Tennessee state lawmakers are pushing a bill that would cut funding to the University of Tennessee in order to fund “In God We Trust” bumper stickers. The reason: they don’t agree with students spending non-state dollars on a student-organized “Sex Week.”
Sex Week has been a point of controversy for years at the UT campus. Sex Week is held annually on campus by the student group called Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee (SEAT). The idea is to educate students through a week of activities on topics of sex and sexuality, gender identity, sex-positivity, diversity, abstinence, body image, sexual relationships and inclusivity.
According to the Huffington Post, lawmakers have requested for students to “cease and desist” the week. State Rep. Kevin Brooks told Fox News that they now need to “legislate” over it because students have refused. To be exact, the HB2248 bill suggests cutting $436,700 from UT Knoxville’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
The bill also pushes to use those cut funds to promote “In God We Trust” stickers for the back of police vehicles.
The catch is that state money actually doesn’t fund Sex Week. Student programming fees do. In essence, the bill does not defund “Sex Week” so much as threaten UT’s overall funds to pressure students into stopping the week. The Huffington Post reported that Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said, “Sex Week clearly constitutes protected speech.” Legislators are “trying to twist the University of Tennessee’s arm into censoring its students…but when they start threatening funding, they’re chilling speech.”
UT Student and co-chair of SEAT, Colleen Ryan told the Huffington Post, “It would be a violation of our free speech to tell us we can’t have these events on campus.” She went on to say, “We’re the ones who walk around campus every day and know friends who have been sexually assaulted, we’re the ones who have friends who would not be on campus without the Office for Diversity and Inclusion…It seems like the state should listen to the students a little more if they’re going to keep inserting themselves into university politics.”
Although the lawmakers threaten the freedom of speech of students, Rep. James “Micah” Van Huss, who drafted HB2248, said that the bill absolutely does not threaten free speech rights. The bill is scheduled to go before the Tennessee House Finance, Ways & Means committee Wednesday.
According to the Huffington Post, Van Huss said, “Nothing opens the closed minds of administrators faster than the sound of pocket books closing.” I don’t know about you, but the bill sounds like it threatens freedom of speech AND a safer campus for students.