An NCAA facilitator has resigned in protest of the governing organization’s weak new trans inclusion guidelines.
Dr. Dorian Rhea Debussy, who served as a volunteer in a program that helped train Division III schools to become more LGBTQ+ inclusive, shared their resignation letter on Monday via the nonprofit sports advocacy organization Athlete Ally.
The chief catalyst for the letter was last week’s announcement from the NCAA Board of Governors that the transgender organization policy had been updated, requiring trans student athletes to provide documentation of their testosterone levels “at the beginning of their season,” with a “second documentation” six months later, and another “four weeks before championship selections.”
Debussy wrote that they are “deeply troubled by what appears to be a devolving level of active, effective, committed, and equitable support for gender diverse student-athletes within the NCAA’s leadership.”
“As a nonbinary, transfeminine person, I can no longer in good conscience, maintain my affiliation with the NCAA,” Debussy concluded, formally resigning from their role in the NCAA’s Division III LGBTQ OneTeam Program, which they’ve participated in since its creation in spring 2019.
“As a member of the inaugural training cohort and one of only 54 certified facilitators across the country, I have taken this role very seriously, particularly given the importance of LGBTQ+ inclusion in both athletic and educational settings,” Debussy wrote, reflecting on their time as a facilitator as “rewarding and impactful.”
In a press release accompanying the new trans inclusion guidelines, the NCAA tried to draw a comparison between its new policies and those of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which were updated last November.
However, as Debussy pointed out in their open letter, the new NCAA policy “still mandates rigid testing schedules for endocrine levels,” whereas the IOC policy “strongly emphasizes the importance of bodily autonomy and scientific evidence in ensuring fairness.”
