As soon as the Rice band completed their halftime show on Saturday, September 17th, they were the talk of the Baylor student population and of many others around the country. Pictures flooded our group messages, articles were all over the internet and school newspapers, and complaints were not few. They made a bold statement to say the least, and the Baylor fans and students were mad. It is completely understandable why they would be mad. A school deliberately made fun of Baylor's own tireless attempts to solve the issue at hand and prevent future, similar issues from arising.
If you don't know about what happened at Rice that Saturday, basically "the MOB (Marching Owl Band)" performed a halftime show in which the band formed a IX, among many other controversial forms, in reference to Baylor's Title IX campaign and all of the issues that have risen from the sexual assault cases. Songs were played and the announcer made comments mocking the issue. Students and fans were upset, since Baylor is truly doing everything they can. Baylor University states this movement "takes allegations of sexual violence, assault, dating violence, domestic violence, stalking and other sexually inappropriate conduct seriously."
The Title IX campaign is also known as the "It's On Us" campaign and let me tell you, they are doing everything they can to make us feel safe and in control of our own situations. I've been to multiple mandatory "It's On Us" events in the month I've been here. Baylor is taking things seriously. They let us know it is their job to secure our safety and our job to secure our peers' safety. Baylor's Title IX Coordinator Patty Crawford has stated numerous times it is her goal in life for her job to be nonexistent in the future. Baylor has been and is doing the best they can amidst the difficult and controversial circumstances that have occurred.
And not only as a Baylor student, but as a fellow band student, I had a mixture of feelings about Rice's show. Being in band, I know how important it is to maintain a good and respected reputation and to individually represent my school well. It was disappointing for a music organization to be a group who chose to support such mockery. This is how Rice's band always chose to support their team. After little research, I learned the band's shows are not approved before they are performed and "their thing" is to make fun of the opposing team.
Good for them. This is effective in engaging their audience, and it gets the Rice fans excited about the game. As Baylor fans, we should handle this with class. I think we have for the most part. Besides the fact that searching "Rice band" still brings up an article about the performance as a first search hit, talk of the performance around campus completely died down with the conclusion of the weekend of the 17th, and we have all moved on to discussing more important things.
