Smith College, the largest of the all-female Seven Sisters schools, has announced that the school’s Board of Trustees “voted to clarify Smith’s undergraduate admission policy to include self-identified transgender women.”
In a statement posted on its Web site, Smith College President Kathleen McCartney wrote, “The board’s decision affirms Smith’s unwavering mission and identity as a women’s college, our commitment to representing the diversity of women’s lived experiences, and the college’s exceptional role in the advancement of women worldwide.”
“The mission of Smith College is to educate women of promise for lives of distinction,” McCartney wrote. “In the years since Smith’s founding, concepts of female identity have evolved. Smith alumnae have been leaders in the movement to afford women greater freedoms of aspiration and self-expression. At the same time, educational settings in which women are central remain powerfully transformative.”
GLAAD has worked alongside Smith alumnae to urge the college to open its doors to all women. “No person should be denied an education simply because of who they are,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “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.”
