The issue of trans participation in competitive sports is a very important topic. But it’s not often that it ends up with the entire team displaced from their own locker room.
A highschool volleyball team in Vermont have been banned from the locker room after a ‘dust up’ with a transgender athlete.
Girls volleball team member Blake Allen told WCAX how she was very uncomfortable by a presence of an unnamed trans individual in the locker room.
“It’s a huge thing … everyone’s asking, ‘Why aren’t you allowed in the locker room?’ ” she said.
“They want all the girls who feel uncomfortable to get changed in a single-stall bathroom, which would take over 30 minutes,” Allen said.
“Where, if one person got changed separately, it would take a minute, like no extra time.”
The trans athlete in question allegedly made an inappropriate remark to other players. They complained about it.
Some team members want the transgender player relocated, but Vermont’s state law means that students can play sports and use the locker which corresponds to the gender with which they identify.
The school sent out an email to families of the players after the incident, stating that the school has “plenty of space where students who feel uncomfortable with the laws may change in privacy.”
Allen doesn’t mind that said individual participates in volleyball – and mostly begrudges the locker room incident.
“There are biological boys that go into the girl’s bathroom, but never a locker room,” Allen said.
Lisa Randolph, Randolph High School co-president, said that when policies are violated, disciplinary action that aligns with the school’s rules will be applied, adding that students’ safety is the “district’s top priority.”