Dive Brief:

• The University of Tennessee’s president and Tennessee legislators are trading public missives over the school’s student-run “Sex Week.”
• A letter from the state senate’s education chairwoman and senate government operations chairman says that new funding for the university could be threatened unless the school puts an end to Sex Week.
• In response, a letter from the university's president says that, by focusing attention on the issue, lawmakers are going to cause more damage to the school than Sex Week itself. Plus, the First Amendment won’t allow the school to stop the event.

Dive Insight:

Question: Don’t college students have anything better to do than talk about sex? Answer: Definitely not. Sex Week is organized by students to promote an “academically-informed” discussion of sex, sexuality, and relationships, with seminars and speakers. Tennessee Republicans have taken issue with seminars on pornography and a contraceptive scavenger hunt. The public letter writing between University of Tennessee President Joe DiPietro and Senate Education Chairwoman Dolores Gresham and Senate Government Operations Chairman Mike Bell comes after, according to the president, him working in good faith with concerned legislators. Proposed legislation would limit or ban funding for outside speakers, and that would be a blow to the university at a time when it is trying to boost its research credentials, according to the AP. Students sent a petition with 3,500 signatures to the lawmakers urging them not to try to stop Sex Week.