Chocolate, flowers and a STD: Wrap it up for V-Day

However you decide to celebrate Valentine's Day – a romantic card and a candlelit dinner with your significant other or partying with your other single counterparts – you never know where the night may bring you. Congratulations if you get lucky – it would just be unpleasant if Chlamydia came with that giant bouquet of roses or with that drink someone bought for you at the bar.

Valentine's Day falls during the same week as National Condom Week, and it's no coincidence. Just as you would celebrate your relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend by thanking them for being there and watching out for you, we should celebrate the existence of this latex creation for being there at a low price and watching out for us if it's used correctly and often.

National Condom Week is sponsored by the American Social Health Association to raise awareness and help encourage safe sex by using condoms. In the United States, there are approximately 19 million new cases of reported sexually transmitted diseases each year, and that's not counting the millions of cases that go unreported or that individuals don't even know about. Years and years of research have shown that condoms are an effective method, if used properly, to prevent the transmission of STDs.

However, even if condoms are an effective preventative method, we continue to fight the war on condoms – they're not as available as they could be and billion dollar abstinence programs discuss condoms only in failure rates, making our population less aware of how effective they can be. Because so many people, especially those between the ages 15 and 24, aren't aware of the diseases they may have contracted, they couldn't tell their sexual partners about them, even if they wanted to, and are therefore at risk for infecting them too. Merely blocking the exchange of fluids containing these infectious agents can prevent individuals from being infected.

A condom can potentially save your life.

So when you're out buying a V-day card at CVS, buy a couple of condoms too, for safety measure, and of course, for good luck.

Ting Chin
Class of 2010