Virginia women’s college bars trans students because of founder’s will from 125 years ago

Sweet Briar College in Virginia has instituted an admissions policy that bars transgender women next school year

Sweet Briar Transgender Policy (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

A women’s college in Virginia has instituted an admissions policy that bars transgender women next school year because of a new interpretation of the founder’s will.

Sweet Briar College, a private women's liberal arts school, said the policy stems from the legally binding will of its founder, Indiana Fletcher Williams, who died in 1900. Sweet Briar's leadership said the document requires it to “be a place of ‘girls and young women.’”

The phrase "must be interpreted as it was understood at the time the Will was written,” Sweet Briar's president and board chair wrote in a letter earlier this month to the college community.

The new policy requires an applicant to “confirm that her sex assigned at birth is female, and that she consistently lives and identifies as a woman."

“Sweet Briar College believes that single-sex education is not only our tradition, but also a unique cultural and social resource,” President Mary Pope Hutson said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The new guidelines are facing criticism from some students and most faculty. They warn the politically fraught policy could repel potential students — not just transgender women — when women's colleges have been closing, going co-ed or merging with other schools. Sweet Briar nearly shuttered in 2015.

Critics also question the board's originalist interpretation of a will that explicitly excluded non-white students.

Williams' will said the school was to be a place “for the education of white girls and young women." The college had to get permission from a federal judge to accept Black students after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

John Gregory Brown, an English professor and faculty senate chair, said the reasoning for the transgender policy is “absurd.”

“Williams also wouldn’t have entertained the notion that somebody who was disabled would be a potential student," Brown added.

On Monday night, the faculty voted 48 to 4, with one abstention, to call on the board to rescind the policy, Brown said.

Sweet Briar has about 460 students —- known as Vixens — and was established in 1901 on Williams’ estate, a former plantation in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

On Aug. 10, the Sweet Briar College Student Government Association stated the policy was “alienating, unnecessary, and it reflects the rise of transphobia in our country.”

Association President Isabella Paul, a senior who identifies as nonbinary, told the AP that at least 10% of students use different pronouns and wouldn't fit in the policy's description of women.

“And there are allies here who may identify as women but have friends and lovers and family members who are nonbinary, genderqueer and transgender," Paul said. “So this is also affecting their pride in their institution.”

It’s unclear how the policy will affect current students. When asked, Sweet Briar’s president said the school tries “to ensure that all of our students feel welcome on campus.”

Hutson acknowledged that a board member has resigned over the policy and that alumnae on both sides “care deeply about the future of our college."

“Many want Sweet Briar to remain a place where women can thrive, and they believe that a broader policy is a slippery slope toward co-education," Hutson said. “They strongly support this policy.”

Women's colleges in the U.S. began to admit transgender women about 10 years ago, including Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and Spelman College, a historically Black school in Atlanta.

“What it means to be a woman isn’t static,” Mount Holyoke's then-President Lynn Pasquerella told the AP in 2014. “Early feminists argued that reducing women to their biological functions was a foundation of women’s oppression.”

Currently, 23 historically women’s colleges have policies that admit at least some trans students, said Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Beemyn, who tracks such policies, said three historically women’s colleges bar most trans women, including Sweet Briar.

Admissions policies at private undergraduate colleges are exempt from Title IX, the 1972 law that bars sex discrimination in education. So Sweet Briar would not be affected by the Biden administration's new rules under Title IX, which restrict discrimination based on gender identity.

Most Republican state attorneys general are challenging those rules in court. And judges have halted enforcement in 26 states, including Virginia, while the cases proceed.

But schools, including Sweet Briar, would not be shielded from any private lawsuits filed by current students, said Nicholas Hite, a senior attorney with LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal.

Hite said Sweet Briar’s policy could be problematic because it explicitly attempts to define for current students what it means to “live and identify as a woman.”

“That’s something that every cis and trans woman should be able to decide for herself,” Hite said.

Sweet Briar lacked a stated transgender admissions policy until this year, according to the letter from school leadership. The college was previously handling applications case by case.

But then the Common Application, a nonprofit that helps students apply to schools on one standardized form, added more options for a person's legal sex, “X” or “another legal sex.”

Sweet Briar's leadership said the additional options created confusion and challenges for applicants and school staff.

Emma Steele, a Common Application spokesperson, said in a statement that the changes “were all made to better reflect the more than one million students who use Common App each year."

Sweet Briar almost ceased being a school in 2015. Its then-leadership announced its closure and cited financial challenges, declining enrollment and other problems.

The school was saved after multiple lawsuits, prolonged negotiations and the raising of millions of dollars by its fiercely determined alumnae.

Sweet Briar is one of 30 schools listed as members of the Women’s College Coalition. The U.S. had more than 200 women's colleges in the 1960s.

The faculty senate president said the new policy will likely shrink the pool of already precious applicants.

“It really excludes any student who would be offended by those positions ... who doesn’t want to be in a place where discrimination is codified in this way,” Brown said. “I think it’s a financially disastrous decision for the college.”