Two hundred sixty-nine pages.
That’s the length of a new report put out Wednesday by the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office on “Sex Week,” the annual sex education program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
The report gives the state legislature and the university options to address the controversial event. Those recommendations range from the legislature banning the program altogether to simply ignoring it.
Most likely, what UT-Knoxville will end up doing is somewhere in between.
Interim President Randy Boyd said the university will re-examine how it allocates money to Sex Week. He told reporters he could be supportive of more programming that addresses issues like sexual assault.
“We can work with our students to provide content that address that,” Boyd said. “I think we can find a lot of common ground.”
More: Read the Tennessee comptroller’s report on “Sex Week“
Four other public universities in Tennessee have similar events, but the one at UT-Knoxville has been the center of a nearly annual battle at the state Capitol.
“The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, unlike any of our other universities which happened to have Sex Week as well, is really for Tennessee is our face to the world,” said Dolores Gresham, the chair of the Senate Education Committee.
In the past, “Sex Week” programming at UT-Knoxville included seminars that addressed patriarchy, religion and sexuality. A condom scavenger hunt has also been part of the event.
The legislature has tried to prevent “Sex Week” by taking different actions, such as prohibiting the use of state dollars to support the event.
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