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Within only 48 hours of one young woman’s freshman year at Syracuse University, she found herself in the middle of the worst kind of trouble. She woke up in a strange room next to a strange man, not knowing how many jungle juices she had consumed the night before, much less what else had happened.

Though she was fully clothed, she was almost positive she’d had sex with the man sleeping next to her. As a precaution, she made her way to SU Health Services for an immediate dose of Plan B, the ‘morning-after pill’ that is 89 percent effective at preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. One year later, she is still unsure of exactly what happened.

‘I was scared shitless the next morning,’ the woman, a Booth Hall resident, recalled of last fall. ‘There’s no need to be that careless.’

At a school like SU, which has alcohol and drugs readily available, when mixed with casual sex, it’s easy to ‘get laid.’ Sometimes too easy. The next day, it’s easy to get Plan B. A cycle of intoxicated carelessness evolves into sober carefulness and the emotional reassurance that Plan B provides. And what about the next weekend? Repeat the cycle.

In an unscientific survey of 463 SU women conducted this fall by a reporting class from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, 25 percent of respondents said they had used Plan B. Among these 122 women, one-third, or 42 respondents, said drugs or alcohol played a role in the events that led up to its use, and 39 of the 122 said they’d used Plan B more than once. Almost half – 43 percent – said they took it because they had not used any form of birth control during sex.

The women surveyed represented a cross-section of the population living in dorms and sorority houses, on South Campus and off campus. SU Health Services reports prescribing Plan B anywhere from 40 to 70 times a week.

‘Most of the bad things that happen seem to stem from alcohol, and that is reflected as we go through the week,’ said Kathy MacLachlan, a full-time nurse practitioner at Health Services. ‘There are days when we have zero (prescriptions), but not too many.’

Women from the Alpha Xi Delta sorority and female residents of Booth Hall, along with men from Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, were gathered by the Newhouse reporting class this fall to discuss the numbers revealed in the survey and reported by MacLachlan.

All three groups expressed surprise at the numbers and how widely Plan B was used.

It’s not all that unusual when a female student walks into a house full of girls, hair disheveled, and is greeted with cheers and pats on the back, congratulations for being fully clothed in ‘going out’ garments from the previous evening. A woman’s ‘walk of shame’ home from a man’s apartment or room is often followed by excited inquiries from friends seeking details about her sexual encounters the night before.

‘That’s why there is Plan B,’ said Lauren Axelrod, a junior in Alpha Xi Delta. ‘Because there is a walk of shame and you walk into a sorority and people ask, ‘Where were you? Who were you with?’ It is funny until you think, ‘Oh my god, the condom broke. I could be pregnant.’ And then you go get (Plan B).’

These sexual encounters are often without forethought and between couples who have only known each other for a few hours. Such circumstances are at the heart of the current debate about whether Plan B should be made available over the counter at the pharmacy rather than by prescription only, as is now the case. Opponents argue that wider and easier availability will promote more careless sex and promiscuity; proponents say it’s a woman’s right, and it already has prevented thousands of unwanted pregnancies. The Food and Drug Administration, which had been expected to approve over-the-counter non-prescription sales for Plan B, instead put off the decision for more study.

Stacy Lessen, a junior in AZD, said the campus makes it extremely difficult to meet someone she would consider having a serious relationship with. She blamed the loud, crowded fraternity parties and bar scenes.

‘There is no way for someone to get to know your personality at a bar. You have to wear your personality, and for some girls, that might be to show a lot of skin,’ Lessen said.

Axelrod noted that a woman might not intentionally dress to provoke sexual attention, but men do not always see it this way.

‘Some random guy will be like, ‘Wow, she’s wearing a miniskirt.’ And he’s going to push you to a point where, as strong as you are, you can get worn down much easier because you are wearing a miniskirt and not your sweatpants,’ she said.

Because the first encounter is often in a crowded place where many people are intoxicated, all the girls brought together for this discussion agreed the courtship system at Syracuse is completely backward.

‘You start hooking up, and then you get to know him, and maybe you’ll start to date,’ said Michaela Alexander-Daniel, a junior in AZD. ‘The casual hookup scene can go on for ages. Going on an actual date at Syracuse is the most rare thing ever.’

Students did not always think they would find themselves in these situations when they got to college.

‘Casual sex in high school was unheard of to me and my friends. When I got here, it was so different,’ agreed Jenny Myers, also a junior in AZD. ‘One of my best friends from freshman year would casually have sex every weekend. My whole idea of sex completely changed after meeting someone like this.’

The sisters agreed many people who enter college go into it with aspirations of being enveloped in sex, drugs and alcohol.

‘I remember going to my first fraternity party and thinking, ‘This is great. Look at everyone. Look at all this alcohol. This is ridiculous, and I want to be a part of it. Sign me up!” Myers said.

Students like Myers do not always see both sides of what they ‘signed up’ for when attending fraternity parties.

‘Many fraternities create environments that are overtly sexist and degrading to women and have poor management of alcohol and drugs,’ said Josh McIntosh, senior associate director of the Office of Greek Life and Experiential Learning.

During the 2004-2005 academic year, there were 31 incidents reported to the Syracuse University Rape: Advocacy, Prevention and Education Center, including 14 incidents of rape and eight incidents of other sexual offenses. There were five incidents of suspected sexual assault, in which the victim-survivor experienced severe memory loss, and there were not enough details available to allow for classification. There were two incidents of suspected involuntary drugging and two incidents of harassment, said Janet Epstein, the associate director of the R.A.P.E. Center.

In at least half of the sexual assaults reported on campus, Epstein said, alcohol is a contributing factor.

McIntosh confirmed that. He said he’d talked with a number of students who made poor decisions about sex while under the influence of some sort of substance.

‘Sometimes when there’s a lot of alcohol involved on both sides, you have sex for a little bit without a condom,’ said Jeff Hirshfield, a sophomore brother of Alpha Epsilon Pi. ‘With a lot of alcohol people get careless.’

This carelessness by both men and women is followed by carefulness on the part of females the next morning. Unless the woman is involved in a monogamous relationship, oftentimes she is flying solo to Health Services for emergency contraception.

In the Newhouse class survey, only 59 percent of the women who’d taken Plan B said they told their male partner about it.

‘It’s a shared responsibility. The women should take a position and say ‘no more,’ but they’re not right now. If women did that, it would change really fast,’ McIntosh said.

‘A lot of responsibility is put on women,’ Epstein said. ‘Nobody turns around and says, ‘Gee, how many times has this girl’s boyfriend gone for Plan B?”

Situations like the one Hirshfield described perfectly exemplify the lack of dating the sisters of AZD mentioned. His fraternity brothers agreed.

‘Lack of dating spans our entire generation. We really have no idea what dating even is, which is why we have more ‘hookups,” said Dennis Jacobs, a junior and brother of AEPi.

All seven brothers of AEPi who were interviewed said they would be more than willing to purchase Plan B for their partner, whether it’s for a one-night stand or a consistent girlfriend.

‘I think it would be a much scarier statistic if you had 45 to 75 girls a week becoming pregnant at Syracuse instead of taking the pill,’ Jacobs said. ‘We’d have many more cases of herpes, the clap and kids, and we can’t deal with any of those right now.’

One Flint Hall residential adviser, sophomore Travis Dempsey, said he observes careless behavior in his residents.

‘On an average weekend night, I see people, always drunk, hooking up,’ he said. ‘The relationships don’t seem to last a long time and are only a one-night thing.’

A group of women who live in Booth Hall could attest to Dempsey’s observation. One reported two friends who are competing to have the most sexual partners.

One sophomore resident of Booth spoke of a friend who slept with 15 of the 20 men she was with her first semester freshman year.

‘There’s a time in college when girls turn into guys and just stop caring and get really dirty about things,’ she said. ‘If the next morning you don’t wake up in a guy’s T-shirt or with sex hair, you don’t think you had a good night.’

The woman said she’d taken emergency contraception a total of five times, but that she’d done so out of extreme cautiousness. Though she and her boyfriend used two forms of birth control, when the condom broke, she still feared pregnancy.

‘Even if they said at Planned Parenthood that I didn’t need to take it, I’d take it anyway,’ she said. ‘It would literally help me sleep at night. I used to freak myself out and make myself sick over it.’

Through her experiences with Planned Parenthood, she discovered once she was on file for a prescription, she could get Plan B before she even needed it for up to a year. Several of her friends have taken advantage of this and filled prescriptions for Plan B with foresight of a careless night. SU Health Services does not write out advance prescriptions for ‘just in case.’

‘I think the whole thing is sketchy. Even if the drunk hookup happens, there’s a solution for tomorrow,’ said Myrum Khan, a sophomore resident of Booth Hall. ‘These women are careful ahead of time so they can afford to be careless later.’

According to MacLachlan, many women are not careless. She said 60 percent of them she sees are just being cautious, perhaps worried whether the condom was 100 percent effective or about having missed a regular birth-control pill.

‘We’re careless until something happens to us, then we’re careful,’ Hirshfield said. ‘But that only carries to a certain extent until we get careless again.’

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Before students get to Syracuse University as freshmen, many have taken sex education classes in high school that have reviewed precautions necessary for safe sex; however, there is great variation in the curriculum, which leaves some students a bit less prepared than others to act carefully in college.

For the brothers of Alpha Epsion Pi, health and sex education prior to college varied greatly.

‘My health classes in high school were pretty intense,’ said Steve Shur, a sophomore brother in AEPi. ‘Senior year was more intense than any other year, so I felt very prepared for college.’

Dennis Jacobs, a junior brother, had the opposite experience in high school.

‘Not during any pre-college career did I ever have anybody who was a faculty member talk about Plan B. We didn’t have anything sex education whatsoever, except in biology when we talked about sexually transmitted diseases,’ Jacobs said.

Fayetteville-Manlius High School, located about 10 miles from the SU campus, has an extensive health-education program that prepares its students for safe sex in college, including insight into using Plan B.

Teresa Polsin, the sole health teacher at FMHS, said she emphasizes Plan B as an absolute last resort.

‘I talk to them about all the safe-sex options, about college and peer pressure they will encounter. I only have them as juniors and seniors and for half of the year, but I talk to them about the influence of alcohol and how it hinders judgment,’ Polsin said.

The responsibility of having safe sex lies very much in the hands of females, and Polsin relays this idea to all of her students.

‘I tell girls to stand their ground, be true to themselves and make sure they are always being protected,’ Polsin said.

 

Published on March 20, 2006 at 12:00 pm