Do transgender students adhere to the mission of a women's college?
By: Allison Metz
Issue date: 5/3/07 Section: News
The changing mission of a women's college
Glossy admissions packets display women happily lounging on the green, intently listening in class and participating in the array of extracurricular activities Mount Holyoke has to offer. But where are the men? Men you ask? This is a women's college. A women's college with a twist. Mount Holyoke and her fellow sisters are witnessing a rise in the number of transgender students at their schools.
An April 8 article in the Boston Globe entitled "When She Graduates as He" by Adrian Brune posed the question, "Is it still a women's college when some students who were female as freshman are male by graduation day?" The article profiled two of Mount Holyoke's own transgender students, Kevin Murphy '07 and Isaiah Bartlett '09.
While the trans population at Mount Holyoke remains small, it does elicit questions about the purpose of a single sex education. The mission on the College's website reads, "Mount Holyoke College reaffirms its commitment to educating a diverse residential community of women at the highest level of academic excellence and to fostering the alliance of liberal arts education with purposeful engagement in the world." Does this "diverse residential community" have room for men?
"I don't think our mission as a women's college is appreciably affected," said President of the College, Joanne Creighton.
Murphy agrees that transgender students fit into the College's mission. "Transgender, transsexual, genderqueer students at Mount Holyoke were born female, raised female, conditioned as female and experienced life as a female for most of their lives," said Murphy.
"I think that Mount Holyoke was created as a safe space for women," said Bartlett- a place to provide opportunities for women that otherwise did not exist, he explained. Bartlett believes that Mount Holyoke is a safe space in which women can challenge ideas in society such as war, race and gender.
Dean of the College, Lee Bowie concedes that "there is a tension between our support for transgender students and our mission as a women's college," but he does not view this support of the trans population as a move towards coed.
Glossy admissions packets display women happily lounging on the green, intently listening in class and participating in the array of extracurricular activities Mount Holyoke has to offer. But where are the men? Men you ask? This is a women's college. A women's college with a twist. Mount Holyoke and her fellow sisters are witnessing a rise in the number of transgender students at their schools.
An April 8 article in the Boston Globe entitled "When She Graduates as He" by Adrian Brune posed the question, "Is it still a women's college when some students who were female as freshman are male by graduation day?" The article profiled two of Mount Holyoke's own transgender students, Kevin Murphy '07 and Isaiah Bartlett '09.
While the trans population at Mount Holyoke remains small, it does elicit questions about the purpose of a single sex education. The mission on the College's website reads, "Mount Holyoke College reaffirms its commitment to educating a diverse residential community of women at the highest level of academic excellence and to fostering the alliance of liberal arts education with purposeful engagement in the world." Does this "diverse residential community" have room for men?
"I don't think our mission as a women's college is appreciably affected," said President of the College, Joanne Creighton.
Murphy agrees that transgender students fit into the College's mission. "Transgender, transsexual, genderqueer students at Mount Holyoke were born female, raised female, conditioned as female and experienced life as a female for most of their lives," said Murphy.
"I think that Mount Holyoke was created as a safe space for women," said Bartlett- a place to provide opportunities for women that otherwise did not exist, he explained. Bartlett believes that Mount Holyoke is a safe space in which women can challenge ideas in society such as war, race and gender.
Dean of the College, Lee Bowie concedes that "there is a tension between our support for transgender students and our mission as a women's college," but he does not view this support of the trans population as a move towards coed.