Eugene weekly., November 20, 2014, Page 13, Image 13

“With abstinence-only, kids aren’t informed of STIs or
how to use a condom properly,” Velasco says. “When my
students choose to become sexually active, I want them to
have a happy, safe sex life. I want them to understand the
risk involved in having sex, but also the good things, too.
I don’t want them to think it’s all bad, because it’s not.”
And when it comes to talking about sexual violence,
having conversations about healthy relationships and
consent is an important first step.
“You can’t talk about sexuality without talking
about consent,” says Julia Baldino, community outreach
coordinator for SASS. “If people aren’t engaging in
conversation before they’re getting to the point where
they’re having sex, then that’s a big problem in terms of
being able to prevent sexual violence.”
SOPHIE KREITZBERG, A
MEMBER OF PLANNED
PARENTHOOD'S PEER
EDUCATION PROGRAM, SAYS
SHE WANTS TO SEE KIDS
TALK ABOUT SEX IN A MORE
POSITIVE FASHION
SCARE TACTICS
In the early 1990s, Oregon sex education focused
greatly on HIV/AIDS prevention — STIs received
growing attention as HIV raged across the country. By
1993, AIDS was the leading cause of death among 25- to
44-year-olds in the U.S., and hope of curbing the spread
of the virus causing it motivated many states to mandate
sex education of some kind, even if it centered on the
negatives of sexuality rather than the positives.
In a 2014 Time magazine article, writer Lily Rothman
describes the “fear of the then-mysterious disease” that
“gave parents, educators, politicians and students a reason
to put aside their squeamishness — and thus changed the
history of sex ed forever.”
While the prevalence of mandated sex education
increased in many states, it also created a fear-based
approach to sex education, the kind that parallels driver's
ed classes with their tales of gore and woe that strike
speeders and drunk drivers. Teens learned primarily about
the dangers of STIs, looking at grisly pictures that served
as warning of the horror that might befall them should
they have sex.
Enter the Oregon Youth Sexual Health Plan (OYSHP),
a sex-positive guide released in 2009 intended to help
advocates in “planning programs” and “educating
stakeholders to support the sexual health of Oregon’s
youth,” according to the plan itself.
A task force, which included contributors from Planned
Parenthood, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE)
and health departments from around the state, created the
OYSHP after former Gov. Ted Kulongoski expressed a
desire for a cohesive approach to youth sexual health.
POSITIVE ATTITUDES
“One of the major shifts we made was that scare tactics
were not to be used in the classroom,” says Brad Victor,
a retired sexuality education specialist for the ODE.
“When you look at the standards, they focus on healthy
communication and positive attitudes about yourself and
others. All of these things are meant to make life better,
not work from a premise of fear.”
The Healthy Teen Relationship Act, which went into
effect in 2013, specifically requires that Oregon schools
address teen dating violence. Part of that includes
directions for “each school district board” to “adopt
a policy that incorporates age-appropriate education
about teen dating violence into new or existing training
programs for students in grades 7 through 12 and school
employees,” according to the bill.
This means that Oregon includes specific language
in its legislation and health standards requiring school
districts to address sexual violence, consent and healthy
relationships.
“We see comprehensive sexuality education as a
resource to help reduce sexual violence,” says Michele
Roland-Schwartz, executive director of the Oregon
Sexual Assault Task Force. “When we’re teaching youth
what healthy relationships look like, we directly impact
levels of sexual violence.”
ABSENCE OF NO
While Velasco’s Network Charter School class has
around 14 students, health teachers at Sheldon High
School tackle much larger class sizes.
“We have around 36 to 40 students per class,” Sheldon
High School health teacher Delia Wenrich says. “It’s too
many. Teaching large classes of ninth graders at the end of
the day isn’t ideal.”
Wenrich and fellow Sheldon health teacher Michael
Bell say that of the 12 weeks that are allotted to teach ninth-
grade health, they ideally devote about two weeks of that
to sex ed. In that time, they cover date rape, relationship
dangers, anatomy, HIV, safe sex, contraceptives, sexting,
decision-making, refusal skills, consent, boundaries and
healthy relationships.
“I’d love to do way more than two weeks if we could,
because there’s just so much to talk about,” Wenrich says.
Wenrich and Bell say that when 4J had a district health
specialist, they would meet with other health teachers a
few times a year and share ideas, get updates and prepare
for upcoming changes. But the health specialist position
was cut around four years ago.
Even with these obstacles, Wenrich and Bell say they
make sure to talk about consent. Wenrich facilitates
discussion-based lessons, and she describes an activity
in which students have to figure out what their sexual
boundaries are and tell someone else about those
boundaries.
“So many people don’t even know what their
boundaries are, and most of them haven’t even thought
about it, so we make them think about it,” Wenrich says.
“If you can’t talk to your sexual partner about sexual
things, you shouldn’t be taking your clothes off and doing
things, or letting people do things to you.”
Wenrich says she emphasizes the idea that “the absence
of no doesn’t mean yes,” and she urges her students to
practice refusal skills by role-playing.
Bell says his students discuss rape culture and victim
blaming, and he’d like to add more to his class on how
“guys can confront guys on thinking errors around proper
ways to address women, particularly around the issue of
consent.”
Wenrich and Bell say they also bring speakers from
Planned Parenthood and SASS into the classroom. “That’s
helpful, because they can talk specifically about their
work,” Wenrich says.
PEER TO PEER
Lane County teens have access to sex ed from their
peers, as well. Planned Parenthood of Southwestern
Oregon (PPSO) runs a year-long program called REV,
short for Revolution, which trains teens as peer educators,
equipping them with the skills they need to lead sessions
with parents and fellow students on teen dating violence,
consent, healthy relationships and sexual assault
prevention.
REV youth use what they learn through the program
to speak to middle and high school classes around the
county.
“Peer-to-peer conversations can create a community
impact on dating violence, relationships and consent,”
says Jenny Russell, youth advocacy coordinator for PPSO.
And peer education can sometimes be more effective than
traditional forms: A 2008 study showed that students
who received an HIV/AIDS lesson taught by peers
demonstrated better understanding of concepts than the
traditionally educated group.
Sophie Kreitzberg, a 17-year-old at South Eugene
High School, is both a REV youth and a member of the
board of directors at PPSO, and she says her interest in
talking about sex initially stemmed from her realization
that people don’t talk about sex enough. “High school
opened my eyes to how little we talk about sex and healthy
relationships in our day-to-day lives,” she says. “Friends
talk about sex a lot, but we don’t really talk about it in
healthy, constructive ways.”
When Kreitzberg joined REV, she not only learned
about what healthy relationships look like but about how
to communicate the concepts she learned with other teens,
who often feel more comfortable talking about sex with
someone their own age.
Fyona Rose, an 18-year-old senior at the Academy of
Arts and Academics in Springfield, adds that as young
people, they can provide a unique perspective to parents
as well. “We usually do a parent night and help parents
become more ask-able to create a more open environment
for kids to ask questions,” she says.
A CULTURE OF CONSENT
As the definition of consent changes, the content
of sex education classes must shift along with it. “One
thing we’ve noticed over the last couple years is that the
definition of consent is really evolving,” Victor of ODE
says. “We’re learning more and more about how to teach
that effectively. Consent is a very difficult concept for
young people to understand, and I think you’re going to
see a lot more discussion and thoughts on how to best get
this across to young people so that they’re safe and their
partners are safe, and they can make good decisions about
their wants and needs.”
For Baldino, who works with teens on behalf of SASS, it’s
encouraging that many of her students are already familiar
with the concepts she presents to them. She’s given talks
about sexual assault prevention and consent at Sheldon High
School, North Eugene High School, Spencer Butte Middle
School, Crow Middle/High School and Cascade Middle
School, and she hopes to add more schools to her list.
She says that normalizing consent is her ultimate goal.
“Kids are hearing about sexual violence in songs and
seeing it in movies, and that’s the norm,” she says. “I think
by talking more about consent in everyday interactions,
hopefully we can create a culture of consent instead of
creating a culture of sexual violence.” ■
eugeneweekly.com • November 20, 2014
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