This Tuesday, for the first time since the student-run community service group Aids and Sexual Health Awareness (ASHA) began running a free STI clinic at Wesleyan five years ago, Middletown residents will have the opportunity to receive testing. Keeping in step with National Sexual Assault Awareness month and ASHA’s goals, the upcoming event at Green Street Arts Center on Main St. is intended to encourage safe sex practices on and beyond campus.

Before this year, the service was offered exclusively to the Wesleyan community and was run out of Eclectic.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I think at Wesleyan, for whatever reason, it’s been the trend that people get really excited about it,” said head of ASHA Ari Tolman ’10.

The decision to move the event from Eclectic to Green Street and to expand beyond campus came in part as a way to continue receiving funding for the initiative following last year’s round of testing, when not a single one of the 217 students tested received a positive result.

“I think Wesleyan is generally a pretty sexually active campus, but also apparently a pretty safe campus, and that’s really great,” Tolman said. “But the fact that there wasn’t one positive test puts the state in a weird position as to why they are providing all these resources to our student body.”

Tolman hopes that opening the clinic to the Middletown community will attract residents who could not usually afford STI testing.

“People like to be in control, and to be knowledgeable about their sexual health so that they can make better choices,” she said. “But STI testing can be really expensive, not only for students but for a lot of people. I see this as a service that helps create a healthy culture.”

Testing will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with Office of Community Service vans shuttling students from Usdan to Green Street every half hour.