Catholic All-Women’s College In U.S.A. To Accept Trans Students
November 23, 2023An all-women's Catholic school in Indiana, U.S.A. will begin admitting trans people who identify as women in the fall 2024 semester, according to an email obtained by the ‘Washington Examiner’.
In a Tuesday evening email from St. Mary's College president Katie Conboy, students and faculty members were told liberal arts school in Notre Dame, Indiana, would start accepting transgender applicants “who consistently live and identify as women.”
The change comes after the school quietly updated its non-discrimination policy June 23. Conboy’s email said the school is still determining the “practices that will follow from the policy.” Earlier this year, she impaneled the “President’s Task Force for Gender Identity and Expression” with the mission to gather “information and best practices from other Catholic colleges and women’s colleges and will present their recommendations on student housing considerations.”
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“For over 175 years, Saint Mary’s College has been a unique place for women to grow and learn together,” a 2010 alumna, who requested anonymity, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s where I formed lifelong friendships. Now, they are betraying me and thousands of other graduates and current students by blowing up the bedrock principles of our beloved college.”
“In the '70s, they turned down the opportunity to join Notre Dame because leadership recognized how rare and special it was to have an institution reserved for Catholic women,” she continued. “Fast forward 50 years, and today’s leadership quietly changed the policy, only putting out a public statement when they were caught. The entire ordeal is insulting and reflects our cultural decline and the erasure of true womanhood.”
Conboy, however, said that St. Mary's new policy is not rare among Catholic women's colleges.
“We are by no means the first Catholic women’s college to adopt a policy with this scope,” Conboy said, adding that admitting men who identify as women “encompasses our commitment to operate as a Catholic women’s college.”
The president also said the board fully supports the new policy, which is based on Title IV of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, and disabilities at educational institutions but still allows exemptions for institutions that have historically served single-sex student bodies.
The policy also cites Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which was recently interpreted by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for an otherwise liberal majority and Chief Justice John Roberts, to include people who identify as trans.
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