Timeline: Randolph, VT Girls Volleyball Team
This is our timeline of coverage of the Randolph, VT girls volleyball team. The story began on WCAX, a local TV News station, which interviewed Blake Allen, a cisgendered high school volleyball player who said she felt uncomfortable sharing a locker room with her transgender teammate. Allen claimed the trans girl had behaved inappropriately while cis girls were changing, an account which has been widely disputed, including by other cisgender players who were present and by school officials.
Assigned first noticed this story on a sports news website that describes itself as “anti-woke.” (Our timeline is in reverse chronological order, click here to jump to the earliest entry.)
UPDATE: VT Digger interviewed the transgender girl on 11/30/2022
UPDATE: A report from Darren Marcy of the Herald (the local newspaper in Randolph, VT), on 10/13/2022 provided evidence strongly supporting the side of a transgender 14 year old whose cis teammate went to the press with complaints that the trans girl had behaved inappropriately in the locker room for the girls volleyball team.
The Herald further reported that speakers at the community meeting were overwhelmingly in support of the transgender girl, who has faced harassment and threats from anti-trans extremists ever since a biased, incomplete version of the story was widely covered in right wing and extremist websites.
OUR ORIGINAL SUMMARY: Reporting in Vermont local news originally described a conflict over a trans girl’s use of the locker room with her high school volleyball team, interviewing a cisgender teenager who objected to changing with the other girl. A right-wing media pile on quickly ensued. Within days, the school district for the high school had its website vandalized with symbols, images, and messages of transphobic hate, leading the district to take down the website and all social media accounts.
UPDATE (10/3/2022): We finally have mainstream reporting on the transgender girls’ side of the story. Alison Novak of Seven Days Vermont interviewed the mother of the transgender girl, who says her daughter was singled out and bullied by three teammates, despite having previously changed in the locker room with the team without incident.
UPDATE (10/5/2022): New England Cable News (a mainstream cable news channel serving New England) found an uninvolved eyewitness, a cisgender volleyball player whose story seems to agree with the story told by the mother of the trans girl but contradict the accoun of anti-trans players who have spoken to the media.
UPDATE (10/18/2022): Mary Margaret Olohan of The Daily Signal has a story of the continuing fallout in Randolph over the locker room incident. She reports Travis Allen, father of the cis girl at the center of the incident, was fired for misgendering the transgender student, and for writing a post on Facebook where he threatened to undress in front of the trans student’s mother. Allen says that he agreed to remove the post, but balked at issuing an issue an apology for it. Olohan also seems to be sticking by her reporting that the trans girl did not leave the locker room when asked to by the cis girl, which has been contradicted by several other sources.
UPDATE (10/30/2022): Assigned is updating intermittently at this point. Updating to add the information that Blake and Travis Allen filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that they were discriminated against when disciplined over bullying the transgender student. The best info on the lawsuit as of this writing is in this Rutland Herald’s story.
10/30/2022
Cheese it, it’s the Cops!: Law Enforcement Today, a cop website for cops which leans to the extreme right, politically, has an editorializing, misleading, and transphobic account of the story/lawsuit by the Allens.
10/28/2022
Vermont Daily Newspaper: The Rutland Herald, a daily newspaper serving Vermont, writes about the lawsuit. It includes information about the school’s response which was not in previous stories.
Right Wing Tabloid: The New York Post has a similar story to the previous day’s story in the Daily Signal, about the lawsuit by Blake and Travis Allen against the school, alleging they were discriminated against.
10/27/2022
Heritage Funded Website: The Daily Signal has another piece by Mary Margaret Olohan, about a lawsuit filed against the school by the Allen family. It includes very misleading and borderline untrue information, mischaracterizing the behavior of both Blake Allen and Father Travis, again neglecting to mention competing accounts with more evidenciary basis, and smearing the trans girl without acknowledging the consensus opinion of the school and other players that she was bullied and left when asked to do so.
10/26/2022
Independent Alt-Weekly: Allison Novak, who covered the Randolph story for Seven Days Vermont, mentions the story briefly in her write up of the Vermont US Senate race. A Democratic incumbent, Mark McDonald, is facing a very tough race against a Republican challenger, John Klar. One reason the race looks bad for the incumbent is that McDonald suffered a stroke on the campaign trail, and has been unable to campaign actively during his recovery. Although the main focus of his campaign seems to be economic issues rather than culture war wedges, Klar has taken the side of parents who object to a trans girl changing in the same room as their daughters, and has phrased his objections in harshly transphobic language.
10/21/2022
Independent Investigative Journalism: Another story in local investigative outlet VT Digger helps flesh out the more biased piece by the Daily Signal. It includes the very crucial detail that the school did attempt to send in the fingerprints of the volunteer coach who claims that the request for an updated background check are due to prejudice for his public transphobia. It also included some more details about the volunteer, John Helfant.
10/19/2022
Independent Investigative Journalism: One of the local news outlets, VT Digger, runs a brief story on the cancelation of a planned (second) community meeting to address the issues, due to continued harassment and threatening phone calls directed at the school system from extreme transphobes across the nation.
Heritage Funded Website: Another reported piece from Mary Margaret Olohan of The Daily Signal, and there’s a lot in this one which is difficult to summarize. Things are clearly very ugly in Randolph, and getting uglier. A volunteer soccer coach, John Helfant, who is also a Police Chief in a neighboring town, told Olohan that he believes he’s being retaliated against for speaking out against allowing trans girls to change with their peers in locker rooms. The school says his background check hasn’t gone through, and it might be because he ran his own fingerprints rather than using the school’s approved service.
Further down in the article there are some quotes that really show a TERF influence on some of the thinking and/or rhetoric from the Daily Signal/Helfant. The article also includes the information that Randolph school officials have also continued to face threats and harassment from extreme transphobes across the country, and have cancelled a proposed second forum in an excess of caution. In Helfant’s telling, this is because the school superintendant is trying to avoid hearing negative feedback. The Daily Signal does not include the information, published in other outlets, that feedback from the first meeting was overwhelmingly supportive of the transgender girl, who teammates said did nothing wrong, was where she was supposed to be, and left when asked to by her cis teammates.
Far-Right Propaganda Network: On FOX News, a story summarizes the reporting in the Daily Signal. One notable detail here is that it mentions the “inappropriate comment” by the trans girl, which was initially suggested as the inciting factor, but was very quickly shown by subsequent reporting to have been either a misunderstanding or a falsehood.
Sinclair Owned Local News Stations: At least one channel owned by the Sinclair media conglomerate posts a story summarizing the Daily Signal’s reporting.
10/18/2022
Heritage Funded Website: Mary Margaret Olohan of The Daily Signal has a story of continuing fallout in Randolph over the incident. She reports Travis Allen, father of the cis girl at the center of the incident, was fired for misgendering the transgender student, and for writing a post on Facebook where he threatened to undress in front of the trans student’s mother. Allen says that he agreed to remove the post, but balked at issuing an issue an apology for it.
10/14/2022
Ailing Mag Founded by Pat Buchanon: The American Conservative, a magazine founded by paeloconservative (coughwhitenationalistcough) Pat Buchanan, writes that the FBI has better things to do with its time than investigate acts of extremism based in transphobic hatred. No, really.
Your Erstwhile Heroes: Assigned published a post looking more closely at Daily Signal writer Mary Margaret Olohan, and some of the ways her reporting on this story may have missed some key facts, which could mislead her audience.
10/13/2022
Local Weekly Newspaper: The Herald, the local newspaper for Randolph, VT reports extensively on the first of two planned community meetings, called to discuss both the incident and the right wing fury and extremist harrassment it provoked. The meeting took place on Tuesday night (10/11), and Our Herald reports the speakers were overwhelmingly supportive of the transgender athlete, including the volleyball team captain who recieved a standing ovation for her remarks.
Heritage Funded Website: The Daily Signal has a lengthy interview with four cisgender volleyball players, including Blake Allen, who say they are uncomfortable changing in the locker room with a transgender girl, and don’t think it’s fair that they would be asked to use an alternative provided by the school because there are four of them and only one trans girl.
Prior to this the Daily Signal’s reporting has been of decent quality, but a glaring omission here is that reporter Mary Margaret Olohan doesn’t seem to have asked the girls why other accounts of what happened all agree that the trans girl initially left when asked (at least one account put her in tears as she did so). The article also, misleadingly, implies that the four cis girls interviewed are representative of the team, and the girls represent themselves as speaking for the team, when other reporting has made clear that the team captain and an unknown number of other cisgender teammates are comfortable sharing the locker room with their trans teammate.
10/12/2022
Independent Investigative Journalism: VT Digger, one of the local sources doing investigative work on this story, writes about the removal of the story from the WCAX website, crediting Seven Days Vermont for initially reporting. Adds some context with more quotes from the superintendent and some discussion of the journalistic ethics of deleting a story. Repeats reporting from 10/11/2022 that WCAX is planning to release a statement.
10/11/2022
Vermont NBC Affiliate: The local NBC affiliate covered a meeting which took place in Randolph to discuss the incident. Superintendent Layne Millington is quoted, otherwise few details are provided.
Independent Alt-Weekly: Allison Novak of Seven Days Vermont, a local independent alt-weekly, reports that the local TV station whose coverage initiated the right wing media frenzy has quietly deleted the story from its site. In a statement to Seven Days Vermont they said they’d have a statement airing on their news program later today.
LGBTQ+ Weekly: Metro Weekly, a free weekly magazine for the LGBTQ+ community in Washington, DC, publishes a story, based on reporting in VT Digger and other outlets. highlighting on the harassment and threats the 14 yr old trans girl and her family have faced.
10/7/2022
Independent Investigative Journalism: VT Digger reports on anti-trans protests in VT, very briefly mentions Randolph.
Legacy Blog: The Daily Kos, a longstanding liberal news blog, covers the bullet points of the story based on accounts in other outlets.
10/6/2022
Those Folks: LGBTQ news website them.us publishes an overview of the story that also highlights some of the coverage in the right wing press.
10/5/2022
Regional Cable: New England Cable News (a mainistream news channel that is exactly what it sounds like) reports that the Republican Governor of Vermont has called for empathy and to “dial down the rhetoric” regarding the incident. The story also, notably, includes the first account by one of the cisgender teammates who was not involved in the incident. That account seems to largely agree with the trans girl’s side of the story.
Focus on the Family Blog: A long rehashing of reporting in the first Daily Signal piece on 10/2 (no mention is made of the 10/3 story which included the trans girls’ side) appears on a blog run by ancient Christian advocacy organization Focus on the Family. The reblogging is followed by an admonishment to fathers to be angrier, and take a more active role in protecting their daughters from trans girls on their sports teams.
Hollowed Shell of News Legend: Newsweek, a conservative leaning sham which was once one of the most widely read mainstream news websites in the US, covers the locker room story through the lens of the backlash to Caitlyn Jenner’s misgendering of the 14 year old trans girl.
UK LGBTQ News: Pink News posts a reasonably thorough summary of other outlets’ reporting on the incident.
10/4/2022
Pat Robertson’s Ghost: Conservative Christian media outlet Christian Broadcasting Network has published the most dishonest piece yet, by Tré Goins-Phillips, falsely claiming cisgender girls were displaced “from their own locker room so a transgender player can use the space instead.” This contradicts reporting from both mainstream and right wing media, as well as statements from school officials, all of which agree the ban, imposed by the school in the wake of the incident for all of the students’ safety, applies to every girl on the team.
ACLU Statement: The ACLU issued a statement in support of the transgender player.
Christian TV: The original WCAX version of the story appears on a website for FISM TV, a self-described Christian TV station. The story is largely unchanged from WCAX’s version, and includies false information which subsequent reporting, including reporting from some of the more ethical conservative outlets, has already corrected.
LGBTQ Media: Caitlyn Jenner’s comments on Fox and Friends (linked below, in our section for 10/3/2022) has spawned its own eddy of coverage. We’re not linking to all the places this was mentioned in right wing sources, but a friendly example can be found on LGBTQ Nation, an online news magazine that reports on the LGBTQ community.
10/3/2022
Independent Alt-Weekly: Mainstream reporting on the transgender girls’ side of the story. Alison Novak of Seven Days Vermont interviewed the mother of the transgender girl, who says her daughter was singled out and bullied by three teammates, despite having previously changed in the locker room with the team without incident.
Independent Investigative Journalism: VT Digger also has a piece after interviewing the mother of the transgender player. (The real gold in this one is in some of the affronted quotes VT Digger managed to get out of the district’s superintendent.)
Heritage Funded Website: The Daily Signal, which previously reported at length on the perspective of some cis girls and parents who objected to the trans girl’s presence in the locker room, also interviewed the mother of the trans girl, and quoted her at length in this follow up. To reporter Mary Margaret Olahan’s credit, while the article retains a conservative slant, it appears accurate and the mom’s quotes seem fairly presented.
Sinclair Owned Local News Stations: The right wing version of this story appears on dayton247now and other websites associated with Sinclair-owned television channels. Sinclair is a large telecommunications conglomerate that places conservative opinion onto its many local news networks.
Caitlyn Jenner on Fox and Friends: Republican transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner misgendered the unnamed 14 year old transgender volleyball player in an extremely ugly appearance on Fox and Friends.
Frilly Conservative Opinion: A brief, nastily barbed opinion piece by Madeline Kearns appeared in the National Review, a conservative opinion site that bills itself as a “premier destination” in advertising copy. The piece deploys Title IX and the language of women’s rights in defense of the cisgender players who have been accused of bullying. It also repeats the claim, contradicted by reporting in the conservative Daily Signal, that the trans girl made an inappropriate comment in the locker room which resulted in the cis girls objecting to her presence. (If the Heritage Funded site’s reporting is correct, the comment in question is alleged to have happened at a different time, and was not the cause of the other players’ objection to the trans girl’s presence.)
10/2/2022
Heritage Funded Website: The Daily Signal, a far right news website funded by The Heritage Foundation, provides a much more in-depth, though heavily biased, story as reported by Mary Margaret Olohan. The piece explains a transgender girl volleyball player was sitting in the girls locker room as teammates changed, when she was asked to leave by a cisgender girl who felt uncomfortable changing with her present. A second cisgender girl joined the first, but the trans girl did not agree to leave. The story also provides accounts of some comments the trans girl is alleged to have made, none of which happened in the locker room during this incident, and reports that the trans girls’ mother denied her daughter made the comments in a Facebook post.
The story also clears up the question of who has been banned from the locker room, explaining that it has been closed to all players in the wake of this incident. It quotes many anti-trans statements from cis teens and their parents, and it reports that at least some cisgender girls on the team did not feel uncomfortable, although it does not provide any quotes relating to their experience.
Independent Investigative Journalism Site: VT Digger reports that the school district’s website was hacked and defaced with transphobic messages, symbols, and pictures. In response, the district disabled their website and all social media accounts. Our coverage here.
Newspaper Associated With Falun Gong: Epoch Times, an extreme right news outlet, had its own summary of the reporting by WCAX here.
Alaska Republican Mouthpiece: Must Read Alaska, a website published by the communications director of the Alaska Republican Party, shares a digest version of the story, largely relying on the reporting by WCAX, but adding in some incendiary and transphobic local flavor.
10/1/2022
Right-Wing Tabloid: The New York Post’s covers the inter-clique conflict on the Randolph Union High School girls’ volleyball team in slightly more depth. The story features quotes by cis player Blake Allen to the effect that it takes 30 minutes to change in the single stall restroom which has been provided as an alternative, and really it’s the transgender player who ought to be forced to change there.
Far-Right Propaganda Network: Fox News has a segment and brief article describing reporting by WCAX.
Daily Mail: The Daily Mail, a right wing tabloid based in the UK, covered this story here.
9/30/2022
Right-Wing News and Opinion Site: The Federalist summarized WCAX’s reporting, adding a section from the school’s harassment policy and stating that the transgender volleyball player had engaged in harassment based on the reports that she made an (unspecified) inappropriate comment. (Allegations of harassment were contradicted by later reporting, including by conservative sources.)
Anti-Woke Sports News Website: This story first came to our attention when it was covered on the “anti-woke” sports news site OutKick.
9/28/2022
Vermont CBS Affiliate, as reported by Kiana Burks: This story began with reporting from WCAX, a local CBS affiliate in Vermont. Reporter Kiana Burks interviewed Blake Allen, a cisgender high school volleyball player, about her objections to sharing a locker room with a transgender teammate. This story includes the claim that the transgender girl made an inappropiate comment, although the specifics are not included in this or any subsequent piece as of this writing.
The original story also includes the claim, later repeated in many subsequent stories in the right wing press, that Allen and other cis girls are banned from the locker room. Subsequent reporting by the Daily Signal, Seven Days VT, and others has clarified that all members of the team were temporarily banned from the locker room in light of safety concerns for both the trans girl and her teammates.
