Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Mt Holyoke College Is Officially Trans Friendly

Mount Holyoke College (est. 1837)Mills College on September 1 became the first women's college to officially enact policies welcoming transfeminine students to enroll on their campus, and I know a transfeminine Mills College alum and longtime TransGriot reader who is exceedingly happy about that development. 

I had the pleasure of being on the Bryn Mawr campus a few years ago for a speaking engagement, and said to one of the deans at dinner before I departed for Louisville it was a matter of time when, not if you were going to see transfeminine students seeking to enroll and become students at traditional women's colleges. 

I pointed out that with transkids transitioning as early as age 4, today's transkids will become tomorrow's transteens looking for a college to attend.  I pointed out if the Seven Sisters colleges wanted to tap into that pool of college students, earn their loyalty and their parents tuition money, they better deal with the reality that transfeminine women exist and may possibly wish to attend a women's college.  If they didn't want to or refused to do th work necessary to attract them, those trans feminine students would attend other schools that are willing to do so.

I suggested Seven Sisters colleges like Bryn Mawr work on including gender identity in their non-discrimination statements and crafting trans friendly policies to make that inevitable day as seamless as possible instead of having those policies forced on them via court decisions they will lose..

Smith College has gained the righteous ire of transpeople for the jacked of treatment of Calliope Wong and other transfeminine applicants as they have hypocritically allowed transmasculine students who transitioned after they started school on that campus to complete their degrees.

One of the Seven Sisters colleges has decided to follow the lead of Mills College and clarify their policy on admittance and enrollment of trans students 

This is a welcomed and much needed development, and it will be interesting to see now that a Seven Sisters college has done so, will the others like Smith, who have been hostile to transfeminine students enrolling, finally do so.  

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