POWER/GAMMA event celebrates Romance Responsibility Month and educates students about safe sex.
Hailey Spivak was dressed as a fairy, but not just any fairy. A condom fairy.
About 100 students crowded the booths ranging from displays of sex toys from Honey, a local lingerie and sex store in Athens, to free pizza for hungry people.
As a celebration of February being Romance Responsibility Month, POWER/GAMMA held its “Safe and Sexy” event on the third floor of Baker Center.
“I dressed up as a condom fairy on Halloween, and I handed out so many condoms, both internal (female) and external (male),” Spivak, a junior studying communication with a focus on health and public advocacy, said.
Handing out condoms in a fairy costume was “just really fun,” and she said she always wanted to do it. So Spivak kept her condom fairy costume specifically to wear for this event, she said.
Phoenix Crane, a junior studying psychology, led the BDSM booth and helped students try out sex toys ranging from floggers to leather handcuffs.
According to Crane, the acronym BDSM stands for bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism.
“The goal of this event is just to bring awareness to different sexual health elements,” Crane said. “We have (booths about) different things from aphrodisiacs, different ways you can orgasm, multiple different types of sex toys (and) condom demonstrations.”
Alex Frantz, a junior studying social work, said POWER/GAMMA did a great job with the event.
“It’s cool to see that there are other people interested in this topic (of safe sex), and it makes you feel more open about it, so that’s cool,” Frantz said.
The event also featured performances by Ohio University’s a cappella groups, the Tempo Tantrums, New Cords and Leading Tones.
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Hannah Nelson, a senior studying community health services, said the event was a great way to educate people about proper condom use.
“A lot of people don’t necessarily maybe know how to use (condoms) 100 percent properly,” Nelson said, demonstrating how to put on a condom to interested students at her booth.
Many problems that come from condom usage are often caused by people “doing a step incorrectly or they’re using (the condom) wrong,” Nelson said.
“Especially when you get to college and you have more freedom, you (become) more free with your body,” Meredith Allen, the owner of sex and lingerie shop Honey, said.
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These factors make it even more important for students to learn about how to achieve pleasure safely, how to be consensual while doing so and to not feel ashamed about it, Allen said.
“It’s important to take care of your body,” Spivak said. “If you want to have fun, that’s great. But you should be safe about it always.”
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