Riley Gaines’ selection as commencement speaker riles some Adrian College alums 

The buzz is building for Adrian College’s commencement speaker this weekend, but the current is not all positive.

Both students and alumni of the private liberal arts school, located about 40 miles southwest of Ann Arbor, say the May 5 address by anti-trans activist Riley Gaines will be divisive and violate its own stated mission of being “committed to the pursuit of truth and dignity of all people.”

Among those is R. Cole Bouck, the creator of an LGBT and Ally Pride Scholarship at Adrian College, where he came out as being gay while a sophomore at the school in 1981.

“Elevating this divisive and extremist symbol of hate with the largest megaphone and to the highest platform of an academic institution’s school year, their college graduation, as an alum, this is an embarrassing and hurtful decision. As a donor to the college, this is a bad investment decision,” Bouck told the Michigan Advance. 

Gaines has become one of the leading voices in efforts against allowing transgender women to compete in sports that align with their gender identity after the University of Kentucky swimmer tied for fifth place with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas in the 200 freestyle final at the NCAA Women’s Championships in March 2022. 

Thomas had previously been a member of the university’s men’s swim team, and became the first openly trans woman to compete in the NCAA women’s division. She ended up finishing first in the women’s 500-yard freestyle, becoming the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title. 

Gaines, who made the All-SEC First Team in 2021 and 2022 and was named the 2022 SEC Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year, immediately disputed Thomas’ participation in female competition, refusing to accept her as a woman based on her anatomy, referring to Thomas as a “fully intact male.” 

That basic premise, in which gender is defined solely on one’s reproductive organs, is at the heart of Republican efforts across the country to limit and/or deny rights to transgender individuals by declaring there only two genders, male and female, which are fixed at birth and “immutable.”

However, a strictly binary definition ignores the complexity of what determines biological sex in humans. Newly fertilized embryos have no indication of sex when they initially develop, with that process playing out over the next several weeks and involving precisely timed gene expressions. When that timing is off, as sometimes happens, reproductive organs can exhibit characteristics of the opposite sex, as seen in emerging evidence that gene variants play a role in transgender identity. 

The result is that, scientifically speaking, using visually observable signs of gender at birth as the sole basis for determining biological sex is simply not a reliable method.

Out of the pool and into politics

Gaines quickly used her experience and became a staple of anti-trans efforts across the country. 

Just weeks after her tie with Thomas, Gaines was present when the Kentucky Senate overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of a bill banning transgender females from competing in women’s sports. By September 2022, she appeared in a campaign ad for Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican, in which she said the dream of girls like her “is being taken away” by trans athletes competing in women’s sports.

Since then, Gaines has testified in several other states in support of similar legislation to prevent trans athletes from participating in women’s sports, including West Virginia, Kansas and Ohio, where the bill she spoke in favor also prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming care to trans youth, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The bill was later passed by a veto override and will take effect April 23.

Gaines also campaigned in 2022 with failed GOP gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon who centered her campaign against trans athletes competing in sports and a Florida-style “Don’t Say Gay” education law, telling a crowd in Taylor that people needed to open their eyes “to the irrefutable damage that is being done to women’s sports.”

“There is no equity. There’s no fairness,” Gaines continued. “There’s no sportsmanship, and there’s no opportunity for women to succeed at an elite level without sex-based categories.”

Gaines was the guest of U.S. Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Bruce Twp.) at the 2023 State of the Union address. The former college athlete has headlined Republican fundraisers, like one for GOP Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds last year, and endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president. 

“Riley is fighting on the front lines of the most important women’s issue of our time,” Reynolds said. “She is not afraid to stand up for common sense and declare that biological men do not belong in women’s sports.”

Gaines also has become an ambassador for the conservative Independent Women’s Forum and joined more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in March, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing Thomas to compete at the national championships in 2022.

But as Media Matters reported last year, Gaines’ arguments have moved beyond claiming that trans women possess an unfair advantage over cis women in athletic competition, but also now include increasing claims that trans women pose a sexual and physical threat to cis women, a position at odds with a study by the Williams Institute which found “transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.” 

Despite that, the announcement by Adrian College that Gaines would be the guest speaker at their May 5 commencement was made in glowing terms.

“We look forward to providing Riley a welcoming atmosphere,” said Andrea Milner, Adrian College vice president and dean of academic affairs. “I’m excited to offer our graduates the opportunity to broaden their understanding of world issues and inspire them as they embark on their future endeavors.”

However, it was met with anger by many members of the college’s LGBTQ+ community. The same day that Gaines was announced, a petition to “disinvite” her as the commencement speaker was created at change.org.

Created by Safe Space, Adrian College’s LGBTQ+ student organization, more than 400 signatures were gathered on the first day. It now has more than 1,600.

“According to the Human Rights Campaign, 4 out of 10 LGBT students report being bullied at school (Human Rights Campaign). By inviting someone with controversial views on inclusivity, we risk further alienating these students and creating an environment that doesn’t respect their identities,” stated the petition. “We urge Adrian College administration to reconsider their choice of speaker for this year’s commencement ceremony. Let us ensure our graduation is a celebration that respects all students’ identities and values inclusivity above all else.”

A request for comment was sent to Gaines, but was not returned.

Alumni speak out

Leann McKee is a 1984 Adrian College graduate who later came out as a trans woman. She didn’t mince words about Gaines being selected to speak at her alma mater’s spring graduation ceremony.

“She has no message to deliver other than she hates trans people. That’s her message,” McKee said. “Would she give an uplifting speech? Could she do all the things that you expect a commencement speaker to do? She could, but so could any member of the faculty that’s already there. They don’t need to bring in a controversial figure.”

McKee says while Gaines or her supporters would likely dispute the notion that she hates trans people, the label does not require a literal statement to that effect.

“When we say somebody hates something, you don’t actually have to say the words to understand how somebody feels about it,” she said. “Her whole message is to minimize [trans people’s] experience, try to push them in the corner, and get public sentiment against them. ‘Let’s make laws to legislate trans people out of this. Let’s make up rules so that they can’t play sports. Let’s keep these people out of sight because ew, ick, we don’t like them.’”

Bouck sent a letter in that vein to Adrian College President Jeffrey Docking and the college’s board of trustees.

“Ms. Riley is not an otherwise LGBTQIA+ friendly person who merely has a strong position on a particularly singular issue,” he wrote. “Her ‘policy platform’ in public speaking is not a mystery, it is not unknown, it is not unclear. On the contrary, Ms. Riley’s notoriety arises solely from her established record of intolerance and hate against trans persons and the LGBTQIA+ community more broadly – not just controversy, but HATE.”

Bouck said “hands down” he would support Gaines speaking at a forum in which her controversial opinions could be presented along with an opposing point of view and students could in turn ask both speakers challenging questions, and be challenged themselves. 

Most importantly, he says only those students who wished to take part would participate, unlike at a commencement ceremony.

“This is of course an unkind thing to expect a graduating LGBTQIA+ or Ally senior and their family to have to consider for their college graduation ceremony,” he wrote.

An ‘uncomfortable’ commencement

Docking has been Adrian College’s president since 2005. He holds a Ph.D. in Ethics from Boston University, a master’ss of divinity degree from Garrett-Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Ill., and a B.A. from Michigan State University. 

When asked by the Advance, how Gaines was chosen as the commencement speaker, he said the choice was entirely his own as he thought the issue of transgender women in athletics was substantive. 

“She seems to be at the center of the vortex because of her swimming career at Kentucky, and when she realized that she was swimming against a trans athlete, was willing to go public and say, ‘This doesn’t seem fair to me,” and in speaking up she then became the face of that point of view, so she seemed like the most logical person to bring to talk about this,” said Docking.

While he declined to say what his personal belief is about Gaines’ point of view, Docking insisted that Adrian College was not taking a position on the issue by inviting her to speak.

“First of all, this college is not endorsing her point of view,” he said. “Secondly, I think on college campuses sometimes people debate topics like this. Other times topics like this are presented.”

As to whether a commencement address was the appropriate venue to feature such a polarizing figure as Gaines, Docking had no concerns it was not.

“My feeling is with the amount of tuition that people pay to go to college, whether it’s here or somewhere else, that they should expect to be challenged, presented with thoughtful topics, things that need to be considered from the day they arrive until the day they leave, and so I don’t think that a commencement address is necessarily a time that should be solely focused on just making everybody feel comfortable. I think that making people feel uncomfortable during a commencement address is very consistent with what colleges should be doing.”

In many ways, Docking’s reputation is one based on not letting people, especially at the collegiate level, get too comfortable.

In 2015, he co-authored a book called, “Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Small Liberal Arts Colleges in America,” which focused on an “admissions growth” strategy that has more than doubled enrollment at Adrian College since his arrival. 

That strategy favors prioritizing the funding of athletics and upgraded facilities over the arts, foreign languages or library holdings as those were not viewed as being a draw for new students. While the book received generally favorable reviews, Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, writing for Inside Higher Ed, noted the college’s enrollment growth depended largely on a high tuition discount rate and dubbed Docking’s strategy as “an example of how to destroy an institution in order to save it.”

Supporters, on the other hand, say the results speak for themselves with an enrollment of over 1,850 students compared to less than 900 when Docking arrived. The college’s endowment has also tripled to over $70 million, while seeing a fivefold increase in applications.

But that growth has come with some pains along the way. In 2020, the college tried to quietly implement a plan to cut the history, theater and joint religion, philosophy and leadership departments as a cost-cutting move. However, the pushback from faculty and alumni eventually convinced Docking to cancel the plan, saying he had “received a significant amount of feedback from alumni, faculty, staff, and friends of the College” about the decision and that the “input overwhelmingly supported the continuation of the majors and minors in these departments and the need to keep the liberal arts at the center of all we do as an institution.”

When asked about the feedback on the decision to bring in Gaines, Docking admitted it had created negativity.

“We’ve gotten some angry phone calls,” he said. “We’ve gotten some threatening phone calls. We’ve gotten some alums [who] have been upset about it. I’ve been out of town quite a bit, so I haven’t had a chance to read some of the articles that have been written, but presumably given that this is a very debatable issue and one that people like to weigh in on, I assume that there’ve been a whole lot of people out there that both agree and disagree with the decision.”

Despite that, Docking was clear that no amount of negative feedback would change his mind to invite Gaines and he expected commencement to go on as usual.

“I always say that the second most important thing that we do at Adrian College is educate students, but the first most important thing we do is to try to keep them safe during their time here,” he said. “I’m always concerned about student safety, whether it be large events like this, safety of visitors to campus, et cetera. And so we will certainly take all precautions possible to make sure that it’s a safe environment, a civil environment for people to attend a commencement address.”

Bouck, however, says inviting Gaines is pushing the envelope of what a commencement address should be.

“I am gravely concerned about the safety and security of the students, the college, the public in attendance, and (based upon some of her past experiences) even Ms. Gaines,” he wrote. “Extreme violence against trans people and incidents of mass violence have both skyrocketed over the past years and continue climbing. Why is Adrian College so interested and willing to stoke that fire so publicly?”

Courting controversy on college campuses is nothing new for Gaines. When she spoke at San Francisco State University (SFSU) in April 2023, she claimed that she was assaulted by protestors, although university police eventually suspended the investigation after “reviewing available video footage found that claims of crimes committed were unfounded.”

The SFSU event was hosted by Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a right-wing organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has linked to white supremacist groups, as well as the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has conflated homosexuality with pedophilia.

TPUSA has sponsored Gaines on a national tour of college campuses, although they are not involved with her appearance at Adrian College.

Docking, however, says he sees the controversy surrounding Gaines as being one-sided and often missing the point.

“I don’t think that there’s any doubt that some people see her as anti-trans,” he said. “I think there’s other people that see her as pro Title IX, pro supportive of women in athletics, pro-supportive of fair competition.”

NCAA transgender policy

It is the question of fairness that the debate over Lia Thomas, and of trans athletes in general, is often waged. 

In that regard, Docking says he has experience and insight on collegiate athletics having served as chair of the Division III Presidents Council of the NCAA, the NCAA Board of Governors, and a member of the five-person NCAA Executive Committee. 

“I am very aware of the NCAA’s point of view, and I think that it’s very clear to the public that the NCAA has a point of view, which is … I’m not a medical doctor, but I believe it’s the sort of drugs that suppress testosterone, if they’re taken for enough time, that they will allow trans athletes to compete with their new identity.”

At the time of the NCAA Women’s Championships in February 2022, in which Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth, the policy in place by the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports (CSMAS) required transgender student-athletes to provide documentation that they had undergone one year of testosterone suppression treatment. At that point, Thomas had been on such treatments for more than two years.

It also required a one-time serum testosterone level that fell below the maximum allowable level for the sport in which the athlete was competing, which in this instance was USA Swimming. At the time, USA Swimming deferred to the medical criteria of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which required a testosterone level of below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least 12 consecutive months prior to the competition. 

But just six weeks before the championships, USA Swimming announced new rules for elite swimmers that would require Thomas and other transgender women swimmers to maintain a testosterone level of below 5 nanomoles per liter for at least 36 months before the competition. However, the NCAA declared that it would not adopt the new threshold for the upcoming winter championship. 

Instead, the new standard of 5 nanomoles per liter would be phased in so that by Aug. 1, 2024, transgender student-athletes would have to provide documentation “no less than twice annually (and at least once within four weeks of competition in NCAA championships) that meets the sport-specific standard (which may include testosterone levels, mitigation timelines and other aspects of sport-governing body policies) as reviewed and approved by CSMAS.”

In other words, what started out as a protest of what were essentially temporary rules specifically regarding trans women swimmers, has blossomed under Gaines persona as a movement to ban trans athletes from women’s athletics altogether.

“This has all gone too far. Add your name to the open letter to athletic governing bodies and public servants to keep women’s sports female,” states Gaines’ website.

McKee, who was a competitive athlete for many years including playing women’s tackle football, says this issue is not one that is black or white.

“A lot of sports go by that testosterone level, and I think a lot of people would agree that’s a reasonable thing,” she said. “I think it’s reasonable that different sports have different concerns when it comes to mixing the men and women. So I do agree with the idea that I think each sport could look at it separately. But the tricky thing with testosterone being your measurement is that there are cisgender females in Africa who have been disqualified from their track events because their testosterone levels were naturally too high. Well, all women have testosterone. So we’re now saying women’s sports is meant for women, but only those that don’t have too much testosterone. Is that fair? No.”

McKee says that unfortunately, the atmosphere has become so poisoned with bigotry that a rational debate is almost impossible right now.

“There could be conversations that could be had on this topic. Absolutely. I always saw myself as an athlete, so to not play would’ve been a blow to me. But at the same time, I want to make sure I’m competing the way I’m supposed to compete. See? I’m not so radical that I’m saying, ‘If anybody says they want to be a woman today, they can play.’ But while it’s a political football, I don’t think any progress is going to get made,” said McKee. 

“It’s just very difficult to try to do it when people are just trying to score points and keep people uneducated about trans people.”