SleazeWeek Returns!

by Joe Lazauskas

Tuesday April 8, 2008

Thanks to TransAction and SLC Acts Up! Sleaze Week is saved. The Phoenix previously published inaccurate speculation on the end of Sleaze Week, based on the inactivity of QVC, the week’s host in past years. However, student groups TransAction and SLC Acts Up! have taken the reins to save the SLC tradition from extinction.

Sleaze Week will officially kick off on April 5 and will have noticeable changes from last year’s Glamor Week. “Last year, the chairs of QVC were told that Sleaze was originally created by straight students on campus as a response to the events around Coming Out Month, especially the Coming Out Dance,” TransAction wrote to The Phoenix. “They created the Glamour concept in an attempt to move away from this. When TransAction and SLC Acts Up! sat down to plan out Sleaze Week, we decided to go back to the focus on sex, specifically safe sex.”

The culmination of this year’s Sleaze Week will be a return of the Deb Ball. The Deb Ball was the first-ever AIDS benefit at any college (started here), debuting in 1983, but has been defunct since 2004 “due to a monetary dispute with Senate” according to TransAction. The Deb Ball will replace the Sleaze Ball. In conjunction with the return of the Deb Ball, “Sleaze Week is going to have a lot of HIV/AIDS activism and awareness mixed into it, which hasn’t happened so much in years past,” wrote TransAction.

“The Deb Ball is technically formal since it is first and foremost a fundraiser,” wrote TransAction. “However, it is a formal with a twist. If you look at pictures of the Deb Ball in years past, you will see pictures of men in ball gowns and heels. We would very much encourage this.” The Deb Ball will be classic, black-and-white movie-themed, but students are encouraged to test the boundaries of gender and sexuality in their outfits.

The week’s events (see box below) will certainly bring sexuality to the forefront. From an aphrodisiac buffet to Tranny 101 to a BDSM Introduction, students will have the opportunity to be exposed to aspects of sexuality they might not have explored before. In future years, TransAction and SLC Acts Up! hope to push the envelope even further.

“When we were first conceptualizing the week, we were throwing out ideas for workshops that included BDSM, tantra, piercing fetishes, anal sex, etc,” wrote TransAction. “Due to time and budgetary restraints, we were only able to make a few of these things a reality. But we hope that planners in the years to come will take our ideas and explore them further, thus giving more and more students the information and the means to have safe, sane, crazy, amazing consensual sex.”

Sleaze Week 2008!
April 5 – 13

Saturday: Sleaze Cabaret starting 8:30pm in Reisinger Sunday: Porn Marathon starting 7:30pm in Reisinger
Monday: you’re free! take a break from sex for one night! otherwise, we have a list of great events in the city for people to attend
Tuesday: Tranny 101 5pm in Titsworth Lecture Hall (dinner will be provided) Wednesday: BDSM Workshop 5pm in MacCracken’s Living Room
Thursday: My First Time 8pm in the Teahaus (free tea!) Friday: RuPaul marathon starting 5pm. Will include an aphrodisiac buffet and a special Sleaze-themed midnight cabaret midnight Saturday (day): HIV workshop hosted by SafeGuards 3pm in Library Pillow Room
Saturday (night) Deb Ball! starting 9pm in the middle room of the Pub (it will be classy, we promise) Sunday: Sexy Yoga 2pm on the lawn in front of Lynd House (Titsworth Dance Studio in case of rain)