Sunlight, streamers and sex toys?
Ball State’s Student Action Team (SAT) held its annual “Bingo After Dark” event in Park Hall March 20.
The bingo and trivia event looks to help students better understand their reproductive health and aims to promote safe sex practices, with the chance to win explicit prizes.
Second-year professional writing major Emily King serves as the awareness chair for SAT. This event was “my whole domain,” she said. “I did a bit of everything.”
King was in charge of choosing the colorful decorations, creating posters and assigning roles for her peers. Such dedicated planning meant she started doing so as early as November.
“I wanted to get a bit of a head start,” she said.
Despite working on decorum through both her fall and winter breaks, King said the success of the event paid off.
She said that an event like this is vital on a college campus.
“It's really important being on campus and making sure everyone knows how to have safe sex, understand their bodies [and] understand themselves before they go and try to dive in somebody else in some in any capacity,” King said.
Students play mini-games at “Bingo After Dark” March 20 in Park Hall. Bingo After Dark is Student Action Team's largest yearly event focused on sex education and on campus resources. Isaiah Wallace, DN
Third-year social work major, Rose Richard, is a peer wellness ambassador with Health Promotion and Advocacy at the campus’ Center for Survivor Support.
“We do a lot of educational events on campus. We're here [tonight] to give out safer sex resources, spread more information [and] awareness on resources for safer sex within the Ball State community, as well as just talk to people and educate them [about sexual health],” Richard said.
She and fellow student ambassadors sat at a table just outside the bingo hall with lubricants and flavored condoms to offer to students who did not otherwise have the means or knowledge to obtain such products.
Indiana schools are not required to teach sexual education as part of their curriculum, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
“A lot of these students can come in knowing pretty much nothing. And so it's really important that we have these resources there to educate them,” Richard said.
Educating students is the main reason why King takes pride in planning the event. She said she, herself, has learned more about sexual education from planning this event than she ever did in high school.
The highly anticipated event was enjoyed by students in all the ways King had hoped. The safe environment and its fun, light-hearted orchestration helped “reduce the stigma of self-pleasure and sex in general,” third-year elementary education major Mackenzie Hertzberg said.
SAT hosts events like this all through the school year, the intent being to help students learn real-life skills in a fun, responsible manner.
Contact Katherine Hill with comments at katherine.hill@bsu.edu .
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