So "that's" what Valentine's Day is all about

By: Josh Cohick

Posted: 2/1/07

A sigh of disappointment followed by a feeling of disgust. That was my initial reaction upon opening my e-mail on Jan. 22 and reading the following subject line: "FREE HIV testing for Valentine's Day."

This e-mail announced that on Valentine's Day, the Wittenberg Health Center will be teaming up with the Clark County Health Department to conduct free and confidential HIV tests. They will be open to students, faculty, and staff, and a patient can have his/her results in less than a half hour. The e-mail proceeded to go into detail about HIV and the importance of getting yourself tested.

Now, before I get into the ridiculous, let me say this - I'm not saying that holding free HIV testing is a bad idea. Quite the opposite. If you're one of those people that pride themselves on hooking up with a new "friend" every time you go to the bar, then this test is for you - probably even long overdue. Getting the most amount of knowledge about your own medical situation is always for the best, and this is one of those opportunities. Even if you won't walk away with the customary Health Center brown bag of goodies. However, just because the testing is a good idea doesn't mean that the Health Center went about promoting this the right way, and this is where my problems come in.

First off, while presenting some good medical facts, the Health Center uses the one method that our parents, teachers, counselors, etc. have been telling us for years to avoid falling prey to: peer pressure! This is a line directly from the e-mail: "[T]he United States (CDC and other major health organizations) are embarking on a policy change of recommending routine HIV testing for everyone, regardless of your perceived risk. You can be on the cutting edge of this new idea of testing everyone, and get tested!"

Is it just me, or when you read this line, do you immediately think of a senior in high school, wearing his Fonz-style leather jacket while taking a puff of a cigarette, telling little freshmen that smoking is cool and will instantly elevate their popularity? That's the basis of the Health Center's argument - everyone's going to be doing it, so you should too!

That was just one issue, but not the primary issue. In the way that they have promoted this event, the Health Center has made a direct correlation between Valentine's Day and sex. Yes, we all know that people are going to get some on Valentine's Day, but that's not what the day is supposed to be about. Now, I'm the overly sappy romantic type, but at least I'm aware enough to recognize what Feb. 14 is intended to represent - the ideas of love, relationships, and (probably more so for younger children) friendship.

Not the Health Center. To them, Valentine's Day equals sex. Even in the e-mail's closing line, they directly relate celebrating the holiday with sex: "Celebrate Valentine's Day by proving (to yourself) you don't have HIV!" This was a line that I read out loud to a group of friends, and they were appalled; even my mother, who I forwarded the message to for her reaction, was taken aback by Witt's techniques.

The Health Center has taken a day marked by love and warped it into a way to promote their own services, while instantly making Valentine's Day synonymous with disease and humping. Maybe they need to reach out to all those elementary school children and warn them that their Little Mermaid valentines could one day lead to HIV. After all, Valentine's Day and venereal diseases do have the same initials.