Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines tore into Georgia Tech President, Dr. Angel Cabrera, for failing to intervene when it became clear that the NCAA was going to allow a biological male to not only compete against the females, but to have full access to their locker rooms while they were changing as well.
Gaines spoke on Tuesday before the Georgia General Assembly’s Special Committee on Protecting Women’s Sports, where she called Cabrera out for allowing trans-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas to compete against and change alongside the women who had worked their entire lives to get to the NCAA championship. Prior to her appearance, Fox News Digitalobtained a copy of her prepared remarks.
“Dr. Cabrera, you knew that a 6’4″ fully intact man was coming to compete against me, my teammates, and my competitors in the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming & Diving National Championships. Do you have a daughter? You could have stopped it, you could have at least said, ‘not here, not on the campus of Georgia Tech University,’ but you did not,” Gaines said. “You had the chance at the outset to bring a sane, rational, science-based perspective to the protection of women’s sport, but you looked the other way, and you did nothing. Why didn’t you intervene? The scientific evidence for immense male performance advantages in sport is overwhelming — I don’t have to explain that to you or this committee, but you ignored the science to the harm of women.”
Gaines went on to say that officials had known Thomas, still a fully-intact male, would be changing in close proximity to the women — and that they would have no ability to escape the situation.
“This was intentional, premeditated, sexual harassment, and it happened right here, in the capitol city of the State of Georgia, just a few blocks away the grounds of Georgia Tech University,” Gaines said. “Because you did nothing, that man walked into the women’s locker room at your university and saw me undressed down to nothing. I did not even know he had access to the women’s locker room until I heard a man’s voice and turned around and saw him a few feet in front of me, and I was unclothed. You allowed college women to be traumatized on your campus in this way. Why didn’t you protect me? Why didn’t you protect us?”
Gaines called on Cabrera to respond, saying that the Georgia Tech President could “redeem” himself by speaking up now, adding, “Thousands of women across this country and hundreds of girls who dream of swimming for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and more broadly who dream of competing in sports at all look forward to your response.”
Post a Comment