The largest all-women’s college in the country just announced that it will accept transgender women into its student body come fall semester. Massachusetts-based Smith College adopted the new admissions policy just last weekend.
BuzzFeed reported that Smith College board members voted on this new policy last Saturday. The college has experienced several protests fighting for the admittance of transgender women over the course of the past year, particularly after the admissions department was revealed to have denied a transgender woman’s application because she was not recognized as a woman legally by her home state.
The school’s official admission policy announcement read, “The mission of Smith College is to educate women of promise for lives of distinction. In the years since Smith’s founding, concepts of female identity have evolved.”
Smith College is not the first all-women’s college to update their admissions policy to include transgender women; Wellesley and Mount Holyoke have recently made the same changes.
President and CEO of GLAAD, Sarah Kate Ellis, said in a recent statement, “No person should be denied an education simply because of who they are. By opening its doors to transgender women, Smith College has joined a growing number of educational institutions that respect and afford equal opportunity to all women.”