A necessary part of growing up is learning about the opposite sex, dating and interacting with them. By this point in our lives, many college students have lost their virginity and a growing amount engage in casual sex. While this is entirely your business, not mine, I am personally a little concerned about an experience that I had last week.

I wanted to go with my girlfriend to get an HIV test. I had never been tested because I had never had sex before, but figured a free clean bill of health couldn’t hurt. I was pleased to hear that there was free HIV testing on campus, but when I looked online, I found that Health Services didn’t list any free HIV testing. However, they did say that they offered HIV testing on campus. So, I called.

I learned that Health Services does not offer HIV testing at all, free or otherwise. I asked if there was any other place I might be able to be tested and learned there might be some places Downtown. Four phone calls later I had found a clinic that would let me get tested, and made an appointment. A week later I got tested. It took exactly 20 minutes, and I got the results right then.

The actual process of the test was so easy, but the trouble I had to go through to get to that process got me thinking. How many BU students are being tested for STDs or HIV? Condoms or not, we live in a world where you can get some scary, and downright humiliating, diseases if you sleep with the wrong person.

So let’s look at this in review: it took me five phone calls and an Internet search just to FIND a clinic that offers HIV testing. Furthermore, I needed to find a way to get there for the appointment (just so you know, the clinic I found, called STAP (the Southern Tier AIDS Program), is NOT near a bus station). If my girlfriend didn’t have a car, I would have had to take a cab (presumably a $9 ride) or take a bus and walk the rest of the way.

And this is in no way whining.

What I had to go through doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my experience is the kind any freshman, and probably many sophomores and juniors, would face.

Let’s say you’re a horny, albeit mildly apathetic and lazy, college student with a lot of partying to do and not too much free time on your hands. Would you have been tested by now? Would you get tested at all?

Apparently many BU students aren’t getting tested. Since the University Health Services policy has mysteriously changed without being announced to the students, neither STAP nor the Binghamton Planned Parenthood has mentioned being overwhelmed by the hundreds, if not thousands, of the 10,000 students attending BU that are going to get tested for STDs or HIV at some point during their college careers.

It’s with that scary reality in mind that I would like to ask BU’s administration (not Health Services, because I doubt they advocated this change themselves) to take a look at the situation and ask themselves if they want to be held responsible for those students that don’t seek testing because BU has chosen to abandon providing the programs for them?

Does it piss anyone else off that not only was the program cut in the first place, but that we weren’t told. Not to mention, Health Services’ Web site, to this day, remains to be updated.