Hot Take: Demanding the NCAA Support Trans Athletes

Jessica talks to Alana Bojar and Aliya Schenck, two track athletes from Washington University, about the open letter to the NCAA they've written demanding that the NCAA speaks out against anti-transgender legislation. This episode was produced by Ali Lemer. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist.

Jessica talks to Alana Bojar and Aliya Schenck, two track athletes from Washington University, about the open letter to the NCAA they’ve written demanding that the NCAA speaks out against anti-transgender legislation. This episode was produced by Ali Lemer. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica, and for this hot take we are once again covering the ever-increasing number of anti-transgender bills – and now, in Mississippi, laws – being debated across the United States. As we’ve recently talked about on episode 195, lots of legislators and the people supporting them are using transphobic arguments claiming that we must discriminate against trans people or else women's sports will be ruined. That’s a lie, that’s a terrible one at that. In that episode, Lindsay said, “We need the NCAA to be coming out with very strong statements that any single place that considers these bills, that puts these bills into action, will have zero play – zero NCAA championships, zero chance of hosting any of these big tournaments, and will not be in compliance with their by-laws and therefore honestly should be up for punishment.”

Well, Lindsay wasn’t the only person feeling that way. Roughly 550 college athletes signed a letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert and the NCAA board of governs this week that says, in part, “You have been silent in the face of hateful legislation in states that are slated to host championships, even though those states are close to passing anti-transgender legislation.” I have the two college athletes who started that letter here with me today. Will y'all introduce yourselves? Tell us who you are and what you do.

Alana: Great, so I’m Alana Bojar. I am a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, and I run for the women's track and field team here.

Aliya: My name’s Aliya Schenck, and I’m a junior at at Washington University in St. Louis, and I also run for the women's track and field team.

Jessica: Awesome, thank you both for being here today. Can you tell me first…I’d just like to hear how did this letter come about?

Alana: So, we are part of our school’s chapter of Athlete Ally, which is a national organization to end and combat transphobia and homophobia in sport. Earlier in the summer actually the national organization reached out to us and said Idaho has HB500, which is one of the anti-trans athlete bills, and they said can you try to mobilize student athletes and get a letter going? So, we did that, and we essentially got silence from the NCAA board of governors, and so 6 or 7 months later we recognized the silence and we said, no, we have to do it again. So Aliya and I, we talked with the national chapter once more and we wrote this letter really pointing out the silence and said, you know, not saying anything is saying a lot, and we talked to the other chapters, we talked to athletes at our school, we sent it out to as many student athletes as we could think of, our friends from high school too. That’s when we got this all going, and we've had the letter open for about a month and a half now, and we’ve had really great turnout.

Jessica: Oh, that’s interesting. So, the letter was actually written a while ago. I was gonna say, how did you get 550 anybodies, but especially college athletes together! I read somewhere it’s like 85 different schools are on this letter. How did you do that, you’re literally just emailing?

Aliya: Pretty much. It’s kind of a combination of texting our friends that are student athletes at other NCAA schools and being like, “Hey can you distribute this amongst your teammates?” Circling it around the athletic department at WashU, and then using the contacts through what we call SAAC, which is Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. So we have a SAAC Committee at our school and there’s representatives that go inter-conference and then national representatives, so kind of using that network and just being like, hey, there’s this petition, we’re really passionate about this and we’re trying to mobilize student athletes, if you could spread it amongst your community, just get as many signatures as possible, that’d be wonderful. That’s a big way that we’ve done it.

In terms of, yeah like you said, 85+ different schools, a lot of it is just looking online and looking at social media presences and being like, would this person be interested in maybe distributing this amongst their community? So, we had a great athlete at Duke who reached out and was able to circulate it among that community too, and that certainly helped. So, it’s just kind of a combination of informal me texting my friend who runs at XYZ school and being, “Hey, can you distribute this?” and more legitimate outreach through email and things. It’s just any way that we can get the word out we tried to do.

Jessica: Yeah, and as you mentioned it’s not the first letter you’ve written, this is now the second one. Why does this issue matter to you all? Why do you think athletes should care about it? Why should it matter to all of us?

Alana: I know that for me personally and for…I feel like I can speak for any athlete I know – sports have changed our lives, and to know that there’s a certain group of people, transgender athletes, that are denied this privilege, it’s upsetting, it’s angering. I feel like if you can enjoy this sport you have to fight for the rights of everyone to enjoy the sport too. 

Aliya: I think also these bills are presenting the assumption that trans athletes are going to ruin women’s sport, and that obviously has lots of different connotations, but I think what Alana said really well – we just want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to play the sports that they love, you know? I started playing soccer when I was 4 years old and then transitioned to running and just my entire life and a huge part of my identity has been based around sport, and so to see this entire community just not have the chance to be able to enjoy the sports that they love and to be considered villains for just being who they are is super upsetting to me. 

Jessica: Yeah, I find it so strange that so many people involved will not…I think a lot of legislators are not being genuous about what they believe. But a lot of us in sports, we just love sport. It's just so strange to think that that then leads you to want to deny that to anyone. It’s so heartbreaking at its core. What has your experience been like as college athletes who speak out? We’re having a particular moment, I would say, during the pandemic, where this has been a huge narrative about college athletes speaking out. I was wondering what would you say to other college athletes who may be on the fence about whether or not to use their platform in this way? 

Alana: It’s hard to I think recognize how much weight your voice has, especially because we are college athletes and we’re kind of in this transition phase where we’re coming out of high school, we’re coming into the real world, and we’re kind of in this phase of “Does our voice really matter?” You know? Because on some level we’re adults and we do have a say, and then other times we’re still technically babies entering the workforce and entering the real world, right? But what I’ve learned throughout this whole process is that people do listen to what you have to say and people do recognize your impact, and so if you’re a college athlete and you’re looking to get involved in this type of thing and wanting to mobilize student athletes at your school, go for it. There’s resources out there, and Athlete Ally is always looking to start more chapters at different schools, so if your school doesn’t have one you can start one. We’ve been really lucky so far in terms of the great feedback and reception from our athletic department and Athlete Ally, the national organization. But I’d say, you know, just know that you do have an impact and your voice does matter.

Aliya: I do wanna recognize that I think there can be unique challenges when speaking up from a place of athletics, so, you know, “Will my teammates, will my coach not respect me as much? Will I lose my scholarship?” That’s why I think it is really important to just have the people that do speak up, have them speak up even louder to show that you can do this, people are behind you, and that if someone doesn’t wanna talk to you anymore, if someone wants to take something away from you, you can say no, you can't do that, all these people are behind me and they support what I’m doing, I’m actually in the right here. 

Jessica: Yeah. Do you think you’ll hear anything from the NCAA

Aliya: I really hope so. [laughs] 

Alana: I think that this response to this letter in terms of media and news articles and things has definitely been a lot heavier than it was in the summer, so I hope that they’re taking notice and I hope that they know that we’re not gonna stop fighting. 

Jessica: Yeah, and they set a precedent for that in North Carolina, so it's not as if we haven’t seen them do something in the past, and I know that this is worse now than ever. I mean, it's like a crisis at this moment. Do you have any advice for college athletes – or I guess anyone – who might want to do something specifically to help push back against these transphobic laws and bills that we’re seeing in these legislatures right now, or just transphobia in general? 

Alana: I would say use the platforms that you have to spread awareness, especially I feel like there’s a lot of unfounded fear surrounding transgender participation in sports. So, if you can dispel those myths for the just the people close to you, that’s a great step. I think if you're in one the I think 23 states that has a bill on the table, call your representatives. As Aliya said, your voice does have weight, and so the more people that call in, that email, that really shows that people do care.

Jessica: Thank you so much Aliya Alana, for your work, and for coming on Burn It All Down to talk about it.

Aliya: Thank you.

Alana: Yeah, thank you so much.

Jessica: If those listening want to know more about these bills, check out transathlete.com if you want to know more about how to combat these bills. Make sure to check out transathlete.com/take-action, and until next time: burn on, and not out.

Shelby Weldon