This story is the third in a seven-part package about sex ed and sexual health at Menlo. It also appeared in the March 2021 47.4 print edition of The Coat of Arms.

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In the United States, 30 states mandate sex education for all students and 22 states require that the information taught in sexual education courses be factually accurate, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California, being one of these states, requires all schools to teach medically accurate, objective information to its students. At Menlo, students are required to take a sexual health course during their freshman seminar rotation in their freshman year as well as attend additional assemblies in their sophomore, junior and senior years that take a deeper look at topics covered in the original course. 

This year, the juniors and seniors attended sexual health assemblies taught by guest speaker and former Menlo Dean of Student Life Programs Cathy Chen with topics that ranged from consent to toxic relationships. Senior and Student Body Vice President Addie Ahlstrom described that she received feedback from the seniors that the assemblies taught by Chen were often unhelpful for gaining a better understanding of sexual health as they were too vague and lighthearted. “The way [Chen] was answering pretty serious questions about consent and not wanting to upset your partner, I just felt like those weren’t handled well,” Ahlstrom said. 

Senior William Akis explained that he felt most of the information being presented to him in his senior year during assemblies wasn’t new to him. “It wasn’t like I disliked the program. I just came out of it feeling like I’ve heard this and I already knew this,” Akis said. 

Junior Amy Wyatt expressed her frustration with the assemblies on sexual health her grade has attended this year. She specified that there were multiple conversations surrounding rape, consent and toxic relationships where she believed Chen didn’t give proper and helpful information for being in those situations. Wyatt said she felt as if the assemblies did not define toxic relationships in a concrete way, leading to a fear that some will assume they are imagining toxic situations and that it’s “all in their head.”

The freshmen, many of whom have attended the freshman seminar sexual health course at this point, also had an additional assembly on sexual health this year. According to freshman Emmy Ford, although the original topic was sexual health, she and many of her peers felt that the speaker talked about issues that weren’t relevant to the freshmen or sexual education. “It was about weird stereotypes and people were really confused about it. It was a lot of mixed messages,” Ford said. “She was talking about baby clothes, onesies and how it would say ‘ladies man’ or ‘lock up your daughters,’ and was saying that it feeds into society’s stereotypes,” Ford said. Ford noted that Freshman Class Advisor Eve Kulbieda even interrupted the speaker at one point and described that the clothing was just for babies.

Although there is debate over the effectiveness of the assemblies, the students interviewed generally agreed that the freshman seminar sexual health course, taught by Upper School Counselor Jake Fauver, is effective and productive as a starting place for learning about sexual health. “[Fauver] moves at a good pace to make it not extremely awkward, and he tries to make it as inclusive as possible,” freshman Zach Ruwitch said. 

Sophomore Chris Liao noted that Fauver did an excellent job of making the class lighthearted and entertaining while also talking about difficult issues. 

However, there is a point of failure in the sexual health course for some members of the LGBTQ+ community, which is the lack of material and conversation surrounding non-heteronormative relationships and sexual health. One junior felt that the sexual health course did an accurate job of covering a wide array of information regarding non-heteronormative relationships, however another junior believed there wasn’t enough material for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Both juniors who asked to remain anonymous noted the difficulty of asking questions anonymously, particularly those pertaining to LGBTQ+ issues, in the sexual health course due to the small size of the class. Another member of the LGBTQ+ community noted that not having an inclusive enough curriculum can be dangerous for students. “If sexual education in schools isn’t inclusive [of] certain groups, those groups are going to turn to the internet, which is not the best place to get information from,” they said.