Activist Chloe Cole sparks campus protest

BY ARYANNA QUSBA

The Dartmouth Staff Republicans president Chloe Ezzo ’22 moderated the conversation.

This article was originally published on Apr. 20, 2023.

On April 17, the Dartmouth College Republicans hosted activist Chloe Cole — an 18-year-old woman who detransitioned and now advocates against gender-afrming healthcare for youth — and guest speaker Carrie Mendoza, a doctor for Advocate Health Care in Hazel Crest, Illinois. The lecture, titled “Regrets of a Former Trans Kid,” triggered backlash from members of the Dartmouth community, who protested outside the event in support of transgender rights and healthcare.

Before the event, around 150 students from various campus groups, including the Asian American Studies collective, the Dartmouth Democrats, The Dartmouth Radical, Spare Rib and the Student Workers Collective at Dartmouth, chanted in support of gender-affirming healthcare for transgender individuals. Organized clubs were joined by other students hoping to challenge Cole’s message and support the transgender community.

“A lot of [SWCD] members are either trans or non-binary or queer and we want to support them,” SWCD organizer Polly Chesnokova ’24 said. “We think it’s abhorrent that the College is helping this event happen and giving space to hate speech and misleading information.”

In response to students’ frustrations, College spokesperson Diana Lawrence referred to the College’s policy on freedom of expression and dissent.

“Dartmouth prizes and defends the right of free speech and the freedom of the individual to make their own disclosures, while at the same time recognizing that such freedom exists in the context of the law and in responsibility for one’s own actions,” the policy states. “Protest or demonstration shall not be discouraged so long as neither force nor the threat of force is used, and so long as the orderly processes of the institution are not deliberately obstructed.”

The event itself was open to the public, with a security guard and Safety and Security ofcer positioned outside and within Moore Hall. College

The event and protest come amid a growing national debate over transgender rights — especially with regard to participation in athletics — which has mobilized conservatives around the issue, the New York Times reported this week. After a brief introduction, Cole — who is from California, according to the Los Angeles Times — explained that she was assigned female at birth and decided to transition during her sophomore year of high school. She said she was introduced to the concept of being transgender through social media, adding that she also connected with other LGBTQ+ youth through video games, cartoons and anime.

At age 13, Cole said she then began using puberty blockers and testosterone. She said she continued to struggle with body image issues and was medicated for depression later that year.

“I told my therapist I wanted to get top surgery, and she referred me to a gender specialist who wrote a letter of recommendation to a surgeon,” she said. “Within six months, I went under the knife.”

Cole said recovering from her top surgery was difcult, adding that she began to understand the “reality of the situation” a few months postoperation. While Cole said she was initially “happier” after her transition, she said she began to feel “unhappy being a boy.”

“That was when it really started to come crashing down,” Cole said. “Now I probably can’t have a child, and I’ll certainly never have the option to breastfeed. I’ll never know what that’s like. This ripped a hole in my heart, and I couldn’t go on any longer like that.”

Cole said she chose to detransition at age 16, adding that she was “shamed” by the transgender community online for her decision. Cole is now suing Kaiser Permanente, her healthcare provider and the hospital where her surgeries have taken place.

Cole explained that she thinks children are “too young” to make lasting medical decisions, adding that adults are justifed to receive gender-afrming care.

“Giving kids life-altering surgeries

EPAC updated their rules to prohibit candidates from “spending additional funds” and participating in “in-person campaigning” on election day, though online advocacy is allowed, according to the 2023 election code. The rule change, which afects the 24-hour period beginning on April 24 when students vote for their representatives, is intended “to limit coercive behavior,” according to the code.

The updated election code also establishes new rules surrounding “vote-buying” and “payment for campaign services.” The new rules prohibit purchasing or exchanging goods or services for votes, as well as promising future goods or services for votes. The regulations further stipulate that students only “be paid a reasonable rate” for campaign services.

The changes follow last year’s election code updates, which provided candidates with the ability to more freely use social media for campaigning. Those changes, which afected the frst in-person Student Assembly race since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, also included several budgetary increases for candidates.

EPAC chair Will Elliott ’25 explained that this year’s election day rule changes mark a transition to more open campaigning.

“In the past, campaigning was not allowed during the 24-hours at the end of the campaign period,” Elliott said.” “[EPAC is] slowly walking towards allowing it to be completely okay.”

Elliott said that the campaign fnance changes were intended to “promote fairness” within the election process, adding that he was “actually surprised” the EPAC code had not explicitly prohibited such practices prior.

“Not that [EPAC] has run into issues with [providing goods and services for votes] in the past, but we wanted to make it concrete,” Elliott said.

Favion Harvard ’26, who is running for reelection as a West House Senator, said that EPAC is an important organization for regulating social media cam- paigns. EPAC’s new campaign fnance changes were “very understandable,” he added.

“You shouldn’t be buying votes either way,” Harvard said. “And if people don’t want to vote for you, they’re not going to vote for you.”

At an institutional level, EPAC has also been subject to recent changes, Elliott said. EPAC, which has historically consisted of a maximum of seven members, recently updated its total to nine, he added. Elliott said that this revision was made “to make sure that we have class representation every single year” across diferent grades.

Elliot said these regulatory and organizational changes to EPAC align with the group’s core principles to “maintain the kind of conduct that you would expect out of a Dartmouth student: to be respectful.”

“[EPAC] wants campaigns to be issue-oriented and policy-oriented, not attacking candidates,” Elliott said. “So we enforce a no negative campaigning clause in our code.”

Kiara Ortiz ’24, who is running for Student Body Vice President alongside presidential candidate Jessica Chiriboga ’24, praised EPAC for its oversight.

“I think generally having EPAC is great because they mitigate a lot of the bias people may be concerned about, and they are also a body that is interested in change and very open to it,” Ortiz said. “And what they want to do is just have clean, easy elections for students, which is really appreciated.”

Ortiz added that she “had not really run into any issues [in previous elections] because [EPAC] has been very clear.” EPAC provided clarity on the election code by setting up a Q&A for all students on the ballot, according to Ortiz.

“I already knew how to set up my budget sheet, how much I could spend, which events I can host [and] who to email,” she said. “So it’s all been pretty clear and fun. I’m very glad that there’s a separate body on campus handling it.”

Student government organizations such as DSG and the Student Assembly “hold a lot more weight and power” in the College’s decision-making process compared to last year, Ortiz said.

“Especially with the new administration coming in, I want that to be communicated to them efectively — which is why it’s important to vote, so that we can show President Beilock and her new administration that students want student perspective involved, [that] we want Student Government involved in making these decisions,” Ortiz said.