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For Maddie Lentz and TJ Tracy’s second date, they watched the Disney classic “Ratatouille” in Lentz’s car.

The two Syracuse University students first met on Tinder, but it was challenging to spend time with each other because of COVID-19. Tracy, an SU freshman, couldn’t visit Lentz in her sorority house, and Lentz couldn’t come to Tracy’s dorm. Without any other option, they chose the car.

“No one was allowed in other halls, and he can’t come into my (sorority) house, so the car movie date was the move,” said Lentz, an SU sophomore.

Lentz and Tracy are one of many couples that met each other during the pandemic. There has been an uptick in dating app usage during the pandemic, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But as the pandemic continues to complicate the college dating scene, Michelle Goode, the health promotion specialist at the Barnes Center at The Arch, hopes that the center’s month-long campaign to highlight sexual health awareness — called Frisky February — can promote programs and services offered at the Barnes Center that students might not know about.

Goode acknowledged that new relationships are facing a challenging learning curve as people limit social interactions to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The Barnes Center website provides tips on sexual health to mitigate the risk of transmitting COVID-19, including instructions to access sexual health supplies from Safer Sex Express, she said.

“(The Barnes Center is) not an abstinence-based program,” Goode said. “We really want to encourage people to do what’s right for them and to do that in the safest way possible.”

Students can sign up for workshops and events led by peer educators, such as “Sexy Bingo,” through the Wellness Leadership Institute, a series of workshops held by the Barnes Center. During Frisky February events, participants can expand their knowledge of sexual health and win prizes, said Amanda Chau, the educator and team leader for the Barnes Center’s Peer Educators Encouraging Healthy Relationships and Sexuality.

The peer educators go through a certification program that addresses the role of diversity and inclusion in programming and discusses how inequities limit access to health care. The work to create programming for the student-led workshops is intentional and includes voices from students with a variety of identities, Goode said.

To adapt to the pandemic, SU’s Instagram account @BeWellSU promotes virtual health hubs, a supplement to Barnes Center tangible health hubs around campus. The virtual health hub allows students to answer polls and interactive questions on its Instagram stories.

“The main thing during this pandemic would be to promote (healthy relationships and sexuality) and to make sure our students know (the Wellness Leadership Institute) have these workshops,” Chau said.

To date safely, Lentz and Tracy get tested for COVID-19 weekly. The two were not imminently worried about transmitting the virus because the university monitors Tracy’s residence hall, Tracy said. The couple also discussed whether they were seeing other people, a conversation that Lentz said she wouldn’t have imagined having so early in a relationship, if not for the pandemic.

“From the beginning, we had to have more upfront, honest conversations,” Lentz said. “If we were dating not in a pandemic, some of those conversations would be pushed to later.”

Goode recognized that the pandemic has affected where and how quickly relationships form. But she recommended that students take time to reflect on what they want in a relationship instead of focusing on what they don’t want.

The Barnes Center also provides sexual health services, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV and the newly expanded initiation of hormone replacement therapy, Goode said.

“We want to be partners in health care for folks, and we really want to help work around different barriers that might exist,” Goode said.

Published on February 14, 2021 at 11:52 pm