A member of the NCAA Committee on Infractions resigned from his position over disagreements with the organization’s transgender athlete policy, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Reportedly, William Bock III, the former general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, submitted his letter of resignation to NCAA President Charlie Baker on Friday. Bock reportedly served as a committee member since 2016.
The primary reason for Bock’s resignation was the organization’s decision to allow men who believe they are “transgender” to compete in women’s sports, the Examiner noted. Part of these policies included measuring a man’s testosterone levels before allowing him to compete with girls.
“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. “This conviction has changed as I have watched the NCAA double down on regressive policies which discriminate against female student-athletes.”
Reportedly, Bock first opposed the policies when he was former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Will “Lia” Thomas compete against women and win at the NCAA championships. Thomas competed as a man for three years prior to joining the women’s team, where he made women feel uncomfortable in their locker room and robbed them of awards.
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“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,” Bock added. “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 reportedly consulted with “experts” about transgender sports physiology and biology to try to understand the policy.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Bock told the Examiner that he has not heard a response yet.
“I’ve gotten no response from anybody,” he said. “Which I think probably says a lot about the fear that’s driving silence at academic institutions on this issue.”
Women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines reacted to Bock’s resignation on X (formerly Twitter).
“More of this,” she wrote.
"NCAA official resigns in protest of transgender policies that ‘discriminate against female student-athletes’"
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) February 13, 2024
More of this 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼https://t.co/0WJDJ8PldX
Last year, Gaines, who competed and tied against Thomas at the NCAA championships, told Townhall that allowing “transgender” males to compete in women’s sports is a “slippery slope.”
“If this continues, it’s a slippery slope. It’s truly only a matter of time before one transgender athlete winning a national title in the women’s category becomes three and five and 10 and so on,” Gaines explained. “I think truthfully it will become…the integrity of women’s sports will be lost.”
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