Nevada Globe

On March 1 at the Board of Regents meeting, my intent was to ask about the safety of biological female student athletes and the chance of them being injured by biological male athletes playing against them in NSHE sports. It was and remains an appropriate question.

Not surprisingly, my choice of the words “men masquerading as women” was mischaracterized as “transphobic” and created the needed distraction that the subsequent protests aimed to create. Ultimately, the safety of women was ignored and then twisted into a shameless rallying cry of a fringe minority who have embraced “woke” politics. My choice of words were simply because I did not remember the word “transgender.”

The safety of women is paramount. I have spent decades training women in self defense, including teaching skills to increase their situational awareness and their ability to fight back for their own personal safety.

It has been well-documented that female athletes who are continually forced to participate in sports with biological men have been severely injured, with some requiring hospitalization. Furthermore, many of these women have trained their entire lives to excel in the sport of their choice, with hopes to receive awards and scholarships. Now, these opportunities that they have worked so hard for are being taken from them by male athletes who do not have the skills to compete against other biological men. 

The same people who asking for my resignation have not questioned the loss of free speech when a Jewish guest lecturer at UNLV was forced to leave campus because a certain group of students did not believe in freedom of speech and his right as a Jew to speak freely at an American university. The rise of antisemitism on UNLV has also been well-documented, yet, these same people have largely ignored this malignancy spreading across our NSHE campuses.

Many of the protestors who are demanding my resignation have not cared enough to question why Beam Hall is closed to students and why the building cannot be used to educate them. Many students have reached out to me for comment on this situation, as taking online classes and classes in other buildings is not convenient for them and was not what they signed up for. 

The answers I have received from the chancellor and president have been unsatisfactory. The amount of damage done to the interior of the Beam Hall has not been fully-exposed and requires further inquiry and pressure applied to the administration in order to get answers. I will continue to press the administration for answers so that I may provide these displaced students with answers to their questions. 

At the meeting some Regents shed crocodile tears about this “calamity” that I had allegedly inflicted upon certain attendees, yet not one of them seemed to shed any tears at the memorial held for faculty killed at UNLV, nor at any of the following meetings when this tragedy was raised. 

It seems to be a sign of our times that students and the public will be given wrong information by individuals with personal, political agendas. Individuals who don’t seemingly care about education, or our students’ welfare and safety, forget that our primary duty is to educate and prepare them for the real world, not coddle or encourage their misguided activism that will ultimately threaten the safety and welfare of our female athletes. 

I have lived and worked all over the world. My international experiences with different cultures and communities have shaped me as a person and as an elected leader who has served for the State Board of Education and now as a NSHE Regent for District 5. I have never experienced such an unwarranted backlash and vitriol from certain Educational Administrators and faculty in my career as an educator in the private and public sector. Yet, the backlash has only confirmed that my efforts to protect biological female athletes is needed, now more than ever. 

Let me be clear to the loud minority. I will not resign.