Northern Illinois University is ranked 117TH in the nation and last in the MAC.

No, I’m not talking about NIU football here, although the rankings are probably close, I’m talking about NIU’s ranking on the Trojan Annual Sexual Health Report Card.

The report grades a schools “sexual health” by ranking them in a number of categories and then issuing the college a “Sexual Health GPA.” In total there are eleven categories, and no, none of them have to do with how many people actually have STI’s (Sexually Transmitted Infections) at the University.

Northern’s GPA was a measly 2.09, barely above a C average. Northern wouldn’t even be able to make it into its own college of Business with that kind of GPA. The highest GPA was posted by the University of Minnesota with an astounding 3.91, and the lowest was .82 by Louisiana Tech University.

So what is it that Northern is doing so poorly in then? I am going to go out on a limb here and say all students at Northern are not practicing abstinence, so I don’t think the reason we rank so low is because we don’t need these services.

From what I have seen there are plenty of free condoms to be had, so it must not be condom availability. There are condoms available at the Health Center, downstairs in most dormitories, and most CA’s even have free condoms to distribute in case you were wondering.

Two categories I noticed NIU might be lacking in are anonymous advice and student peer groups.

According to Trojan many schools made large jumps up from last year’s report card, and I think NIU should be trying to make this same jump. Sexual health information is very important for college students and even though it seems at times as if we all already know everything there is to know about the subject, it simply isn’t true. Go out and take advantage of the resources offered by our University, and hopefully there will be even more to come.

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