San Jose State could have taken the easy (and morally correct) route. Acknowledge the mistake. Apologize. Promise to do better.
Instead, the university isgoing to court to fight the federal governmentafter the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR)found the school violated Title IXin its handling of the women’s volleyball situation involving trans-identifying male Blaire Fleming. Brooke Slusser, one of the captains of the 2024 women's team, says that choice tells people everything they need to know about SJSU.
In an interview with OutKick, Slusser said that while many people focus on Fleming, this story is about institutional failure. She says the people in authority at the school created a daily environment that was punitive toward anyone who dared speak up about the safety and privacy concerns for the women on that team.
"There’s so much that happened… it wasn’t just the fact that I was living and finding out," Slusser said. "My staff at school, compliance, everyone just deciding to make my day-to-day life a living hell because of my views."
The argument Slusser is making isn't just about allowing a male on the women's team, though that's an obvious issue. But her main complaint stems from how power works inside a program when the people in charge decide there is only one acceptable opinion.
Slusser also pushed back on the common response online that "nothing bad happened" to her, so she should be quiet about it. She pointed to what she describes as daily safety issues in practice, and the way she says concerns were ignored.
"It was kind of the whole reason why I had to leave San Jose before my senior year was up and go back home to literally heal from everything I endured," she said, before describing practices where players had to get out of the way to avoid Fleming's powerful spikes. She said she and a few other girls frequently commented that some days it felt like they were playing dodgeball rather than volleyball.
"Try and tell me again that we weren’t dealing with anything being in danger every single day."
Brooke Slusser argues SJSU prioritized one male athlete (Blaire Fleming) over women’s privacy and safety, and the school’s lawsuit against a federal Title IX finding has revived the controversy.
Slusser recently spoke with Fox News Digital's Jackson Thompson and discussedhaving to share a room with Flemingwithout knowing Fleming was a male. But it goes even deeper than that. The reason Slusser says that she ended up in that situation was because head coach Todd Kress asked Fleming, a male, who he wanted to room with and never consulted Slusser.
Source: The Latest & Most Breaking News With OutKick
