Students at Hillary Clinton’s all-female alma mater are calling for legal admission for trans men

Students at an all-female college attended by Nora Ephron and Hillary Clinton will vote Tuesday in a tense referendum on whether it can accept male trans students who were born female.

Wellesley College in Massachusetts already accepts admission from “anyone who is alive and consistently identifies as a woman,” including transgender women who were born male.

But now a landmark referendum – which has polarized students – will ask whether its application process should be open to people who were born women but now identify as transgender men.

Students will also be asked to vote on whether the college’s communications should be more gender-sensitive — for example, using words like “students” and “alumni” instead of women.

The move was opposed by Wellesley’s President, Paula Johnson, who claimed she was rewriting her mission to “provide women with excellence in the liberal arts education.”

Wellesley College President Paula Johnson said the college is open to all students who “consistently identify as women”.

Johnson is pictured with Hilary Clinton at a graduation ceremony in 2017. Clinton attended college between 1965 and 1969

Johnson has been vocal in support of accepting transgender female students born to males, stating, “This is who we are: a women’s college and a diverse community.”

But her stance has drawn the ire of students who have hosted a constant sit-in at the administration building.

The student newspaper wrote in its editorial that they “disapprove and strongly disagree” with the President’s remarks.

The newspaper has campaigned for the college to adopt more gender-sensitive language over the past year.

In the spring of 2021, it wrote to the college’s administration, stating, “We are not all Wellesley women.”

“The editors of The Wellesley News reiterate that transgender and non-binary students have always been, and always will be, a part of Wellesley, historically a women’s college,” reads its most recent editorial.

Protesters point out that the college already has trans men and non-binary students.

Many of them seem to have been admitted as women during their time in college before the transition.

Student body president Alexandra Brooks told the New York Times: “All we’re asking is administration to put on paper what’s already in place for the student body.

“Trans men go to Wellesley, non-binary people go to Wellesley, and they kind of always have.

Student body president Alexandra Brooks told the New York Times that she was “just asking the administration to put on paper what’s already in place for the student body.”

Hilary Clinton is pictured with Bill at college in 1979

A young Clinton is pictured on the left of the second row during a commencement ceremony for Wellesley College in 1968

She is pictured again in May 1969. Clinton has been described as the college’s “golden girl.”

“A new policy,” she said, “would not change the culture of the school in any way.”

“It is still and always will be a school to educate people of marginalized genders.”

Transgender women were first admitted to Wellesley in 2015.

Perhaps best known for its high-profile alumni, the college has a long history of activism.

Nicknamed the “golden girl” of the college during her time there, Hillary Clinton gained recognition for taking the stage at its inaugural ceremony in 1979 and taking on a powerful Republican US Senator, Edward Brooke.

Clinton was commissioned to deliver a speech after Brooke, whose speech Richard Nixon appeared to defend during the Vietnam War.

She read a play by Nancy Scheibner about the “hollow men of anger and bitterness.”

She received thunderous applause for the poignant speech, and the next day the Boston Globe wrote that she staged the senator.

The college also counts Nora Ephron among its alumni. She was an editor at the Wellesley News.

Nora Ephron is also a famous alumni of the college. In 1996, she gave a famous graduation speech, telling graduates, “I hope you choose not to be a woman.”

In a famous commencement address to the college’s class in 1996, she said: “Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope you choose not to be a woman.

“I hope you find a way to break the rules and cause some trouble out there.

“I also hope that you will decide to cause some trouble on behalf of women.”

Women’s colleges and sports teams across the country have long grappled with the issue of admitting transgender students.

Sweet Briar College in Virginia now requires a birth certificate or altered birth certificate to confirm applicants’ gender as female.’

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk