In partnership with the Riley Gaines Center at the Leadership Institute, San Francisco State University’s Turning Point USA chapter hosted former NCAA swimmer and anti-trans athlete activist Riley Gaines.
This was the second event in which TPUSA hosted Riley Gaines, after an event in 2023 resulted in a large protest with Gaines sheltering inside an HSS Building classroom for several hours. This year’s event was mostly mundane except for a demonstration outside and a single protester being forcibly removed.
Tuesday evening’s event “The Fight is Far From Over” follows her first appearance on campus, one that lacked proper collaboration with TPUSA and the University Police Department, according to Navid Mehdipour, graduate and founder of SFSU’s TPUSA chapter.
“There was communication between staff and police,” Mehdipour said. “It was a big factor and this time it went much better than expected.”
At 5:30 p.m. a group of about 40 students opposing the event met on the grass outside Seven Hills Conference Center’s Nob Hill Room, which was blocked off with purple and yellow tarped barricades both in front of the grass and the path to the room.
Organized by the student-led group Mutual Support, the event was marketed as a soccer game against transphobia, with nothing about Gaines or TPUSA on the flyers advertising it. While students played soccer, individuals also held up Pride flags and cardboard signs that said, “Trans rights are human rights” while chanting “Riley Gaines has no brains.”
“I have a lot of trans people who are close to me, and I do not want to just stand passively by the side while they’re actively being taken away,” said Noah G., one of Mutual Support’s leaders who requested to not provide his full name, in fear of retaliation. “We’ve seen under Trump a new surge of anti-trans rhetoric and even anti-trans laws. So we are now here to show that we are not going to just passively let this happen.”
At 6:50 p.m. Gaines stepped behind the podium flanked by four bodyguards and recounted her first time on SFSU’s campus, reiterating to about 60 people that she is “excited to be here,” and “loves speaking to those that are on the fence or in opposition of my opinion.”
Within ten minutes of her speech, an individual sitting in the middle section of the room interrupted shouting, “Get out of here, go home loser bitch.” The individual continued to yell and said “I’m not moving, you can carry me out.”
Gaines’ four guards surrounded her until UPD officers forcibly removed the individual.
“That does not scare me,” Gaines said after the individual left. “It went on for two minutes for someone to do something, it’s ridiculous. It’s not law enforcement, it is law un-enforcement.”
Attendee and president of the San Francisco Peninsula Republican Assembly, Elizabeth Starks, said she feels strongly about the topics Gaines supports.
“I believe Riley got cheated,” Starks said. “Men should have their own competitions. I don’t have anything against them [the trans community] but men have been hurting girls in sports.”
Gaines actively speaks for the protection of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational areas and the defense of “women’s rights to single-sex spaces and equal opportunities.”
Andre Rosenberg, an international relations and mathematics student, said his values align more with the trans community outside the walls of the conference room, but was curious to see what Gaines had to say.
“I was on my way home when I saw the group,” Rosenberg said. “I want to listen to other voices to make a symbiotic relationship. It’s interesting that they did it here, they could have done it somewhere else.”
To end the event, Gaines opened the room for a Q&A where topics ranged from women’s rights in sports to President Trump’s executive orders regarding the LGBTQ+ community in sports.
When asked if the Trump administration’s policies have impacted how she currently speaks on school campuses, Gaines said they give her “substance,” and made her feel more secure.
“Now there’s things being done,” she said. “There was nothing being done at the federal level… I think now with Donald Trump in office, it’s provided a lot of people with cover from the sense of feeling like they can’t talk about it.”
Dominic, a protester who only shared his first name, shared his thoughts on the Turning Point USA event.
“I think they feel empowered to do all this because the current elected president is on their side,” said Dominic. “I think that gives them some sort of home field advantage.”
The event ended at roughly 8:20 p.m. with Gaines escorted out by her guards. The outdoor protest, which had about 60 trans-rights supporters at this point, continued to chant.
A student who only wanted to be identified as Fern, was one of the organizers of the protest and said they felt bad for the people inside and felt that TPUSA was an organization where members must give into hate in order to find community.
“I feel really bad for you,” Fern said. “History is going to remember you not so fondly. You’re just going to be kind of a disgrace and a lesson learned.”
This story has been updated to add an additional photo.
