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EXCLUSIVE: The mother of three former Yale swimmers has come forward with alleged details of her children’s experience at the school to Pak Gazette Digital, after the Ivy League giant’s athletic department saw a pair of unflattering document leaks in recent days.
Kim Jones, the mother of two former Yale female swimmers and a former male swimmer, said she had to witness her daughter and son being forced to compete with transgender athletes of the opposite sex while at Yale.
Pak Gazette Digital is not naming his children at his request, but has verified that they competed at Yale during the time periods provided.
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Her oldest daughter, who went to Yale from 2018-2023, competed against UPenn’s infamous trans swimmer Lia Thomas during Thomas’ reign in 2021-22, in both the regular season and the Ivy League championships. Then she had to watch her son, who went to Yale from 2020 to 2025, share a team and locker room with a biological trans swimmer, Iszac Henig, who moved from the university’s women’s team to the men’s team in the 2022-23 season.
“I would say I felt like North Korea,” Jones said of her children’s experience at the time.
“I would say the athletic department as a whole was a terrible place to be.”
The experience of watching her oldest daughter take on Thomas, and Yale’s handling of those contests against Thomas, caused internal conflict and trauma in her family.
“They terrorized the girls… forced them to attend mandatory meetings. They intimidated, coerced, threatened and emotionally blackmailed them,” Jones alleged.
“They were told that they were going to be responsible for any harm suffered by people in their communities who identified as transgender.”
Jones said she doesn’t believe the women affected even “realized” what they went through.
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“I think it’s going to take even longer than it has for many of those young women to look back and realize how coerced and abused they were during this,” she said.
Jones said her daughter never had to share a locker room with Thomas. But his son had to share one with Henig.
“It ruins the camaraderie. Of course, you’re going to change the way you talk, you’re going to change the way you act when you’re in a different environment with people of the opposite sex. Kids didn’t feel like they could go to the athletic department and say ‘this is awkward, we don’t want a woman in our locker room,'” Jones said.
Still, Jones said his son maintained the same friendships with the other men on his team.
But the mother said the worst part of her son’s alleged treatment at Yale was that it allegedly prevented him from defending women who had to compete against Thomas.
“It is emasculating, it takes away their conviction to defend what they have in front of their eyes, to speak when they feel uncomfortable.”
“You can’t stand up for women. You can’t stand up for what’s right, right in front of your eyes. And then an athletic director comes along and squashes every, every single dissent by wanting to put anything under the rug.”
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas (C) smiles with Yale University swimmer Iszac Henig (right) after winning the 100-yard freestyle during the 2022 Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Blodgett Pool on February 19, 2022 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)
The Jones family still sent their youngest daughter to start college at Yale in 2024, but she transferred just a year later in 2025.
Jones is currently a co-founder of the women’s rights organization, the Independent Council for Women’s Sports (ICONS), known for funding Riley Gaines’ lawsuit against the NCAA over the inclusion of Thomas and other trans athletes in women’s sports.
His son’s alleged quarantine experience turned him into “a skeleton”
Jones’ son began his college career during the school’s quarantine period amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
And as a mother, Jones still has the image in her head when she returned home after the first semester.
“He looked like a skeleton, he had lost a lot of weight,” Jones said.
He called the university’s alleged handling of COVID “disastrous.”
“He was a freshman and on campus he was confined to his dorm room,” Jones said. “They were handing out food. No, the athletic department didn’t look at their student-athletes and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re a bigger person, you need food.’ My son is 6’4.”
Jones also lamented the university’s vaccine requirements and perceived demand for constant care. [nasal] COVID swab testing.
“It was incredibly oppressive,” he said. “The mask-wearing oversight, mandatory vaccinations, and constant testing was far worse than anything happening in the outside world.”
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During the fall 2020 semester, Yale University implemented strict COVID-19 protocols to allow for a partial return to campus, which included a gradual, three-step, month-long quarantine process for students upon arrival, according to The Yale Daily News.
Undergraduate students in residence and graduate/professional students in high-density housing were required to undergo asymptomatic testing twice a week. Strict social distancing measures were in place, including limiting gatherings to 10 people and requiring face coverings.
“An environment that, as I said, resembles North Korea”
Jones alleged that one day during Thomas’ reign at UPenn, her eldest daughter approached her to warn her against a comment on social media.
“I had written, ‘women deserve to be able to celebrate their incomparable physical limits’ or something like that,” Jones said.
“My daughter said, ‘Take that away. People are realizing, we’re not supposed to say anything.’ And I said, ‘I thought that was a pretty benign comment,’ you know? And she said, ‘We were told that our first priority, above ourselves, above anything else, should be to basically maintain… the position that the school and the league are taking.'”
Jones is not the first person previously associated with Yale who has spoken out about the athletic department’s alleged intention to “silence dissent.”
A letter signed by former Yale hockey coach Keith Allain to Yale President Maurine McInnis alleged that current Yale athletic director Victoria Chun has created a “toxic environment” for the university’s sports teams. Pak Gazette Digital published the letter on Monday after confirming with Allain that it sent the letter to McInnis via email in October, shortly after his retirement.
“My name is Keith Allain, I have just retired after 19 years as a men’s hockey coach, and I am writing to you at the urging of several head coaches in our Athletics Department. I was told that you were seeking feedback from some coaches regarding the extension of our athletic director’s contract, and they are concerned that with the culture of fear that permeates the athletics department, they will not receive honest feedback,” the letter began.
The letter later said: “Vicky’s singular talent is self-promotion and she has created a toxic environment within the department where she is isolated by a group of administrators whose primary task appears to be to silence any dissent,” the letter continued.
On Tuesday, Pak Gazette Digital reported on emails that show a former Yale University administrator telling an attorney for former Yale strength and conditioning coach Thomas Newman that he was recorded during a meeting.
“A former employee recorded a portion of a meeting with his client, without the university’s knowledge,” reads part of an email sent to Newman’s attorney, Alan Granovsky. from Yale Deputy general counsel, who no longer works at the university.
The attorney’s email was sent in response to an Aug. 13, 2025, letter with the subject line “Ongoing reputational damage and misstatements about Thomas Newman.”
The attorney’s email also included the lines: “The university has not made any defamatory statements to anyone regarding your client” and “The university did not inappropriately disclose any medical information, the university has not said that your client involuntarily left the university or is the subject of an investigation.”
Newman’s attorneys at Granovsky & Sundaresh Labor Law sent several emails to Yale regarding the issue and Newman’s eventual departure from the university in 2021, which were provided by a source to Pak Gazette Digital.
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Newman confirmed to Pak Gazette Digital that the emails were exchanged between the university and its attorneys, but declined to comment further.
An October 10 email from Granovsky to the attorney includes the following allegations:
“You now admit that a former employee recorded a portion of a meeting with Mr. Newman,” part of the email read, and then said, “Despite knowing the recording was unauthorized, the parties involved, specifically [Executive Deputy Director/Chief Operating Officer of Athletics] Ann-Marie Guglieri and [Athletic Director] Vicky Chun attempted to use the recording for disciplinary purposes.
Under Connecticut General Statutes ยง 52-570d, it is illegal for any individual to record a private conversation without informing and obtaining consent of all parties involved.
No current or former Yale employee has been incriminated in any illegal activity.
Pak Gazette Digital reached out to the president’s office and Yale’s athletic department for comment but did not receive a response.
