Sophie was the valedictorian of her high school in Texas. She came to OU on a full scholarship as a promising engineering student.

Sophie would have been a senior this year. Instead, she's working part-time in a bar in a rural part of South Texas.

In her second semester at OU, she met a guy she'd known through parties in her first semester. That night, like many students on campus, they had sex. Sophie was on the pill, so she wasn't worried about pregnancy, but she did want to find a condom because of the risk of STDs.

They were in the dorms and didn't want to walk to Campus Market in the freezing cold in the middle of the night to buy them. Sophie felt that she knew him well enough and he didn't seem like the kind of guy who would have an STD.

She was right -- he was clean. But at the age of 19, Sophie became pregnant. Her pill had failed to work, and she still doesn't understand why today.

Her family and friends counseled her through her options, and she decided to have an abortion, with total support from her loved ones. But the abortion caused her body terrible problems, and within a few weeks she had left college and gone home to be with her family. She's still there now.

Sophie was an adult and legally allowed to have sex with whomever she pleased, so why wasn't she able to easily find a condom?

The dorms are, understandably, split into male and female sections, but I hope this isn't so parents misguidedly think their children are safe from the other sex.

Having a locked door to get through just makes the experience more exciting and, in my freshman year, we rarely had our friends leave by the midnight lock down (whether it was for parties, sex or just watching movies). My friends and I just hid boys in the closet when RAs did the rounds.

Here's news for you parents: College kids have sex. Barrels of it. So do high school kids, for that matter. Wouldn't you rather they had a way to protect themselves if they're having sex instead of crossing your fingers that your child will remain a virgin until the age of 40?

Having condom machines in the dorms is a brilliant idea and, frankly, if we weren't in the Bible Belt and a red state, I think they'd already be there.

It does not matter what your, or my, opinion is about sex before marriage, promiscuity or casual flings: That's between an individual and his or her god.

I'd rather know people are able to have safe sex if the mood strikes them. That way the number of unwanted pregnancies can be drastically reduced -- not to mention the startling number of STDs.

Let me give you some figures to bounce around your heads: In 2005, 5,031 people in Cleveland County alone reported gonorrhea; a staggering 12,957 people reported chlamydia; and 148 people reported syphilis. There is no explanation for these shocking figures.

Allow me to repeat my point: It doesn't matter what you believe religiously or ethically. College kids are having unsafe sex because they don't always have time or forethought to buy condoms.

I know it's easy to say, "Oh, well they deserve herpes if they aren't careful," but sometimes the groin wins the battle with the brain. Just because condoms would be in the bathrooms doesn't mean freshman virgins will suddenly start sleeping with everything that walks past their door. But if they did choose to have a little rendezvous (as they are legally entitled to do) at least they'd be safe.

If condoms were in the bathrooms of the dorms, a lot of people would be saved from painful and embarrassing visits to Goddard. Women would be saved from the prying eyes of strangers who look at them with concern like they're about to find out they're seven months pregnant or have a horrible infection when they sit in the women's center at Goddard.

Men would be saved from the terrifying news that they're going to be a papa and from calling their past conquests to see who gave them gonorrhea.

If condoms were available in the dorms, Sophie would graduate in May.

-- Lindsay Hodges is a journalism junior. Her column appears every other Monday, and she can be reached at opinion@oudaily.com.
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