A campus health clinic is a safe haven, a place of refuge and security. Students visit health clinics for all types of reasons -contraception, std’s, and illness. Students should feel comfortable during their stay at the campus clinic and should not feel humiliation or embarrassment. It’s the one place on a campus full of thousands of students where you should NOT feel judged.
While GSU has a great health clinic that offers many services to all students, it seems to have overlooked one thing: the necessary privacy of women in health clinics. Unlike Georgia Tech and Kennesaw State, GSU does not offer a separate clinic just for women.
Why is a women’s clinic necessary? Wouldn’t female students be isolating themselves? After talking with several female students who were visiting the health clinic I found that their greatest concern was not why they were their but rather who may see them there and what judgement may come as a result.
The reality is that double standards continue to exist, especially on college campuses. “The first things they’ll think is you’re a slut or you’ve got an STD or something,” one female student informs me (cannot disclose name) during my visit to the health clinic. Our realities have been permeated with the notion that a woman in a clinic is a tell-tell of the woman’s character.
But what struck me most were the remarks of one female student when asked of her thoughts on a separate facility for women: “I got into it a fight with my boyfriend and I wanted to come here. I needed someone to talk to. But I didn’t want to run into any of his friends here. I didn’t want him to know I’d been here.”
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, women between the ages of 20-24 are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence. What the GSU clinic has overlooked is that many female students have intimate partners who are students as well. This can be a troubling factor when domestic abuse or rape has occurred. This avoidance in fear of retaliation or judgment can lead to continued abuse.
While we’re are grateful for the services at the GSU health clinic, we must have more concern for the needs of female students. I am in no way saying here that male students don’t feel judgment as well when at clinic. Nor am I saying that they don’t experience sexual assault or abuse. But the stats are in staggering “favor” of women. Creating a separate clinic could prove to not only be “healthier” for female students but the entire student body.
