Sport can be a powerful thing. Whichever sport it is, it doesn’t matter – it can really bring people together and create a strong sense of belonging to a community.
We know that for the Trans* Community, there are many barriers they face to access and participate in sports, not just at university – but anywhere. We want to change that.
Here at UCLan Students’ Union, we want all students to feel like they can join our teams, get involved with sports and feel safe and comfortable doing so. This semester, Katie, your elected Vice President Activities will be working on getting a better understanding of the barriers impacting Trans* Students at UCLan and putting things in place to ensure we have a welcoming, inclusive and supportive environment.
Katie, VP Activities: “As Vice President Activities I want to ensure that we better represent our Trans* and Gender-fluid students within our sport and activity. We want our activity to be a positive safe environment which is inclusive for all students.”
As part of this work, we will:
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Educate our Sports Club Committees, members and coaches to ensure they are inclusive and understand how important equality, diversity and inclusion is.
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Educate students involved in any of our activity around inclusive language and normalise and encourage the use of pronouns.
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Increase the number of non-gender specific/mixed gender activities and ensure students are aware of them.
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Ensure students are aware of how they can report discrimination or any hate crime and ensure they are aware of the support they can receive if they ever witness or experience it.
Policies around Trans* Student Athletes
UCLan Students’ Union does not currently have its own policy regarding transgender and non-binary athletes, and how those who identify in those communities can participate in competitive sports. The Union currently defers to the national British Universities & College Sports (BUCS) policy alongside other national governing bodies policies. At the Students’ Union, we deliver 35 different sports with different national governing bodies and many of these national governing bodies have more comprehensive trans* policies than others.
BUCS Policy:
Below, you will find some of the key and most relevant information taken out of the BUCS Transgender Policy
"Those who transition from female to male are eligible to compete in the male category without restriction.
Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:
a. The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.
b. The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).
c. The athlete's total testosterone level in serum must remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category.
d. Compliance with these conditions may be monitored by testing. In the event of noncompliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female competition will be suspended for 12 months."
Guidelines for specific sports can be found on their governing bodies websites.
A copy of the full BUCS policy can be found here.
If you have any questions about the work we’ll be doing, the above policies or are interested in joining one of our Sports Clubs or Teams but are unsure about anything – please contact our Activities Team (email: suteam@uclan.ac.uk) who will be more than happy to have a chat with you.