Your health matters to Augustana’s Office of Student Inclusion and Diversity (OSID). On Sept. 9, 2024, OSID, in collaboration with The Project, held its first free testing clinic for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) of the year. The clinic will be held every second Monday and fourth Friday of the month from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., across from the OSID office in Gerber 439. Testing is free to all Augustana students, faculty and staff.
Augustana partnered with The Project last year to provide free on-campus STI testing in Old Main. According to Sam Wright, OSID’s assistant director and LGBTQ+ coordinator, student engagement with STI testing was low. Wright sought to engage more students and create a safe culture surrounding STI testing.
By partnering with The Project, Wright hopes students will use this local resource.
“Being aware that The Project exists in the first place is a really important thing for the Augustana campus to know,” Wright said. “From gender-affirming therapy to providing sexual health supplies and all the things in between, they’re just a good resource to know because they do a lot of outreach in the Quad Cities.”
For the testing, OSID is partnering with The Project, a Quad City nonprofit organization centered around sexual health. According to its website, The Project is “your home for your home for all questions related to HIV prevention, care and treatment as well as other LGBTQ health related issues.”
Located in Moline, Ill., The Project offers several services, including STI testing, harm reduction, LGBTQ+ health, counseling, prevention and living with HIV.
Viminda Shafer, The Project’s community relations and development coordinator, said the free STI clinics provide an additional nonjudgmental and always accessible access point to healthcare. Shafer emphasized the importance of sexual education on college campuses, as every student was educated differently before college.
“It’s important that local organizations partner with local college campuses to ensure that every student and faculty on campus have access to the resources they need,” Shafer said. “Sex education is often stigmatized. When we can give people facts based on science, people can really take their health and wellness into their own hands.”
Senior Janey Locander, a peer mentor in Augustana’s Sexual Assault Education Prevention (SAPE) office, said the previous STI testing clinics were under-promoted to the student body. By OSID using the Brew and social media to promote the clinic openly, Locander sees the stigma surrounding STI testing changing on campus.
“Through the work being done, people feel more comfortable talking about it with their friends,” Locander said. “The Project does a great job of making people comfortable so they can get what they need.”
Wright sees the conversation around STI testing evolving. Wright said college students tend to have polarizing opinions on STI testing, being either sex-positive or treating the topics as off-limits. Similar to Locander, Wright sees the culture shifting.
“I see [STI testing] becoming easier to talk about the more that [students are] associated with it,” Wright said. “I’m hoping that people are able to get educated on what [STI testing] is and who The Project is to become acquainted with the idea of just watching out for yourself.”
The next free STI testing clinic will be held on Sept. 27. For additional resources, visit the OSID office on the fourth floor of the Gerber Center, the SAPE office in Sorenson or The Project’s website at https://www.tpqc.org/.
