Smith College’s admissions policy regarding gender has remained a point of contention among campus discourse, signaling the need for an open conversation about Smith’s trans community. In a campus climate survey conducted in 2023, 82% of Smith students identifying as transgender reported that they felt a sense of belonging to Smith’s campus — six percent higher than cisgender students. The environment that this data reflects, however, is largely new and still developing. In order to examine how this environment has evolved over the last 20 years, The Sophian spoke with a variety of Smith students, faculty, alumni and staff who identify closely with the trans community.
An unwelcome past
Smith alum Toby Davis currently serves as the Smith Inclusion Education Trainer and Facilitator in the Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI). Toby Davis ’03 remembers when Smith announced their policy officially proclaiming that students would not be asked to leave the college for transitioning.
“As a result of the activism that I was a part of by my senior year, when I was chair of the [trans] committee […] we actually had a historic meeting with the Dean of the College — then Maureen Mahoney — where she said, ‘No Smith student will ever be asked to leave Smith for being trans,’ and that became the policy,” he said. According to Toby Davis, before this official proclamation, trans students at Smith advised each other not to tell administration about their gender identity for fear of being asked to leave the college.
As a student, Toby Davis served on what were known as “LBTA” panels, where lesbian, bisexual and transgender students (and allies) would sit on panels in different house living rooms to discuss queer issues.
“The way that gay activism was happening everywhere was very like, if I tell a sad enough story, straight people will care, kind of a thing,” he said. Though Toby Davis described discrimination he faced while at Smith as not overtly hostile, it was still a regular occurence. “I would go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and like everybody in the bathroom would leave, and then it was just the incredulity, either people would be like, ‘Oh, you’re a man, you’re not a Smithie.’ Or they’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re a Smithie, you’re not a man,’” he said.
Stretching into the 2010s, many facets of this unwelcoming environment that Toby Davis faced remained present at the college. Sam Davis ’17 (no relation to Toby Davis) recalled an overwhelming sense of disagreement about his presence as a non-binary student at the college.
“There were tons of people at Smith who just felt like people like me shouldn’t be there,” he said.
Casey Hecox, who left Smith after their junior year in 2018, also reported many difficulties being non-binary on Smith’s campus. “There was definitely a lot of transphobia […] there were a lot of microaggressions, like, a lot of feelings of looks and stares and just not feeling welcomed in any social spaces or in even classes,” they said.
Beyond microaggressions, many institutional factors at Smith posed barriers to trans students. Until 2021, there were no options for students to officially change their pronouns in Smith’s system on their own, meaning students had to proclaim their pronouns in class and professors were often prone to mistakes.
“Professors, when I was there, had no idea what to do with the trans presence, except for the professors who were specifically in the Gender Studies Department […] [but other professors] didn’t know how to ask people’s pronouns at the time,” Sam Davis said.
Both Toby Davis and Hecox reported negative encounters with campus safety in relation to their gender presentation.
“I remember sitting under a tree outside of Lamont, and like, campus safety came over, and were like, ‘Somebody called in that there was, like a strange man sitting outside a house.’ And I was like, ‘Well I’m sitting outside a house and that feels vaguely gender affirming but also I live here,’” Toby Davis said.
Hecox asked a campus safety officer for a ride on a cold night and the officer allegedly proceeded to question their identity and ask for their OneCard. “He kept asking me multiple times, like, ‘You’re not a student, that’s a fake ID, like you don’t look like a girl,’” they said.
In terms of healthcare, direct access to gender-affirming care was not available on campus until recently. “Healthcare was not accessible, which for people who had access to money that just was not that big of a deal […] but if you’re a low income student and Smith is giving you your health care and that’s your only option, like, that’s it,” Sam Davis said.
Hecox also recalled seeking out gender-affirming care off campus. Since then, Smith has begun offering gender-affirming care on campus. In the fall of 2022, the Schacht Center introduced direct access to gender-affirming treatments. After current medical director, Tara Dumont, was appointed in 2021, she set out to create a comprehensive policy to offer gender-affirming hormone therapy through the Schacht Center. Additionally, the Schacht Center opened the binder library where students can check out and try chest binders at no cost in 2022.
Sam Davis noted difficulties for trans students in accessing Smith’s vast alumni network. “Trans people have trouble accessing the alumni network, no matter what other identities they hold […] If they look like a version of trans that makes them seem as if they don’t belong to a version of Smith that an older alumni will recognize, that creates a system of in-access that actually extends way past the time you leave Smith,” he said.
A disputed admissions policy
One of the most notable changes for Smith’s institutional acceptance of trans students occurred in 2015 when the college announced that it would extend admission to trans women. In 2014, Mount Holyoke College extended admission to all transgender and non-binary students. That same year, Smith created a policy study group and presented the Board of Trustees with two proposals: one which would open admission to any applicant assigned female at birth no matter their current identity and the other which would constrain admission to applicants currently identifying as female. The board ultimately chose not to extend admission to all transgender and non-binary students — a policy that remains contentious today.
Toby Davis served on the policy study group and recognized the long and careful research the group conducted, but felt a disconnect with the Board of Trustees who made the final decision.
“I wish that there had been more conversations and education with the Board of Trustees who ultimately made the decision, because I feel like they didn’t necessarily have as much information as maybe would have helped them,” he said. “I feel like the conversation about transness and non-binaryness was different then, and I’m interested to see the next chapter of how that admissions policy evolves.”
Alix Livingston ’26 noted how accepting Smith is to students who transition after admission and how the policy can prevent some applicants from accessing its unique environment. “It’s a really amazing thing that Smith is kind of like this fake little world that transgender people and non-binary people can live in for college and while they figure out who they are. And I think that there’s something to be said about not keeping anybody out of that,” he said. Across interviews, many sources shared the sentiment that the gender admissions policy should be altered.
Efforts towards change
During his junior year at Smith, Sam Davis went through the Smith archives in search of documentation of trans students’ presence at the college. He was disappointed by his findings.
“There was literally nothing, as if to say that trans people had never been to Smith and had never touched the school,” he said. Sam Davis then began collecting interviews with trans students and alums to create Smith’s first trans archive and ultimately put the interviews together in a documentary, which he screened just before graduating. Sam Davis credits his documentary with starting a more open conversation about trans people’s presence at Smith.
“Since the movie came out, even in the fall of the following year, I noticed such a big difference from my friends who were still there, because the conversation had been brought to everyone’s attention, of like, yeah, trans people are here period, and they deserve to be here,” he said.
Sam Davis’s documentary came out in 2017. That same year, Smith conducted a student climate survey which revealed that 27% of trans and non-binary students at Smith felt “uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” with the climate at Smith, compared with only 12% of non-trans students. The survey also collected open ended responses from trans students about changes they wanted to see at the college. According to Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Floyd Cheung, responses highlighted a demand for gender neutral bathrooms and the option to add pronouns in Workday.
In 2019, Toby Davis and Jen Malkowski — a trans non-binary faculty member and Chair of Film and Media Studies — started a working group for trans and non-binary issues on campus. In collaboration with Cheung and the OEI, the working group was able to introduce pronouns in workday and relabel all single stall bathrooms on campus as all-gender restrooms. In addition, Toby Davis and Malkowski rewrote Smith’s webpage that clarifies who is eligible to apply to the college.
“That webpage, honestly, prior to our suggested revisions was really transphobic and really unwelcoming to trans students of all kinds. To Smith’s credit, we made suggestions and they took every suggestion we made and they completely revised Smith’s website,” Malkowski said.
The athletics dilemma
Athletics has long been an area where trans students face issues; at Smith there have been recent efforts to ameliorate its limitations. While at Smith, Hecox was an athlete on the Smith track and field team. When they decided to medically transition by taking testosterone, they had to leave the team due to NCAA regulations that prohibit the use of testosterone on collegiate women’s teams.
“I had to quit cross country, because you can’t be taking testosterone while running. And there was a pretty big fallout from that, and that was kind of like my main community. That was really, really hard and just like the feedback from my coach, when I did tell her that I was quitting, was less than pleasant to say the least,” they said.
At co-ed schools, student-athletes who begin using testosterone have the option to move to the men’s team. At Smith, there are no men’s teams, so students are forced to choose between delaying medical transition or no longer playing their sport.
A year after Hecox left Smith, Kelsey Parks Smith became the first to serve in her newly created role in 2019 as Assistant Athletic Director for Equity Inclusion and Student Well Being. Under her role, Parks Smith works to help trans athletes manage athletics and their transition while facing the difficult decision to delay gender affirming care or leave their team. Parks Smith offers athletes who want to medically transition new ways to stay involved in their sport to support them in the face of limiting NCAA regulations.
“While I hate that we have to play by the [NCAA’s] rules to even have a seat in the conversation, we absolutely don’t have a seat at the conversation if we don’t. I think we try to ride this line of, we’ll be really upfront about [how] ‘we don’t love this policy, and how do we support athletes within it,’” Parks Smith said.
In order to support athletes, Parks Smith works with coaches to find alternate ways for students to remain part of their team even if they are not playing competitively. “As long as you want to stay involved, especially at a DIII school like Smith, there’s a way to stay involved, not always playing,” she said. Parks Smith noted practicing without competing and taking on managerial roles as a few options for athletes to stay involved.
Even when students delay medical transition, Parks Smith works with the Schacht Center to provide support and ensure that students’ names and pronouns are respected within athletic settings. Parks Smith is also working to create a regularly scheduled training for athletic coaches and staff to specifically address a need for education regarding trans and non-binary athletes.
Smith’s environment today
As the newer data reflects, many current trans students at Smith feel grateful to the college for the accepting environment it provides. Maeve Toolan ’28, applied to Smith because it stood out to her as a school that would accept her trans identity, a factor she considered heavily when applying to college.
“Smith kind of stood out to not have a big like an exclusionary culture, almost, and felt like there was purposeful thought had kind of been put into making it an inclusive space,” Toolan said. During her first few months at Smith, Toolan has found this impression to be true. “Adjusting was really easy, surprisingly, and just everything here has been wonderful. Honestly, I have other trans friends who go to other schools who haven’t had as great a time as me,” she said.
For some students, Smith’s open-minded environment that does not stray from discussing trans issues acted as a catalyst for discovering their gender identity.
“I didn’t really think about it at all until I came to Smith. Like, I just didn’t feel like I had the space to, but coming to Smith, I met trans people almost immediately, and it was a complete shift from my high school […] I feel like, once I got in that space, I kind of realized [that I was trans],” Caro Faust ’26 said. As Faust began to transition, they noticed how accepting the campus was to the changes he made. “With every step, I feel like I’ve never felt pushback or any kind of discomfort, because it felt like such a normal thing on campus […] the broader community was just ready for those changes,” he said. Faust also noted their appreciation for Workday’s pronoun declaration system during his transition.
Elio Berkovic ’27 commends the Schacht Center for how easily he was able to access gender affirming care. “[The Schacht Center] is very helpful. I feel like when you’re seeking gender affirming care, there’s a lot of those barriers, of like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? Is this really something that you want to do?’ and there’s a lot of like back and forth, but they don’t put up all those barriers,” he said.
Looking to the future
In the past two decades, Smith has undergone many shifts that have changed its environment for trans students. Nonetheless, the institution continues to reckon with its identity as a women’s college that does not only educate women.
“I think that the college does a really good job of empowering young women, and it sees that as part of its identity: to empower women for their future. But I think that there are [examples like the Women of Distinction program] […] still little things that are aimed towards fitting that image. And it is a little weird knowing that there’s such a percentage of Smith that doesn’t fit that image,” Faust said.
Smith’s admissions policy continues to upset many who feel that the college’s abundant resources should not be limited to those who are women at the time of application.
“If we go by the feminist justification for women’s colleges, which is giving an education to people who cannot access it, or who historically have not been able to access it, then that goes for all trans people,” Sam Davis said in recalling a quote from an interviewee in his documentary.
The limiting admissions policy also raises questions about the college’s advertising of itself as an institution. “It has always struck me that Smith in its kind of admissions marketing rarely features pictures of students who are kind of signaling transness in a visible way or signaling queerness in a way that we would culturally read. I think our marketing of ourselves as a college doesn’t highlight the incredibly strong queer and trans community that we have fostered here,” Malkowski said.
When asked by The Sophian about admissions marketing that features Smith’s queer and trans community, the admissions office declined to comment as they do not explicitly conduct outreach to queer and trans students.
Despite a tumultuous past and ongoing institutional qualms, Smith’s queer and trans community continue to not only exist, but remain a strong and vibrant portion of the campus. In considering how things have changed for trans people at Smith, Toby Davis reflected on how his own experiences in the past inform the work he is doing today to make the college a more accepting place.
“I want the level of exclusion and isolation [that I faced] to feel like this alien thing from another century,” he said. “So that is really exciting when it’s like, wow, I cannot even picture a Smith where everybody wouldn’t immediately like, come to the trans person’s support if that was happening, or where somebody cared if a trans person was brushing their teeth next to you in the bathroom.”
While considering the newest data revealing trans and non-binary students’ comfort at Smith, Malkowski expressed a sense of achievement. “I feel proud of our community for creating that feeling despite some messages they may receive from the college as a whole that this is not a place for trans people or for certain kinds of trans people,” they said.
Be First to Comment