KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The student organization that runs Sex Week at UT is responding to a report about the event from state investigators.
State lawmakers called on the Comptroller's office to investigate sex week, and it released its findings in a 269-paged report on Wednesday.
The report found university officials didn't do enough to address lawmakers' concerns about the event.
Megan Henley is a co-chair of SEAT, or Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee, which runs Sex Week. She says the group feels mischaracterized by the report.
"I think we've always felt a little mischaracterized by our state legislature, no matter how much support we have on campus, in the Knoxville community, from our faculty, our professors," Henley said.
Henley said SEAT has worked with administrators throughout the year. SEAT released a statement Thursday that reads in part, "We have always treated human sexuality as a topic of utmost intellectual importance. Our programming has been and is still largely put on by professionals, doctors and professors."
Sex week began in 2013 and has drawn criticism from lawmakers and others.
The state Comptroller's report found that Sex Week got the highest allocation of funding from student activity fees in the past four out of five years.
The report found in 2018, 694 people attended one of the events, out of a student body of more than 28,000 students.
Right now, students have the option to opt out of paying for student programming in general if they do not want to pay for sex week.
That's what junior Jack Huddleston did.
"I know that that money could potentially go to things that I don't agree with, like Sex Week," Huddleston said.
The Comptroller's policy considerations recommended UT change this method so that administrators have more oversight of how student groups get funding instead.
When that change takes place, Henley says Sex Week will adapt.
"We are willing to work with a new system, and we are willing to help put our input into that and to work with it and to work with administrators to develop it, to ensure that all student programming is allowed to ask for funding, get the funding that it deserves and needs," Henley said.
The UT Board of Trustees will discuss the Comptroller's policy considerations at its meeting on March 1.