By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Wading into a hot-button national issue, Princeton’s Recreation Department will examine its policies on gender in a move with implications for access to boys and girls sports teams and the right of transgender pool users to use the changing room of their choice at the municipal pool.
Councilwoman Jo S. Butler, the council liaison to the recreation commission, said Friday that it was too soon to say what kind of policy recommendations would come out of a sub-committee of the commission tasked with looking at the issue. She said the committee would seek to educate itself on what the law says about providing access to programs and facilities and what other communities are doing.
Ms. Butler said it was “not quite clear” if the recreation commission could make any policy changes on its own or if the full Princeton Council would have to weigh in.
She said the task force was created given how the subject of gender is in the national news and a big issue for schools around the country. She called it “something we need to deal with.”
Her comments came the same day the Obama administration issued a directive to public schools saying they must allow students to use the rest rooms and locker rooms that fit their gender identity or face lawsuits and losing federal money.
She said that in the past couple of years, the issue of gender has surfaced from time to time within the Recreation Department.
She cited how a family wanted its daughter to participate in a boy’s basketball league — a request that was denied since the department offers a basketball clinic for girls. Also, she said there are other questions about what is the appropriate cutoff age for allowing children into the pool changing room with a parent of an opposite gender, like a boy with his mother.
She said the town has not confronted the transgender question at the pool, and was uncertain what the response would be in such a situation.
