Before I started teaching, I never considered the possibility that it could happen.

But it does.

It has even happened a few times at the school where I teach over the years. They hauled a 18-year-old football player out in handcuffs when they caught him on the stage with his 14-year-old girlfriend my first year there. During the height of Monica-gate, the girls basketball team walked into the gym for practice and found a couple doing the Full Lewinsky. And then there was last spring, when a somewhat shaken student returned from girls restroom and informed me that there were two girls engaged in "hot lesbian action" in the handicapped stall.

I assumed that such incidents were rare, and could be accounted for by the huge enrollment at our school (grades 9-12 have grown from 3300 to 3900 in the last decade). But it seems like it is getting more and more common -- and that some kids don't even find it shocking.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about students having sex in a high school auditorium was that other students didn't find it very shocking at all.

"I glanced over and, whatever, I just let him continue on with his business," said a 16-year-old linebacker on the Osbourn High School football team who, along with a friend, stumbled upon a couple engaging in oral sex. "I stayed for five to eight minutes, just talking. We weren't worried about it. When the janitor came in, everyone started running."

Manassas school officials weren't as laid back. The students -- eight in all -- were quickly identified and suspended, and the matter prompted the small school system to confront an issue many adults would rather not face: in this case, two girls and three boys engaging in oral sex or intercourse on school property while three other boys watched, according to sources familiar with what happened.

"In all the years that I've been in education, I've never run into this one before," said John Boronkay, the school system's acting superintendent. "It's a new one."

Actually, it's not so new. According to some teenagers, sex on school property is more frequent than adults might imagine. And some adults who work with teenagers said it's happening more often these days.

There's anecdotal evidence to support that:

Two students were discovered recently having sex in an Anne Arundel County high school gym. Four students at Col. Zadok Magruder High in Rockville were arrested in June after performing sex acts in the school parking lot. A boy and a girl at Springbrook High in Silver Spring were caught "touching inappropriately" in a school bathroom. Last year, three teenage boys at Mount Hebron High in Howard County were arrested after a student accused them of sexually assaulting her in a school restroom, but charges were dropped after the boys said the sex was consensual and the girl recanted.

"Students would have intercourse on the stairwells, locked classrooms, in the locker rooms," said Ihsan Musawwir, 18, a recent graduate of Dunbar Senior High School in the District. "It was embarrassing for me to walk in on it."

Jessica Miller, 19, who graduated in June from T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, said that for some students there, sex on campus is a popular fantasy -- and sometimes a reality -- particularly in the auditorium.

"It's so big, it's so dark," Miller said. "There's a lot more places to find privacy -- behind the stage and on the catwalk."

But what's the appeal? "Just being rebellious," she said. "Coming back to class and saying, 'Ooh, guess what I just did? I just had sex in the auditorium.' "

Deborah Roffman, a Baltimore-based sexuality educator, said she has been hearing more about similar occurrences in the past five years. "Schools are calling me, asking, 'What do we do? We've had this incident at our school.' "

The fact that teenagers have sex is well established: Roughly half of all 15- to 19-year-olds have had vaginal intercourse, and more than half have had oral sex, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But getting a handle on the reasons students are emboldened to risk having sex at school is as tricky as figuring out how many are doing it. Musawwir, the Dunbar graduate, who has helped lead teen forums on sex, said she thinks students have sex in school because they have nowhere else to go. "And it's the thrill of getting caught or not. And the media has a lot of things to do with it. They think that if they see it on TV, they can get away with it in real life."

What is shocking is that many schools are finding out that they don't even have such situations covered in their handbook or district policies.

Many schools don't have rules specifically banning sex on campus but punish students who do it through a clause prohibiting "immoral conduct" or behavior that offends the community's morals, said Naomi Gittins, a staff attorney at the National School Boards Association. Gittins added that more specific policies would make it easier for schools to defend themselves against legal challenges.

Gotta love that -- the rules are needed not to prevent exploitation, not to encourage proper behavior, not to encourage morality, but rather to use as a legal shield! Where are our priorities?

So, folks, what do you think? Do your really believe that it isn't happening at your schools? Do you really think it isn't your kids? And what would do you think should be done?

Posted by: Greg at 11:46 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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