After UPenn, These Schools Should Apologize For Trans Policies

Now that it’s too late to truly make things right, the University of Pennsylvania succumbed to pressure from the Trump Administration and agreed to apologize to female athletes who were disadvantaged when UPenn allowed male swimmer Lia Thomas, a wannabe-woman, to compete on the women’s swim team.

Sadly, although UPenn has apologized for letting Thomas compete, it is too late for the woman who didn’t make the team because he took her spot. It’s also too late for the women who would have earned the medals Thomas easily won. Those opportunities are forever gone.

UPenn came to an agreement with the Department of Education not because it was the right thing to do (it is) but because it could have lost funding from the feds. President Donald Trump is holding UPenn accountable for violating Title IX of of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

There are plenty more schools that owe women apologies for the same sex discrimination, and if they don’t, the Trump administration should go after their funding next.

Like the University of Montana, which allowed a man, Juniper Eastwood, to compete on the women’s cross country team. The propaganda press called him a “trailblazer,” but the woman who didn’t make the team because he got the spot probably didn’t think he was blazing any trails.

Franklin Pierce University should apologize or lose funding for allowing Cece Telfer, a man, to compete on the girls’ track team. Even cornrow hair extensions and a headband could not make Telfer a real girl. Only genetics can do that. He competed (poorly) on the men’s team for several years, before suddenly deciding he is “really a girl” on the inside. He then switched to the girls’ team, setting records and dominating their sport.

Another failed male athlete, now called Meghan Cortez-Fields, found success when switching from the men’s’ to the women’s swim team at Ramapo College in New Jersey. He considers Thomas one of his heroes, according to a Daily Mail piece. Say you are sorry Ramapo, or lose federal funding.

San Jose State must apologize for letting Blaire Fleming, a man, take a spot meant for a woman to play on the school’s volleyball team. Even schools that played against San Jose State knew that having a man on the opposing team skews the game.

Mission College in Santa Clara, California must apologize for allowing Gabrielle Ludwig, then 52, to play on the women’s basketball team 2012-2013. Standing head and shoulders over his teammates, he was so out of place that it looked like an adult playing with a group of toddlers.

Boys and men have been allowed to infiltrate women’s sports not only in college but also high school for years. It must stop.

Cromwell High School in Connecticut allowed Andraya Yearwood, a boy, to participate on the girls’ track team. He is celebrated in a 2021 Teen Vogue article. The school and Teen Vogue should both apologize for normalizing trans culture.

AB Hernandez, a boy on the girls’ high school track and volleyball teams in Jurupa Valley, California, captured two gold medals at the state’s high school track and field championships.

At Tahoe Truckee Unified School District in California, female athletes went to their school board meeting in May and begged the board not to allow boys in their sports or their locker rooms. The school planned to switch athletic leagues to one that would force girls to allow boys on their team.

At Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, a boy going by the name Abigail Jones won the 300m hurdles in April by running against girls. Last year, a 16-year-old girl went to the school board asking them to intervene. She talked about other girls who did not make the team because the spot had been given to a boy, and she told the board she did not feel comfortable in bathrooms and locker rooms when boys are present. The teenage voice of reason should never have had to say this in the first place.

Around the country, policies are changing and schools are starting to get the message. The Trump Administration is serious enough about enforcing Title IX to prevent discrimination that it will remove federal funding. Money talks, and when it is about to dry up, identity politics take the backseat.

It is too bad trans mania had to be addressed by the president with the threat of funding cuts. It’s even more unfortunate that school boards and university leaders don’t value female students or their parents enough to honor their numerous requests for privacy in locker rooms and fairness in athletics. It’ is to their shame’s shameful that policy makers did not have the discernment or the backbones to prevent all the damage caused by ignoring the reality of gender differences.  

More than an apology is required. Clear policies preventing such gender bending in the future must be bravely pursued.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.