Santa Rosa Junior College was just supposed to be a stepping stone for Madison Shaw. Instead, she stepped right into a that is now being investigated by the federal government.
With her graduation coming up, she has to move forward without being able to chase her dream of playing , which was the whole reason she went to Santa Rosa in the first place.
“It was the only plan I had,” Shaw told Fox News Digital of transferring to an NCAA program.
“I was planning on going to Chico [State University] and transferring, and getting set up through the recruiting process in that. And I wasn’t even able to upload any film or have a coach come out for my sophomore year. Because that year I was forced to be off the team.”
Shaw had to step away from her volleyball team in the fall because she didn’t want to share a locker room with a biological male, and felt her Title IX rights to privacy, safety and equal opportunity were being violated. She had to throw away her plans for her sophomore season, and any chance of making it to an NCAA program.
Because Santa Rosa, as a junior college and not affiliated with the NCAA, and did not have to comply with the NCAA’s updated policy to prevent biological males from competing in women’s sports, Madison and her teammates ended up on the same roster as a trans athlete.
The California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) allows transgender athletes to participate based on their gender identity. Biological males can compete on womens teams after one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.
Santa Rosa and the CCCAA as a whole have been under Title IX investigations by the U.S. Department of Education, and the federal Title IX task force, since January, after Madison and two teammates sent an S.O.S.
Madison, and her freshman teammates Brielle Galli and Gracie Shaw, Madison’s sister, filed a Title IX complaint last September that brought attention to what was going on with their team.
Once the complaint became public, and garnered national media attention, multiple tense on-campus incidents allegedly occurred.
The three women allege Santa Rosa President Dr. Angélica Garcia led a pro-trans rally before a volleyball game, handed out packets to attendees.
“The president of our school had a rally to support our male athlete and had packets that were being hand handed out that said that our school is a gender inclusive closet,” Gracie Shaw alleged, with Madison Shaw and Galli corroborating the allegations.
Teammates who had once been friends began distancing themselves, and in some cases, they said, actively excluded them.
“We were ,” Gracie Shaw said. “We were left in the dark.”
They said teammates created separate group chats without them and held meetings they were not invited to, effectively cutting off communication.
The players said they received backlash on social media and, at times, felt uncomfortable on campus. In one instance, they recalled being recorded and photographed by other students after being recognized in connection with the complaint.
The incident occurred when two other students set up a table with a sign that read “We are Christians, ask us anything.”
The women claim that the two men at the table were being told by other students that they were “hateful people.”
And soon, the anti-Christian crowd realized who the three women were, and two other students allegedly began to record Gracie Shaw and Galli, non-consensually.
The women say the only time the college and its administrators expressed concern for their well-being was in an investigative interview after news of their Title IX complaint had gone public.
“Those interviews really rubbed me the wrong way,” Galli said.
“They kept pushing the same questions on us trying to get a different answer and trying to make us say something that wasn’t true. They kept stating that or they wanted us to state
