When the Maize and Blue face off against their in-state nemesis Michigan State Spartans, families divide and tempers flare. But when the two rivals meet on the basketball court in Ann Arbor on Saturday, the century-old hostilities will take a back seat.

In the wake of the shooting that took three lives on Michigan State’s campus earlier this week, the University of Michigan has planned to honor the victims and show support for its rival school during its annual basketball game against the Spartans at Crisler Arena.

Michigan is preparing a host of recognitions for MSU, including “specially designed team warm-up shirts,” a “Spartan Strong” flag displayed in the Michigan student section, the Michigan band learning and playing MSU’s fight song, and a moment of silence for the victims.

Special things slated for Saturday's game with Michigan State ….

✔️ Honoring the Michigan State victims and community 💚💙
✔️ A Maize Out
✔️ 2013 Final Four Reunion

〽️🏀 #ForCompetitorsOnly#GoBlue #SpartanStrong pic.twitter.com/ett6CEUh3Y

— Michigan Men's Basketball (@umichbball) February 16, 2023

Students Brian Fraser, Alexandria Verner, and Arielle Anderson were killed, and five others were injured Monday night after a 43-year-old man opened fire on students at two locations on the Michigan State campus. The suspect, who was unaffiliated with the university according to police, later committed suicide.

Michigan State University canceled classes through the end of the week, and the men’s basketball team postponed a home game scheduled for Wednesday against Minnesota as the campus reels from the tragedy. The Spartans’ game against Michigan will be its first time taking the court since the shooting.

Long-time Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo said that after talking with mental health professionals earlier this week, they decided that it’s important for the team to play to begin the healing process.

“We’ve had a lot of help from some mental health professionals that I think really helped me,” Izzo remarked on Thursday. “They felt that if (MSU’s basketball team) played it would help not only themselves, the team, but maybe the campus heal a little better. And so we agreed that would be our battle cry.”

The legendary MSU figure added that playing on Saturday against Michigan will represent far more than another rivalry game.

“There’s some things that aren’t rivalries. There’s some things that are bigger than the game,” he said. “The game is gonna be really important to me, as it has been for all 28 years I’ve been here. But there’ll be a little asterisk on it. And I’m gonna have to do a good job of holding my emotions, their emotions. Everybody’s emotions.”

Despite the game taking on a much bigger meaning after the tragedy that unfolded in East Lansing, Michigan head coach Juwan Howard is still expecting a hard-fought contest.

“I expect two competitive teams to still go out there and compete,” Howard said on Friday, according to MLive. “Me and Coach Izzo … we put our hearts into our players and helping them go through whatever they go through, and preparing them to play the game they truly love.”

“We know once that ball goes up it’s going to be all about the game of basketball, and both teams trying to, at the end of day, win,” he added.

A new Canadian study found that 9 in 10 male inmates who identify as transgender were incarcerated for violent offenses and nearly half were sexual offenders.

A recent study conducted by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), an “Examination of Gender Diverse Offenders,” which surveyed 99 “gender diverse” inmates between 2017 and 2020, found that of the 61 male inmates in the study who identified as transgender or something other than male, 46% had committed sexual offenses and 92% were incarcerated for violent crimes.

The report found that 91.7% of male inmates who identified as transgender women surveyed were incarcerated for a violent offense, including 41.6% for homicide. By contrast, according to the Correctional Service of Canada’s 2021 annual report, 25.8% of male inmates (who identify as male) were serving sentences for a violent offense, which includes homicide/manslaughter, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and other violent offenses.

Additionally, the researchers determined that 62.7% of male inmates who identified as transgender women had a low reintegration potential, 39.3% required maximum security, and 74.6% had “high static risk,” which refers to a high level of risk that an individual will reoffend based on factors that are relatively unchangeable or “static.”

Image provided by Correctional Service Canada (CSC)

Because of the way the study was designed, inmates were not categorized by biological sex, but rather as “transgender women” and an “other” group that included “gender fluid, gender non-conforming, intersex, two-spirited, or unspecified.”

The Daily Wire sought clarification for the biological sex of the individuals with a history of sexual offenses, and Marie Pier Lécuyer, the senior media relations advisor for the Correctional Service Canada, explained that “of the 33 gender diverse offenders identified with a sex offense history, 84.9% (28) were male and 15.1% (5) were female at the time of the study.”

Image provided by Correctional Service Canada (CSC)

With this new information, it can be deduced that 85% of the inmates who identified as transgender women or “other” with a history of sexual offenses were in fact male. About 94% of the crimes were committed prior to adopting a transgender identity, with 64% having committed a “current sex offense” while they were incarcerated, and 88% convicted of prior sex offenses before they were incarcerated.

The majority (85%) had committed a sex offense that caused death or serious harm to their victims, with over half of the victims being children (58%) or female (55%). Nearly 70% had inflicted psychological harm on their victims and a third of offenders had multiple victims.

The report found that only about 16% of the males who identified as transgender or “gender diverse” applied for a transfer to a women’s prison. Among those who made this request, 62% were granted approval, 19% were denied, and 19% were still pending at the time of the study. No females who identified as transgender men sought to transfer to a men’s prison.

The study also revealed that 47% of the “gender-diverse” offenders surveyed were Indigenous. As of 2021, Indigenous people make up only 5% of the Canadian population, but constitute a disproportionate number of inmates in Canada’s prisons.

Prior to 2017, incarcerated individuals in Canada were placed in a men’s or women’s correctional facility based on their biological sex. However, in December 2017, the Correctional Service of Canada issued a directive mandating that prisoners be housed in facilities that align with their self-determined “gender identity.” Since then, several offenders convicted of severe sex crimes have been transferred to women’s prisons. However, the Canadian policy was clarified with a 2022 directive that explicitly gave prison officials the power to reject a transgender inmate’s transfer request on a case-by-case basis.

After the implementation of this new policy, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) research study was conducted to investigate the methods used by other correctional systems to accommodate “gender diverse” individuals and to create a comprehensive profile of “gender diverse” offenders in Canada’s federal correctional system.