Sex at School Increasing, Some Educators Say

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."

For example, the popular movie "Mean Girls" -- a comedy about clique warfare in high school -- showed a girl in a bra and skirt making out with a guy in briefs in the school auditorium's projection room.

Cpl. Michael Rudinski, president of the Maryland Association of School Resource Officers, said teenagers do whatever they think their peers are doing, whether they are or not. "The thing about young people is when they see things in the mass media and they think it's going on, they start doing it."

A 16-year-old who said she is friends with one of the girls at Osbourn who was suspended said the episode wasn't surprising. "It wasn't that big of a deal," she said. But she said her friend "regrets what she did. She knows it wasn't a smart thing to do. But everybody whispering about her doesn't help."

Not all teenagers accept such incidents as "no big deal." A few nights after the Osbourn news broke, students from T.C. Williams, standing in a drizzle to cheer on a girls field hockey game, pronounced it "weird" and "embarrassing."

"What do you call it -- orgies?" 17-year-old senior Emilie Jackson said, giggling as she tried to come up with the word. "They don't happen. That's not normal teenage behavior."

"I would just wonder, like, what's going through their heads -- like, 'Okay, guys, let's meet at 3:30 behind the curtain?' " she said.

It can be hard to police everything that goes on at school, especially after hours, when club meetings, sports practices and rehearsals take place. In many schools, hall monitors and other adults stay late to make sure students are there for legitimate reasons.

But even adults do not always know how to handle the sex issue. An Anne Arundel teacher said he found two students having sex last year on the wrestling mats in a high school auxiliary gym. The teacher, who declined to be named, said he didn't report the couple because he was worried about repercussions for them -- or himself.

"I've seen and heard situations when you don't have support. These stories come back and kick you in the face," said the teacher, who is in his thirties.

He said he doesn't think an adult's word is worth as much as it used to be. "Kids have a voice or whatever, which is great, but at the same time, you see [teachers] who step up and say something and they get mashed."