Demoted for speaking out, Kim Russell said the campus atmosphere is so hostile that she doesn’t feel comfortable returning.
The former Oberlin College women’s lacrosse coach, who was recently demoted after speaking out against the inclusion of men in women’s sports, now says the campus environment has become so hostile that she no longer feels comfortable showing up to work.
On March 20, 2022, Kim Russell reposted a story on Instagram congratulating Emma Weyant as “the real woman winner of the 500 freestyle” at the NCAA swimming championship after male competitor Lia Thomas took the title.
At the top of the post, Russell left comments: “What do you believe? I can’t be quiet on this…I’ve spent my life playing sports, starting & coaching sports programs for girls & women..”
The next day, Russell received a text from Oberlin athletic director Natalie Winkelfoos requesting a meeting, the coach told National Review. The senior captain on Russell’s team, whom she said she had a close relationship with, had reported her social-media comments to the department.
“Unfortunately, you fall into a category of people that are filled with hate in the world,” Winkelfoos said, according to Russell’s recording.
A few days after the student reported her to the administration, she asked Russell to serve as a reference on her job applications.
Winkelfoos directed Russell to attend a meeting with her team and a moderator to apologize and allow players the opportunity to air their grievances. Russell obliged.
The meeting quickly devolved into a free-for-all attack on Russell, she said.
People have since compared the meeting to a “Maoist struggle session,” Russell said, referring to the public spectacles in Maoist China in which enemies of the state were humiliated by friends.
“My team was allowed to say anything they wanted about me or my assistant coach with all of those people present,” she said. “All of this could have been avoided if my athletic director said to the student who sent the post, ‘Hey, why don’t you have a conversation with Kim? You’re the captain, you’ve known her for four years, you’re close to her.’”
“Instead, she blew this up in the way she did,” she added.
Only one freshman student advocated for Russell at the group gathering, reading a four-page speech detailing her coach’s contributions to the team.
While Russell was required to repeat “all of the negative things that were said . . . so everyone knew that I heard them,” she was not allowed to refer to the lone freshman’s praise.
Multiple disciplinary meetings followed for Russell, including one lasting an hour and 45 minutes that was attended by Winkelfoos, the director of Title IX at Oberlin, and a DEI liason for the athletic department, she said.
After the roundtable with the team, Winkelfoos told Russell that she’d caused upset in the athletic department, and that many students and administrators found her to be “transphobic, transgressive, and unsafe.” Winkelfoos demanded she write two apologies: one to the team and another to the athletic department.
As she started to write the letter, Russell realized, “I can’t write a letter when I’m not sorry.”
As she was in the middle of lacrosse season, Russell tried to focus on coaching. All the while, she said she was silenced. To make matters worse, none of the administrators who witnessed Russell being berated in the nearly-two-hour meeting had reached out to check in, she said.
“Not a text, not a phone call,” she said. “Not like a stop in the office. I found that fascinating. From there, I coached throughout the season. When it was over, I was called in for a meeting.”
At the meeting, Winkelfoos gave Russell a letter, copied to Oberlin’s legal counsel, the associate athletic director, and Oberlin’s director of human resources, ordering her to change her behavior immediately. After Russell was told the document would be added to her personal file, she hired an attorney and waited for the summer to pass.
After returning to school in late August 2022, Russell was reprimanded for not being on campus during the summer. She wrote a response to the admonition, telling the administration, “If I am breaking university policy, please tell me what that is” and “if you’re going to fire me for breaking university policy, please do it now.” Angry and hurt, Russell thought about speaking to the press, but hesitated. She didn’t want to disrupt her youngest son’s senior year of high school.
“Every day I felt like I was walking on eggshells,” she said. “Walking into work, I didn’t know how I would be treated.”
Russell soldiered on for the freshman who had defended her to the team, as well as the incoming freshmen, she said.
“That was more courageous than what I could ever imagine for a student of that age when the mob mentality is there and everybody wants to belong,” she said. “Any coach you talk to does it for the kids. They’re not getting paid much but they do it because that’s how much they care.”
About a year later, Russell prepared to share her story, knowing her players would feel betrayed.
“But I also recognized that whether it’s in a few years, or down the line, most of them will at some point understand why I did this,” she said.
Unbeknownst to the athletic department, Russell had recorded each of her disciplinary meetings with Winkelfoos and other officials, which were then incorporated into a September video series produced by the Independent Women’s Forum. In her recordings, Russell caught some hot-mic remarks, such as one from Winkelfoos, who allegedly told her subordinate, “I hope you feel remorse” for the drama.
The videos also included multiple students’ harsh comments against Russell from the team meeting.
After Russell publicized her experience, the administration removed her from coaching and demoted her to “employee wellness project manager.” Russell had coached for 27 years at the high-school and collegiate levels.
Asked for comment, Oberlin’s media-relations department said that the decision to demote Russell was driven by “her breach of trust rather than any views she has expressed.”
The spokeswoman claimed that it was her recording of student-athletes without their knowledge or consent, and then her sharing those recordings with the media, that “violated their trust in an irreparable way.”
“This breach of trust — not her posts, feelings, or beliefs about trans athletes — is why she has been removed from her coaching duties,” the spokeswoman said.
However, Russell maintains that the administration’s punitive treatment preceded her releasing the recordings and was motivated by her opposing men in women’s athletics.
Russell took personal time off until last Friday, but has not returned to work since.
“I have not gone into the office Monday or Tuesday, so my guess is they will be firing me shortly,” she said.
Russell was supposed to attend yet another disciplinary meeting Tuesday because students complained that their voices were heard in the IWF videos.
“I’m at a loss anymore for what they’re doing,” she said. “I’m not transphobic or transgressive or unsafe. This is about protecting women’s rights. This is about protecting women’s private spaces. I really don’t understand where the Me-Too movement is, what happened to it?”
Despite the retaliation she’s received, Russell has a happy-warrior attitude, vowing to continue to speak out “with love.”
“The men’s category has always been the open category in sports,” she said. “Before we had women’s, what you would play is co-ed or you’d play on the men’s team if they’d let you on. We fought for title 9 so women and girls can have their own divisions, not so men can play in women’s sports.”