New smartphone app is not ‘Good2Go’

The newly developed smartphone application Good2Go was created as a way for college students and young adults to communicate whether a pair should engage in sexual activity.

The number of sexual assaults on college campuses sparked the idea for the app, which was created by Lee Ann Allman and seven other parents of young adults. Recent questions about content have caused the Apple Store to drop the app, but its creators are determined to see its return.

After opening the app, a user is asked if they are “Good2Go” and then sent to their partner is asked the same question. When answering, the application will continue to ask the user his or her level of sobriety with four options to pick from. If “pretty wasted” is the answer chosen, the app will not allow the user to give consent to their partner.

“Why do we even need this app?,” asked Alison Lutz, a gender and women’s studies major. “Why is the issue of consent so difficult to comprehend that we need our phones to tell us?”

With this app, there are three options to the question of whether a partner is good to go — “No, thanks;” “Yes, but we need to talk;” “I’m Good2Go.” If the first option is chosen the partner is reminded, “Remember! No means No! Only yes means yes but can be changed to no at anytime!”

Esther Chery, a human development and family relations major, reminds the campus on a regular basis that consent is a sober, on-going “Yes” between a person and another. As a peer educator, Chery and the rest of the educators do presentations to different classrooms, groups and organizations on campus to raise awareness of alcohol abuse, emotional and sexual violence, mental health and other awareness throughout the year.

“I don’t think there is really a necessity to have an app to have proper communication between you and your partner,” Chery said. “If there is a moment that you don’t want to do a particular action, I don’t think you need to select it.”

She said she believes the best way to communicate is with words, and it is more effective that having an application to click on between partners.

Scott Sheehan, resident director of Macdonough Hall, agrees with Chery and Lutz. He said he believes as long as people understand what consent is then we shouldn’t need the app.

His concern with the app, he said, is that it is possible that either someone answers one way but is thinking another, or the possibility of an outside party responding for one side of the partnership.

“I would advise them to think about consent when it comes to a relationship,” he said. “If you are in a relationship and you’re partner doesn’t understand [if you don’t want to act], then maybe they aren’t the person you should be with.”

As of Oct. 8, the application was pulled from the Apple Store because it was deemed “excessively objectionable or crude.” To recreate Good2Go, Allman and the other creators are opening comments and suggestions to making the next version more “successful and useful” to its users to continue the conversation of consent, particulary among college students.

“The fact that it exists is a testament to people’s desire to find a solution to the epidemic problem of sexual assault and rape on college campuses,” Lutz said.

Email Lisa Scivolette at lisa.scivolette@cardinalpointsonline.com.