When Richard Tucker went to the Student Health Center to ask for condoms, he was told that it is Loyola’s policy to not provide them.
“They would also not comment on the advisability of seeking condoms,” said Tucker, a political science junior and president of the Loyola Society for Civic Engagement.
Tucker said anyone who has been to the Student Health Center for condoms has probably received the same answer, so LSCE is holding a forum on the matter.
The forum, called Access to Contraception On Campus: The Safety and Morality of Condoms, will feature a panel of guest speakers including Kurt Bindewald, director of University Ministry; Karen Reichard, Women’s Resource Center director; Lynette Collins, a nurse practitioner from Daughters of Charity Health Center, a Catholic health provider in New Orleans; and a Planned Parenthood representative.
The upcoming forum plans to attract a large student audience and initiate discussion about access to condoms on campus, Tucker said. The university’s policy of not providing contraceptives to students is at the center of it.
“We are a Catholic institution, and we must adhere at an administrative level and a moral level to the tenets put forth by the hierarchy within the church,” Tucker said, “But we are also a liberal arts university. What we’re trying to do is talk about the safety implications of Loyola’s policy, and the moral implications of Loyola’s policy.”
The event will be formatted so that a moderator will present each guest speaker with questions about Loyola’s contraceptive policies, asking them to provide opinions on access to contraceptives on campus. Following the discussion, students will have the opportunity to ask their own questions to the panelists.
“We are not here to bring condoms back onto Loyola’s campus. We are here to stimulate discussion in a non-partisan way,” Tucker said.
The forum will be held in Miller 114 at 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 17.
The Loyola Society for Civic Engagement usually holds about three to four similar events a year, designed to stimulate conversation on campus about current event and public policy issues.
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