“Come pin the penis on the scrotum!”
“Have you tried putting on a condom while intoxicated?”
“Do you want to color in a vulva?”
These questions aimed to draw students to CSULB’s fourth annual Sexual Health and Education Festival on Wednesday.
Sextival, hosted on the lawn in front of the bookstore, provided an opportunity for the campus community to educate itself on sexual health with the help of outreach representatives and campus organizations.
With interactive booths, educational materials, free contraceptives and carnival-style games lining the walkway, Sextival attempted to take away the fear of openly discussing sex and asking questions about protection.
“We want to bring awareness to the positive side of sex…to self-love, self-awareness, the benefits of having sex and how to protect yourself during activity,” said Sextival coordinator and Student Health Center Health Educator Christina Goldpaint.
Goldpaint put together the event with the assistance of nursing students enrolled in a community nursing class through the department.
“Part of our class is putting on an event to promote awareness,” said Anh Nguyen, a senior nursing student currently enrolled in the community class, which focuses on positive interaction between health officials and the community they serve. “We want to make it more comfortable and easier to talk about sexual health.”
The nursing students hosted a booth where participants could toss stuffed representations of sperm and sexually transmitted diseases into hoops acting as latex and lambskin condoms to see what each material was capable of protecting individuals from.
Out of the Closet, Family PACT, the Women’s Gender Equity Center and Project OCEAN also hosted booths with lighthearted, hands-on activities to further specific messages on sexual health.