(Maire Clayton, Headline USA) The former co-captain of San Jose State’s women’s volleyball team was forced to flee due to alleged harassment over her lawsuit regarding a transgender athlete.
Senior Brooke Slusser spoke with Fox News Digital and stated she no longer felt safe remaining on campus.
“I would just be walking, and I’d have people say things to me, like I had one girl just scream ‘f**k you!’ to me,” Slusser told the outlet. “I was in the elevator one time at my apartment and some girls, as they were walking out, were like ‘oh, that’s the girl, you should have slapped her when you had the chance,’ so those types of things happened.”
Slusser originally joined Riley Gaines’s lawsuit in September 2024 against the NCAA where it alleged transgender athlete Blaire Fleming’s gender was hidden from the student athletes.
A few months later, Slusser filed her own lawsuit with 11 other players and her former associate head volleyball coach Melissa Batie–Smoose. The coach was removed from her position after she filed a Title IX complaint regarding alleged favoritism toward Fleming.
“They took away the only safe space we had in the program,” Slusser said in response to her coach being removed. “Because she knew that it was right to stand up for the 18 women on the team.”
Slusser told Fox News Digital that ever since the lawsuit, she felt on edge while being at SJSU.
“I literally just didn’t feel safe. Anytime I left the house, I felt like people were just like staring at me, I felt like I had to watch my back whenever I was on campus,” she noted.
The former volleyball player said she did not report the majority of the incidents as it became her new norm.
Slusser will finish her final year virtually as she went back to her home state of Texas.
