Safe Sex, Healthy Relationships, and Bridging the Gaps: Sexual Health Awareness Week at StFX
/On Monday February 9th, 2026, the StFX community was invited to take part in Sexual Health Awareness Week. This consisted of engaging and educational events and activities to bring awareness to sexual health and wellness, and the importance of being educated and informed.
Sexual Health Awareness Week was organized and facilitated by StFX’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Response team, alongside Visible at X, a student run support service for the community which provides education on sexual health and sexual violence prevention.
In an interview with 5th year student and Visible at X peer educator, Emmy Stewart, she spoke about the goal behind Sexual Awareness Week. “The overall goal is to promote safe sex among students. We have done a couple trivia and outreach events on campus, just like ‘hey, here’s where you can go to get STI tested on campus’, or bringing free condoms to campus.”
The first day of Sexual Health Awareness welcomed everyone to attend a trivia night at Oak Manor, as a fun and engaging way to inform attendees on healthy relationships and STI awareness. Residence outreach also ran from Monday to Wednesday, where the peer educators for Visible at X appeared at each StFX residence to provide helpful resources for students, alongside interactive trivia with prizes.
Emmy discussed more details regarding residence outreach, explaining, “We usually just set up a table in the evening, and we try and actually time it with when people would be coming back from meal hall for dinner, so that they’re kind of forced to pass us, and there’s different approaches we’ll take. We have one of those wheels we spin, and we’ll usually have candy and condoms and say ‘Hey, want to answer a trivia question?’”
“When chatting with them we usually have resource pamphlets and stuff. It’s more just ‘We’re here as a resource’ more than anything’’ says Emmy, “Whenever I’ve participated in the outreach, I’ve always had really awesome responses, like people being interested in the trivia questions and the facts we have for them.”
She continued, “It’s about safe sex but we also have a focus on healthy relationships. So unfortunately, it’s cancelled cause of the snow day, but tonight we were doing an event called ‘Love Me, Love Me Not,’ and we basically do discussions about healthy versus unhealthy relationship behaviors. So that’s the main focus of this week, promoting safe and healthy intimacy and relationships.”
The event which Emmy is referring to was scheduled for Thursday evening of Sexual Health Awareness Week but was cancelled due to the poor weather conditions. The event was to take place in the Bloomfield HUB and was promoted on the Visible at X Instagram page in a post stating “Let’s stop relying on flower petals—learn how to spot healthy and unhealthy relationship signs to help blossom your connections.”
When asked about the importance of being informed about sexual health, Emmy replied, “I mean obviously we don’t want STIs running around campus. Also in such a small community, it’s really hard to talk about these things because everybody knows everybody, we’re all into each other's business all the time, so a lot of things kind of get swept under the rug, because no one wants to talk about it. I’ll tell somebody, and they’ll tell somebody, and within those two interactions it’ll get back to who you’re talking about. It can be really inhibitive to be forthcoming with information, so it’s really important that people know about the resources available to them, and are able to spot these behaviors, not just within themselves but also with their friends too.”
In response to a question regarding the turnout at these events, Emmy said, “We usually have really good turnout, especially with the res outreach stuff, it’s not like people are attending an event, they're just swinging by our table, and if we frame it to people as a competition between residences that really amps people up, so I would say depending on the size of the residence, we could have up to a hundred people come by in a night which is really nice. And the HUB has their regulars come by, which is usually another twenty to thirty people. It all depends which audience we’re targeting.”
When it comes to focusing on specific audiences, Friday evening’s event, ‘Love Across Borders’, was aimed primarily at international students, though it remained open to all. Hosted by StFX Sexual Violence Prevention Education Coordinator, Gowry Kaliyiluvila Rajesh, the event took place in the fourth-floor DEC Lounge in Bloomfield. In an Instagram post, it was described as “Dating, culture, connection & conversations! Exploring love from around the world.”
Emmy gave an overview of the event, explaining how “It’s designed for international students. I think it’s really cool. She’s doing an educational workshop with international students, discussing commonly used phrases and stuff people use here to talk about relationships, dating, and hooking up, so that they understand, like if English isn’t your first language you know what you’re agreeing to. It’s talking about things that might not mean the same thing to everybody, so people can be more aware and equipped to navigate relationship terminology.”
In response to being asked about potential gaps in sexual health education on campus, Emmy said “Absolutely, and I’ll be the first person to admit that I love what we do, I love the events we do and the initiatives we take, but a lot of the time the people that are showing up and getting involved with them are the kind of people who were gung-ho for this already. The people who need this information the most are rarely the people choosing to attend our events.”
She continued, “I do think that addressing those gaps in trying to host events that are fun and interesting, and not necessarily all about our messaging and more like slipping it in there, but there’s only so much you can do if people aren’t eager to learn and listen.”
“I think that a lot more people who have a lot of power should use that power to promote what we do. For example, people who are high up in athletics. Yes, athletes have to take the training, but I don’t think there’s enough coaches and staff telling them how important it is that they give a shit.” The training Emmy is referencing is the Waves of Change modules, which are mandatory educational workshops for StFX athletes, and focus on sexual health and sexual violence prevention on campus.
She continued, stating “Yes, they do show up, but once they leave the session, there’s nobody keeping up and reminding them to do the things we talk about in our training. I’m not asking people to put in a lot of time and effort and show up to every event we throw, but having more people be supportive and recognize the importance of what we do would make a real difference and I think we’d see a real attitude shift.”
Outside of Sexual Health Awareness Week, Visible at X hosts a variety of other events and workshops throughout the academic year. Emmy described these efforts, saying “We run events, do social media content, and outreach programs and advocacy. A lot of prevention work for sexual violence, but we also do consent awareness and safe sex awareness, healthy relationship stuff, and a lot of promoting the resources we have on campus. A lot of people who unfortunately experienced sexual violence don’t know where to go or what to do.”
Sexual Health Awareness Week at StFX welcomed all students to attend a variety of engaging and informative events. The efforts organized by the Visible at X team, including peer educators like Emmy, demonstrated the importance of sexual health education, as it promoted student well-being both individually and within their relationships.
