College apologizes for breast cancer awareness promotion

A Georgia women’s college apologized after students got an email last week that used some crude language to promote a breast cancer awareness festival.

The Office of Health Services at Brenau University’s Women’s College sent an email to more than 1,000 students and staff members Friday to bring attention to the fall festival, and mentioned games like “cop a feel” and “ring the boob,” Channel 2 Action News reported.

Several students on the Gainesville campus said the names of the games were in poor taste, leading the university to apologize and retract the email within an hour, the news station reported.

“As soon as it was brought to our attention, we issued a retraction and removed that language,” Ben McDade, vice president of marketing and communications, told Channel 2.

The retraction said it was an attempt to “make a serious topic more light hearted.”

“We are very, very sensitive to these kinds of things,” McDade said. “... I think it was just an ill-directed attempt to gain some attention for this event. But apparently, obviously, this was a little over the top.”

The festival is scheduled for Tuesday.

McDade could not confirm anything about the staff member who sent out the email but said the issue had been addressed.