Riley Gaines Describes 'Hostage' Situation At San Francisco State University

is Gaines for five minutes for your opening statement. Thank you, Chairman Bishop, Ranking Member I.V. and Ranking Member Thompson, and members of the committee for inviting me to speak to you today. My name is Riley Gaines, and I'm a 12-time All-American Summer from the University of Kentucky. Competing in the Women's Division of the 2022 Insta-Vol-A Championships, myself and my teammates and competitors around the country were required to compete and share a locker room with Leah Thomas, a biological male who competed on the men's team at the University of Pennsylvania, as will Thomas, the three years prior. In the 200-yard freestyle at the Insta-Vol-A Championships, Thomas and I tied.

Despite going the exact same time down to the 100th of a second, the Insta-Vol-A insisted on giving Thomas the trophy as they explained this was necessary for photo purposes and told me that I had to go home empty-handed. At our national championships, I looked around and wondered why no one was standing up for myself and the other women in the pool and in that locker room. As I talked to my teammates and competitors at the championships, I discovered that the overwhelming majority of the girls shared the extreme discomfort of being forced to strip down in front of a male who was intact with an exposing male genitalia in that same room. After seeing how this affected every girl at that meet, I decided I would stand up and speak out. I put my plans for my future, which included dental school, on hold after graduation and decided to fight for women and girls in sports. Last December, I joined the nation's most influential women's organization, making gains to stand up for women's rights and against discrimination of women in single sex spaces. Independent Women's Forum and its C-Force is their organization, Independent Women's Voice, and I serve as a spokeswoman there.

But I've spent this past year speaking about the need to keep women's sports for females only and to safeguard women's privacy, security, and access to a fair playing field. The right to privacy and equal opportunities for women are not being protected by Title IX. Even worse than the efforts to dismantle Title IX are the efforts to silence and intimidate us through the use of every means available, whether that be fear, shame, threats, emotional blackmail, gaslighting, to try to keep us from speaking out against the efforts to deprive women of their rights. I believe the co-heir silencing of women and men by college administrators who will not let us speak freely about injustices now being faced by women in sports is one of the most important free speech issues of our time. Seeing how universities were not allowing students to truthfully consider all perspectives, I found it necessary to travel to colleges all over the country to share my experience surrounding the injustices being faced by women in sports and the systemic attempt to erase women as a whole. In April, on April 6 of 2023, I traveled to San Francisco State University to speak to a campus group on the right of women to compete on a level playing field in sport. The school administration was aware of my visit and the program had been publicized on campus.

I was told I would be met by the campus police and briefed on a security plan an hour and a half before the event, but the police failed to show up to our scheduled meeting. I went to the classroom building where I was to speak, which was on the third floor. And I entered the room, which soon began to fill with protesters. Still, the campus officers did not show like I was told they would. And I began my speech. And the protesters in the room, they were not generally disruptive. However, I could hear chanting from outside the hallway.

And I sensed the situation outside was growing confrontational, which was unnerving, but no one provided any guidance to alert me that my safety was at risk. They continuously chanted outside the room, we fight back. And that's when I began to fear for my safety. As I ended my presentation, protesters in the room opened the lock doors in a chaotic flood of shouting. Angry protesters forced their way in. They rushed at me with fists raised, most shouting, and angry faces coming around me. They flickered the lights and ultimately then turned the lights off.

The room filled with glares of cell phone flashlights, some in my face. And I realized I was at the mercy of the crowd, and I was assaulted. A woman grabbed me and told me she was with the campus police and pulled me towards the door. But I did not believe she was with the police, because she wore no clothes. The indicated she was an officer. And she had a face covering on, so I couldn't see her face. And I resisted going with her.

But I recognized I really had no choice, because I couldn't have made it out without help. Again, I really truly feared for my life. But once we made it into the hallway, we were met with an even larger mob, blocking the stairway exit ultimately forcing us to barricade ourselves into an office alongside the same hallway. The small room we had found would be my prison for the next three hours. And in those hours, I was certainly held against my will. The mob screamed vengeful, racist, violent, awful things at both myself and the officers. And I received no assurance that I would get out of that situation.

When I needed consoling from the officers, because I was so flustered and confused, they told me they could not provide me with that, because it seemed too controversial for them. When I had expressed that I had been hit, no one asked me if I was OK, or no one asked me if I needed medical attention. When I realized I missed my flight back home due to being held hostage, I became visibly upset and told the lieutenant in the room that I just wanted to make it home. And he responded back with, don't you think we all want to go home? After a while, some of these protesters began to demand a ransom for my release. They had asked for payment and threatened not to safely release me without it. And I heard an adult administrator who I learned to be the dean of students from outside. The door trying to negotiate my release with the students.

They said my appearance on campus was so traumatic that they were owed something. They were under the false notion that the university paid me to be there. Therefore, they only thought it was fair that I should pay them if I wanted to leave. After hours of being held against my will, the officers from the city of San Francisco Police Department finally arrived. And they were much more methodical and assertive in developing a strategy. And it was around midnight that I was finally able to leave. I had to run to the car.

Ask you to sum up as soon as you can. Yes. I'll just read this last paragraph here. Free speech suffers when university administrators do not condemn violence and kidnapping on their campus. It's chilled when administrators do not adequately prepare for and protect the safety of their speakers, whether liberal or conservative. And free speech is undermined when administrators misrepresent and malign the views of those with whom they disagree. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.