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A women's college is telling professors to stop calling students women. Here's why

Williston Library at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., Jan. 18, 2018. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times)
Williston Library at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., Jan. 18, 2018. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times) NYT

Mount Holyoke College says it’s absolutely still a women’s college - even though it’s telling professors to no longer address their students as “women.”

Mount Holyoke College was founded more than 180 years ago, nestled a few miles from the banks of the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. The school, created by Mary Lyon, a major advocate for women’s education, has since been consistently ranked as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country.

In a section on its website, the school advises professors to “say ‘Mount Holyoke students’ rather than ‘Mount Holyoke women,” and to avoid making statements like “‘We’re all women here...’”

The school also says to use “gender neutral” language when possible, to avoid referring to “the two genders,” and to avoid reading out a roster and instead pass around an attendance sheet and ask students to write down their preferred names and pronouns (like “they” or “he,” or even “ze” or “xe” instead of “she.”)

The guidelines are listed on a section of the school’s Teaching and Learning Initiative called “Supporting Trans and Non-Binary Students.”

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News of the guidelines kicked up criticism on national television.

“This is becoming increasingly common on campuses across the country…we have these administrators, these leftist progressives who take their own ideological opinions, their political views and insert them into things like speech codes and diversity classes,” CRTV host and “Roaming Millennial” Laura Tam said on Fox News. “They try to codify their opinions into the school policy to try to indoctrinate students.”

Acting President Sonta Stephens sent a statement to the network which acknowledged that “not every Mount Holyoke Student identifies as a woman,” and added that “every student at Mount Holyoke has the right to live and learn in an inclusive environment that is free from hostility and respectful of their identity.”

On its website, the school says it remains “committed to its historic mission as a women’s college.”

It adds, however, that the experience of being a woman is not “static” and that the traditional idea there there are only men or women is being challenged.

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The school says any student who was born biologically female can apply for admission, regardless of whether they identify as a woman.

People who were born biologically male can also apply, as long as they identify as a woman or as some other identity that includes “woman.” Those born with both male and female anatomy, known as intersex, are also invited to apply if they identify as female.

Once someone is accepted, they cannot be withdrawn, even if they decide to change their identity during their time at college, the school wrote.

Mount Holyoke is not alone. Across the country, women’s colleges are crafting new admissions policies for how they will accommodate students who wish to apply but who may not identify as a woman or may not have been biologically born as one.

In 2017, Vox contacted 38 American women’s colleges in the Women’s College Coalition and found 13 either did not admit transgender students or had not yet established a policy for doing so - though many others had embraced the new role of providing education for another type of group that has, historically, been pushed aside in higher education.

“That’s always been the historic role of women’s colleges,” Chicora Martin, a vice president and dean of students at Mills College, told the Associated Press. “The definition of gender and gender identity has broadened, and yet it’s still very much that mission.”

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