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mahatmakanejeeves

(59,792 posts)
Sat Aug 31, 2024, 09:51 AM Aug 31

Women's college in Virginia bars transgender students based on founder's will from 1900

Women’s college in Virginia bars transgender students based on founder’s will from 1900

The Associated Press
August 30, 2024, 6:45 PM

Sweet Briar College in Virginia has instituted an admissions policy that bars transgender women next school year, making the school an outlier among the nation’s diminishing number of women’s colleges.

The 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.

{snip}

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
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Women's college in Virginia bars transgender students based on founder's will from 1900 (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Aug 31 OP
kinda like those property deeds... ret5hd Aug 31 #1
permanent fiduciary responsibility and judicial interpretation all in one bucolic_frolic Aug 31 #2
I'm an alumna of Sweet Briar College. no_hypocrisy Aug 31 #3
Good morning. I knew you were. I was hoping you'd chime in. NT mahatmakanejeeves Aug 31 #4

no_hypocrisy

(48,059 posts)
3. I'm an alumna of Sweet Briar College.
Sat Aug 31, 2024, 10:05 AM
Aug 31

A lot of alumnae are up in arms about this sudden change in admissions policy.

At the moment, there are several transgender/non-binary students already enrolled. And the Board voted to essentially disenfranchise them while shutting the door for prospective students.

We are outraged and organizing. A barrage of letters and e-mails have been sent to all members of the board and to the prospective President, Mary Pope Hutson.

We stopped the Board from closing the college in 2015. We can change this egregious policy as well.

Stay tuned.

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