was presented was that if we, as college students, are mature enough to engage in sexual acts, then we are mature enough to walk down the street and buy our own birth control.
Maturity has nothing to do with the purchasing; it’s the money that throws a wrench into that seemingly solid solution.
Birth control of any kind is expensive, and when a student doesn’t have the funds to buy any, they are faced with an increasingly frustrating situation, not knowing what to do.
Something else very interesting about this situation is that the main character of “Fifty Shades,” Christian Grey, forces all of his partners to take some form of birth control, because he knows that it’s important.
I know that it’s important, and you should too. Although as an RA, I am told that I’m not allowed to hand out any form of birth control, or even make it available to residents.
I think my biggest concern with this whole ordeal is that we have very real, very non-Catholic college students, who are having sex, and the only adults who have direct impact on their every day lives- professors, administrators, faculty- are not making any effort to stop them from creating very real, very loud babies.
