Bathroom Breaks
April 29, 2016
Restrooms and locker rooms have become the front line of the latest civil rights battle in America, with collateral damage to school sports possible.
The laws of the land (local, state and federal) are presently conflicting and unclear; but ultimately, they are likely to be liberally construed. In the meantime, it will be discouraging to observe litigation that pits one person’s rights to access against another person’s right of privacy.
What we advocate is a safe and supportive environment for all students, with as many decisions as possible made at the most local level possible where resources can be best assessed and allocated.
We take no political or religious position; we are on the side of students, facilitating opportunities for gender questioning or confirming students while promoting a fair and level playing field in competitive athletics for all students.
To preserve opportunities for females and consistent with state and federal statutes and a long history of case law, Michigan High School Athletic Association rules do not allow boys on girls teams in MHSAA postseason tournaments. Therefore, the only time the MHSAA is directly involved is when a male student is transitioning to female and desires to play on an interscholastic team designated only for females in MHSAA tournaments. We decide about eligibility only; local schools make the necessary accommodations.
If a student’s gender preference of male is disputed by facts, that student may not be allowed on tournament teams designated for females only. Each decision is made on a case-by-case basis, balancing the objectives of promoting both opportunity and fair play.
Adversity
January 25, 2012
It’s been said that adversity causes some people to break and others to break records.
Author Keith McFarland spent seven years studying the performance of 7,000 companies, after which he made this pronouncement: “The top performers had one thing in common. Each went through a period of pronounced difficulty – often serious enough to threaten the firm’s existence.”
McFarland continued in The Breakthrough Company: “Great companies, I discovered, arise not from the absence of difficulty but from its vortex,” its whirly mass.
The key during tough times, according to McFarland, is not to focus on survival, but instead to ask fundamental questions, to face facts that might have gone overlooked in more prosperous times, and to identify and integrate the new knowledge and insights that adversity can bring.
Schools and school sports, today in the vortex of adversity, may actually do more than merely survive our present difficulties if we too examine obstacles and opportunities previously overlooked, and then make positive use of the lessons that sometimes only adversity can bring.
A Scottish author of the 19th century with the optimistic name Samuel Smiles wrote: “The very greatest things – great thoughts, discoveries, inventions – have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.”