8 minute read
Sharing your story
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Serving as the fi rst event for the Dean of Students’ Mattering & Belonging campaign, students, faculty and staff shared their stories through Dear World on Thursday, September 12. UT community members gathered in the Student Union art gallery to have their photo taken with various words and phrases written on their upper body. These written phrases shared a story or impactful moment in the participant’s life, with the line to participate steadily growing throughout the day.
Priding itself on being “home sweet home,” Dean of Students Shea Kidd Houze decided to start the Mattering & Belonging campaign, which is also known as “Vol is a Verb,” to cultivate inclusivity in the campus environment on Rocky Top and to instill mattering and belonging as central themes to the campus experience. “The campaign is designed as a collective call to action so that all of us that are a part of the [campus] can ensure that Rocky Top is a place where all students matter and belong,” Kidd Houze told the Daily Beacon before the event.
“As we thought about the various ways we could engage our community, we continued to come back to this notion that the Volunteer Experience is active and tactile. So in order to make our campus one where everyone belongs, it takes all of us,” Kidd Houze added.
A large part of “Vol is a Verb” includes encouraging students to share their personal stories, allowing them to connect their experience with the wider UT community and spreading a message of positivity as students bond over shared experiences.
“The big thing is to cultivate a campus climate where every student’s story is valued and has signifi cance,” Kidd Houze said. “When we think about a sense of belonging, we really think about the importance of an individual’s story and how that fi ts into the volunteer experience … When we say mattering, that means, ‘I am in a space that people know has a voice, and my voice matters.’”
Dear World, which began in New Orleans in 2009, was the campaign’s answer to start storytelling on campus.
Senior in the interdisciplinary program and Dear World participant Zack Brady said the Vol is a Verb campaign is something everyone on campus should pay attention to.
“This campaign shows that everyone who is a Volunteer is important and matters and is vital to building a supportive and successful community across campus,” Brady said. “The awareness being raised due to the campaign is sure to have a positive impact in the future.”
Photos taken will be presented at another event for the Vol is a Verb campaign. Shared in a slideshow, student stories will be presented on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. in the Student Union auditorium.
Coordinator for Student Programming in the Center for Student Engagement Brittney Wright said Dear World helped students share their own unique stories in an impactful way.
“It is important to connect with each other in meaningful experiences, especially in this day and age,” Wright said. “It is more important than ever before for people to be open to sharing and hearing others’ experiences.”
Junior studying theater and 2019 orientation and group leader Shahd Abbas said the event helped her think about what she was doing to cope with stress, including taking breaks to do what she enjoys.
“I really enjoyed the process. I met a 2018 orientation leader, and it was a cool bonding moment,” Abbas said. “We got to talk about how our experiences were diff erent.”
Staff Writer Ben Winiger and Contributor Abby Madan contributed to this article. Sharing your story: Dear World kicks off Mattering & Belonging campaign KYLIE HUBBARD Editor-in-Chief Sex Week seeks to crowdsource funding
DANIEL DASSOW Contributor
For four of the last fi ve years, Sex Week has received more funding from the former Student Programming Allocation Committee (SPAC) than any other registered student organization on campus.
In the 2016-2017 school year alone, Sex Week received $29,800 to put on their annual week of sex education programming. But now, after a damaging report on Sex Week by the state’s Comptroller of the Treasury last spring and the disbandment of SPAC, Sex Week’s main source of funding has eff ectively been cut off .
At the beginning of the academic year, Sex Week’s executive board set up a GoFundMe page to crowdsource funding. As of now, $2,765 of the $13,000 goal has been raised by over 40 donors.
Sydney Peay, co-chair of Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee (SEAT), the organization that puts on Sex Week, is confi - dent that the program will go on in the spring without a hitch.
“Even if we don’t raise our goal, even if we don’t reach it entirely ... we’re still going to make Sex Week happen. It might look diff er
ent, but this is a need that has to be met on this campus,” Peay said.
According to Peay and many others who work for SEAT, the program fi lls a gap in students’ understanding of sex and gender that is left by public school systems and the pervasive societal stigma surrounding issues of sexuality. With event titles such as “Butt Stuff ” and “Black Feminist Thot,” they do so in both a fun and educational way.
Not everyone is on board with Sex Week’s unconventional way of educating students.
In his appearance before the Tennessee House Education Committee last February, UT Interim President Randy Boyd made it clear that the university does not “condone” Sex Week and wishes that the organization would tone down their programming, which many members of the state legislation and administration of UT have described as “disgusting” and “explicit.”
In a statement to the “Daily Beacon,” Boyd made it clear that no one is being silenced, and free speech is still the operative principle where
student organizations are concerned.
“I have full confi dence that our university leaders and students have come together to create an equitable process that will allow students to continue to lead and express themselves in a way that provides value and needed help on very critical issues,” Boyd said.
Even in the face of such calls to change their programming, Peay says that SEAT is not planning on “toning it down” anytime soon.
SEAT has hope that students will help crowdsource funding for their speaking events in the spring either through GoFundMe or other means. Peay sees it as appropriate that an organization dedicated to helping teach students about sexuality should be funded primarily by students.
To learn more about the current state of the Student Programming and Services Fee allocation process, visit utdailybeacon.com.
Sharing your story: Dear World kicks off Mattering & Belonging campaign
KYLIE HUBBARD Editor-in-Chief
Serving as the first event for the Dean of Students’ Mattering & Belonging campaign, students, faculty and staff shared their stories through Dear World on Thursday, September 12.
UT community members gathered in the Student Union art gallery to have their photo taken with various words and phrases written on their upper body. These written phrases shared a story or impactful moment in the participant’s life, with the line to participate steadily growing throughout the day.
Priding itself on being “home sweet home,” Dean of Students Shea Kidd Houze decided to start the Mattering & Belonging campaign, which is also known as “Vol is a Verb,” to cultivate inclusivity in the campus environment on Rocky Top and to instill mattering and belonging as central themes to the campus experience.
“The campaign is designed as a collective call to action so that all of us that are a part of the [campus] can ensure that Rocky Top is a place where all students matter and belong,” Kidd Houze told the Daily Beacon before the event.
“As we thought about the various ways we
could engage our community, we continued to come back to this notion that the Volunteer Experience is active and tactile. So in order to make our campus one where everyone belongs, it takes all of us,” Kidd Houze added.
A large part of “Vol is a Verb” includes encouraging students to share their personal stories, allowing them to connect their experience with the wider UT community and spreading a message of positivity as students bond over shared experiences.
“The big thing is to cultivate a campus climate where every student’s story is valued and has significance,” Kidd Houze said. “When we think about a sense of belonging, we really think about the importance of an individual’s story and how that fits into the volunteer experience … When we say mattering, that means, ‘I am in a space that people know has a voice, and my voice matters.’”
Dear World, which began in New Orleans in 2009, was the campaign’s answer to start storytelling on campus.
Senior in the interdisciplinary program and Dear World participant Zack Brady said the Vol is a Verb campaign is something everyone on campus should pay attention to.
“This campaign shows that everyone who is a Volunteer is important and matters and is vital
to building a supportive and successful community across campus,” Brady said. “The awareness being raised due to the campaign is sure to have a positive impact in the future.”
Photos taken will be presented at another event for the Vol is a Verb campaign. Shared in a slideshow, student stories will be presented on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. in the Student Union auditorium.
Coordinator for Student Programming in the Center for Student Engagement Brittney Wright said Dear World helped students share their own unique stories in an impactful way.
“It is important to connect with each other in meaningful experiences, especially in this day and age,” Wright said. “It is more important than ever before for people to be open to sharing and hearing others’ experiences.”
Junior studying theater and 2019 orientation and group leader Shahd Abbas said the event helped her think about what she was doing to cope with stress, including taking breaks to do what she enjoys.
“I really enjoyed the process. I met a 2018 orientation leader, and it was a cool bonding moment,” Abbas said. “We got to talk about how our experiences were different.”
Staff Writer Ben Winiger and Contributor Abby Madan contributed to this article.
