This article was originally published in the October 2024 print edition.
As Mount Holyoke College celebrates its tenth anniversary of the change of its gender-based admissions policy, Smith College’s policy continues to be a point of contention. Mount Holyoke, a member of both the Five College Consortium and the Seven Sisters, “welcomes applications from female, transgender and nonbinary students” as of 2014.
Since 2015, Smith’s admissions policy has allowed for the admittance of “people who identify as women — cis, trans, and non-binary women.” Smith requires applicants to check a box affirming that the applicant “understand[s] Smith’s admission policy regarding gender identity and [identifies] as a female” on the Common Application, which Admissions uses to review incoming applications. Mount Holyoke does not include the same Common App question and permits students who do not identify as female but feel they belong at a gender-diverse women’s college to apply and attend.
As conversations surrounding gender identity at historically women’s colleges and in the global community have evolved over the past decade, so have ideas on Smith’s policy and how to best account for transgender and nonbinary students at a historically women’s college.
“There are feminist reasons for having a women’s college,” said Davey Shlasko, a Smith college alum, Adjunct Associate Professor of Transgender Studies at the Smith College School of Social Work and Diversity and Social Justice Consultant at Think Again. “This feminist motivation […] is to create opportunities for people who would otherwise be excluded from higher education because of their gender — that includes everyone who identifies or lives as women, and it also includes anyone who was assigned female at birth.”
“I think Mount Holyoke’s policy is much more clearly aligned with feminist values and feminist reasons for having women’s education at all than Smith’s is,” he added.
Smith changed its admissions policy in 2015 to broaden access for transgender women — which it has successfully done.
A policy study group was created in late 2014, and after months of research and discussion, it presented the Board of Trustees with two proposals in April of 2015. The first was to make eligible any applicant who was assigned female at birth, as well as any applicant who identified as a woman at the time of applying. The second option, which the board chose to adopt, was to make eligible anyone who lived or identified as a woman at the time of application — including transgender women, but not nonbinary or transmasculine people who were assigned female at birth.
This policy was meant to uphold Smith’s mission as a women’s college by “consider[ing] for admission only those woman-identified individuals who seek entrance into a community dedicated to educating women of promise,” according to the report made by the study group.
“In my mind, this is an accessibility issue,” said Margot Audero ’26. As a Gold Key student, Audero meets many prospective students, including “transmasculine people who really feel that, even though Smith has a reputation as a historically women’s college, as fellow gender minorities, they could really thrive here.”
Shlasko added that having access to information about gender identity is not universal and could impact accessibility in applying to Smith. “If you grew up in a community where you didn’t have access to open and expansive conversations about gender, then you might identify differently with these words just because of what they mean in that place,” she said.
When asked to comment on how diversity and inclusion play out through the admissions policy, Smith’s Admissions Office stated that “they adhere to the policy as adopted in 2015” and declined to comment further.
The 2015 policy announcement included a caveat that the school would continue to use gendered language and she/her/hers pronouns on the website and in official announcements. Audero is also Co-President of Smith’s Trans and Nonbinary Alliance, and has spoken with students about the impact of gendered language and policy on campus. “The issue isn’t just in the policy,” she said. “It’s this cultural perception of the Smith student body as one that only includes women.”
Although altering the admissions policy could encourage more inclusivity at Smith, it could also open the college to potential legal trouble.
“We have a legal framework to allow for colleges that only accept women, but we don’t have a legal framework for colleges that accept gender minorities,” Audero said. “There’s fear that if we adopted a policy more similar to Mount Holyoke’s, we could be open to a lawsuit from a cis guy who says ‘Aren’t you co-ed? Why aren’t you letting me in?’”
Mount Holyoke College has not faced any lawsuit of this kind over the past 10 years of allowing entry to transgender men.
Of the Seven Sisters, Mount Holyoke’s policy is the most gender-inclusive. Bryn Mawr College allows for nonbinary students and transgender men to apply, so long as they have not undergone medical or legal transition. Barnard and Wellesley have policies that are similar to Smith’s, requiring applicants to identify and live as women. Sweet Briar, a small women’s college in Virginia, allows for only cisgender women applicants as of August 2024, making it one of the most conservative modern policies among HWCs. Conversely, Agnes Scott College in Georgia has allowed transgender men and nonbinary students to apply since 2011.
Both Shlasko and Audero stated that they would like to see Smith adopt a policy more aligned with Mount Holyoke’s.
“I think we’d be more true to Smith’s mission by allowing all gender minorities to attend the school,” said Audero.
