NEW YORK — On a recent bright spring morning, students entering the Barnard College Class of 2019 gathered on campus.
There were, of course, young women from a variety of backgrounds, but at least one category wasn’t included: transgender women. Barnard, like other women’s colleges, has traditionally admitted only students born female. But that might be changing.
This week, Barnard’s trustees are expected to vote on an issue that has arrived loudly and emphatically on the front burner for women’s colleges across the nation: transgender admissions. One by one, schools have announced policies in the past year that address, as never before, the fluidity of gender.
Why the sudden action? “I think certain issues just hit the zeitgeist at a certain point in time,” said Debora Spar, Barnard’s president.
Spar has led a months-long effort to explore the issue with her community, including five town halls and a survey that yielded about 900 responses, all of which she says she has personally read. “History is moving very quickly on this issue,” she said.
“Transgender issues have been accelerating in the culture,” said Jennifer Finney Boylan, an English professor at Barnard and herself a transgender woman.
She points to several recent influential events: actress Laverne Cox’s appearance on a Time magazine cover touting “The Transgender Tipping Point”; the Golden Globe-winning TV show “Transparent,” about a transgender woman; and, more recently, Bruce Jenner’s transition.
“These issues are changing the game,” Boylan said. “It might seem like it’s all happening at once, but why didn’t it happen sooner? I’m delighted that all of these colleges are trying to figure it out.”
But figuring it out is a complex process, and colleges have arrived at differing — and often lengthy — policies.
The most recent: Smith College, which early this month decided to admit transgender women but not transgender men (assigned female at birth but identifying as male). Mount Holyoke, on the other hand, has decided to admit both.
“We acknowledge that gender identity is not reducible to the body,” the school’s president, Lynn Pas querella, said in September.
Barnard will now have to determine where to draw the line. To those who might argue that the issue affects only a tiny group, Dru Levasseur, director of Lambda Legal’s Transgender Rights Project, replies that it’s hugely symbolic.
“It really gets to the heart of who qualifies as a woman and who qualifies as a man,” Levasseur said. “Which makes it so relevant right now.”
