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This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Former Roanoke College women’s swim captain Lily Mullens remembers the first weekend in September of her junior season in 2023. She had just gotten her wisdom teeth pulled, but something much more painful was to come.
That weekend, a team meeting was called to discuss a biological male transgender swimmer who wanted to compete with the team. Mullens was in the meeting over Zoom.
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Captains of the sophomore, junior, and senior squads — Kate Pearson Lily Mullens and Bailey Gallagher. (OutKick)
“The purpose of the meeting was to bring us all together with this individual to, in a way, hash out whatever feelings or opinions we had to the individuals with administrators in the room,” Mullens alleged. “At one point, it was discussed that this individual, without the transition, had thought about and gone through with planning a suicide. So that was something that was told to all of us.”
Mullens, who described herself as a religious person, said she and her teammates’ first reaction was confusion.
“All of us felt emotionally confused. We didn’t know what to do,” she said.
Mullens alleged that the athlete even went into detail about the specifics of the alleged plan.
“The plan was actually detailed to us,” Mullens said. “There’s a building on campus that they said they had planned going to the top of and launching themselves off of.”
The school administrators at the meeting allegedly “didn’t say anything” during and after the athlete’s alleged suicidal suggestion, according to Mullens. Then, the team was told to vote in a virtual poll to determine whether to let the trans athlete score with the women’s team until mid-season, per Mullens.
Mullens said she and one other teammate voted no, while the rest of the team all voted yes. Mullens claimed this was not the result she expected prior to the meeting based on her conversation with her teammates.
“When we went into that meeting though, everybody agreed that that was not going to be a thing. So, the immediate switch-up that happened, I blame on the emotional stress that that put on us, going through, listening to hearing mental health struggles, and not knowing what to do and then planning something as detrimental as that and as devastating, telling us that and then asking whether or not it’s OK if this person scores,” Mullens said.
“I stuck to my guns and I said ‘no,’… but leaving that meeting and having my friends call me afterwards and tell me how, just, not okay they were. The tears, just the frantic panic, all of that. I experienced it all myself, but it was just such a hard meeting and such a difficult thing to bear. We were all 19-20 years old.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares concluded an investigation into the situation involving Roanoke’s trans swimmer, and findings, released by complainants on Monday, addressed the alleged suicidal claim, referring the the athlete as “Swimmer A.”
“Swimmer A then told the team in vivid detail about regularly contemplating suicide before undergoing medical treatment and about wanting to commit suicide whenever stepping on the blocks to swim. Swimmer A expressed a desire to climb to the top of Trexler Hall, the tallest building on campus, and ‘go splat on the concrete,'” Miyares’ findings stated.
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Mullens alleged that she and the other swimmers were told that “none of the mental health or health and counseling people were told about the situation” until after the swimmers held a press conference to speak out against the school on Oct. 5, 2023.
“After our press conference, the head of student health and counseling, as well as one of our counselors on campus called a meeting with us,” Mullens said.
“We told them everything that we went through, and they, at the time, they were baffled as to what we’ve been through… That first initial meeting that we had with the head of counseling and one of our counselors, they had no idea. And when we told them, they were appalled on our behalf.”
Later on in the semester, after the female swimmers held a press conference and made the situation public, Mullens and her teammates hoped to do a travel course in the spring. She said she was looking for a change in environment after the situation involving the swim team.
Mullens and some of her teammates list Japan as the top option and believed they would be chosen for the course based on academic performance and extracurricular activities.
However, she and other swimmers were ultimately denied many of their first options and some denied completely from traveling. Mullens said only two female swimmers were selected for any course, and neither got their first choice, and one of them was accepted before the press conference occurred.
Former Roanoke women’s swimmer Lily Mullens (Courtesy of ICONS)
Mullens recalled an email she received when her mother inquired about why she was not accepted.
“When she emailed, the response that she got was, I can’t remember the exact wording… but basically it said ‘not only is the professor responsible for the student’s academics, but also for their behavior,'” Mullens said. “I had no idea what that means. I’ve never had any sort of disciplinary action to me.”
Miyares’ investigation addressed allegations that the female swimmers were rejected from the travel courses as a means of retaliation for speaking out about the trans athlete.
“The evidence has established reasonable cause to believe that Respondent Roanoke College’s policy discriminated against the female swimmers based on sex, whether the college in fact denied them accommodations, advantages, and privileges on the basis of sex, and whether the college retaliated against them for their related protected activity,” Miyares’ findings stated.
Miyares concluded that the college denied the female swimmers accommodations, advantages, and privileges on the basis of sex, caused the women emotional, physical, and dignitary harms and violated the Virginia Human Rights Act (VHRA).
Miyares also suggested the female swimmers who were discriminated against are eligible to seek financial damages because the school’s policy violated the VHRA, as per state code.
Roanoke released a statement on Monday denying of Miyares’ findings.
“The college categorically denies the unsubstantiated allegation that its trustees, faculty, staff, coaches, or administration violated the human rights of any students or retaliated against them in any way,” part of the statement reads, adding that “The transgender student never competed on the women’s team.”
The statement continued, “The report does allege that our faculty retaliated against members of the women’s swim team by rejecting their applications to May Term courses. That accusation is patently false. Our faculty acted in good faith and followed our usual process regarding student selection for May term courses.”
Mullens called the school’s response a “lie,” regarding the claims the athlete “never competed on the women’s team.”
“It’s a lie. This individual was on the team. There’s no other way to put it. You can say all you want that it was a request. But it’s a lie. This person was in our group chats. This person was in our women’s suits. This person was at practice. This person did all the things with the team. That sounds like a team member to me. And I was actually appalled by the fact that President [Frank] Shushok had the nerve to send that out. Reading that made me just so upset because it’s just more proof of what we went through,” Mullens said.
Mullens’ attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), condemned Roanoke for its statement.
“Regrettably, President Shushok’s letter does not deviate from Roanoke College’s consistent two-year pattern of denying misconduct, blaming victims, and discriminating against women,” Bock said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“In the face of the Virginia Attorney General’s report, which describes strong evidence of women’s free speech being suppressed and women’s athletic opportunities being curtailed, President Shushok’s tone deaf response again trots out the tired phrases of the School’s public relations consultant, claiming yet again to ‘celebrate the individual’s rights to form opinions and champion the rights to free speech’ and ‘seek to find a path forward that supports and honors each and every member of our community.'”
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Members of the Roanoke College women’s swim team attend a press conference. (OutKick)
Roanoke has addressed Mullens and Bock’s responses to its statement in another statement provided to Fox News Digital.
“Roanoke College stands by our statement. We will continue to cooperate with the Attorney General’s Office, as we have since the beginning,” the statement read.
Roanoke has not addressed the trans athlete’s alleged suicidal claim or the school’s alleged handling of that situation in any of its statements.
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