More Houses Approve Condom Machines

By lopsided margins, three more houses and the freshman class have approved installation of condom machines in bathrooms or laundry rooms.

As yet, no house that has voted has rejected the machines, whose installation was first suggested by The Undergraduate Council in a resolution last month.

The most recent additions mean that the residents of Adams, Cabot, Dunster, Eliot, Leverett, Lowell, Mather and North have all approved the move, either at house committee meetings or in house-wide referendums. Freshmen also voted in favor of installing the machines at a special meeting organized by the Freshman Council.

Winthrop residents will vote in a referendum this week. and Kirkland and Quincyhouse committees are still discussing the issue.Dudley house committee approved of the idea butdecided that condom machines would be uselessbecause Dudley is nonresidential.

When all of the house committees have decidedwhether or not to install the machines, theUndergraduate Council will negotiate with a condomcompany on behalf of all of the undergraduatedormitories where the machines have been approved,said Ken E. Lee '89, council vice chairman. "We'dlike to have them in by early next semester," Leesaid.

Condom vendors, like soft drink and snackvendors, provide and maintain the machines at nocharge in exchange for a percentage of theprofits. The initial council resolution requireshouse committees to donate their share of theproceeds to a fund for AIDS research.

The decision to allow the council to installthe machines was unanimous at Leverett House andencountered very little opposition at Lowell andDunster. But debate was sharp at Eliot housecommittee where the vote came out at 22-11, saidchairman David A. Isaacs '88.

Very few people showed up at a special meetingin Mather to discuss the machines, said Sunny C.Kim '88, Mather house committee chairman.

"The people who were there were really divided.So we decided to have a referendum to get a reallygood sense of how the community felt," Kim said.

Mather's weekly newspaper. The ConcreteAbstract, devoted eight pages to statements on theissue, and students voted 176-52 in favor ofinstalling the machines, she said.

Many of the people who objected to the vendingmachines were concerned that they would be viewedpurely as a convenience rather than an educationalreminder about the danger of AIDS. house committeechairmen said.

As a result. Dunster house committee decidedthat if the council does not launch an educationalcampaign about AIDS when the machines areinstalled, the house committee will do so, saidchairman Ken L. Chernof '88.

Although virtually all of the freshmen whoattended the meeting about the condom machinesfavored installation, they disagreed on where toput them, said Noam Bramson '91, the UndergraduateCouncil member who proposed installing themachines.

Freshmen "worried about 24-hour access arguedthat laundry rooms might not be the best place"because laundry rooms in freshman dorms are lockedafter 1 a.m.. said Bramson, adding, "But if youare worried about invasion of privacy, [puttingthe machines in] bathrooms might be going a bittoo far."

Since upperclass rooms rarely have common hallbathrooms and most house laundry rooms are openall night, most house committees decided to putthe vending machines in or near the laundry rooms