It’s a week before Valentine's Day and everyone’s thinking about it, even UOSA.

Condoms.

According to a USA Today article last week, teen pregnancies and abortion rates are on the rise; now’s the time to plan ahead.

UOSA is considering putting condom machines in the dorms’ basement bathrooms.

If it decides to write and pass this legislation, anyone will be able to go to the private reaches of the basement bathrooms, pay a quarter or so and walk away with protection from such hideous side effects of sex as warts, HPV, gonorrhea HIV and children.

So here’s the question:

Why didn’t we have them yesterday, last week, last year or last decade? Perhaps after a dorm birth last year we would have gotten the message: College kids have sex, even in the dorms.

We currently have programs to educate students on campus and keep them safe. The Women’s Outreach Center has great programs like Sexperts, a team of sexually informed students seeking to educate the campus about sex.

The center is already giving out free condoms in the Oklahoma Memorial Union. The only problem is they’re giving them out from a bowl in a high-traffic hallway.

UOSA will charge students for these condoms. They won’t be free. And you don’t always have a quarter, especially when you really need it.

However, there are always pennies available; you can find them lying around in rooms and fountains. Penny condoms in the basement would solve a multiplicity of problems. Penny condoms would truly expunge excuses for not using condoms.

But UOSA is on it. They’ve been thinking about it since last August; they’re sure to be about done with it anytime now, right?

We’re still waiting. UOSA needs to expedite the process. They are here to solve student problems and this is a long-standing one. We need this to be solved. Now.

Cheap condoms in the basement will allow students to get condoms when and where they need them. There will be fewer stigmas buying them in the privacy of a bathroom than grabbing them from a public bowl in a high traffic hallway.

So, UOSA, quit thinking about it and give us penny condoms already.