Precious Jewels is a Christian-based group with an average of 20 women who support sexual abstinence until marriage. “I know that on college campuses there’s a lot of peer pressure to have premarital sex,” Dekeshia Anderson, pre-physical therapy junior from Benton, said. “I abstained from sex, and I know other girls abstained from sex, and I just wanted a group of girls to be able to come together and be a support to each other.”

The Precious Jewels meet once a week, usually on Thursdays in the Donald G. Bollinger Memorial Student Union at 6:30 p.m. in the Plantation Suite or in the Captain’s Room, depending on which is available.

Ahmad Alexander, communicative disorders senior from Thiboudaux, founded Brothers in Christ, which is basically the same type of group as Precious Jewels except it is for males.

Anderson was not in a group like this in high school. “I wish there was something like this in high school for girls,” Anderson said, “because high school is where you start to get all of your information and start to get curious about stuff.”

The group’s mission statement says that “Precious Jewels is a diverse union of young women growing through God and abstaining from sexual immoralities through friendship, fun and support.”

Anderson said there are many negative aspects of college, but with such a positive group like Precious Jewels, women won’t be influenced by the negativities if they can be influenced by the positive that the group gives.

“You don’t have to have sex to have fun or to be included,” Anderson said.

Not every woman in the group is a virgin. “We’re not claiming to be perfect; we do make mistakes,” Anderson said. “Our goal is to become better people and to do things the right way not only morally, but based on Christian standards.”

The group also holds Bible studies and scripture readings on Thursday mornings. They also try to attend different activities together such as football games, and they even had their own T-shirts made.

“You can be friends with a lot of people, but not all of them can relate like this on a Christian level,” Whitney Yarbrough, freshman from Baton Rouge, said.

“We wanted to create a group of girls that can come together and have the same purpose as us who are supporting abstinence until marriage while still having fun and fellowship with the girls,” Megan Archer, mass communication sophomore from Cut Off, said. “We wanted an outlet for girls who feel the way we do to come too.”

Founders, Anderson and Cynthia Williams, family and consumer science sophmores from Florida were not sure, at first, how many girls would come to the meetings and really stay true to the group, but now they have a group of 20 committed girls. “(With) a lot of them, we didn’t know what area in their life they were in, but I really feel like from this group, we are helping these girls grow, and at the same time they are helping us grow as well,” Archer said.

“I feel that we can gain support from one another,” Rachel Dyers, health care management sophomore from New Orleans, said. “It is very difficult on this campus to be abstinent and for girls to feel that it is okay to be abstinent. So with a group of girls that is supporting one another and just being friends and building fellowships together, we feel that we have one another to fall on and keep us accountable so that we don’t fall.”

Archer said that the group knows that abstinence is not popular right now; but it is the right choice to make, so they wanted a group that women could go to.

“If we all have the same beliefs, we can all help one another whenever one of us feels like we are falling,” Dyers said.

“Out of this group, I’m really getting a lot of friendships,” Erika James, freshman from Shreveport, said. “Some of us girls are incoming freshman, so with this group we gain friendship with people that have the same beliefs and values as we do. It really helps a lot when we have these girls that believe what we believe.”

Precious Jewels plans on spreading to different high schools around the area. “Girls in high school are facing the same situations that we are facing in college,” Archer said. “We just want to talk to them, see what they are going through and help them also.