om the campus of san jose state university, welcome to this edition of equal time. i'm your host, journalism school director, bob rucker. [music] safe sex and sexually transmitted infections. these are two topics that many young people are having trouble discussing. not a discussion for the dinner table and often not in front of young people. but some california organizations want to erase the stigma that has been put on sti testing. and most importantly they want to enable serious conversations about sexual partners. raven swayne begins our coverage. welcome back to this edition of equal time.

our focus today is on sexually transmitted infections among youth. let's meet our guests. hi, my name is erica everly and i'm a child and adolecent development major at san jose state university. hi my name is sandra gregory, i'm a peer health educator in the sexual wellness specialty here at san jose state. hi i'm nina calderon, and i am a consumer intern at the lgbtq youth space. hi my name is jacob peinado, and i'm the lead for the sexual wellness for peer health education at san jose state. and i'm raven swayne, the student correspondent. thank you very much. this is a very important topic. just to clarify for the audience. back in the olden days, when i was in college it was stds. now it's called stis. what does that mean? so we use the term, sexual transmitted infection because infection means something is transmitted person to person rather than a disease where it's developing within us, and that's exactly what a sexual transmitted infection is. it's transmitted from person to person. >>very good. so not necessarily an on going

or life long challenge? right. so some can be an on going or life long challenge, like hiv or herpes. but just the term "infection" we're talking about it being transferred from person to person. very good. and what are we talking about in terms of numbers or problem? is this an issue in our society today? yeah, absolutely. in fact half of all new stis in people ages 16 to 20 are, occur in ages 16 to 25 - excuse me. so that's a really good focus to have on preventing the spread of stis, if we can focus on the youth age group of 16 to 25. we can really cut down on new infections that spread. now some parents are out there listening and they're thinking "isn't that kind of late?" "don't they start a little earlier now and we have to be more proactive with a younger group?" wouldn't you say? yes, most definitely. i feel like at a young age children are already knowing. they're already, you know, talking about it at the playground and stuff. so it's really important to get to them when they're really young and having those casual conversations so they don't feel like there's a stigma attached or it's taboo. you have to make them feel

comfortable about talking about it so later on when they're starting to be more active they're able to come and talk to you about what's going on. >>very good, and nina you were talking to me earlier that you work with the lgbt community? yes. tell me what you do. so i provide resources such as information about how to get screened for stis, how to find housing for homeless youth. there's a number of, countless resources that the space has for partipants that come in through our doors. >>very good. let's open it, and everybody a little bit about the concept of how easy it is to get young people to talk about sex and sexually transmitted infections. i think sometimes it can be hard. especially when someone is coming at them as an authority figure, so i think it's really beneficial to come at them from a peer standpoint and be able to talk to them in a comfortable safe environment.

and i feel like i've noticed a lot of people are willing to open up a little bit more when we're not trying to shame them and we're not trying to scold them for their sexual activity, but just to have a conversation about having a healthy sex life. yeah i agree. i think it goes back to how each young person is raised because if we feel like we are being scolded or being looked down upon as you sort of mentioned by either our parents or our peers while we're growing up, we'll be less inclined to share our views or get tested or talk about sex and stis. whereas if it's more of an openly... like open discussion about sex, stis, getting tested, and safe sex and even having good sex, people would be more comfortable talking about it with other people and even authority figures. raven, help me out with this one. when i was in college, we had no problem talking about sex we had a lot of problems talking about sexually transmitted issues. yeah. so, would you say that is still the case? i think a lot of people have trouble talking about what should go on in like a healthy sex life

like everyone's intrigued, obviously a lot of people are having sex and that's not the problem. the problem is people aren't taking the time before engaging in that sex to say "we should use a condom" or "are you on birth control?" or "are you using another contraceptive?" and like that's the important conversations to have. because then like when it's over, and then you, like he says like a lot of stis are asymptomatic and that leads to people just not knowing and then not getting tested because they skip that step of "oh i had sex, i don't need to do anything else after." but it's like no, you should always be proactive i guess, is the right word to use. now people watching and sitting in our discussion are thinking, "wait a minute, you're making it sound like it's a given that everyone is having sex. and that we have to be on guard for this." is that really true? everybodies having sex? we have roughly 30,000 students at san josé state. well of course everyone's not having sex, but there is a vast... not a vast majority but there is a good population that is having sex.

so it's important to be able to be comfortable to talk about what's going on if you are having sex. or if you do have sexual partners and you did catch an sti you need to be able to converse that with the partners you've had previously because if not and you feel ashamed or there's some time of stigma if you admit that you have an sti, then i feel as if you're going to pass it along to even more people. because you're not comfortable enough talking and letting other people know "hey there's a chance that i might pass this along. you should go get tested." >> just to add off of that, and being abstinent it's completely supported if someone choses to remain abstinent that's their choice and that's important that's their choice and they have the ability to make that choice. however the idea of being abstinent chances from person to person. so one person can consider themselves abstinent, even though they're engaging in oral sex and stis can still be spread through oral sex. so that's why the idea of only being able to spread an sti through sex is kind of even a misnomer to a point. because we can have sex in different ways. are we assuming though that there's more likely

that it'll be men versus women coming in? or is that changed in any way? are you able to track that? >>men versus women having sex? >>no, coming in to ask for help or advice, or whatever who's more likely to step forward first? i would think women. i think women know their bodies better, more comfortable with their bodies. whereas are more uncomfortable talking to other people about themselves. i don't know if anyone else wants to talk about it. i think that there is a growing trend of women really taking charge of their personal health especially with empowering women to just go and get checked out in general, getting pap smears, stuff like that. so i think it's a lot easier for women to go in and talk to their physician about any kind of sexual issue whether its stis or their own sexual health. >> and in the gay community, nina, would you say it's now more comfortable to talk about because of the history in the gay community? >> no. so i believe that it's very hard for lgbtq people to

talk about, especially them, to talk about stis and getting, a lot of people don't even know how to help themselves even if they're abstinent. they don't know how to, like say, correctly use like a sex toy because you can get stis off of sex toys too. or like, just the basics...because sex education is basically taught for... in a very heteronormative way so its really hard to get participants to open up about what they need to keep a healthy relationship and the services that we provide makes it very easy for them to come in and make an appointment and then be on their way. this kind of brings me back to how sex education is taught in schools because when i think back, we had one in class in high school and it was this

older guy, he was a nice guy, but it was videos shown. and that was it. it was kind of "ew! what is that?" he didn't explain things and it was like immature students, boys specifically, in the class and you don't really take in "oh, this is how it's suppose to go" "this is what's suppose to happen. i'm suppose to talk to my partner before hand." it's kind of brought up as an awkward situation that teachers are forced to tell us. but now we have such a big problem of like, there's a lot of types of sex. like there's sex between a man and and a woman. there's sex between a man and a man. like a woman and a woman. and children who are... who are like questioning their sexuality aren't able to even understand, like, what a sex life is suppose to be like and i think that's like a big problem that it's not taught early enough in school and it's not brought up as "let's have this conversation." it's brought up like "alright, watch this video." and then that's it. we'll have a test.

>> and let it come on and have that conversation. >>exactly, yeah. and it's not a comfortable conversation, it should be a comfortable conversation. it should be. now just to tell you how tough it can be, mine was a football coach in a catholic school, in high school. now i can tell you, he had a very difficult time using terms that would make sense. and so there's a lot of giggling and he doesn't know how to talk to us about it. is that the experience we still have? >>well, yes and no. so, it kind of depends on the person who's teaching it because i feel like, you know, when you start young, it's a lot easier because you can teach it just as a body part. so, an arm is an arm, and a penis is a penis. and when you learn that at a young age, then later on when someone brings up "penis" they're not like [laughter] or anything like that. they're just like "oh i learned about that when i was younger. i know exactly what that is, it's functions and everything like that." so if you're able to find someone who is comfortable teaching and just treating it as a normal body part as it is. i think when the kids get older, its going to be a lot easier for them to process and feel like they're able to actively engage in a conversation

without feeling any type of way. >>so when you talk about your experience getting sex ed at a catholic school, i'm brought back to the mean girls movie. when everybody is sitting in the gym and the gym teacher is sitting in there and says "if you have sex, you will get pregnant and you will die." and i feel like that's really representative of the sex education that a lot of students are getting these days. its trying to scare you straight basically or scare you straight out of having sex and i remember seeing picture of, you know, these horrible stis and "this is what's going to happen to you if you decide to have sex" and that's a really negative view of sex. and i think that it makes it really for people to talk about sex too and, like jacob said, to have good sex. and to really grasp what they want and to take that power and say "this is what i want out of my sexual experience." some people tug in more with cultural values, sometimes religious based cultural values. let's talk about that. again, catholic school for me, we were told

"no no no no, not till you get married" but i do remember that we had a problem with teenage pregnancy when i was in high school. how about this generation? >> so, actually, the same problem happens when you look across the country and look at abstinence only education. cause studies have shown that comprehensive sex education, at a young age even, helps decrease the number of stis in young people and helps decrease the number of unplanned teenage pregnancies. mississippi for instance, 76% of new babies born in the last two years were to teenage mothers and thats the second highest rate in the country. and they have a law that says "no condom demonstrations can be preformed at all." >>it's in the law of the state? the state law says that "condom demonstrations can not be preformed to students at all." so that's just an example of how people are trying to encourage abstinence only education, which again we support abstinence as someone who choses to be abstinent, that's fine. but the idea is if we only teach one side of it, if people do chose to be sexually active, we want to make sure they can still protect themselves. >>but you still have that intersection of family values,

cultural values, personal desire, and then of course where do i go and how comfortable is it to knock on the door and say test me, to get me help. what do you say to someone who says "alright, it's not my religion, but my parents taught me, and i have to do what they tell me. this is very uncomfortable for me to talk you about this." how do you respond? >>well you just give them support. you.. i'm sorry could you repeat that? >>well you have to hear them, when they're saying their parents are telling them, they've been taught to be a certain a way and not to talk about these things. or not address these things and certainly don't engage in this behavior. how do you help them to relax so that they can talk about it? >>just really open the conversation. talk to them not as an authority figure, talk to them as a peer instead. and just really provide that support they need to open up to you and if they need help reaching out to anybody, to get tested, or to get birth control, to get anything that they need.

>> it may not surprise you but at san josé state, our faculty and different departments have developed relationships with students where we can sometimes talk very privately, very candidly about issues. and i've heard these conversations, i've had these conversations and the number one thing is that as a faculty member i see is their wanting somebody to give them good advice from someone they respect and they don't want to be judged. is that the point? >> oh, most defiantly because i mean if you don't feel comfortable going to your parents or if you don't feel comfortable going to someone in your family, it's because you feel like they're going to just basically completely deter you from what you're doing. and you know you might have, you might just want to do what you're going to do. so to have someone that you could go to and talk to and they know what's going on and they could lead you in the right direction. and not tell you that you're wrong for what you're doing, but this is how you should do it instead, that's like essential. >> in the time we have remaining, how about entertainment world?

we're talking about movies, we're talking about concerts young people learn a lot of things there and sometimes they are not accurate. sometimes they are glorified how do you deal with those issues when they say "i saw that in a movie once, it was okay to do that." well, going off of like my experience with the participants that i work with, they see all of this on tv or like in movies and it doesn't really apply to them, because if they're trans and they see just heterosexual sex they don't think... >>they don't see a connection between their lives. >> they don't see that. they don't - they can't apply it to their own lives. so they don't know what to expect when it comes that time when they feel it's right or when they feel it's time to be sexually active. >> i feel like movies are the bane of my existence

when it comes to teaching sexual scripts because that always has that stereotypical thing of you go out on a date, you get some drinks and someone invites you up to their apartment. and the clothes start coming off and suddenly they're having sex. there's no conversation around it, there's no negotiation about what are we going to do? what do you want out of this experience? how are we going to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe? and so that's what young people see in the media and that's immediately what they apply to their lives and that's what they think is right because they don't have any other models for good communication when it comes to sex. and then we end up with problems like this where people can't talk about sex. >> and we want people to >> exactly! talking about sex is sexy! it's great! i personally love it. which is why i'm here. and i think that the more we talk about sex the better our sex is going to be. and the healthier our sex is going to be. >>i'm afraid we're out of time but i think it's wonderful that we've started the conversation. hopefully we can continue it. thank you all for being here today and thank you for joining us. [music] when we come back, we'll sit down with marimar ochoa.

and talk about sexual assaults and how they're affecting the campus community. [music] [music] today our topic is sexual assault and how to deal with it. the resources that are available. let's meet our guests. hi my name is stephanie preston, i'm a licensed clinical psychologist. i work as a personal counselor at counseling services on campus. hi i'm michael barnes i'm a police detective at san josé state university police department. >> hi, my name is marimar ochoa, and i am the correspondent student on this topic. >> on this story and it's a very important story. in the community we hear it on the news "sexual assault" and most of us hope it'll never touch our lives. we hope we never have to deal with it. but when it does it comes as a shock i would imagine but that's something that you have to deal with when

you're working with students on campus. >>yes, actually unfortunately it's much more common than we realize. there's a statistic that's been thrown around a lot lately that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted during their college career yeah, so it's really actually quite common and chances are that all of us know somebody who has been sexually assaulted in their lives. but as you said, yes, i think it is shocking when it does happen if somebody recognizes that's what's happened i think a lot of different reactions are common. whether that be shock or surprise, guilt, blame, you know. there's a lot of - sometimes the victim blames themselves or the survivor blames themselves,. so there can be a wide range reactions. and i think that a lot of us don't understand the range of reactions that lead to sexual assault. there are men and women out there who think "it's just flirtation what's the big deal?" you have to tell them

what's the difference. what is the difference? >> that's a good question, maybe actually our officer can give us more of the technicalities but my understanding is that any unwanted sexual contact could be classified as sexual assault. >> okay. >> that can be anything as serious as rape to unwanted touching, like somebody groping a girl at a party or just on the campus in general. and anything in between. >> i'm sure you hear people say "well, come on, it's innocent, it's just touching. it's not i'm not trying to cause a rape. i'm not even thinking in that regard." >> well we can't really comment on their mindset at the time. i mean everyone's got their own threshold of what they believe is right and wrong in their own specific morals. but the law is the law and the rules and regulations that we abide by and the school conduct also has rules and regulations as well, not just the police department. >> yeah, every program, every school i know we do here at san josé state university, but again

what do we do when students don't have this on their radar screen? they come to school to study. they work on their majors, and set up a career, develop connections for the future and then, bang, something like this comes out of the blue , at least that's my perspective on it, is that the way you see it when they walk through the door? they're just not prepared? >> maybe. i think what i see is the issue is this awareness of what is sexual assault. that that's an issue that students don't always know. so going back to what our other guest said, i think it's really about consent is the issue and so in the situation you posed of "well i'm just flirting, this is what's going on." there needs to be consent. and there's actually a recent law that was passed in california that consent means to be affirm in the affirmative, so it's not just somebody didn't say no, but that they actually said yes. and there needs to be an on going enthusiastic consent given during the whole the sort of process.

>>can i make a comment? >> so. yeah. >> sure, go for it. >> so when she's talking about consent and on going, at any point you can stop that. >> it can be revoked. it can be revoked and ended so if somebody's willing to consent to whatever physical act they want to do and they decide to stop, you have to stop. it's over and it can't be implied. >>right. >> now, we have a student right here who can tell us is it really that easy? is it really that simple for your fellow classmates to understand the different step from this to sexual assault? >> you know i would hope that as students we do understand what sexual assault is only to kind of side off on the topic, a lot of the sexual assault cases that happen on campus, i feel, are when students are under the influence of alcohol. and this is one of the biggest problems as an investigator, i was wondering how many assault cases you have seen because of alcohol? i couldn't give you an exact number but

i would say absolutely the majority are alcohol related >> i've heard that 90% of sexual assault invlove alcohol in some way. in one or both or all the party >> it's really rare for us to get a sexual assault case where there isn't any alcohol involved. >>interesting. i would say it's rare. >> oh, sorry. oh, no. go ahead. i'll also add that, going back to the consent piece, legally, if somebody is under the influence of alcohol or drugs, they can't legally give consent. so that's a really tricky piece because obviously on a college campus everyone there's drinking, there's sex, they go together and some, most of the time hopefully that's consensual and it's fun and great. but the issue is to get the consent beforehand. and as he said, make sure it's on going as well. >> when students are in a classroom setting though and they're concentrating on their teachers, their assignments, their projects, we all assume and we make sure, we try to keep the environment safe. but are we talking about these types of activities taking place on campus itself,

or in the areas around it, or in social settings? how would you describe it? i think that as students we don't really think about that it could happen to us. we know, we hear about it all the time. but you never actually think that it's gonna be you, it's gonna happen to you. and i think that, i mean, that's really sad obviously in general. but as students i would hope that we can go to the resources that we have on campus and that's exactly why we have these two representatives here. because we would like to talk about and explain to all the students in our community, that we do have resources offered on campuses. if this happens and a way to prevent it also. and if the officer can elaborate on prevention. >> what should people do? that would be great. >> if they encounter this. well, for starters, common sense and knowing your surroundings. i would say goes a really long ways. knowing where you're at, knowing where the danger spots are near campus. not putting yourself in bad situations. personally, not being overly trusting with people

until you really get to know them. and i'm talking about like, people they move into the dorms in the fall and three months in they're like "oh, i'm with her so she's gonna take care of me." and then they get super drunk or inebriated and they pass out and the other person leaves them. doesn't mean to but they're so trusting that they're with somebody else that they let their guard down so far, that bad things can happen. keeping your guard up. but is that something people do normally? all the time? well, i don't think so, the other thing that that raises for me is that most sexual assaults are perpetrated by somebody that we know and somebody that we know well actually. most often sexual assault occurs within a relationship. or with an acquaintance, somebody, you know, that you've spent some time with. so, i think it's tricky. i also want to, i absolutely agree with the recommendations that have been made but i also want to emphasize that

it's not the responsibility of the survivor or the person to prevent the sexual assault. if that makes sense. that, you know, if i'm walking around on campus or off campus, yes i'm aware of my surroundings. but it's not up to me, i'm not the one to blame if i experience a sexual assault. to concentrate a little bit on what you just said, you said survivor, not victim. can you explain why you use that word? >> yeah, well i think some people feel like that's a little bit more empowering, to say that i'm a survivor of sexual assault, as opposed to a victim. i think it's a personal preference. >> okay. as a faculty member on this campus, it's not my place to get involved in the details. my place is to listen and to try to be supportive. but some of my colleagues might be wondering well, what's the best way to listen? a couple of things we really encourage you to say: the first thing is "i believe you." for somebody to confess and tell you that they've experienced a sexual assault is a huge reveal, right? that's probably

taking a lot of courage, so we say the first thing you should say is "i believe you. that there's no doubt in your mind this happened." the second thing is "what can i do to support you?" so instead of rushing in and telling them what they should do, you know, asking "what do you want to do? how can i help?" excellent advice, not only for faculty but people in our community, corporations, businesses. i thank you all, and thank you for doing this story. because i think it's important that we have the opportunity to talk about these things. and we thank you for joining us. we hope you'll come back for another edition of equal time. [music] [music]

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