With this decision, Sweet Briar is one of the few women's colleges in the US with such a policy.
Sweet Briar College, a private women's liberal arts college located in Virginia, United States, has just implemented a new admissions policy, which means that transgender women will not be allowed on campus for this new academic year, according to New York PostWith this decision, Sweet Briar College has joined the few remaining women's colleges in the United States taking a similar stance.
According to the news outlet, university officials said the policy reflects the will of founder Indiana Fletcher Williams, who died in 1900. Officials explained that Williams' will obligated the institution to serve “girls and young women,” and they argue that those terms should be understood in the sense they had at the time the will was written.
In a letter to the college community, Sweet Briar President Mary Pope Hutson and the chair of the board of trustees announced that the new policy requires applicants to confirm that they were assigned as a girl at birth and that they always act and identify as female.
President Hutson made it clear that single-sex education was both a tradition and a unique cultural resource for the university. But the policy has angered students and faculty, who said it could deter potential students — both transgender and non-transgender — from applying to the university at a time when many women's colleges are closing, merging or becoming coeducational. Sweet Briar itself nearly closed in 2015.
Critics have also cited the administration's originalist interpretation of the will — which at one point explicitly barred nonwhite students from the university — as deeply problematic. The university only began admitting black students when a federal judge gave approval after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The reasoning behind the transgender policy was “absurd,” said John Gregory Brown, chairman of the faculty council and an English professor.
