A Massachusetts all-women's university will admit transgender students, the school announced last week.
Wellesley College, about 20 miles west of Boston, made the decision after a year-long committee evaluation, according to Advocate.com.
A revised admissions policy will consider a student who "lives as a woman and consistently identifies as a woman," and will be effective for the next admission cycle.
"We will support all the students who are at Wellesley and all of their kinds of finding themselves in all of the ways that we can," Wellesley President H Kim Bottomly told the Boston Globe.
Students who change gender identity from female to male while a student at the college will be permitted to graduate, or they can be assisted in transferring to another university.
"For the current generation of Wellesley students, our understanding of gender has always been more complex than it was under Henry Durant in 1870," student government president Hana Glasser said, referring to the school's founder. Glasser stated that the policy is a relief to students, as it clarifies the university's position on the matter.
Massachusetts women's colleges Mount Holyoke and Simmons also allow transgender students, and Simmons also allows biologically female students who identify as male. Mount Holyoke admits all students except those that were born male and currently identify as males. A spokesperson for Northampton's Smith College said the school is currently considering revising its admission policy to accommodate transgender students.
While Wellesley's admissions revision has received praise from LGBT activists, others thought the new policy does not go far enough.
"Even if you have very supportive parents, it's often very hard to be out in high school," University of Massachusetts Amherst LGBT resource center director Genny Beemyn said.
Wellesley graduate Tim Chevalier, who now identifies as male, also criticised his alma mater's announcement, saying that the stance "seems carefully crafted to satisfy those of us who want to see Wellesley admit all women, while leaving the college plenty of plausible deniability with which to reject trans women on the basis that they aren't 'living as women.'"
Wellesley assistant professor and alumna Sarah Wall-Randell said the new policy was meant to affirm that the college is an institution for women. Wall-Randell also served on the committee that instituted the new admissions criteria.
