With transgender issues and rights receiving more and more public attention, some women’s colleges are facing them while others avoid the challenge of reconsidering admission policies and student parameters.
“We don’t think it’s our role to define a woman,” says Brian O’Rourke, vice president for enrollment management at Mills College, the first women’s college in the United States to develop a formal admissions policy regarding transgender or transitioning applicants.
Brian O’Rourke, vice president for enrollment management at Mills College
Mills is a small college in Oakland, Calif. At the undergraduate level, which numbers about 920 students, it is a women’s college with a deeply held tradition. In the early 1990s, after the board made a decision to go coed, students, faculty, staff and alumnae went on strike until the policy was overturned.
Over the past decade, O’Rourke says approximately three to five transgender students per year expressed interest in applying. Furthermore, current students identify as transgender males or gender neutral. The policy, which was approved by the board in May 2014, took a couple of years to establish.
During the 2012-13 academic year, the faculty and staff committee to explore issues of diversity and social justice identified this as an issue of higher education that needed further conversation on the Mills campus. After preparing a report about the transgender experience at Mills, the gender equity and identity subcommittee was created.
The subcommittee spent the 2013-14 academic year developing the policy. That was taken to the board and vetted through legal counsel before being brought to a vote at the May 2014 meeting where it was approved.
