Like pregnancy, Cleveland and Jackson said STDs can be the subject of gossip as well. The students said it is especially common to hear about their peers having chlamydia.

“Most (students) don’t realize (they have an STD) until it’s too late,” Cleveland said.

“And then everybody has it,” Brooks added.

Brooks said one downside of teaching prevention would be that she worries it might make some students who aren’t sexually active feel like the school is condoning sex, in a way.

“But there’s more (students who are) already sexually active than others (who aren’t),” Brooks said.

Cleveland said he thought the relationship between religion and moral values relating to sex is probably the reason that the subject had not come up before in school. He said that it only makes sense to teach the value of not having sex within the context of religion.

All three students said they weren’t sure how effective any type of sex education would be on their peers, but they agreed teaching abstinence as the only option would have no impact.

“I still don’t think (the abstinence-plus policy) would stop (students) from having sex, but it would make them more aware about using protection,” Jackson said.

Cleveland said he thought it would be well worth teaching his peers about the consequences of unprotected sex even if it only helped one student.

He said he thought lawmakers hadn’t made a policy to require sex education until the statistics were glaring because they weren’t aware of what’s going on and avoided the subject, mostly because of a generational, social gap.

Older generations were married at younger ages and are now out of touch with the society’s youth, Cleveland said, but neither Cleveland nor Brooks could think of any of their peers who were married when they had a baby.

“Most people in (political) office are born in the 50s, 60s or 1400s,” Cleveland joked. “They’re old.”

Jackson said she thought teaching sex education at schools is long overdue.

“We just need to face reality,” Cleveland said.