Riley Gaines fields questions from the audience during her event in Phillips Hall on Thursday. Taylor Phillips | Mustang News

Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer and political activist, spoke at Cal Poly on Thursday night as part of her nationwide college tour. Gaines, who has filed a lawsuit against the NCAA over Title IX, shared her experiences competing against a transgender athlete.

In partnership with the Leadership Institute, Cal Poly’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter hosted the “Take Back Title IX” event in Phillips Hall.

According to its website, Turning Point USA is a national nonprofit “whose mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote freedom.” It has a presence on over 800 campuses.

Cal Poly TPUSA president Madison Pierce said the chapter tries to get at least one speaker to come to campus every year.

“I think it’s just really cool to bring different speakers to bring those different perspectives onto campus, whether you agree with them or not,” Pierce said. “That’s great, and that’s the beauty of free speech—we all have a right to say what we want.”

One year before speaking at Cal Poly, Gaines declared “Real Women’s Day” a holiday on Oct. 10, 2023. The Roman numerals of this date are XX, representing the chromosomes that women have, she explained.

The idea for the holiday came after seeing companies like ESPN and The Hershey Company honor transgender women during Women’s History Month in March 2023, who Gaines said are not real women.

“What they’ve done is equate sex with gender identity, meaning these words are synonymous. They’re interchangeable,” Gaines said in her speech. “They mean the same thing, [and] the implications of this of course are severe and harmful.”

During her time as an NCAA swimmer at the University of Kentucky, Gaines competed against Lia Thomas, a transgender woman from the University of Pennsylvania. The race motivated her to pursue activism for Title IX, she said.

In her speech, Gaines described how she felt after learning Thomas, who was winning races “by body lengths,” was a transgender woman.

“I felt relieved because I thought the NCAA would see it how I saw it… how anyone with any amount of brain activity would probably comprehend this information,” she said. “Nothing hateful about it, nothing even opinionated about it.”

A man should not be allowed to compete in the women’s races, Gaines said. She thinks it is wrong for transgender women to compete in women’s sports partly because of a lack of privacy in locker rooms.

“It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. It’s uncomfortable. It’s humiliating,” Gaines said about changing in the locker room with Thomas present.

After her speech, Gaines answered questions from the audience. Several asked for Gaines’ advice about what they could do in their communities and how to get involved with the movement.

In response to Gaines speaking on campus, the Cal Poly Pride Center opened its doors as a safe space to make sure everyone on campus felt comfortable, according to biomedical engineering junior and a student assistant in Student Diversity and Belonging Dani Tran.

“We understand that everyone has the right to free speech, however, we do find that it is irresponsible in a way to allow this [event] to happen when, obviously, it can make students uncomfortable,” Tran said. “They deserve the right to feel comfortable on campus. It is and should be the school’s job to make sure that [students] feel safe, and with someone like that on campus, it is very possible that [students] feel unsafe or like the school doesn’t care about them.”

Throughout the day, Cal Poly Safer staff were available to speak with people, and Pride Center student assistants provided activities and entertainment.

According to the Cal Poly Police Department, despite anticipated counterprotests due to previous TPUSA events on campus, no protests occurred during Gaines’ visit. However, Cal Poly provided security at the event.

“I’m a little sad that there weren’t protests; the other two events have had protests, so I was kind of disappointed,” said civil engineering sophomore Jack Terry.

Terry is a member of Cal Poly TPUSA and has attended club events in the past.

“A lot of times in the media you hear just one perspective and it’s usually secondhand, so it’s nice to hear directly from the source about what her experience has been and then also what we can do about it,” Terry said.

Alum Stephen Corley identifies as “politically in the center” and wanted to see Gaines speak because right-wing events are rare on California college campuses, he said.

“I think that Gaines’ concerns are pretty reasonable,” he said. “It was a pretty conservative group there and so there was some low-brow humor, but that’s what I would expect and I didn’t think that it was out of place.”

He said he would like to see Cal Poly host more events like this.

“I think it would be better for our culture overall if there were more events like this and people kept their hats on and had thoughtful and composed conversations,” Corley said.