Daily Titan aborts condom promotion

The Daily Titan at California State University, Fullerton has scrapped plans to distribute free condoms in its Nov. 14 issue after the student health center backed out of the promotional deal.

The newspaper had made arrangements with the student health center to place 4,500 condoms into the paper to encourage students to have safe sex. But when the paper announced the plan with promotional signs featuring stick figures having sex in the missionary position, students and administrators began to complain.

“If I’m picking up a paper to read it, I would not necessarily want to have a condom there,” Dean of Students Bob Palmer told the Orange County Register. “You know how newspapers are; we would probably have condoms out all over campus.”

Last week the health center administration pulled out of the deal.

Instead, the newspaper has decided to print a coupon that students can clip and use to redeem a free condom from the health center.

The Daily Titan editors expressed their annoyance at the health center's decision in an editorial on Nov. 1.

"Those in charge of the center are sorely mistaken," the editorial said. "They are adopting a very dangerous philosophy that denies a person the ability to protect themselves simply because that protection may offend some people."

The bottom line, the editorial notes, is that fewer students will get the condoms.

"Out of the 4,500 condoms the Daily Titan was going to distribute to students by way of impulse grabs, only a small fraction will take the trip with their coupon to the center and get their free condom. Rather than 4,500 condoms in the pockets, wallets, purses and backpacks of students all over campus, the center will only give out a small fraction of this number through their coupon system."