Women’s college in Virginia bars transgender students based on founder’s will from 1900

Associated Press

Sweet Briar College in Virginia has instituted an admissions policy that bars transgender women next school year. The decision makes the private liberal arts school an outlier among the nation’s diminishing number of women’s colleges. The college said the policy stems from the will of its founder who died in 1900. The school said the document requires it to “be a place of ‘girls and young women’” and must be interpreted as it was understood back then. The policy is facing criticism from some students and most faculty. They warn the politically fraught policy could repel potential students, not just transgender women.