A series of disciplinary meetings

Oct 3rd, 2023 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

In late August the Independent Women’s Forum reported:

In Kim Russell’s memory, the room had dark energy. Chairs were set up in a circle, and she was at the epicenter. For nearly two hours, Russell, who has been Oberlin College’s head women’s lacrosse coach for five years, recalled feeling critiqued, crushed, and degraded by the condescending and censorious voices of colleagues, players, and friends.

So you know instantly what the circle was addressing.

This was one of a series of disciplinary meetings Oberlin College staff subjected Russell to after a post she shared on her personal Instagram account upset students and staff. The post congratulated Emma Weyant, now an Olympian swimmer, who had her first-place podium spot at the 2022 NCAA swimming championships taken from her by transgender-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas.

Oh oh oh, The One Forbidden Thing.

“I was not just chastised,” Russell began, recounting what took place in an interview with Independent Women’s Forum. “I was burned at the stake. I was stoned. I was basically told I was a horrible person, and it was heartbreaking, really.”

I know the feeling. I know the feeling exactly, although in my case it expressed as more like rage than heartbreak. But I know that goddam sit in the center of the circle while they all throw rocks at you feeling, when the “they” throwing the rocks are people who were friends five minutes ago.

With Oberlin’s reputation as a “bastion for progressive politics,” Russell thought she would fit right in on campus…

But every time she has voiced a dissenting opinion, Russell says she has been silenced—the opposite of how she expected this liberally-minded campus to operate.

…

When Russell saw that transgender-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas from University of Pennsylvania won the 2022 NCAA swimming championships, beating top-ranked female swimmers, she felt empathy for the athletes whose hard work had been unfairly erased.

Ah but they’re “cis” women, so they deserve everything they get. Bitches.

So on March 20, 2022, Russell shared a post from another Instagram user that read “Congratulations to Emma Weyant, the real woman who won the NCAA 500-yard freestyle event,” to her own personal Instagram story.

All she added to the post was her own brief commentary, reading “What do you believe? I can’t be quiet on this… I’ve spent my life playing sports, starting & coaching sports programs for girls & women..”

Little did she know, a player she said she was quite close to screenshotted the post and sent it in an email to Natalie Winkelfoos, athletic director at Oberlin College and a member of the president’s senior staff. The following day, on March 21, Russell was called into a meeting with Winkelfoos and Creg Jantz, assistant athletic director, where she was chastised for sharing her beliefs on Instagram.

Her “beliefs” that women’s sports should be for women, not women plus men who call themselves women. “Lia” Thomas is a giant, with a male skeleton and male shoulders and all the rest of it. It’s obviously not fair to let him compete in women’s races.

“Unfortunately, you fall into a category of people that are filled with hate in the world,” Winkelfoos said, according to Russell’s recording.

Jantz told her: “It’s acceptable to have your own opinions, but when they go against Oberlin College’s beliefs, it’s a problem for your employment.”

Winkelfoos then asked Russell to sit down for a meeting with her entire lacrosse team and apologize. Russell said many of her players hadn’t even seen the post but, once the meeting began, a “mob mentality” took over. For about 45 minutes, several impassioned players voiced how upset they were with Russell, saying things such as, “A trans woman is a woman,” and “How can you not think that?”

But that wasn’t enough; there had to be a further meeting, with even more bullying.

There, Russell faced what she described as a two-hour “struggle session” with her entire team, Winkelfoos, the athletic department’s Title IX director and its diversity, equity, and inclusion representative, as well as the Title IX director for the entire college. The Title IX director instructed Russell to listen, not respond, and repeat back what she had heard each individual say.

“That meeting turned into anybody being able to say anything they didn’t like about my coaching style or my assistant’s coaching—anything,” she said. When Russell finally got the floor to explain her position, she said her perspective wasn’t welcome.

“I know that this is probably a shock because now we’re at this stage where, for this generation, it’s not good enough just to work for women’s issues or white feminism. Your feminism has to be inclusive for everybody and work for everybody,” said one athlete.

So it’s not feminism it’s everybodyism. Why? Because women are shit and don’t deserve anything that’s just for women, that’s why.

Russell is still at Oberlin but feels she could be fired at any moment.

Updating to add:

15 Responses to “A series of disciplinary meetings”