The Facts: The University’s first sexual communication class held a fair yesterday to encourage sexual communication and educate students about sexual health. Sex research and discussion are still accompanied by a strong stigma.

Our Opinion: This communication fair is the first step in breaking a long history of stigma around sexual practices and unease in discussing topics associated with sex.

Though the sexual communication class did hold a successful sex fair yesterday, this measure is only a small step in breaking the strong taboo and stigma surrounding sex in American society.

Students are generally viewed as a population that is comfortable discussing sex, due to ease in joking about the topic and making lewd remarks. However, when it comes to serious conversations about sex practices, many students find the topic awkward and unapproachable.

College is a time where many students are looking for new experiences and relationships. Truthfully, a significant number of contacts with the opposite sex are sexual in nature, with the ease of obtaining alcohol to remove inhibitions and the prominent hook-up culture.

However, these practices come with dire consequences. Unplanned pregnancy is one of the most serious of these consequences with its financial and social ramifications. Women who get pregnant in college often have to drop out to raise their child and face alienation and the potential prospect of supporting a child alone. Even if these women seek avenues such as abortion or adoption, they face a host of other negative consequences, both psychological and social in nature.

Contracting sexually transmitted diseases are another great risk associated with the college hook-up culture. In Wake County, gonorrhea tops charts as the most commonly transmitted STD, and chlamydia is the most prevalent in North Carolina according to the STD testing service in Raleigh. Both STDs and pregnancy are easily preventable through something as simple as communication. It is incredible that these rates remain at high levels when these consequences are so easily to avoid.

American society has come a long way. In the 1960s, the Masters and Johnson research team published the first research text on human sexuality, which led to many important treatments in sexual dysfunctions and disorders through the 1990s. At the time when this publication emerged, the researchers were unsure whether their text would be burned at the stake or viewed as pornography. Luckily, it led to many important discoveries and practices in biology and psychiatry and is now a clear historical marker that social stigma can be overcome.

There is still a long way to go before the stigma around sex is entirely alleviated, but the sex fair is a sign that people are starting to realize that sex is natural and can be very safe. Communication can prevent almost all negative consequences associated with sex, and if the taboo around sex is finally lifted, marital satisfaction and quality of life rates would likely rise as well.