On November 27, 2023, twelve-time All-American swimmer, Riley Gaines Barker, spoke at a forum in Coffman Union, hosted by Students for a Conservative Voice. Gaines spoke on when the 2022 NCAA National Women’s Swimming Championship was taken from her unfairly. In the final round of her event, Riley tied for with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas down to the one-hundreth of a second. Although the two swimmers tied, Riley was informed she would not receive any recognition, and Lia was the winner. Riley quickly realized what was going on, and began to challenge the lack of support for women in sports.

This event opened Riley’s eyes to the importance of protecting women in sports, and she began advocating for women in sports. Riley understood the threat that not just swimmers were facing, but all young women across the entire country. Riley’s impassioned opposition to biological men competing in women’s sports quickly became a beacon of hope for many others who felt the same way. 

Since then Riley started a campaign fighting to protect women all across the country whose safety was at risk. She has traveled the country going school to school, speaking the way she did at our very own University of Minnesota. Her voice has reached thousands as she continues to push forward in the woman sport space.

After speaking, Riley gave the audience the opportunity to ask questions. One member of the audience brought up the concept of boycotting and its effectiveness. The audience member’s question and her answer follow.

Question:

My question has to do with boycotts. I am probably one of the oldest people in this room and would like to say I participated, when I was in college, in the Nestlé boycott. For those of you who don’t know what that is look it up on wikipedia, but it was an effective boycott.

It was, at that point in time, one of the most effective boycotts ever. Boycott all products because its baby food formula was killing babies all over the place. So I went to schools across the country just like you, and it worked. They pulled out of those countries and stopped doing that. I think it is a really interesting concept.

Do you think it would be effective only for teams that are experiencing someone coming into their space? Or should just any women’s team right now consider boycotting? Maybe its state by state for different reasons? Who should be boycotting do you think?

Answer:

If there was a way to coordinate a nationwide, of some capacity, some sort of walk out, some sort of large scale way of saying, “Enough is enough”, that would be so powerful.

Recently we saw in Loa County, in Virginia the entire school did this walk out because they allowed men into women’s bathrooms, which led to a young women being raped in their bathrooms by a male claiming the identity of a women. The entire school walked out, young people holding signs saying, “Enough is enough” – yes, I think it (a national boycott) would be very impactful, and would change things so fast if we could coordinate some sort of large scale event like that. 

I don’t know what it looks like, I don’t know how you get that done, but if we could I am all for it – I think it would be very powerful.