Although it lost more than $11,000 of its budget, “Sex Week” will continue relatively as planned.
After Chancellor Jimmy Cheek announced that $11,145 from academic programs and departments would be pulled from “Sex Week,” a campaign for additional funds through student programming and private donations has allowed the week-long event to continue on course.
Brianna Rader, a junior College Scholar and co-founder of Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee (SEAT), said that nothing has been changed on the schedule or canceled.
“Everything’s going on as planned,” she said. “It’s just been very difficult. We’ve had to jump through lots of hoops. We’ve had to fundraise over half our budget as private donations now.”
Coordinated by SEAT, “Sex Week” is a series of events going through April 5-12, featuring speakers, panels and discussions on a variety of sexual topics. Some of those topics include transgender issues, how to discuss sex issues with your doctor and HIV.
Earlier this month, however, state senator Stacey Campfield took issue with some of the “Sex Week’s” more provocative discussions and that state tax dollars were being used to help fund the week-long event.
After Campfield suggested that the university’s budget should be reviewed, Cheek sent out a press release stating that $11,145 from academic programs and departments would be pulled from “Sex Week.” The student programming money, amounting to $6,700, would be allowed to remain.
After the letter was released, there was an outpouring of private donations from students and supporters abroad. In a little more than 24 hours, SEAT announced that they had made up enough of their budget to continue “Sex Week.”
Aside from the private donations, SEAT also applied for additional funds from student programming, which they initially received.
Because of the outpouring of money coming from private donations, Jacob Clark, co-founder of SEAT and a junior in College Scholars, said that SEAT agreed to only use the additional student funding as needed. However, SEAT has recently been told that the additional money that they applied for and had been granted can no longer be used.
“We applied for more of it, we got what we needed from it, and then they took that away again,” Clark said. “It’s like that never happened. It’s like it disappeared.”
Clark said that they were able to keep a small amount of it and SEAT can reapply to get the additional funding today. However, today is also the day that SEAT needs to place orders for the things that money would purchase, so Clark said that SEAT’s concern is whether they should even bother going through with the application process.
Despite the difficulties, the thousands of dollars from private donations have enabled SEAT to save “Sex Week.” Clark said that the major change of plans is that SEAT cannot afford items like promotional materials and information pamphlets that were going to be available at each event.
But it is those private donations that keep SEAT members like Rader and Clark encouraged about “Sex Week” and its purpose.
“I think it’s a testament to what we are doing,” Clark said. “If people didn’t believe in what we’re doing or want it to happen, we wouldn’t have had that much money pour in.”
Rader shared Clark’s sentiment.
“The fact that we were able to raise that much money in a very short amount of time means that people want this event,” Rader said. “And they feel strongly about the money being pulled in the first place. …”
The fact that “Sex Week” and its funding issues has gotten so much national attention (from outlets such as Fox News, Cosmopolitan, Time, The Nation, Huffington Post and Al Jazeera), also shows Rader and Clark that their efforts are worthwhile.
“The fact that it’s getting national attention means that it’s important,” Rader said. “It makes me feel fulfilled that we’re working so hard on this. If it’s positive publicity then it’s great for us because they’re advertising our event for free.”
Clark had a more ironic view on the national coverage, noting that it was a huge publicity boost and was due in large part to Chancellor Cheek.
“It’s been a really big pain to deal with all of this,” Clark said. “But if anybody did us a favor as far as publicity, it’s been the chancellor by pulling funding.”
For more information about “Sex Week” and its schedule, visit http://sexweekut.org/
