A member of the NCAA Committee on Infractions has resigned in disgust over the group’s pro-transgender athlete policies that he says discriminate against women.
William Bock III, the former general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, announced last Friday that he was resigning from the committee over the NCAA’s rules allowing men to compete as women in college sports. Bock is resigning from the post he has held since 2016 for a term that isn’t set to expire until 2025, according to the Washington Examiner.
“Although I may not have agreed with the wisdom of every rule in the NCAA rulebook, I believed the intent behind the NCAA’s rules was competitive fairness and protection of equal opportunities for student-athletes,” Bock wrote in his resignation letter sent to NCAA chief Charlie Baker. “This conviction has changed as I have watched the NCAA double down on regressive policies which discriminate against female student-athletes.”
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker speaks to the press at the Hynes Convention Center FEMA Mass Vaccination Site on March 30, 2021 in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. (Erin Clark-Pool/Getty Images)
Bock went on to point to the policy that allows male-born trans women to compete as women after meeting a list of requirements, including date of transition and testosterone levels.
Bock insisted that the criteria does not negate the natural physical advantages that male-born athletes have over women, even if they have suppressed their testosterone levels.
“There’s a lot of biological development that starts at birth that allows you to maximize testosterone, and those changes that you get through development — they don’t go away,” he wrote. “And you’re going to reduce performance by a small amount if you reduce testosterone levels, but you’re never going to bridge the gap between men and women. And so it’s a ruse to say that testosterone suppression, it’s a level playing field, so it’s not true.”
Bock said that his work at the anti-doping agency allowed him to learn a lot about human biology, and that experience showed him that it is unfair to allow male-born transgenders to compete against natural-born women.
He also said he has argued against allowing trans-athletes to compete as women since the initial controversy over UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas erupted in 2022.
Lia Thomas of the Pennsylvania Quakers after winning the 500-meter freestyle event during a tri-meet against the Yale Bulldogs and the Dartmouth Big Green at Sheerr Pool on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania on January 8, 2022, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Hunter Martin/Getty Images)
Bock added that he worked with experts in biology and sports physiology “to really try to make sure that I really understood the science” but came to the conclusion that allowing trans players to play against women was wrong.
“If I’m there in a sport integrity role when there’s massive, essentially authorized, cheating taking place and dramatically harming women — it’s just a contradiction,” Bock insisted. “I just felt like I couldn’t seem to do that any longer and needed to resign with the hope that maybe [it] will cause other people to look at the issue more closely.”
Since handing in his resignation and being open about his reasons in public, Bock added that the fear over the issue is palpable in the NCAA.
“I’ve gotten no response from anybody. Which I think probably says a lot about the fear that’s driving silence at academic institutions on this issue,” he said.
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