WE WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS BELOW
Responsibility focus of Saturday teen workshop
by Gale Horton Gay
gale@dekalbchamp.com
It was a most unusual ice breaker. A classroom full of teen boys answering questions about their first kiss, who schooled them on the birds and bees and the sex question they’ve always wanted to ask a girl.
Initial nervous laughter led to frank—sometimes brazen—disclosures by the boys followed by the adult leader guiding their discussion, dishing out facts, asking questions and offering advice.
 Welcome to a Saturday workshop designed to inform middle and high school students about sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and domestic violence.
Held on April 18 at Stephenson High School, the Project Alpha five-hour workshop and forum on making responsible life choices was sponsored by the Nu Mu Lambda chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the Lambda Epsilon Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
Andre Castro, youth development coordinator for Gwinnett, Rockdale and Newton counties, didn’t appear to have any problems relating with the teens and engaged in dialogue using the kind of language they use in talking about sex.
And the 15 boys in attendance didn’t appear to be shy about giving their opinions or talking about their experiences.
When Castro asked the boys if they considered oral sex to be sex, only a few hands went up. Then he inquired how many had had sex with someone they were not in a relationship with, four hands shot up. And he asked them if they believed that oral sex is safer than intercourse.
“That’s not one of my goals no more,” said one young man talking about oral sex. “I did enough of that in eighth and ninth grade.”
Castro tapped on his laptop and projected words, images and numbers having to do with how common the practice is and with sexually transmitted diseases.
“Oral sex is sex,” he told the group.
Across the hall, Rachel Wright, who manages the Meadowcreek Adolescent Health and Youth Development Teen Center, was telling about 21 teen girls that sexually transmitted diseases tend to manifest more in females.
“You both need to get checked and treated,” said Wright, adding that when a male isn’t treated he can possibly re-infect the girl or pass the disease to another partner. “Our bodies are just a Petri dish. Our bodies are warm and dark and moist.”
Asked who told them about sex and at what age, one girl replied that her mother had the talk with her when she was in the ninth grade but it was too late. “She had to because I had gotten pregnant,” said the teen.
Wright asked the girl what she learned from the experience. “I trust myself before I trust someone else,” said the girl. “You have to pick and choose who you can trust.”
Wright, who said she is the mother to two girls, said that she, like most teen girls between 14 and 17, saw her parents as her enemy. However, she added, “That’s the time when you are most vulnerable. You need information about birth control, abstinence and condoms. You have to have a support system.”
In a discussion about sexually transmitted diseases, Wright drew laughs from the girls when she said in a male voice, “You are the finest thing I have ever seen, and I don’t ever want to be with no one else.”
“If you don’t know the possibilities, all you know is what you hear,” she said. “That’s how we end up with STDs.”
“We don’t care what the motivation was to get you here,” said Trudie Carmichael, president of the Lambda Epsilon Omega chapter, to all the young people at the beginning of the program. She encouraged them to become informed and evaluate their lifestyle and decide if they should make changes in their behavior. “We are not trying to put you down. We are trying to lift you up.”
This is the third year the fraternity and sorority have partnered on the workshops, which are held twice a year at different schools.
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