Sat Mar 23, 2013 at 04:00 PM PDT
Smith College's Transgender Problem

by rserven

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/23/1196452/-Smith-College-s-Transgender-Problem

Calliope Wong is finishing up high school at Amity Regional Senior High School in Connecticut.  Like high school students all over the country, that has meant sending out hundreds of college applications.

Unlike high school students all over the country, Calliope has the disadvantage of being a transwoman.

She was led to believe her application to Smith College in Northampton, MA would get a fair hearing.  Last summer she corresponded with Smith's Dean of Admission Debra Shaver and was assured that she would.  But on March 10 Calliope got the bad news.  The rejection letter, signed by Shaver, included the following sentence:

    Smith is a women's college, which means that undergraduate applicants to Smith must be female at the time of admission.

Wong wrote on Tumblr:

    Dean Shaver's words to me over the summer, when I was still trying to figure out Smith's transgender-acceptance policies, were that: "It seems to me that if your teachers provide the language you suggest, all your pronouns would be female and therefore consistent with what Smith is expecting. "She spoke of school papers and transcripts consistently reflecting "female" for my application.  Nowhere was there mention of FAFSA, a federal financial aid form.

As more and more transwomen transition while in high school, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for women's colleges to change their admissions policies.

Quote from: LearnedHand on March 25, 2013, 11:40:37 AM
As more and more transwomen transition while in high school, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for women's colleges to change their admissions policies.

Well maybe the obvious needs to be pointed out to the folks at Smith: They depend HEAVILY on the LGBT community for enrollment. There is a lot of solidarity among LGBT high school students with the proliferation of Gay/Straight Alliance clubs on high school campuses. Shutting their gates to trans women could hurt their enrollment among other queer females.

I'm sorry, but I have a problem with this.

I have "heard" that the all-female Smith College has so many FTMs attending that the choir has a bass section!!

That's how I heard the joke, anyway. 

Like you said, the obvious needs to be pointed out, i.e., the double standard.

Smith College = NIMBY