A
fter being sexually assaulted
before
college,
an
LSA
freshman who prefers to
remain anonymous due to the
sensitive nature of her experience, was not
aware of the resources available to her. The
sex education class she took in high school
hadn’t prepared her.
“The experience itself — it’s unlike
anything you can really describe. It’s
demoralizing. It’s dehumanizing. You feel
disgusting,” she said
Growing up in a conservative and rural
area of Michigan, she said her only high
school sex education was an hourlong
presentation, which dodged the topic of sex
entirely and excluded her queer identity
from the narrative.
“We got an hourlong class period about
abstinence and STDs, and that was it,” she
said. “In a period of time when I really
would’ve needed it, I didn’t have the
education about resources or even that my
experience was valid, and that’s definitely a
big thing that could change.”
When she arrived at the University of
Michigan this fall, she, along with all first-
year students, underwent the required
Relationship Remix workshop. This was
her first formal exposure to the concepts of
sexual consent, communication and sexual
assault education.
Relationship
Remix
gave
her
the
validation she needed to stop blaming
herself for her experience, and it did so in
an inclusive manner.
“Relationship Remix honestly was the
sexual education class I wish I would’ve
gotten when I was a freshman in high
school … it didn’t really discriminate even
though a lot of sex education classes in
high schools do, and it’s because they’re
very heteronormative,” she said. “And then
in terms of sexual assault, Relationship
Remix,
it
almost
seemed
like
the
understood and they cared.”
In an email to The Daily, Laura
McAndrew, a University sexual health
educator, emphasized the importance of
personal empowerment in sex education.
“In Relationship Remix, we focus on
promoting healthy relationship behaviors
like knowing your values, defining what
you do and don’t want in a relationship,
communication, consent, and sexual health
promotion,” McAndrew wrote. “There’s
not just one approach that will promote
sexual health; we’re complex creatures,
and different individuals and communities
will each have unique needs and interests.”
*****
With regard to sexual education, the
state of Michigan mandates only the
instruction of HIV and AIDS safety,
delegating significant authority to local
districts. For districts that do opt to offer
more comprehensive sex education, the
state-mandated curriculum is loosely
defined
and
hardly
exhaustive.
It’s
intended to provide control to local school
boards. Under this decentralized model,
parents have a right to review sex education
and HIV/AIDS curriculum
materials and can excuse their children
without penalty.
The result is an inconsistent patchwork
across the state. Students in different
school districts are taught about sex
in dramatically different ways, with
a
particularly
contentious
divide
surrounding the issue of abstinence.
Under
Michigan
Department
of
Education guidelines, all public school
sex educations programs “must stress that
abstinence from sex is a responsible and
effective method of preventing unplanned
or out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and that
it is the only protection that is 100%
effective against unplanned pregnancy,
sexually transmitted disease, and sexually
transmitted HIV infection and AIDS.”
Michigan is one of 26 states that require
abstinence be stressed as a part of sex
education; 11 others require that it be
covered.
Absent from the guidelines are any
discussion of sexual orientation and gender
identity or clinical abortion. Nine states
require the discussion of sexual orientation
be inclusive of LGBT individuals, and
three states require only negative, or
discriminatory, information on sexual
orientation.
Abstinence-only sex education has
attracted much scrutiny, with a report
published in the Journal of Adolescent
Health finding abstinence education often
fails to prevent adolescents from having
sex.
The
report
concluded
that
when
adolescents who receive abstinence-only
education have sex, they are less likely to
use contraceptives than those who received
instruction on contraception.
The
federally
funded
Michigan
Abstinence Program provides abstinence
education to schools that apply for its grant.
Currently there are nine grantees. Carrie
Tarry, acting director for the state Division
of Child and Adolescent Health, attributed
decreases in teenage pregnancies to a
combination of abstinence-based and
contraceptive sexual education programs.
“There are a variety of factors that
influence the teen pregnancy rate and
I think are responsible for some of the
dramatic decreases we’ve seen over the
past 20 years,” Tarry said. “Certainly,
access to contraceptives is one of them, (as
well as) our evidence-based approach or
evidence-informed education.”
*****
School districts are allowed under state
law to bring outside groups to teach sex
education.
Until 2015, an outside group — Sexually
Mature Aware Responsible Teens — taught
part of the sex education curriculum in
the East Lansing School District, before
attracting
significant
controversy
for
their focus on abstinence — an issue some
community members attributed to the
group’s religious affiliations.
That year, Alice Dreger, a former
professor of clinical medical humanities
and bioethics at Northwestern University,
took advantage of a policy that allows
parents to attend sex education classes.
She attended her son’s ninth-grade class
and live-tweeted it.
“‘Sex is part of a terrible lifestyle,’”
Dreger said instructors told students.
“‘Drugs, unemployment, failure to finish
school — sex is part of the disaster’”
In a separate portion of the workshop,
instructors assigned numbers to students,
then rolled dice to simulate the chance of
condom failure and unintended pregnancy,
Dreger said.
“‘We are going to roll this dice
eight times,’” Dreger attributed to the
instructors. “‘Every time your number
comes up, in pretend your condom failed
and you get a paper baby.’”
Daniel Kaplowitz, a current student at
East Lansing High School, recalled the
event in an email to The Daily. He said
the negative publicity Dreger’s tweets
garnered ultimately pressured the district
to remove SMART from participating in
the sex education curriculum.
“Until 2015, an outside, religiously-
funded group was a regular guest speaker
in sex ed classes at ELHS, and they used
pseudo- and un-scientific information to
create an atmosphere of fear and confusion
around sex in hopes of pressuring students
into choosing abstinence,” Kaplowitz
wrote.
Another such group is Crossroads Care
Center, which, through the Sexual Health
Wednesday, December 6, 2017 // The Statement
6B
ALEXIS RANKIN/DAILY
A lack of clear sex ed policy in Michigan
by Colin Beresford, Daily Staff Reporter