More Penn Pushback

This story at Breitbart expands on another story at the Washington Post that fleshes out the circumstances of the letter that 16 members of the Penn women's swim team (also mentioned here) sent to university authorities requesting that they not sue USA Swimming over its new trans criteria. According to the Post,

Thomas’s teammates did not identify themselves in the letter. It was sent by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a 1984 Olympic swimming gold medalist, lawyer and chief executive of Champion Women, a women’s sports advocacy organization. She said in a telephone interview that she sent the letter on the swimmers’ behalf so they could avoid retaliation; in the letter, the swimmers claim they were told “we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer” if they spoke out against Thomas’s inclusion in women’s competition.

The Breitbart story interviewed a second expert, Natasha Chart, whom they characterize as "a feminist who argues that women’s particular legal rights and social status depend on the public’s recognition that women’s bodies are fundamentally different from men’s bodies", who raised an additional point:

Consider what else is happening here. Lia Thomas is reported as [committing] basically what would be regarded as indecent exposure. He’s fully undressing in their locker rooms, so he’s displaying sexual power. This is endorsed by all of these [pro-transgender] elites, and the women who are being allowed into the elites have to put up with — or endorse — this sexual abuse of other women in order to be accepted.

Breitbart also quoted a letter sent February 1 by two feminist organizations, Women’s Declaration International, USA, and Keep Prisons Single Sex, to a wide range of Penn and local law enforcemernt officials:

We are writing to report a potential violation of Pennsylvania Code of Law Section 3127 and of Title IX and of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sexual Harassment, Sexual Violence, Relationship Violence and Stalking Policy. . . . It appears from news reports that many, if not most, of the female athletes on the University’s swim team fear retaliation and are concerned about maintaining their scholarships and reputation in the community. For this reason, a report such as this one should be considered an adequate basis requiring law enforcement and the university to conduct an investigation without any female members of the swim team having to make an individual direct report themselves.

The letter cites Pennsylvania Code §3127 Indecent exposure:

A person commits indecent exposure if that person exposes his or her genitals in any public place or in any place where there are present other persons under circumstances in which he or she knows or should know that this conduct is likely to offend, affront or alarm.

The letter continues,

Based on the news report [linked here in a previous post], Thomas has exposed his genitals in a place where it appears Thomas knows or should know that this is likely to offend. Further, based on this news report, a University of Pennsylvania employee, the women’s swimming coach, has been explicitly informed that the women are offended, affronted or alarmed by this. Rather than taking steps to further report and address this, according to this report, the female athletes of the University of Pennsylvania have been told that they must accept this harassment and indecent exposure.

The letter then quotes Penn's own sexual harassment policy, which contains the usual, and concludes,

Should there be any future litigation on this matter, the news reports, including the one cited here should be sufficient to have put the University of Pennsylvania on notice that there were reports of multiple female students being subject to harassment and sexual misconduct while engaged in a sanctioned student activity. According to your own policy, you are obligated to investigate this. You know the names of these female students. You know there are reports that they fear retaliation. For this reason, the initiation of any investigation and remedial action should not require a report directly to you by one of these impacted students.

My wife, a retired attorney, is astonished that nobody on Penn's legal staff appears to have raised these issues even before the February 1 letter. It seems to me that a minimal response to Penn's potential exposure in this case would be either to require that Thomas change in the men's locker room, or to carve out a separate locker room exclusively for transsexual team members, but of course, either solution would undermine the whole message Penn is trying to send, that men and women are interchangeable, gender is just a social construct, and Penn is entitled to enforce this. (Penn's endowment is $20.5 billion, so a few partitions and an extra shower should be affordable and a matter of a weekend's work.)

According to the Post, Penn so far has not responded directly to any of the complaints.

I've got to assume that since this is the Ivy League, there have likely already been quiet attempts by swim team parents and others to resolve this without publicity, but since this is the Ivy League, this is as serious as a Brooks Brothers tie, and Penn will not go quietly. They'll be on the hook for multimillion-dollar settlements, if you ask me. Plus various and sundry resignations.