The University of Tennessee, Knoxville wanted to sponsor “Sex Week,” a six-day campaign funded publicly and by student fees. Students could participate in a condom scavenger hunt, workshops on gender roles and poetry readings on gender and sexuality.
The cost for this sexual health campaign? Just less than $20,000. Student fees cover $6,700, but $11,145 would come from state funding — and, ultimately, taxpayers’ pockets. When Fox News broke the details of Sex Week in an editorial, Tenn. Sen. Stacey Campfield and Rep. Bill Dunn called for UT-Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Creek to pull state funding from the campaign. Even after signing off on Sex Week, Creek dropped state funding for the events.
Closer to home, Boston College administrators shut down a student organization that distributed free condoms and literature on sexual health. This begs the question: How much responsibility should a university’s administration assume in promoting sexual health and awareness? Is it the students’ responsibility to choose a school that best caters to their social needs? Or should administrators transform with general student opinion?
The majority of a college experience is not centered on the content of lectures, but by a cultural experience with classmates. Not every BC student is catholic, but it is clear that it is primarily a Jesuit institution and policies will shift toward Catholic opinions. UT-Knoxville may have some liberal students, but the taxpayers that help pay their tuition lean right in regards to sexual discourse.
The content of UT-Knoxville’s Sex Week is not the only issue. Each of the activities culminated to a pretty hefty price tag, most of which is paid for by the state. There should be oversight on the general opinions of the public when taxpayers are contributing to the school. There is a certain degree of validity that sex awareness is important for young people, but students should be exposed to more workshops such as STI information sessions, instead of an oral sex workshop called “How many licks does it take?” Although the latter may appeal to the student, when the funds are coming from conservative voters, these sorts of activities should be vetted closely.
This does, however, exemplify the problems in the lack of sexual discourse to discussions of total abstinence as the definitive answer. At schools such as Northwestern University, Sex Week offers events for every possible niche between fetishists and sadomasochists. We are in an age where college students are more accepting of what-was-once taboo. The planned events elucidate different sexualities and gender opinions, and this type of discourse intrigues college students. But maybe they shouldn’t be having the conversation on the taxpayers’ dollars.
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