by Aaron Warner

The Vermont Principal’s Association handed Mid Vermont Christian School a school wide disqualification from all VPA sponsored events on Monday.  This decision was made by the board “unanimously” 15-0 after allowing their “stakeholders” to comment, VPA assistant executive director Lauren Thomas told the Valley News.

I reached out to the VPA directly yesterday to offer my expert analysis only to be met by the gatekeeper who informed me she would need permission to give me the board’s emails. I never got a call back.  However the story made it all the way to the United Kingdom and was published by the Guardian before I ever heard a word.  

Having put two children through Mid Vermont, helped coach and even drawn pay for refereeing games there I certainly have a stake in their fate. Of course, the VPA is not interested in a diversity of opinions, nor are they concerned with equity, otherwise known as fairness, not to mention banning MVCS is the exact opposite of inclusion.  

Having already made the physiological and statistical case against high school boys participating against high school girls in sports, the next logical thing to do is consider the VPA’s own policy handbook.  After reviewing it last night and again this morning it is full of apparent contradictions whereby the association has written itself into a corner misapplying words in multiple sections tantamount to double-speak.  

At the outset the document launches into a defense of gender identity and “perceived” gender identity making this highly controversial subject the focus of all VPA policy, despite there being zero scientific evidence for trans-genderism as a thing.  In order to be based in science the thing in question needs to be falsifiable.  A students feelings or perceived identity are not.  Essentially, the VPA is basing its policy on the capricious feelings and perceptions of teenagers, mentally ill ones, at the expense of the mentally healthy.  P. 3 sec. 5 states “a medical diagnosis is not required.” The backwardness of this logic is equaling crippling:

1. Commitment to Racial, Gender-Fair, and Disability Awareness: 

The Vermont Principals’ Association believes that all individuals should be treated with dignity, fairness, and respect. Students must be able to participate in Association-sponsored activities in an environment that is free of sexual harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. The Vermont Principals’ Association and its member schools are committed to creating an environment in our activities and programs that promotes respect for and appreciation of racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious and ethnic differences, and is disability aware. Preventing prejudice and discrimination begins with every individual. (p. 4)

Given this situation these are just words on a boilerplate pretending to care about the dignity, fairness and respect of the girls team from MVCS who expressed their religious difference by voluntarily losing a game rather than endure the anti-science, anti-fair and unsportsmanlike practice of another school. 

The Policy on a Coach’s Code of Ethics (Page 5 sec. 3 states): 

“Each student-athlete should be treated as an individual whose welfare shall be primary at all times. The coach must be aware that they serve as a model in the education of the student-athlete and, therefore, shall never place the value of winning above the value of sportsmanship, health, and safety.” 

Here again the policy language clearly defends a coach’s right to protect their players safety as they see fit yet when MVCS applied this policy against the VPA’s sacred cow of woke identity politics it mysteriously doesn’t. Rather than placing winning above their girl’s health and safety they took the loss and ended their season.  The commissariate pretending to be an athletic governing body chose to add insult to injury.  The unanimity of the vote has about the same integrity of the one enjoyed by communist emperor Xi Jinping this week in China on his way to a lifetime leadership despite the overwhelming disapproval of the Chinese people.  

Another policy that amounts to just digital ink on the paper can be found on page 8 under “Student Limitations” which states: 

“Most teams have cut policies; some students do not even get to participate on their school team.” 

This is perhaps the most realistic and valuable nod to the adult life with which these teens will be confronted.  You don’t always get what you want.  However this painful reality was too much for any of the adults to apply to the male student “perceiving” himself to be a teenage girl.  It wasn’t enough to let him try that on for size, they had to let him take his 6’3” masculine frame and 20-30x higher testosterone levels onto the floor with girls half his size. 

Pages 8 and 9 the VPA trots out the legal term “bona fide” to describe student athletes eligibility for sport.  Bona fide literally translates to “good faith”.  Allowing a young man to compete against girls who were acting in the goodness of their faith then punishing them for it is anything but a good faith practice. 

On pages 12 and 14 the policy notes amateur status and age respectively, with the decisive language “outstanding players” and “19” (years old) as limiting factors to maintain fairness.  Here again the policy seems to indicate maturity matters – in other words, despite what you may have heard, size matters.  Sanity, it seems, does not. 

This Marxist anti-religion bent in Vermont politics has come home to roost all over our children.  And it’s not wonder it is making a mockery of them.  Karl Marx had six children, one of whom he rejected since he bore him out of wedlock with the family maid.  Of his others, three died of malnutrition and two by suicide.  This is the man Vermont politicians listen to when it comes to politics and policy regarding children.  The nuts don’t fall far from the tree. 

The end of the VPA document addresses legal recourse for member teams stating they participate on a voluntary basis.  In typical legalese they assume and litigious schools will suffer the penalties of incurring legal fees if they lose to the VPA.  

As of today the United States Supreme Court is hearing a case out of West Virginia about this very same topic – fairness for girls in sports.  Eighteen states have already legally protected their girls from unfair participation by boys.  

What say you Vermont?  If the VPA wishes to call itself “democratic” as it does in its policy document then it ought to allow actual democracy of the students and coaches affected by the policies to be heard.  Rather than fifteen bureaucrats playing politics from their cozy office chairs, let’s hear from the thousands of coaches, parents and students putting their sweat equity on the line.  

What is that woke axiom again – silence is violence?  Stand up and be heard Vermont. 

The author is a commentator and regional reporter for Vermont Daily Chronicle.