This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah universities rank among the nation's worst when it comes to accessibility to sexual-health resources and information available to students on campus.
A study sponsored by the makers of Trojan Brand Condoms and conducted by Sperling's Best Places ranked the University of Utah 102nd, down from 54th last year; Utah State 119th, down from 103rd; and Utah Valley University 129th, up a notch from 130th.
LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University was dead last at 140, the same position it held the previous two years.
Oregon State finished first, followed by the University of Texas, the University of Maryland, the University of Arizona and Stanford.
The Pac-12 led all athletic conferences, with three schools in the top 10.
The Ivy League and Big 10 tied for second, with two apiece, while the Big 12, ACC and Big East rounded out the top 10 with one each.
The dismal showings by BYU and UVU could be chalked up to more students practicing abstinence in conservative Utah County, where those schools reside. But a previous study revealed skyrocketing rates of sexually transmitted diseases there.
A few years ago, Sen. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, tried to make it easier for public school teachers to talk about contraceptives in sex-education classes, but his bill failed after Utah Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka opposed it.
Bangla-Utah? • A recent piece in Business Insider featured a map from Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute's that "puts America's $16 trillion economy in some global perspective."
The map compares the gross domestic product of U.S. states with the GDPs of other nations. It then puts the name of each nation in the state with which it has a comparable GDP.
California, for example, is renamed Italy. Texas is Australia and New York is Mexico.
Nevada is Iraq, Arizona is Hong Kong, New Mexico is Ecuador, Colorado is Chile, Wyoming is Serbia and Idaho is Croatia.
And Utah? Bangladesh.
Utah-Bama • The Washington Examiner recently published an analysis by Facebook's data team examining the posts of English speakers in the United States and creating a map of the most distinctive things they found in each state.
When posters were asked what they were most thankful for, Texans said rain, Louisianians listed rainbows, Californians pointed to YouTube and Coloradans put down freedom of speech.
In Utah — and Idaho — the consensus was "Heavenly Father," which put the Mormon-dominant Beehive State in the same company as the South's Bible Belt. In Alabama, it was "God's forgiveness." In Georgia, it was "God's word." In South Carolina and North Carolina, it was "salvation." And, in Tennessee, it was "God's love."
Utah's neighboring states of Nevada and Wyoming said country music. Folks in Oregon liked yoga the best.