In which I pick the wrong side

78 Comments

1. I think this is exactly right.

   • Agreed

   • +1

2. If I recall correctly, the problem with condom procurement is that when you need one, you need one VERY VERY VERY BADLY.

   • I am not particularly familiar with the area surrounding Boston College, but I am reasonably confident that a CVS or some like purveyor can be easily located for the procurement of condoms and such.

     • Yeah, condoms are kind of like Immodium that way. If you wait to procure them until you need them, it’s too late.

       At colleges, there needs to be a Domino’s-style delivery service that can drop them at your location in 5 minutes or less. You can’t be walking into a CVS in that state.

       It’d be worth the premium and delivery charge.

       • Well that was a rather pleasant analogy

         • I find it highly irregular.

         • Sometimes you just gotta run with it.

       • Something like Tacocopter or Burrito Bomber, only for condoms? Sounds good!

       • Yeah the condom drone!

         • “They didn’t want me handing these things out, but I conned ’em into it.”

         • And now your boss, Pro Phil, lacks his rubbers.

     • I went to a very liberal undergrad but the area was rural. There were no pharmacies within walking distance of my campus. I’m not even sure where the nearest pharmacy was.

       Condoms and other birth control were distributed by health services and students who had bags of condoms on their doors.

       • That makes much more sense to me.

     • Doc… See my comment below. Perhaps I should have threaded it here (I commented before reading other comments)… feel free to move it if it makes more sense to.

3. “It doesn’t suddenly occur to people that OHMIGOD I could be having SEX RIGHT NOW?!?!? when a condom is handed to them. ”

   For your typical new college student, who hasn’t got past the idea that the school administration is the same as your mom? It does indeed send a message when the school’s official position is “you should carry condoms” instead of “don’t have sex”.

   Indeed, let’s describe this as men saying to women “you should always carry contraceptives with you because you never know when someone might ask you for sex, and it is not socially appropriate to assume that you’ll just always say ‘no’.” Why can’t we describe this as men pressuring women to believe that sex is always an option, and is always a part of social interaction?

   • 1) I find your likening a college student’s view of his mother with his view of the college administration specious, at best.

     2) There is a lot of daylight between “We will allow condoms to be distributed on campus” and “it is the official policy of this institution that you should carry condoms.”

     3) I have no idea what the hell this — it is not socially appropriate to assume that you’ll just always say ‘no’. — even means. It is not socially appropriate to assume any answer from any person of either gender about their willingness to have sex at any time. What on earth does making condoms available to people who want them have to say about that wholly unrelated question?

     • It does indeed send a message when the school’s official position is “you should carry condoms” instead of “don’t have sex”.

       Warning: anecdotal evidence follows.

       Now, it’s been twenny years since I was in college, and the rose-tinted glasses of yesteryear and all that… but, to the best of my recollection, neither I nor anybody in my peer group needed anybody’s outside opinion on whether or not we should be having sex to encourage a damn thing.

       In fact, having your school have an official position on birth control would be more likely to have engendered ridicule towards the school than adjusted any of our behavior(s).

4. Mostly, I hear ya, Doc.

   However, having been a young Catholic, and remembering the other young Catholics at the Newman Center at my university …. there were A LOT OF THEM that had only ever heard that premarital sex was bad and needed to be atoned for, but premarital sex with a contraceptive was HORRIBLE SHAMEFUL AND NOT TO BE DONE (which, to be fair, is a pretty decent thumbnail of the church’s historical position on the matter). It seemed to make a really big difference to most of those kids to hear *from their peers* that those peers were picking and choosing what part of the Catholic creed to adhere to, including that part about condoms. It wasn’t the ACTUAL condoms, right? It was the demonstration-from-your-peers-that-they-can-still-feel-Catholic-AND-use-condoms-look-they-are-even-giving-them-away aspect of things. (I say this, by the way, as an observation – I never gave away condoms myself, and at first, I remember thinking exactly what you say – dude, there are 800 pharmacies in this city – but it really did seem to matter to other people – A LOT.)

   So, you know, I guess that means that I think both the college and the students are right about the psychological effects of giving condoms away – in that it is sending a clear message to students about their fellow students’ theology of contraception. I do agree that it’s a narrow altruism, aimed only at their immediate peer group – the consequences of getting pregnant for young women in that elite context are much lower (on average) than for the young women in Chelsea that you mentioned – but I disagree that there’s no effect other than self-regard.

   That said, yo, there’s a reason why I didn’t go to a Catholic college, and a reason why I didn’t stay in the dorm with a curfew. But I think a lot of Catholic young women (even the elite ones) don’t pick their residential arrangements – regardless of legal status, going to college is a complicated negotiation for them and their parents about just to what degree they are, or aren’t, under their parents’ direct control anymore. My parents really weren’t very parental by the time I got to high school – they didn’t choose my school, or my residential arrangements – I didn’t even really take their opinions seriously – but that is often not the case for other 18-year-olds.

   So, I understand the college’s legal rights. I also understand the reasons why young people in that context might *sincerely* believe that they are making a difference in the lives of their immediate social circles by giving away condoms from their dorm rooms. I even think they might be doing just that. There’s a big gap between the effort it takes to talk yourself into going to a CVS on your own, when you’ve been told your whole life that you’re basically spitting in God’s face to do so, and the effort it takes to start buying condoms after you’ve received tangible proof that peers you respect think the whole God’s face thing is stupid. Narrow altruism, not utter self-regard.

   Of course, if I’m looking at this through an experiential lens, the part that worries ME the most about all this is actuall, the condoms given away through college programs are often of inferior quality. My peer group and I used all the condoms in our welcome kits for water balloons, and we were APPALLED by the lack of quality control… a good third of them weren’t watertight.

   • Thanks for you thoughts, Maribou. I’m always so glad to have them.

     The thing that rang out to me about the student group was its “founded in 2009”-edness. I just find it so very hard to believe that elite college students, even at one steeped in Catholic ideology, would in this era need to be told how to use condoms and where to get them. Given my understanding of attitudes about birth control these days (even within the Catholic polity) and how abundantly available information about it is, it just strikes me as odd that this organization would have appeared within the past five years.

     Having both gone to college and come out of the closet while AIDS was still killing pretty much everyone who got infected with HIV, it was deeply imbued in the culture I entered to promote safe sex and give out condoms to everyone who strolled by. I guess it seems to me that this kind of stance was understandable then, but doesn’t transfer so well to the here (or, specifically, the “there” of Boston College) and now.

     Do I kid myself?

     • I just find it so very hard to believe that elite college students, even at one steeped in Catholic ideology, would in this era die of embarrassment before they’d admit they need to be told how to use condoms and where to get them.

       Just fixed that for you. I have no trouble at all believing that having a sympathetic peer introduce you to the technical aspects of the activity rather than an unknown and possibly judgmental medical type is much more comfortable for students. Ditto if they condoms are handed out to girls, who can then get some guidance on introducing the subject to their dates.

       If the condoms are given away free, why is it an issue? Are there any other consumer products that the administration frowns on friends giving to friends?

       No, I strongly suspect that the students who participate in this group are doing so for their own self-regard and what it says about their politics.

       Well of course they are. They’re students, it’s part of their growing experience.

     • When I finally lost my virginity, as a senior at Boston College, I did so with a girl who was on birth control and who had one previous, older (out of college) sexual partner. She insisted that a condom was unnecessary because of the birth control. I insisted on wearing one, because, frankly, I had no idea how it all actually worked. I mean, I knew basics… but I had no idea at the time whether birth control alone was appropriately sufficient to prevent what would have been a very unwanted pregnancy.

       • But not STDs!

         • Well, we all knew that you can pray away STDs.

       • It’s may be TMI but my first sexual partner was on the pill and we still doubled up with a second form of contraception because, love her as I did, I was not ready to be a father. One MIT have been enough. Two is better.

         • There’s a family anecdote that I was the only planned child and all the sibs (and there are three of them) bypassed multiple forms of birth control.

           My mother’s sister got pregnant after her tubes were tied.

           Let’s just say that pregnancy is considered high probability.

     • FWIW, my college institution was Catholic and in 1989 you could get condoms on campus from the student health center and nobody was surprised that this was the case.

     • Well, you know, I work with elite (extremely liberal, and fully enmeshed in the so-called “hookup culture”) college students every day…. I try to stay as minimally informed about their sex lives as possible (boundaries! are! important!), but I still feel hit by a truck a few times a year by realizing due to some scandal, drama, or teary confession … most of them (not all!) are still just kids. Far too many of them (not most! but too many) still do stupid, stupid, regrettable things (including more-risky sex without barriers) because their fear of being shamed and/or their fierce drive for social approval and/or their delusions of immortality are stronger than their sense of self-preservation. And the ONLY thing I have seen work in helping scared and/or stupid first-years to grow into stronger, wiser juniors is personal connections (either with peers or with post-college adults who treat them like peers). There are students at my hippie liberal arts college who don’t think it’s emotionally safe to practice safe sex (AUGH – just typing that out makes me want to shake them). If they’re *here*, I can only imagine that at Catholic colleges – given what I know of growing up Catholic, given the Catholic students at my institution I have talked to about how their perspectives changed between high school and college – there are many other such students. Students who can be nudged by their peers, but aren’t going to show up at a pharmacy to buy condoms without that nudging.

       Things have changed, statistically. Things have not changed all that much, existentially. And, honestly, when it comes to the particular problem of STDs and pregnancy, I kind of worry that college students who AREN’T young old enough to remember the urgency of the AIDS epidemic are going to be a lot less careful than us older folks are.

       [Maribou, I hope you don’t mind my editing this just slightly to reflect what I think you meant to type. — RS]

       • Nothing, but nothing is more likely to make me go into Preachy Doctor Mode than a young gay patient who doesn’t practice safe sex. I try like the dickens to avoid finger-wagging as a medical provider, but I start talking about HIV and what it did to our community and how important it is to not get careless.

         And thanks for your perspective on this, which is more informed than mine. It softens my initial reaction a great deal.

         • Yeah, I meant old enough, doc, thanks for the fix.

           And amen to the sermon.

       • “There are students at my hippie liberal arts college who don’t think it’s emotionally safe to practice safe sex (AUGH – just typing that out makes me want to shake them). If they’re *here*, I can only imagine that at Catholic colleges – given what I know of growing up Catholic, given the Catholic students at my institution I have talked to about how their perspectives changed between high school and college – there are many other such students.”

         Zazzy and I lived together for about 3 years before we were married, getting engaged about halfway through that period. There were two primary reasons we decided to do so (besides just being in love and wanting to spend time together):
         1.) I was moving to the city where she was stationed, a city I would not have moved to otherwise, so I saw fit to make that move worthwhile by spending as much time with her; if we hadn’t moved in together and I instead moved in with a friend, it is possible I would have seen her even less than when we were doing the long-distance thing, which seemed run counter to the entire point of me moving there in the first place.
         2.) It seemed prudent to see how we did living together in the real world before making any huge, life-altering decisions.

         What I found interesting was that many of my BC peers did not move in together before marriage. Some of this was largely to acquiesce parent feelings or demands. But at least one guy, who wasn’t particularly religious but did grow up in a fairly conservative part of New England, put it this way: “If we move in together before marriage, then we’re sort of cheapening marriage. The whole point of getting married is to make a commitment to the person no matter what. So we’ll make it work when we live together because that is what we’re committing to do.”

         This really blew my mind, to be perfectly honest. It seemed to ass backwards. But, hey, it was their lives and their decision and they remain happily married almost three years later. But there did seem to be an undertone that to engage in certain forms of relations part-way in anticipation of engaging in them fully was somehow problematic. Rather than seeing such moves as a series of stepping stones, there was a virtuous path to be followed and any deviation from that was risky. That seems to be at the heart of the feeling expressed here by Maribou, which I never thought of in this way but makes perfect sense. And if a fairly non-religious guy was putting that out there, I can only imagine how the more devout felt.

5. Is it mostly self-regarding what the students are doing? Yeah, probably. But that doesn’t make them in the wrong. People are, generally speaking, allowed to do whatever self-regarding things they like. It might mean we shouldn’t give them donations, but it doesn’t mean we should end up on the college’s side.

   • I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re wrong. I don’t think they’re as right as they think they are.

     And I’m on the college’s side only insofar as I think it has the right to say “you can’t do this on campus.” I think it is foolish and retrograde to do so, but within its rights.

     • Within their legal right? Probably. But that hardly means they shouldn’t be subject to criticism for that stance.

       • I’m not saying they should be. (I find their opposition to allowing contraceptive prescriptions from their health services more problematic.)

         However, my reaction to this article still stands — the group comprises a bunch of students whose efforts center around giving free contraception to other students with the resources to procure it themselves with minimal inconvenience. I would admire them far more if they put those same energies into trying to help people without the resources their fellow students enjoy.

         • It’s interesting to read this objection in conjunction with the school’s Jesuit focus on service. It wouldn’t shock me to learn that these same students took part in the school’s many service trips to Appalachia or overseas to serve real people in real need or any of the other efforts that genuinely did some real good in the world.

           I don’t know if that makes their actions more or less curious… on the one hand, perhaps they balance their support of less-needy campus peers out with spending their spring break building houses in Appalachia; on the other, it’d be a bit concerning if they somehow saw both actions as morally equivalent.

           All of this is part of what makes my relationship with my alma mater so conflicting… I love so much of what the Jesuits do with their commitments to service and education yet hate that they can’t see the massive holes in their ideology and the real damage it does. If you could somehow have Jesuits who were not bound by broader Catholic dogma… well, that would be pretty cool.

         • “If you could somehow have Jesuits who were not bound by broader Catholic dogma… well, that would be pretty cool.”

           reminds me of the old joke where the heads of all the catholic orders are arguing in the vatican about whom god favored the most. finally it was decided they would pray upon it and wait for a sign from the lord the next day.

           the next morning the orders file into the meeting room where they’d been contending and find a slip of paper with a single line and a signature upon it:

           “I love you all equally. God, S. J.”

       • But that hardly means they shouldn’t be subject to criticism for that stance.

         Narrow stance, wide stance … who are we too judge?

6. I’m not sure I embrace the idea that the distribution is done only to sooth the distributors. Do they take a good feeling away from their organization? Sure, probably. But the idea that two kids having sex might say, “Oh, I’ve got a condom here…” rather than, “Let’s stop groping each other mercilessly to take a twenty minutes evening constitutional down to the local condom vending establishment…” strikes me as a good enough reason to continue the distributions.

   • I don’t dispute the notion that distributing condoms will make some sexually-active students’ lives somewhat better (or at least less freighted with inconvenience). I guess I would just have more admiration for the students in the group if they devoted their energies to helping people with less privilege and access to resources than their fellows at one of the nation’s more expensive and prestigious institutions.

     • Do we know that the students in that group don’t devote their energies to helping people with less privilege?

       • Well, not those particular energies, in any case.

       • Well, we know that they are expending their energies on a) distributing condoms to their fellow students and b) publicly grappling with the college’s administration about distributing condoms.

7. I am almost charmed by the notion that the idea of sex had never struck the Boston College student body until rubbers started getting illicitly distributed.

   Indeed. For anti-sexers, that’s where the rubber meets the … road.

   • No skid marks?

8. A bit of context, as someone who attended Boston College from 2001-2005…

   There was no birth control of any kind available on campus. Condoms were not sold in the book store. Oral contraceptives were not available through the infirmary (Zazzy, a student from ’02-’06 confirms this for females). I do believe condoms were occasionally given out free by different on-campus groups but I wasn’t sexually active for most of college (not in the way that would require condoms, at least) so I don’t know exactly how, when, or where that went down.

   There was a convenience store across the street from campus. You could use your dining card to purchase things there, but condoms were on the prohibited list. You had to pay out of pocket.

   The only pharmacy was in Cleveland Circle, a 10 minute bus ride or 30 minute walk from campus. Parking was very limited on campus and was basically unavailable to the vast majority of students; neighborhood parking was limited and not an option. It should be noted that while CC was hardly convenient to campus, it was also where the closest bars were and the more convenient T station, which students availed themselves of regularly.

   I don’t know all the in’s and out’s of what is going on now, but the good doctor’s response seems reasonable and responsible. I have my share of issues with my alma mater, including some of their decisions around reproductive health, but they were not as extreme as often believed. A running joke was that BC cared about if you drank but not who you slept with, while our rival Notre Dame cared about who you slept with but not if you drank. ND, as I understand, has all or mostly single-sex dorms. BC had only single-sex floors in dorms that had communal bathrooms but otherwise everything was mixed use.

   So… take all that for what it’s worth…

   • Thanks for the information, Kazzy.

     For what it’s worth, I think any intrusion that Boston College makes on the medical care offered to students in its infirmary is inappropriate.

     • I should also probably add that there is also a satellite freshmen campus (where the law school is located) that is approximately a 30 minute bus ride to the aforementioned CVS and a 30-40 minute walk to the one in Newton Center.

       To me, I disagreed with but was not super bothered by the lack of condoms in the bookstore; for most students, the convenience store across the street was closer to their dorms. The lack of oral contraceptive care was far more problematic, especially given how many students didn’t have a local doctor.

       • I’ve have a serious issue about the contraception access. It’s a private school and they can do what they want, but I’d sign a petition policy on it, and if I was a donor-type, would make a big issue out of.

         • I did hear a rumor that there were certain docs who’d give you the prescription for it, but can’t confirm or deny it (I could probably ask some other alums). Zazzy indicated that she had to go off-campus for all her needs. The university’s written policy strictly prohibited it.

           I agree that, as a private institution, they are free to enact such a policy, but I strongly disagree with it as well. I can’t say what 18- through 21-year-old Kazzy would have done had I been more aware of the situation and the issues therein.

           When I was there, the controversy du jour was the administration’s refusal to include sexual orientation in the non-discrimination clause; they only went so far as to say they would act in accordance with all federal and state laws, but carved it out separately from other identifiers. I remember a non-binding student resolution broke down within a few points (51/49 or 52/48… something thereabouts) though I honestly can’t remember which side it broke for, since it ultimately didn’t mean anything. Contraception wasn’t much of a topic… you just knew to go across the street if you needed “domes”.

           Of course, sex between anyone unmarried on campus is technically against the rules and could be grounds for expulsion.

         • My general belief is that you should form policy more on how people act rather than a theoretic ideal. The Catholic Church and a lot of Protestant denominations are big on no sex before marriage. The Catholic Church isn’t even that big on contraceptions after marriage. This is all well and good but most young American adults like sex, think that pre-marital sex isn’t a big deal, and are going to have sex if possible. Therefore, contraceptives should be readily available to prevent pregnancies and STDs.

         • I agree wholeheartedly, Lee. As I understand the school’s (and by extension, the Church’s) position, it is that doing so would serve as an endorsement of such behaviors, which run directly contrary to their teachings and values. I don’t agree with that, because I think a residential educational institution takes on certain responsibilities and obligations beyond the Church’s teachings, included in them providing a safe and healthy environment that meets the needs of its students. But the higher ups didn’t see it that way.

           FWIW, in my four years there, I don’t know of anyone nor did I hear of or see any pregnant girls. That doesn’t mean it never happened, but I’d be curious A) how the rates of pregnancy on campuses such as BC’s compares to secular institutions and public institutions and non-Northeast institutions and B) if the rates are different, what it means.

   • I lived in the area for 20+ years. So what jumps out here is that it was easier for the students at in the region’s public high schools to access contraception then it was for students at BC.

     That actually troubles me; for many reasons. But the biggest is research a friend did in college in the late 1970’s, early 1980’s on teen pregnancy; the biggest cause (beyond actually having sex, of course), was indoctrination into the ‘sex before marriage is a sin,’ being responsible and planning in advance was perceived as a bigger sin then being caught up in the passion of the moment.

     Now I’m the daughter of a woman who gave birth to my oldest sibling 1.5 months after she turned 16; another sib a year later. I’m also from the generation where having four or five brothers and sisters was common; because contraception was not legal. Somehow, I feel I’m a little bit closer to witnessing the problems first hand.

     So I have issues with the Catholic Church about these things; and not just because of the studnts like Kazzy and Zazzy, privileged enough to be able to attend BC; I have concrns on behalf of the women thousands upon thousands of women in Guatemala who are pregnant, nursing a baby, have a toddler at their side, and maybe even a child or two in school. Their right to space their children isn’t just a feminist notion, it’s an important health right and an important economic right.

     I know the Catholic Church does tremendous good throughout the world; I have hope that with a new Pope, the Church’s attention will be refocused on the truly poor. My family has long supported several orphanages throughout Central America; the last resort for children without family in a culture where family is everything. My in-laws purchased a bus so that the priest at one could bring children who lived with their families in the city dump to the orphanage each day, and provide them with a couple of safe meals, a place to bathe, and an education, without taking them from their families.

     But if you are so poor that you live in the city dump; having your Church tell you you’ll rot in hell for using contraception does not sit well with me. I’d rather see the church handing it out for free, to be honest.

     So it’s not just the students at BC; it’s the total stance on contraception that disturbs me. Flouting some rules is sometimes necessary to provoke change. And maybe this isn’t one of those times, but then again, maybe every time is the right time when you consider it through the lens of a 15-year old girl living in a city dump and not just through the lens of BC, its culture, and the students lucky enough to be attending this otherwise outstanding school.

   • Don’t these kids have a bar they could be hanging out in?

     School is for pick-up action only.
     Maybe a bit of groping in the parking lot.

     Otherwise, get a room.
     At least go find a different parking lot.

9. Perhaps they should nail 95 condoms to the door of the administration building.

   • Sounds great, but as a medical professional I feel compelled to advise against using them afterward.

10. I think the student group handing out free condoms is engaging in exactly the kind of self-regarding “help” that LoOG chum Jason railed about in his post for our Charity Symposium.

    They should be giving out money for condoms, instead of condoms! 😉

    (It’s just a joke, folks. Please just take it that way.)

    • They’re college students, they’d just spend the $ on beer! 😉

11. Back when I was in college in the Midwest, condoms were available from the Student Health Services. They even ran a piece in the student newspaper recommending that a condom be worn for oral sex, as well. (There even was a mention of using a dental dam for oral sex!)

    The only reason I clearly remember the publicity surrounding the SHS offering condoms is due to a quote from the Director, “Yes, we have flavored condoms available, although, nothing really quite kills the taste of latex.”

12. This is one of those cases where our incessant need to protect the unlimited cosmic power of a private institution’s property rights leaves us deeply confused about how to advance human freedom. I can’t see a single actual good reason to give a shit about BC’s authority to prevent the distribution of legal health care products on campus.

    In case anyone was curious, this is probably why I am not a libertarian.

    • I would call forcing a private entity to comply with your notion of human freedom, on balance, a retreat of human freedoms as a whole.

      But that’s probably why I’m more libertarian than you.

      • “Entity” is doing a lot of work there. Institutions don’t have the same rights as people. Even if we invest them with some rights by virtue of the fact that they’re made up of people, individual rights matter orders of magnitude more than the nebulous property rights of corporate things. The fact that our legal system is set up in such a way that BC can derive the near-unlimited right to police the private activities of its students by virtue only of the fact that it owns the land on which they are engaged in those activities doesn’t establish their moral right to do so, nor should it.

        Also, I’m not forcing a private entity to do anything. I’m removing their right to use force against others. This, I’m told, is what liberty is about, but only if it applies to governments for some asinine reason.

        • I’m not sure where the use of force has entered this discussion.

          And one doesn’t have to give institutions the same rights as individuals to grant them some rights. I, for example, grant Boston College the right to dictate what kinds of materials are distributed to other students on campus, but I don’t think they have the right to proscribe certain kinds of care provided by their medical services. Whence “near-unlimited”?

          • “I would call forcing a private entity to comply with your notion of human freedom…” <– That's where.

            Of course I grant BC some rights. Do they have the authority to prevent students from playing music in class? Sure. Obviously. They even have the authority to prevent students from distributing condoms in class. I don’t see why they have the authority to prevent students from distributing condoms outside of class, though.

            I mean, what if they wanted to prevent students from distributing Coca Cola? Or, better yet, books they don’t like? How do we feel about a Muslim university prohibiting students from owning The Satanic Verses (or lending it to other students)? I guess you could say you think they do have the authority to do that, but that strikes me as a decent enough reductio of the way the broader libertarian theory of property rights just doesn’t really mesh with a commitment to actual liberty.

          • Ah. Fine, yes, I guess I worked the word “force” in there, didn’t I?

            In any case, I draw the lines differently than you do. Assuming the vast majority of its students are over 18 and thus legally allowed to smoke, I would imagine most of us wouldn’t find it objectionable for the BC administration to prohibit students from giving away free cigarettes in the dorms. I don’t view this as all that different.

            With regard to the question of banning books, freedom of speech is one of our foundational values. The rights of students to speak freely has been well-established by legal precedent. I think that question is settled in a way that this one is not.

          • I believe your point about speech is correct. And it reflects my relative lack of tolerance for the idea of leaving some issues “unsettled” on the basis that we are really committed to letting religious groups believe things that are wrong, stupid, and destructive. Which, of course, should be their right, except that it also spills over in situations like these in ways that directly harm people’s lives.

            At least we seem to agree that, at least at some level, property rights are subordinate to actual rights.

          • I think you and I would draw the “harm” line differently here (though, as I said in response to Maribou’s comments, my views are a bit softer now than they were when I wrote the OP), and religious freedom is just as foundational as that to speak freely.

            But of course I would put certain individual rights over property rights. That thuggish campus policeman who pepper sprayed the students during their Occupy protest was clearly violating their right to free assembly, to choose one easy example. Your lines and mine are obviously set at slightly different places in the particular case of condoms and BC, but I imagine we probably agree on more than we disagree.

          • Russell,

            What do you think about students’ rights as tenants (via being dorm inhabitants)? I realize things get more “public” when tenants invite other people to come in for free condom distribution, but banning the practice seems to approach a landlord intruding on their tenants’ privacy.

          • I don’t think that students living in dorms are really the same as tenants living in an apartment. Students are there for more than just housing, and the college is there are more than a provider of shelter. Students are there for instruction and education, and they choose a school based upon the kind of instruction and education it can provide. The education provided at a Jesuit school is grounded in its philosophies and traditions, and to a certain extent that philosophy and tradition informs the full life of the college and its students.

            Now, this will obviously be a source of conflict when those philosophies and traditions rub up against the students’ freedoms, and different people will weigh the rights of the one against the other differently. But just like it wouldn’t bother me if a school founded on Orthodox Jewish principles didn’t allow students to cook pork in their dorms, it doesn’t bother me that a Jesuit school doesn’t want them distributing condoms there.

          • Russell,

            I guess that’s where we differ. I agree that dorms aren’t exactly like apartment/tenant situations. But I’m inclined to see them that way more than you are. (I personally would have a problem with a school founded on Jewish Orthodox principles not allowing dorm residents to cook pork.)

            But still, I’m not entirely sure where I’d draw the line. If I draw it too tightly in the pro-tenant direction I favor, then I risk making communal/educational arrangements that dorms are supposed to offer, and which is supposed to account in part for dorms’ special appeal, less and less likely. I’m not sure I’d like that outcome, either.

13. I’ve read all, or almost all, of the comments here, and one issue that doesn’t seem to have come up is that this policy affects what students do in their dorms. I know that dorms are in many ways in loco parentis places and that’s part of the deal, but they are also rooms that students let. The students are (probably most of them) adult-tenants.

    Should landlords have the power to deny their tenants the ability to distribute condoms in their own units?

    This isn’t a rhetorical questions. Maybe the answer indeed is yes, especially in this case, where dispensing condoms isn’t just giving some to some friends, but is rather making the room(s) a quasi-medical dispensary. Still, I find it very problematic to deny tenants the ability to engage in legal conduct on their own property, inasmuch as rented property is “owned” for the time being by the tenant. On some level, I even find it appalling, regardless of how “self-regarding” the students’ actions are and regardless of BC’s ultimate legal right to engage in such nonsense.

    Also, in some of these comments, I see a note of the following tone: “well, when I was their age, condoms were less widely available, and there was a real need for awareness, but now these students are sophisticated enough to know they have other options.” One thing I remember from when I was their age was that people who were what is now my age and older made a heckuva lot of assumptions about what was good for me and what I needed and what I believed without really asking my input.

    This is a very sensitive issue for issue for me. Growing up, I was very behind the curve when it came to such matters, so much so that such matters became a very unhealthy obsession. And maybe, just maybe, a little more openness would have prevented or blunted all that. And if more can be done now, and if some students think more can be done, I think it’s very poor form to stop them, no matter how much of BC is in the right legally. (Of course, because it’s such a sensitive issue, I obviously am not unbiased, and I realize the tone of my comment is probably harsher than it ought to be.)

    • If I were to take absolutist property rights arguments seriously, I would like this argument.

      • I thought I was criticizing the BC policy.

        At any rate, while I think it’s a bad policy, I hesitate before stating categorically that BC cannot prohibit the activity. My one possible reservation has to do with whether we ought to regard the dorms as private (though rented) units. I think we should–and in such case, BC ought not to have the right to be so intrusive–although perhaps that’s not widely agreed upon here.

        • You were. And I like that, but I don’t share that kind of view of how property rights ought to work, so I’m not super on board with the content of your argument. Others might be, though.

          • Fair enough. I guess for me, it’s a question of what alternative I would be willing to live with. And I would have trouble with an alternative that would not allow BC to prohibit such distribution on its property unless it be by taking into account students’ rights as tenants. In other words, if BC were solely a commuter campus, I’d be almost on board with it.

            There’s the additional issue of the on-campus medical service apparently not offering birth control. I should say I endorse the ACA contraception mandate inasmuch as it extends to private institutions’ insurance to most of their employees, and I would not hesitate to apply this to students. However, in that case, I would endorse an opt-out by the college, with penalty paid by the college in service of alternatives for the insured. Still, a lot of that pushes up against my prior claim (mostly assumed) about property rights.

          • I actually find the on-campus medical service a much thornier question, frankly. Telling the university to stop interfering with students’ freely-chosen activities is an easy call for me. It’s a basic liberty issue that doesn’t require the university to do anything other than shut up. The question of provision of contraception directly implicates their religious beliefs because it requires them to do something they find unacceptable.

            Now, as I laid out in a post a long time ago about the contraception mandate, I think their religious preferences are trumped by the fact that their core mission isn’t religious. They’re a university, and part of what a university does is provide medical services to its students. Their objection to contraception has nothing to do with education or medicine, so it’s out of bounds. But that’s a much harder call than just leaving students alone.

          • Ryan,

            (Sorry, I’ve been at work for the day so I couldn’t respond).

            It’s funny how the lines we draw shift on issues. I think I agree with you, though, that medical provision is dicier because it’s mandated action. And while I’m not sure I remember reading your post a while back, I think I agree with the general thought behind it.

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