Hello,

My name is Lauren and I am the president of the Mines Activities Council. Thank you all for expressing your thoughts and concerns regarding the B.o.B concert on Saturday night. We all were just as surprised as you by his actions. It was included in his contract, as with every contract we make with artists, that students are not allowed on stage without prior approval. Thus, his actions were a breach of said contract, and we certainly do not condone his behavior. His agent was immediately told he cannot bring anyone else on stage. While we prepare for our events in as much detail as possible, we ultimately cannot control the actions of our performers. We select our artists based on the survey results sent out in the fall, which gave us the genres of music desired at E-Days. From there, it comes down to cost, scheduling, recommendations from our agent, and other logistics to make it happen. Our goal is to have something for everyone, and I apologize for any discomfort this caused for you as attendees - that is never our intention at any of our events. We hope you were able to enjoy the remainder of the weekend and can forgive the actions of the artist who will not be invited to return to our campus.

If you have any additional thoughts on this topic or feedback about E-Days in general, please feel free to contact me at lawilson@mymail.mines.edu. MAC is always striving to listen and cater to you all as much as we can, and your thoughts and opinions matter to us as we move forward. Thank you for your time, I hope you have a great rest of the school year.

Respectfully,
Lauren

In response to the concern that the women initially expressed a desire to go on stage and dance(twerk) alongside B.o.B., what ultimately ended up happening was not what had been presented initially and may have pushed some these women out of their comfort zones.

Lest we not forget, the video Mines showed many of us when we first came to campus:
https://youtu.be/oQbei5JGiT8?t=51

Mines hosted this event as a celebration for the community. No matter the extent to which the events that transpired occurred or how it may seem inconsequential to "compare adult girls, who, WILLINGLY participated, to people who had someone force themselves on another person," in the end, consent matters. These women agreed to do one thing and received more than they bargained for. Whether or not they were fine with it in the moment, E-Days has a reputation for students to destress in various ways. Things that were done over this weekend may have been out of character for many individuals. I can't pretend to know exactly what these women felt before, during, or after the concert, but from a bystander's perspective, I was taken aback.

The bottomline: No matter what these women agreed to when they initially went on the stage, the true events did not line up with the proposal issued by B.o.B. - Mines has an obligation to their students and their community to protect everyone who walks its campus.

The concert sucked but the girls went up there on their own volition.

Unless the girls voice their concerns, we shouldn't pass judgement.

My concern is the fact that they invited someone who's known for having strong "alternative" views in science especially in a school like this.

The thing that’s stupid about this is that if he were inviting guys to dance, or a female performer invited guys to dance it wouldn’t be seen as “inappropriate”.

It was not inappropriate. The girls knew what they were getting in to and they chose to participate. If he were physically pulling girls from the audience to dance with that would not have been okay, but these people chose to participate.

I think it’s stupid to even bring up the idea of rape culture. It’s honestly extremely disrespectful to people who have actually gone through sexual assault. To compare adult girls, who, WILLINGLY participated, to people who had someone force themselves on another person really shows how the people posting these click words are simply using them for that: the shock value.

If you invite someone to a concert who has a reputation for smoking weed, would you be upset if he passed around a joint at the concert? If you invite someone who has a reputation for being a degenerate, would you be upset if she started throwing pieces of the set?
No because you hired someone who has a reputation.

Like many other rappers, BOB has songs about performing sexual acts on women. So when he sings these songs and invite girls up to dance with him, can we be mad? No we can’t.

rape culture? really? the girls chose to go on stage, specifically to “twerk” knowing thats what they were asked to do. the girls themselves were choosing to dance on him, he never made them do anything they weren’t comfortable with. trashy—maybe. inappropriate for children—its a concert for college kids, dont bring children. was he in the wrong—hell no, anyone who knows who B.O.B is and decided to go to that concert anyway shouldn’t be surprised by his actions. he had every right to do what he did.

The girls chose to go on stage to dance, not to get grinded on or picked up by the artist. To allow things like this to happen and to ignore it completely is a hard perpetuation of rape culture which Mines itself already allows far too much on campus. If you were to watch a man go up and literally pick some people up when they did not consent, what would you do? Would you sit and tell the people who were offended to leave and let him get away with it or would you do something?

How about we ask the girls themselves if they were uncomfortable and felt his behavior was inappropriate otherwise everyone else’s say kind of doesn’t matter.

Trashy concert if I do say so myself

Honestly it made me uncomfortable too, but they are legal adults and chose to go up on stage because they wanted to. Its not our job as students to police what other students get to do. Also you cant hold MAC responsible for knowing that he would start grinding, they're not psychics and MAC actually got the girls off stage asap after grinding started (and had him apologize to the girls). If you try to add vetting to E-Days artists for what they might do on stage that could make some people uncomfortable, you're going to have a tiny pool of performers to choose from.

They literally volunteered to go up if you don’t like it then leave.