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Sweet Briar College's founder's 1900 will stated that Sweet Briar would be a school for girls and women, and the college must abide by the understanding of gender at that time, administrators say.
Sweet Briar College in Virginia has barred transgender people from enrolling, based on administrators’ understanding of the founder’s will — from 1900.
The private liberal arts college was founded by Indiana Fletcher Williams in honor of her deceased daughter, Daisy. Williams’s will stipulated that Sweet Briar would “be a place of ‘girls and young women,’” college officials told the Associated Press.
Sweet Briar, located on the former Williams plantation in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, “has never had an admissions policy specifically for transgender students but has evaluated and admitted trans applicants on a case-by-case basis,” Inside Higher Ed reports. “The new policy holds that an applicant must confirm ‘that her sex assigned at birth is female and that she consistently lives and identifies as a woman.’”
Sweet Briar President Mary Pope Hutson and the college’s board chair spelled out the new policy in a letter to the campus community in August. The phrase “girls and young women,” they wrote, “must be interpreted as it was understood at the time the Will was written.”
“The board cannot change the words or the interpretation of the will,” Hutson told Inside Higher Ed. “I think that’s important.”
The will is from 1900, and the college was established in 1901. It began admitting students in 1906. The Virginia legislature codified the will, and therefore the college must follow it. “And based on existing state case law, Sweet Briar leaders are required to consider how Williams viewed women and to honor that intent — even if current social norms do not reflect the founder’s perspective,” according to Inside Higher Ed.
The college has deviated from the will in one major way, however. The will mandated that Sweet Briar would admit whites only. In 1964, Sweet Briar sought the state’s permission to integrate, and that led to a long legal battle. The college admitted its first Black students in 1966 under a temporary court order, and a court struck down the whites-only policy for good in 1967.
The ban on trans students has brought backlash from students, faculty, and others. The Sweet Briar College Student Government Association approved a statement saying it is “alienating, unnecessary, and it reflects the rise of transphobia in our country.”
Association President Isabella Paul, who is nonbinary, told the AP about 10 percent of Sweet Briar’s roughly 460 students are trans or nonbinary, or otherwise don’t fit the policy’s definition of a woman. It’s unclear how the policy would affect students already enrolled; Hutson said only that Sweet Briar seeks “to ensure that all of our students feel welcome on campus,” according to the AP.
“And there are allies here who may identify as women but have friends and lovers and family members who are nonbinary, genderqueer, and transgender,” Paul said. “So this is also affecting their pride in their institution.”
Faculty members last week voted 48-4, with one abstention, to call on administrators to revoke the trans ban. Faculty Senate President John Gregory Brown told the AP the ban is “absurd.” Many things have changed since Williams’s time, he said. “Williams also wouldn’t have entertained the notion that somebody who was disabled would be a potential student,” he noted.
Trans students are “precisely the students who benefit from attending an institution that is historically dedicated to gender equity in a world where women were underserved and undervalued,” the faculty resolution states. Brown said the ban would likely lead to a drop in applications and donations.
One board member has resigned over the ban, Hutson told the AP. Some alums have objected to it as well, while others support it, she said. “Many want Sweet Briar to remain a place where women can thrive, and they believe that a broader policy is a slippery slope toward coeducation,” she said.
Private colleges’ admissions policies are exempt from Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bans sex discrimination in education, and therefore from the Biden administration’s new rule that Title IX applies to discrimination based on gender identity. However, students can still bring lawsuits, Nicholas Hite, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, told the AP.
The Sweet Briar policy defines how to “live and identify as a woman,” but “that’s something that every cis and trans woman should be able to decide for herself,” Hite said.
Twenty-three colleges that were established as women-only admit at least some trans women, and three, including Sweet Briar, bar most or all trans students, the AP reports.
