Sex and the single student Sex and the single student (November 16, 2005)

'Secrets' hammers home truths of HIV, STD

by Alexandria Rocha

Sex is not something to take lightly.

That was the message Gunn High School students heard earlier this month during a presentation of "Secrets," a Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre program about HIV, AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases.

With phrases like "Get your 'skanky' butt to the clinic," "I'm allergic to latex," and "The Pill is birth control, not disease control," the play delivered the serious messages with plenty of pop-culture slang and humor.

"It was really funny. The animal skin one, do you guys remember that?" said junior Jonathan Gu, 16, who asked his friends about one of the play's jokes.

Students in Palo Alto's public school system receive sex education in some form nearly every year starting in the fifth-grade. By the time they reach high school, some students said the information has been so drilled into them that it's old hat.

"They told us what was basically common sense. It wasn't anything new," said senior Roscoe Linstadt, 17, who told Gu he didn't hear the animal skin joke because he had his headphones on. "At this point, if you don't know, you're not going to know."

However, "Secrets" presented statistics some students admitted they hadn't heard. During a question-and-answer period after the performance, the actors told students that nearly half of the new HIV cases are in people under age 25, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It was a little shocking. It made people wonder if they have, or know someone who has, AIDS or STDs," said junior Laura Gill, 16.

According to Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C., the national number of high school students with sexual experience declined from 54 percent in 1991 to 46 percent in 2001. In 2003, however, the number grew to 47 percent.

But, also according to Child Trends, condom use among sexually-active teens is growing. Between 2001 and 2003, the number of high school students using condoms increased from 58 percent to 63 percent.

Gunn students have mixed ideas about their peers' sexual activity and principles.

While freshman Samantha Riley, 13, said "everyone in Palo Alto pretty well knows about that stuff," meaning the dangers of unsafe sex, and for the most part acts responsibly, senior Jordan Claassen, 17, wasn't too sure.

"It's a pretty broad range when it comes to people and their attitudes. You can't generalize the school," he said.

Teenagers today are faced with an increased amount of pressure regarding sex from all sides, including their peers and television.

According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of sexual scenes on television has nearly doubled since 1998. The study, which measured 1,000 hours of programming in all genres, found that 70 percent of all shows include some sexual content and that these shows average five sexual scenes per hour, compared to 56 percent and 3.2 scenes per hour, respectively, in 1998.

The "Secrets" performance addressed the issues in the proper context.

A cast of teen-aged characters played out scenarios that typical high school students may encounter, including parties, someone driving drunk, and talking to parents about safe sex and friends about "hooking up." The main plot, however, centered around a girl and boy who in their newfound relationship discover he has been infected with HIV through one night of risky behavior.

With each actor playing several characters, the storyline connected them all in a scary, melodramatic, and very truthful way. The boy engages in unprotected sex with a college student, who shared a needle with a music recorder, whose husband had an affair with a girl, who becomes pregnant. In one fell swoop, all realize they're HIV positive, including the baby, stemming from the music recorder's intravenous drug use.

Senior Jre Hunter, 18, also said most of the messages in the play were old news, but the fast and dangerous connections between people who were ultimately strangers, caught his attention.

"What stuck out the most was how one person's thing that they didn't think mattered built up and built up until everyone had it," he said.

Hunter also said he respected the character who refused to have unsafe sex with her date, who later discovered he was HIV-positive.

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