This week, Wellesley College, a prestigious liberal arts institution for women, voted to expand its admissions policy to include nonbinary and transgender applicants. However, the college has yet to implement any changes to policy. The nonbinding referendum asked students if they supported a proposal to the board of trustees to admit transgender men and nonbinary individuals regardless of their assigned gender at birth, and to replace all gender-specific language in reference to the student body. Wellesley’s website states currently that the college accepts those who “live as a woman and consistently identify as a woman”; nonbinary students assigned to a female at birth and trans women are included under this umbrella, but trans men and nonbinary individuals that were assigned male at birth are not.
The referendum follows a sit-in protest in response to a statement by Wellesley president Paula A. Johnson, who claimed that the college’s mission was directly tied to the gender of students. Furthermore, the editorial board of the Wellesley News pushed back on Johnson’s statement and reaffirmed their support for transgender, nonbinary and gender non-conforming people. Wellesley College was founded in 1870 with the goal of providing a rigorous liberal arts education for women, and is one of the “Seven Sisters” Colleges, a consortium of HWCs that also includes Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Vassar and Radcliffe Colleges.
Of the original seven, Vassar has been co-educational since 1969, and Radcliffe College was absorbed into Harvard University in 1999. Barnard, Smith and Bryn Mawr do not admit transgender men, while Mount Holyoke states that it encourages applications from “female, transgender and nonbinary students”. Wellesley College President Johnson has introduced steps the school has taken to address students' concerns such as increasing the number of all-gender bathrooms on campus and streamlining the application process to clearly explain eligibility criteria for applying. She has also updated the college's gender policy in order to be more inclusive of every student.
The divide between student body and administration at Wellesley is seen as a generational issue. Alumnae of Wellesley include former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, both of whom have expressed their full support for the college's decision to expand its admissions policy. The vote to accept transgender men and nonbinary individuals into Wellesley College is seen by many as a positive step toward inclusivity and equality.