The Student Services Finance Committee approved funding for Sex Out Loud and heard eligibility hearings from Adventure Learning Programs and Veterans, Educators, and Traditional Students Monday.
According to its website, Sex Out Loud is a peer-to-peer sexual health resource for University of Wisconsin-Madison students that offers sex education programs, safer sex supplies, sexual health counseling and advising services as well as other informational resources.
Student groups receiving funding from the General Segregated Service Fund must present to SSFC every two years at eligibility hearings and demonstrate their ability to provide direct services to students. Direct services are defined as educational benefits available and customizable to the needs of any UW-Madison student.
Although SSFC Rep. Devon Maier said he felt Sex Out Loud did not focus the majority of its time on direct services, most of SSFC members said they believed Sex Out Loud met all of the eligibility requirements.
Following Sex Out Loud’s approval, ALPs and V.E.T.S. applied for GSSF funding eligibility.
ALPs is a student organization that says it challenges students and helps them develop a variety of skills through adventure-based programs. Several of the organization’s programs are ropes courses where students learn to work together and put trust in other students.
ALPs’ coordinators Lee Swartz and Maggie Riederer said ALPs offers four programs that can be tailored to any group’s needs. They also said they prioritize UW groups over other groups that have access to their services.
“We provide a unique service,” Swartz said. “ALPs is the only organization on campus that offers adventure learning through experiential education.”
According to its website, V.E.T.S’ mission is “to provide information on benefits and other support activities to student veterans attending UW-Madison, while raising awareness to the general student population of the veterans’ experience.”
V.E.T.S President Jacob Beebe said they recently changed the organization’s name because they felt the previous name, Vets for Vets, did not apply to the whole campus. He said the organization wanted to make sure more “traditional students” and not only veteran students felt welcome to the organization.
SSFC will deliver the eligibility decisions to ALPs and V.E.T.S. Thursday, in addition to holding an eligibility hearing for the MultiCultural Student Coalition.
