Amid the Uproar Over Gender Issues, Wellesley Stands by Its Mission

Kudos to Paula Johnson. In an era when university administrators are too often cowed and even toppled by enraged students, the president of Wellesley College is standing her ground.

Despite students voting recently to admit transgender men, Ms. Johnson announced that the college would not be changing its admissions policy, which states that “Wellesley will consider for admission any applicant who lives as a woman and consistently identifies as a woman.”   

That means the school welcomes biological men who have transitioned to identifying as a female and living as one. It also means that biological women who have decided to live as males are not welcome to apply. Ms. Johnson reckons that if Wellesley were to welcome trans men it might as well go co-ed. 

After all, trans men presumably want to live as men; they have renounced womanhood. Why on earth should they go to a women’s college? Yet standing behind that standard has brought Ms. Johnson considerable grief. She has been booed and called transphobic. Her office has been disrupted by student sit-ins.

To read more…. https://www.nysun.com/article/amid-the-uproar-over-gender-issues-wellesley-stands-by-its-mission

Published in The New York Sun