‘Sex Week’ has come and gone, but the controversy surrounding the event still lingers.

As the Tennessee state Senate session closed last Friday, Republican state Sen. Stacey Campfield, who has been an outspoken opponent of ‘Sex Week,’ weighed in on the program’s performance and its future.

“Is that the best place we can put our money?” Campfield asked. “Is that where the majority of students wanted their funds to go to? Is that what people who pay student activities fees are dying to have? Or were they saying, ‘Hey, is this what we have to have our student activities pay for? Is this what our state tax dollars should be paid for?'”

For Campfield, the representative for Tennessee’s 7th District (which encompasses UT’s campus), the main issue with ‘Sex Week’ was the nearly $8,000 of funding from student programming fees devoted to scandalous event content.

“For a long time, I’ve thought that the student programming fees were really just a boondoggle for a couple people to play and have their little fetish things with, or whatever,” Campfield said. “… Look at the people who partake versus the number of people that have to pay for it, then what you really have is a small number of people spending the money for everybody on their own little personal things, whatever they may be.”

Jacob Clark, who co-created Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee (SEAT), the student organization that put on ‘Sex Week,’ sees Campfield’s view as a bastardization of the student programming fees allocation process.

“Student programming fees are available to any group that applies for them,” Clark, a junior in the College Scholars program, said. “Now, not every group gets to use them, it depends on how well put together their program is and what kind of success the program can see. The funds are there for students to decide what they’re used for, and I can’t think of a more appropriate way to spend program and services fees than allowing students to decide what it’s used for.”

Not only do the coordinators of ‘Sex Week’ view the process of fee allocation as equitable, but, according to Brianna Rader, the other co-creator of SEAT, it’s just a fact of life on this campus.

“I don’t think people who are making that argument understand the consequences of student programing fees, including the new University Center and the new Student Union use student programming fees,” Rader, who is also a junior in the College Scholars program, said. “Everyone pays a study abroad fee, but not nearly every student studies abroad, and yet every student pays that five dollars.”

“Unfortunately, not every fee in life will go to something that you agree with, but that’s the whole point of student programming fees.”

Regardless of the fee’s allocation process, Campfield feels that the issue with ‘Sex Week’ begins and ends with the nature of the talks.

“I don’t think it’s an appropriate issue for people to be talking about,” Campfield said. “We shouldn’t be forced to pay for somebody’s drag show. I don’t think that’s something that parents when they send their kids to college are hoping that the tuition and activities fees they pay to fund a drag show or a seminar on ‘How Many Licks Does it Take.'”

Rader and Clark, however, disagree vehemently with the senator’s take on the events, which he had categorized as being a “perversion party” in the past.

“These were not salacious and titillating events, these were educational and informative,” Clark said. “People came to these events pursuing more knowledge, and that was evident by how attentively they listened to the speaker and the questions they asked.

“I don’t think that’s perversion, I think that’s a quest for knowledge.”

This “quest for knowledge” was something that Rader felt UT’s campus needed, due to the state’s low sexual health scores.

“I’m a science major, so I’m not into opinions,” Rader said. “In reports done by the Health Department and the CDC, you can see that we’re in the bottom 10 of almost every category. So I don’t think everybody already knows the information.”

Ultimately, the issue for both sides came down to perception and whether or not ‘Sex Week’ was an educational activity.

For the coordinators of the event, the answer rests in ‘Sex Week’s’ mission statement, which Clark summed up as being centered around openness and education.

“‘Sex Week’s’ mission is to create and foster open dialogue around sexuality and gender,” he said. “It’s to start that conversation to get to the root of why we have poor sexual health, poor sexual awareness and high instances of sexual assault.”

This, however, is not how Campfield sees the event.

“That’s just a ruse,” he said. “… It was about oral-sex seminars, ‘How to Spice Up Your Sex Life,’ the drag show and ‘How Many Licks Does it Take.’ You can yell about the good things you did, but what it came down to was an S&M queen doing a bondage seminar.”

Regardless of which side of the fence someone falls on in respect to ‘Sex Week,’ Clark and Rader have accomplished one of the goals they set forward, as a new conversation has certainly been started about the merits of sex education in Tennessee public institutions.

This conversation is guaranteed to be continued by both sides as plans for next year’s ‘Sex Week’ are already in the works.

“We will be asking for state funding next year,” Rader promised. “And we think there will be some options for us to be able to do that next year.”