The "Giving Tree" stands at ten inches tall. The trunk is made up of cardboard and the branches are green colored condoms. The tree was one of many projects created to entice students to have safe sex.

Alyah Schneider and her partner, Adriana Riezato, were one of the many groups working on their latex projects in Jack Adams Hall on Tuesday. The projects were displayed on the Quad during Multicultural AIDS Awareness Day.

"Just to talk and feel and be around [condoms] is enough to get the elephant out of the room," Schneider said, referring to safe sex.

The Educational and Referral Organization for Sexuality provided Jack Adams Hall and the necessary materials for the project's success.

Nataly Gomez, a health educator for EROS, said that the importance of the project is what motivates them to keep providing the room and the materials every semester.

Gomez added that even though the project is intended to be light-hearted, there are serious messages students can take away from it as well.

"It opens the door in talking about sex with their partners and classmates they are working with," Gomez said.

Students assigned to making the projects are also challenged merely by having to ask for the much needed and controversial paraphernalia.

"The importance is to get students into the habit of asking for condoms," Gomez said. "Just to have some sense as what that feels like."

Jordan Hodgson now knows the feeling quite well. His first time asking for condoms was for this project.

"It was a big step, I didn't want to make eye contact with the person in there," Hodgson said.

This is exactly what Gomez envisioned happening.

"We have students who come very shyly and quickly ask for condoms. They come in and rush out," she said. "This is the experience we want to see, the shyest person actually asking for a condom."

But Noelle Willson's challenge wasn't in the asking. It was finding the perfect condoms for her project that was hard.

Her project consisted of wrapping various fruit in the appropriately colored condom.

To find colored condoms, Willson searched unsuccessfully at three different sex shops in the East Bay. Finally, she found them at a peep show.

"It made me step out of my boundaries if only because they had some hardcore porn," Willson said.

Lena Gallaghr and Eli Chavez' group played it safe instead. Their project consist of Obama's iconic "hope" image covered in condoms.

Chavez said that the purpose of their project was to motivate students to "hope for better sex."

Other projects in the room focused more on irony.

Stephanie Britten and Meredith Lada tried to recreate the Trojan horse battle scene using Trojan condoms.

Though the assignment isn't a contest, Britten was quite confident of their projects' success.

"First place!" Britten said of her project.