Like UT, ETSU Students Want Their Own 'Sex Week'

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn.—Last year, we wrote about the consternation among anti-porn types over plans to throw another Sex Week at the University of Tennessee in Nashville, which culminated in state legislators passing a non-binding resolution condemning the event. Now, students at their kissing cousin campus a few hundred miles to the east, East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, want their own Sex Week, and it is anticipated that similar anxiety may result. According to student newspaper The Daily Beacon, the school's student government president is concerned about even having an event called "Sex Week," which appears to be so toxic that the state legislature also toyed with the idea of outlawing the events while also threatening to hold back funding from the institution. That was clearly on the mind of ETSU SGA President Doretha Benn when she told the Beacon, "The UT situation is very concerning. We're focusing on health, communication and education. I don't think 'Sex Week' would be the appropriate title, because it doesn't necessarily grasp the whole concept we are trying to go for." While ETSU doesn't have a Sex Week program planned yet, it does have a student and Sex Week advocate named Max Carwile, who gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from Nickie Hackenbrack, senior in biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology and co-chair of Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee (SEAT), who told the Beacon, "Max has a fantastic group of people already at ETSU that I know will put together a Sex Week that is tailored to ETSU's needs and interests. People see the word 'sex' and make assumptions about what we are trying to accomplish. In reality, we do not presume that anyone is or is not having sex and talking about sex is not emphatically encouraging sexual activities. I suspect that ETSU's biggest challenge will be similar." Students at the school plan to meet again this month to go over plans for the event, which Carville said will hopefully be up and running in February, offering a program that he said would probably look at lot different than the one put together by UT students, though with a similar focus on three main three essential elements of sex: health, communication and pleasure. Stay tuned...