EXCLUSIVE — The president of Georgia Tech University is being pressured to testify before a special select committee on women’s sports to discuss the repercussions of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas using the same facilities as female athletes during a high-profile collegiate championship over two years ago.
Former college swimmer and women’s sports activist Riley Gaines implored President Angel Cabrera in a letter to participate in a hearing before the Georgia state Senate panel, accusing him of failing to protect female athletes at the university. The letter was sent just hours before Gaines and four other athletes are set to testify before the panel about their experiences sharing a locker room with Thomas while competing at a meet at the university in 2022.
“When I agreed to testify before this Georgia Senate Committee, I understood that you would be invited to testify. I thought then that by coming to testify I would at least get an answer to my question, ‘Why didn’t you protect me?’” Gaines wrote in her letter, which was first obtained by the Washington Examiner. “But I am here, and you have declined to testify.”
Gaines also accused the university of failing to provide written communications and other materials requested by the select committee to investigate the school’s policies surrounding transgender athletes and the use of locker room facilities.
“So, I have a new question,” Gaines wrote. “‘President Cabrera, what are you hiding?’”
Gaines recalled her experience at the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving National Championships, during which Thomas became the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title.
Gaines decried the university’s decision to allow “a naked adult man with full male genitalia” to share a locker room with “hundreds of college coeds who would themselves be naked, unable to hide, unable to protect our privacy.” The former collegiate swimmer claimed she was not informed Thomas would have access to the female locker rooms, noting she was made aware when “I heard a man’s voice and turned around and saw him a few feet in front of me.”
“Because you did nothing, that man walked into the women’s locker room at your university and saw me undressed down to nothing,” Gaines wrote. “I was unclothed. You allowed college women to be traumatized on your campus in this way. Why didn’t you protect me? Why didn’t you protect us?”
Gaines lamented there has been no public or private apology from Cabrera or from university officials regarding the event, accusing the president of being complicit in “the ongoing perversion of women’s sports in America.”
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“I do not understand why you, an educated man, a powerful man, a man who understands science and gives lip service to protecting the rights of women, allowed us to be discriminated against and traumatized so severely on your campus,” Gaines wrote. “I also do not understand why years later you are still supporting the same perverse policies in college sports.”
Gaines is set to testify before the select committee on Tuesday afternoon alongside athletes Reka Gyorgy, Kylee Alons, Grace Countie, and Kaitlynn Wheeler, who are all members of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports. The council filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the NCAA, accusing the organization of knowingly violating Title IX by allowing Thomas to compete against female swimmers.
The Washington Examiner contacted a spokesperson for Cabrera and Georgia Tech University for comment.