Photo courtesy of TruColor. Pictured above, the NAIA logo. 

On April 8, 2024, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced a new policy that nearly bans all transgender women from participating in sports competitions. St. Ambrose University is part of the NAIA division, so SAU students and faculty are directly affected. 

“This kind of policy may make a few people rest easier at night, but far too many GNC [gender non-conforming] folks have not received the hospitality required to even get a toe in their local gyms or leagues. For me, that’s the biggest loss,” says SAU Kinesiology and PRISM (Promoting Respect in Sexual Minorities) Advisor, Dr. Sarah Eikleberry. 

According to ESPN, this new policy means that all students can participate in NAIA men’s sports, but only those assigned female at birth can participate in NAIA women’s sports. Students outside of this category can participate in practices, workouts, and activities, but cannot partake in competitions with other schools. 

This policy was approved through a 20-0 vote, with no one on the committee rejecting the near-ban. This fact hits SAU’s community close to home, as Ambrose President Dr. Amy Novak sits on the NAIA Committee. 

Dr. Novak is the chair of the committee of presidents in the NAIA. This means that while she helped conduct the proceedings, she did not have a vote in this decision. However, she was part of the task force that worked to revise the policy on transgender students in college sports. 

When asked about the goal of this policy, Novak said the main goal was “to understand how to guide institutions in their questions as it related to transgender athlete participation.” 

She explains that everyone at SAU wants human dignity to remain at the forefront of this conversation. “The last thing I would want is anybody saying things or doing things that would, in some way, dehumanize individuals.”

Novak explains that this policy was guided by the three values of fairness, safety, and inclusion. 

Eikleberry instead ties this decision to the historical nature of collegiate sports. 

“In this nation, sports and education are inextricably linked, but have historically privileged white cisgender men. This type of policy poses no solution to the real inequities that permeate participation, coaching, or leadership within college athletics.”

Novak says the NAIA task force used feedback from college presidents, athletic directors, female transgender athletes, female cisgender athletes, legal scholars, and medical experts. Members of the task force met about 20 times throughout a two-year period. While the task force conducted extensive research, data regarding transgender athletes has its limitations. 

“The tough part of transgender athleticism is that there is virtually no longitudinal data that has more than maybe five or seven student-athletes or athletes in general,” Novak explains. 

Junior Amber Warak is on the SAU swim team and identifies as nonbinary. They say they believe research regarding this issue has demonstrated no athletic advantage for transwomen over ciswomen (individuals who were assigned female at birth and identify as women). 

“There have been countless studies done that show that transwomen have no more of an athletic advantage than other women in sports, but NAIA is choosing to ignore all of these studies and be blatantly discriminatory.”

This new policy won’t take effect until August 2024, but there have already been questions about what this means for the SAU community. Novak explains that student athletes will self-report their gender identity. Additionally, she assures that any transgender women involved in SAU sports will not lose their scholarships. 

Questions have also been circulating about whether this decision was tied to religion. 

According to ESPN, 17 out of the 20 presidents who voted on this decision come from institutions affiliated with Christian denominations. Additionally, this majority on the president’s committee is not reflected by the rest of the NAIA. Over half of NAIA schools are not religiously affiliated. 

“We tried to remove the religious piece from it,” Novak explains. “I would say that we really stuck to those three values of inclusivity, safety, and fairness of competition as sort of the guiding framework.”

Novak says she would like to find a time to meet with PRISM, the LGBTQ+ club at SAU. “My hope is to meet with them and to help them understand that this is something we have to adhere to because we are a part of the NAIA, but this isn’t necessarily a statement about them.”

Additionally, Novak says that she and the NAIA Council of Presidents promise a continual review of this policy. “We acknowledge that we might not have it quite right yet, but we will continue to review it as we go forward.”

She also says she hopes to include what she learns from her conversation with PRISM in future decisions like this. 

To learn more about this topic, please visit ESPN and the PRISM Instagram page @stambroseprism.