Do college students possess free will?

That is the question, apparently, at the heart of a situation at Stonehill College, a private Catholic school in Easton, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reports:

Frustrated that her college does not distribute birth control, Stonehill College senior Katie Freitas decided she would do it herself.

After collecting hundreds of free condoms from two family-planning agencies, she and about 20 classmates placed boxes of the contraceptives in student dormitories across the Easton campus last month.

But when administrators at the Catholic school learned of the effort, they quickly intervened and collected the condoms, citing the college's ban against distributing birth control on campus.

"We're a private Catholic college," Martin McGovern, Stonehill's spokesman, said yesterday. "We make no secret of our religious affiliation, and our belief system is fairly straightforward. We don't expect everyone on campus to agree with our beliefs, but we would ask people, and students in particular, to respect them."

McGovern said the college's policy follows church teachings, which op pose use of artificial contraception. Most Catholic colleges do not distribute birth control on campus.

Freitas, in her defense, appealed to a venerable and ancient argument based on the now well-known and widely accepted premise that college students are little more than rutting animals who just can't help shedding their clothes and, well, you know the rest:

Freitas, who said she is not Catholic, said she decided to make condoms available because she was concerned about the consequences of students having unprotected sex.

"Abstinence can be part of sex-ed, and should be," she said. "But college students are going to have sex, and they should be encouraged to have safe sex. In certain moments, students aren't going to stop to run to CVS, so I think they should be available on campus."

College students, you see, can be educated in a whole host of issues and disciplines, including the pressing discipline of choosing to use condoms—not to mention learning how to avoid drugs, sexual harassment, being racist, being sexist, being bigoted, smoking, etc. But they cannot, for the life of them, ever learn to avoid having sex. It just happens, like rain in Oregon, an uncontrollable force of nature. Whatever are the administrators of Stonehill College thinking? [That last sentence, to be clear, was written with dripping, nay, cascading sarcasm.]

Comments

[Kevin C.]

One might say that your sarcasm, Carl, is like "rain in Oregon, an uncontrollable force of nature."

Still hoping to see that article about sarcasm one of these days...

[T. Shaw]

In accordance with the Second Amendment, they should pass out free ammunition.

[Diana]

Very good Kevin! You are not so bad making use of the art of sarcasm yourself.
From the Sarcasm Society..........
"Sarcasm usually requires a quick wit, and the ability to extract the minutest points of weakness in a conversation. So it is quite unlikely that it is the lowest form of humor as some would like to call it. Perhaps not being able to enjoy sarcasm is directly related to not having the ability to come up with sarcastic comments, which in turn creates a feeling of inadequacy, which in turn can spawn a Napoleon complex, that can cause someone to logicise that sarcasm is the humor of the stupid".
Perhaps.

[angel]

Why is it SO difficult to tell unmarried students they should NOT have sex before marriage? Parents can't seem to do. Teachers can seem to do? No wonder they don't know any better!

[Ed Peters]

"Freitas, who said she is not Catholic, said she decided to make condoms available because she was concerned about the consequences of students having unprotected sex."

Freitas should be concerned about the consequecnes of distributing personal devices with, perhaps implied warranties of fitness for use and person.

Where's the plantiffs bar when we need them?

[Janny]

Will the article about sarcasm be sarcastic? :-)
Oh-oh. I sense an endless loop here....

Long ago, there was a crass joke running around about the audacity (!) of the Pope and some old celibate men (!!) to "tell us all what we could do in our bedrooms": it went something like this: "You no playa the game, you no maka the rules."

While that joke only illustrated the ignorance of a public concerning what Church law--God's law--was all about, it seems to me that old line would be apopos to this young lady's conduct. She's not Catholic...yet she thinks she has a right to "maka the rules"?

The college is being very charitable indeed if all it does is remove the condoms and tell her to cease and desist. Lesser offenses on the other side of the fence have been known to give students at secular colleges MAJOR headaches...

[j]

may I answer the question that heads your post?

No.

[Jackson]

"The college is being very charitable indeed if all it does is remove the condoms and tell her to cease and desist."

Yes. But if she continues, as she most likely will, the college should expel her. It's time for the cancer to be rooted out.

[Jeff Grace]

Do college students possess free will?

No, they do not... however, the expense of acquiring one is usually covered via student loans...

[Dan Deeny]

I hope Stonehill uses this incident to start a discussion on why the Church forbids artificial contraception. It could be interesting.
Ms. Freitas will probably ask the other side to go to Sunday Mass at any Catholic church and have a look around at the surprising number of families with two or three children, not ten or twelve as in the old days. Why is that? How will her opponents respond? Those couples are using natural family planning? They are sinfully using artificial contraception? Or, they are using artificial contraception, but not sinfully, because they have carefully consulted their consciences, and decided that it isn't sinful? The Church is confused, uninformed, too saintly to discuss difficult sexual matters in the real world? Or, it's none of our business what other couples do?
This is a great opportunity to engage the culture in an important debate. Have Gov. Sebelius and Gov. Cuomo come and defend their actions in light of their Catholic faith. Have Prof. Daniel McGuire come and ask him why he thinks the way he does. Have someone just back from the missions come and give his or her opinion in light of life in a developing country. Have Vice-Pres. Biden come and explain his support for the new Mexico City Policy. Is it a racist program designed to reduce the number of Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans? How can he, in good conscience, support this policy? Maybe Stonehill College did some of this.

[Telemachus]

This statement is absolute perfection: "College students, you see, can be educated in a whole host of issues and disciplines, including the pressing discipline of choosing to use condoms—not to mention learning how to avoid drugs, sexual harassment, being racist, being sexist, being bigoted, smoking, etc. But they cannot, for the life of them, ever learn to avoid having sex."

LOL, "the liberal ethos." No doubt Ms. Freitas learned her sexual enlightenment from our glorious public school system. If she was educated in Catholic schools, this is one more piece of evidence that more attention must be paid to educating Catholics better from age 0 onwards.

Man, sarcasm is spreading like wild-fire, but remember: there is no fire without fuel.