Dive Brief:
- Barnard College, an all-female institution, has told its students that it is examining whether it needs a formal policy about admitting transgender students.
- For now, Barnard considers applications from transgender people on a case-by-case basis.
- The college has students who were born female and now identify themselves as male or neutral gender, but no students who were born male who are now female or identify as having a fluid gender, the New York Times reported.
Dive Insight:
Respecting the rights of transgender students is making it difficult for higher education institutions with charters that define students as either male or female, without consideration of neutral or changed genders. Among the traditional women’s colleges, Mount Holyoke College, Mills College, and Scripps College have changed their policies so they now consider students who identify as female but weren’t considered female at birth. The question of setting a transgender policy extends beyond admissions to issues such as healthcare services, housing, and identifying a person with the proper pronoun, a Barnard spokeswoman told the Times.
