NIU is ranked 117 in the nation and last in the MAC.

No, I’m not talking about NIU football here, although the rankings are probably close. I’m talking about NIU’s ranking on the Trojan Annual Sexual Health Report Card.

The report offers an assessment of a school’s “sexual health” by ranking them in a number of categories and then issuing the college a “Sexual Health GPA.”

Some of the categories being judged are: Sexual health awareness programs, condom and contraception availability, HIV testing, anonymous advice/newspaper columns, student peer groups and student health center hours of operation.

In total, there are 11 categories, and no, none of them have to do with how many people actually have STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) at the university.

Northern’s GPA was a measly 2.09, barely above a C average. NIU wouldn’t even be able to make it into its own College of Business with that kind of GPA.

The highest GPA was posted by the University of Minnesota with an astounding 3.91, and the lowest was .82 by Louisiana Tech University.

I had the chance to sit down with Steve Lux, who works as a health educator in the Health Enhancement branch of Student Affairs, and he told me it surprised him to see NIU ranked so low.

In fact, he was so surprised he called Michael Bruno, who was involved in issuing these rankings, and Mr. Bruno said they called each school’s health service department and if they did not get a response they based the ranking solely off the Web site.

Mr. Lux expressed it might be the case that no one was reached at Health Services, so the ranking might not be an accurate representation of the university.

This is not to say NIU is off the hook however. When asked what categories he thought the university could improve upon he said there is currently no anonymous advice provider he knows of and the Web site could use work.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say all students at NIU are not practicing abstinence, so I don’t think the reason we rank so low is because we don’t need these services.

From what I have seen, there are plenty of free condoms to be had, so it must not be condom availability. There are condoms available at the Health Center, downstairs in most residence halls, and CAs even have free condoms to distribute.

The two categories I noticed NIU might be lacking in are anonymous advice opportunities and student peer groups.

According to Trojan, many schools made large jumps up from last year’s report card, and I think NIU should be trying to make this same jump.

Sexual health information is very important for college students and even though it seems at times as if we all already know everything there is to know about the subject, it simply isn’t true. Go out and take advantage of the resources offered by our university, and hopefully there will be even more resources to come in the future.