New NCAA Policy on Trans Athletes Raises Concerns
International Olympic Committee standards will be followed.The new policy, effective immediately, puts standards for collegiate sports in line with those recently adopted by the IOC and the U.S.
Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the NCAA noted in a press release. But there are those who fear this will create a confusing patchwork of policies.“This update complicates the NCAA policy in a way that I don't believe they are equipped to handle,” triathlete Chris Mosier, a trans man, told ESPN. “Given that many NGBs have not created policies for transgender athletes and that policies vary from sport NGB to NGB, tracking compliance is going to be a nightmare for the NCAA.
This creates many different standards for trans athletes.”The Human Rights Campaign is “still reviewing the NCAA’s new policy on transgender inclusion and how it will impact each and every transgender athlete,” JoDee Winterhof, vice president for policy and political affairs, said in a press release.Anne Lieberman, director of policy and programs for Athlete Ally, added that as advocates “learn more about how the NCAA’s new guidelines for transgender participation will be implemented, we will keep pushing the NCAA to center the lived experiences of college athletes.”Meanwhile, the new policy does not fully satisfy opponents of trans inclusion. “The new NCAA policy sounds a lot like the old one,” former Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a member of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, told ESPN. “The board hasn’t resolved the intractable balancing between fairness, playing safety and inclusion.
They failed women by not prioritizing fairness.”Also, HRC, Athlete Ally, and numerous other LGBTQ-supportive organizations signed on to a letter, released.
