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