UConn’s Student Health and Wellness introduce gloveBOX, a free condom delivery service for on-campus students. Photo by RoseBox رز باکس on Unsplash
In an age when anything can be shipped to your doorstep, Student Health and Wellness has you covered (literally) with gloveBOX, their new, free condom delivery service.
GloveBOX is a subscription service provided by Student Health and Wellness that delivers boxes of safer sex supplies to students. It is a free service for UConn students, and those who order the boxes can pick them up in their mailroom. As of now, gloveBOX is delivering to most on-campus housing with the exception of the Mansfield Apartments, Northwood Apartments, Birch Cottage and Spring Valley Farm (since these areas use a different mail line than most other on-campus residential areas) and does not deliver to any off-campus housing.
The goal of gloveBOX is to make safer sex supplies more accessible to students, Cassy Setzler, a Health and Wellness Specialist and the UConn Sexperts Advisor, said. She also mentioned that the program is in line with Health and Wellness’s new “health promotion” model of engaging students in learning about how to lead healthy, safe lives.
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“People say it’s so new and exciting, and in the world of Amazon Prime, it’s more normal too – Anika Vincent”
“We wanted a way for people to access safer sex supplies easily without having them have to come in to our office,” Setzler said. “Students still can come to our office to pick up supplies, but especially for those that can’t make it or maybe they do want something a little bit more discreet, we wanted an option for them too.”
Setzler also touted the service’s wide variety of options, noting that having a choice of safer sex supplies usually encourages students to be safer.
There are five different boxes that students can select from. According to Setzler, the most popular box so far has been the “Choose-Your-Own” box, which allows students to select 20 condoms from a wide variety available, five packets of lube, one tube of flavored lube and five dental dams, female condoms or gloves. The second most popular option has been the Mystery box (essentially a premade version of the “Choose-Your-Own”), although a Larger-Size box, Non-Latex box and “No Glove” box (which offers everything except male condoms) are all available.
The program was brainstormed last semester when Setzler and Anika Vincent, a third-semester management information systems major and coordinator of the UConn Sexperts, were thinking of creative ways to provide safer sex supplies. They had heard about condom delivery services at colleges like Boston University and Southern Connecticut State University and wanted to bring the service to the University of Connecticut.
“People say it’s so new and exciting, and in the world of Amazon Prime, it’s more normal too,” Vincent said of having condoms delivered straight to students.
Already the demand for the service is higher than expected. There have been over 200 orders so far, and the first set of boxes is set to be shipped out today.
In the future, Setzler and Vincent would like to see the program be able to deliver to all on-campus housing. The two would also like to possibly implement a pick-up time when students who live off-campus could pick up a box in the Health and Wellness office.
Students can subscribe to gloveBOX (or order just one box) by filling out an online order form at https://studenthealth.uconn.edu/glovebox/.
Stephanie Santillo is a staff writer for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at stephanie.santillo@uconn.edu.