The proposed nickname for the athletic center at Colorado School of Mines was “the mine shaft” but students complained the name perpetuated rape culture.

Heat Street reports.

University Athletic Center Nickname Nixed for ‘Supporting Rape Culture’

An exclusive Heat Street review of email correspondence at a Colorado university has revealed that a student-selected nickname for an athletic facility, “the Mine Shaft,” was nixed by administrators after a student complained that “the name supports rape culture.”

Students at the Colorado School of Mines — a public university in Golden, Colorado, focused to engineering and applied science — voted overwhelmingly last year to nickname their athletic arena “the Mine Shaft.”

But in an email sent last August, a student (whose name was redacted) describes being “shocked and disgusted” at the nickname choice for the university’s Lockridge Arena.

“The idea behind the name, at least from the students perspective, was that the students could tell the opposing team they had been ‘shafted,’” the student wrote. In making her complaint, the student used another racially loaded term (and some misspellings) in an email to administrators: “The most common definition of the word means to get jipped out of a deal, which doesn’t make since [sic] for us to be telling another team. But the other and most disturbing definition is to be raped. Bottom line, I think the name supports rape culture. If Mines is truly trying to diversify the campus maybe they should not have the student section have such a phalic [sic] name.”

Administrators sprung into action after receiving the student’s complaint.

Katie Schmalzel, assistant director of housing operations, took the complaint so seriously that she forwarded it to the university’s Title IX coordinator. “I agree with [pronoun redacted] about the name being inappropriate, and goes against everything our work stands for,” she wrote.