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This story is discussing suicide. If you or anyone you know have thoughts of suicide, please contact the suicide and crisis life line of 988 or 1-800-273 talk (8255).
Former Roanoke College Women’s Swim Captain Lily Mullens remembers the first weekend of September of her junior season in 2023. She had just got her wisdom teeth drawn, but something much more painful should come.
That weekend, a team meeting was called to discuss a biologically male transgender swimmer who would compete with the team. Mullens was at the meeting over zoom.
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Captains of the other, junior and senior team Kate Pearson, Lily Mullens and Bailey Gallagher. (Outkick)
“The purpose of the meeting was to bring us all together with this person in a way, hashish out regardless of feelings or opinions we had for the people with administrators in space,” Mullens claimed. “At one point, it was discussed that this person had thought of and reviewed with planning a suicide without the transition. So it was something that was told to all of us.”
Mullens, who described herself as a religious person, said that she and her teammates’ first reaction were confusion.
“All of us felt emotionally confused. We didn’t know what to do,” she said.
Mullens claimed that the athlete even went into detail about the details of the alleged plan.
“The plan was actually detailed for us,” Mullens said. “There is a building on the campus that they said they had planned to go to the top off and launch themselves from.”
The school administrators at the meeting allegedly “did not say anything” during and after the athlete’s alleged suicide proposal, according to Mullens. Then the team got asked to vote in a virtual vote to determine whether the trans-athlete should score with the women’s content until the mid-season, per. Mullens.
Mullens said she and another teammate voted no while the rest of the team everyone voted yes. Mullens claimed that this was not the result she expected before the meeting based on her conversation with her teammates.
“However, when we went into this meeting, everyone agreed that it would not be a thing. So the immediate switching that happened owes to the emotional stress that put us on us, to go through, listen to hearing mental health fighting and not knowing what to do, and then plan something as harmful as it and so destroy, tell us and so to ask if it is OK, if this person scored,” Mullens.
“I kept to my guns and I said ‘no’ … but left this meeting and made my friends call me afterwards and tell me how, just, not okay they were. The tears, just the hectic panic, all this. I experienced it all myself, but it was just such a hard meeting and such a difficult thing to carry. We were all 19-20 years old.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares completed an investigation into the situation involving Roanoke’s Trans Swimmer, and conclusions released by the complaints on Monday, dealt with the alleged suicide’s claim referring to the athlete as “swimming A.”
“Swimmer A then told the team in vivid details of regularly considering suicide before they underwent medical treatment and about to commit suicide when blocs for swimming. Swimming an expressed a desire to climb to the top of the Trexler Hall, the tallest building on campus and ‘go splat on the concrete,'” Miyares’ conclusions.
The former Upenn -Swimmer reflects on being teammates with Lia Thomas
Mullens claimed that she and the other swimmers were told that “none of the mental health or health and advisory people were told about the situation” until after swimmers had a press conference to speak against the school on October 5, 2023.
“After our press conference, the head of student health and counseling called as well as one of our advisers at Campus a meeting with us,” Mullens said.
“We told them everything we went through and they were at the time they were confused about what we’ve been through … The first first meeting we had with the leader of counseling and one of our advisers, they had no idea. And when we told them they were horrified on our behalf.”
Later in the semester, after the female swimmers held a press conference and announced the situation, hoped Mullens and her teammates to make a travel course this spring. She said she was looking for a change in the environment after the situation involving the swimming team.
Mullens and some of her teammates show Japan as the top option and thought they would be chosen for the course based on academic achievements and leisure activities.
However, she and other swimmers were ultimately denied many of their first options, and some refused to travel completely. Mullens said that only two female swimmers were chosen for any course and that they did not get their first election either, and one of them was accepted before the press conference took place.
Former Roanoke -winds swimming Lily Mullens (Courtesy of icons)
Mullens remembered an e email she received when her mother asked why she was not accepted.
“When she emailed the answer she got was, I can’t remember the exact wording … but basically it said ‘not only is the professor responsible for the student’s academics, but also for their behavior,'” Mullens said. “I had no idea what that means. I’ve never had any kind of disciplinary action for me.”
Miyares’ study dealt with claims that the female swimmers were rejected from the travel paths as a means of retaliation to talk about the Trans athlete.
“The evidence has established a reasonable reason to believe that respondent Roanoke College’s politics discriminated against the female swimmers based on sex, whether the college actually refused them overnight, benefits and privileges on the basis of sex, and whether the college retaliated against them for their related protected activity,” Miyares’ findings said.
Miyares concluded that the college denied the female swimmers accommodation, benefits and privileges on the basis of sex, causing the women’s emotional, physical and honorable injuries and violated Virginia Human Rights Act (VHRA).
Miyares also suggested that the female swimmers who were discriminated against are eligible to seek financial damage because the school’s policy violated VHRA according to the state code.
Roanoke released a statement on Monday that denied Miyares’ conclusions.
“College categorically denies the non -founded claim that its Trustees, Faculty, Personnel, Trainers or Administration violated the human rights of all students or reciprocated against them in any way,” says part of the statement, adding that “the transking student never competed for the women’s team.”
The statement continued, “The report claims that our faculty reciprocated against members of the women’s swim team by rejecting their applications for May -Election Courses. This accusation is obviously false. Our faculty acted in good faith and followed our usual process of students’ choice of May designations.”
Mullens called the school’s answer a “lie” in terms of the allegations that the athlete “never competed for the women’s team.”
“It’s a lie. This person was on the team. There’s no other way to say that. You can say all you want it was a request. But it’s a lie. This person was in our group chats. This person was in our woman’s suits. This person was in practice. This person did all the things with the team. It sounds like a team member to me. [Frank] SHUSHOK had the nerve to send it out. Reading that made me just as sad because it’s just more proof of what we went through, ”Mullens said.
Mullens’ lawyer, Bill Bock from the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (Icons), condemned Roanoke for his statement.
“Unfortunately, President SHUSHOK’s letter does not differ from Roanoke College’s consistent two-year pattern of refusing mismatches, accusing victims and discriminating against women,” Bock said in a statement to Pakinomist Digital.
“In the light of Virginia Attorney General’s Report, which describes strong evidence that women’s freedom of expression is suppressed, and women’s athletic opportunities are limited, President Shushok’s tone deaf reaction again withdraws from the tired sentences of the school’s Public Relations Consultant, who once again claims to ‘celebrate the rights of the individual. Finding a way forward and supporting and each ‘celebrating our people’. ”
Members of Roanoke College Women’s Swim Team participate in a press conference. (Outkick)
Roanoke has addressed Mullens and Bock’s response to his statement in another statement delivered to Pakinomist Digital.
“Roanoke College stands by our statement. We will continue to cooperate with the Attorney General’s Office, which we have since the beginning,” the statement reads.
Roanoke has not dealt with the Trans Athlet’s alleged suicide requirements or the school’s alleged handling of this situation in any of its statements.
