Transgender track star’s parents both liberal college professors 

The parents of a transgender-identifying track state champ in Maine have something in common, the College Fix reports: They are both liberal college professors. 

Maine Coast Waldorf junior Soren Stark-Chessa’s father, Frank Chessa, is a professor of medicine and associate course director of ethics and professionalism at Tufts University School of Medicine in Waltham, Massachusetts. 

He’s also the director of clinical ethics at Maine Medical Center’s Gender Care Clinic, which provides “treatment to patients of all ages with both pediatric and adult services.” 

The Gender Care Clinic once offered “surgical consultations to both children and adults,” as The Lion previously reported. However, it now says it only provides such services to legal adults, the College Fix reports. 

Similarly, Soren’s mother, Susan Stark, teaches philosophy at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Her faculty page notes her work on two liberal projects.  

One is “a defense of the moral and social imperative of making reparations, not only for institutionalized slavery, colonialism, and genocide, but also for ongoing racist policies and white supremacy.” 

In a 2022 paper, Stark wrote that one reparative approach involves returning “stolen” land to American Indians. 

“Historical injustices must be acknowledged, addressed, and repaired – that their significance overrides any harm caused by returning the stolen land,” she wrote. 

The other project deals with so-called “reproductive ethics.”  

In it, Stark argues “reproductive justice … requires that midwifery and obstetric care address structural racisms and other forms of oppression in their practices and in the education of their practitioners.” 

A three-sport athlete, Stark-Chessa won the 800-meter (2:19.72) at the Maine girls’ outdoor track Class C state championship meet last season, finishing 10.12 seconds faster than the second-place finisher. 

Additionally, Stark-Chessa, who competes in girls’ cross country and Nordic skiing, recently made headlines for winning the 800-meter at a girls’ outdoor track meet this season. 

During the 2022-23 school year, Stark-Chessa competed on the boys’ side in all three sports under the same name.  

Stark-Chessa isn’t the only male transgender athlete to win a state title in Maine. Greely High junior Katie Spencer won girls’ indoor track state titles in February; one came in the pole vault and the other was a team state championship, which Greely won by one point thanks to Spencer’s first-place pole vault performance. 

Spencer’s victory prompted backlash from the Trump administration, which has attempted to withhold funding from Maine for allowing male athletes to compete against girls. 

“It is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities,” Trump wrote in his executive order, “which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. 

“It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”