<p>Okay, this is a question that I have had for some time. I've asked various people and can't really get a definitive answer--</p>
<p>As far as I know, a man cannot not apply for admission to a women's college (i.e: Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, etc.). And I'm not talking about taking classes through a consortium agreement. I'm talking hs senior applying to enter as a freshman. How is it that these schools can legally exclude men?</p>
<p>[PS: this is not a snarky question. My D will be going to Smith in the fall.]</p>
<p>They can exclude them because it is in their charters, and the US Dept. of Education permits it. Just like the institutions that are all male are able to exclude women. For a specific parsing of this situation, why don’t you contact Smith? Someone there will be able to explain the details.</p>
<p>A man is certainly able to apply for admission at Smith, he just wouldn’t be accepted. As a private insititution, Smith is able to apply whatever admission standards it chooses. Now, public women’s colleges (there used to be a lot of these, but there are only a few left) actually do have to allow men to enroll, but they can keep as their mission statement that they are institutions of higher learning focused on women. There’s an interesting paper about that that you can read here: [Archived:</a> Women’s Colleges in the United States: History, Issues, and Challenges](<a href=“http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html]Archived:”>http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html), I pulled it off of the wikipedia website for women’s colleges. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how exactly it works vis a vis federal student aid, but presumably since that’s awarded to the students, rather than to the instution itself, there’s a legal work around.</p>
<p>There are biological “men” attending Smith. They just don’t think of themselves as such, don’t identify as such, and don’t dress as such. I have heard the same goes for Mt. Holyoke.</p>
<p>About dorming, where would the biological “man” live? If I was at an all women’s college, while I have no problem with transgenders, I would feel uncomfortable living with one simply because I don’t want to live with a male.</p>
<p>A trans woman is JUST AS MUCH a woman as a cis woman is (cis means someone who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth, based on their sex characteristics). Therefore, a trans woman who is accepted at Smith would live with all the other women. I know there are also trans men at Smith, (individuals who were born with two x chromosomes, lived part of their lives as females, and have since realized that they’re actually men), who were presumably living as female when they were accepted, and have transitioned since.</p>
For the same reason that schools like Wabash College, Hampden-Sydney College, and Morehouse College don’t admit women. </p>
<p>It was historically quite normal for private colleges and universities to be single-sex; this included top schools like Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale (which were male only). Most male-only schools went coed in the 1960s or 1970s, and so did many female-only schools (like Vassar, Skidmore, or Connecticut College). </p>
<p>But some schools have remained single-sex. The female-only schools are the best known, but there are still some male-only schools as well.</p>
<hr>
<p>Incidentally, private schools can also discriminate on the basis of religion. Some private colleges and universities are associated with particular religious denominations, and won’t accept applicants who don’t share their particular religious beliefs.</p>
One possible explanation for this phenomenon is a transgender student (one admitted as a female, who then became male). Another possibility might be that Smith was temporarily hosting a male exchange student from another school. Smith participates in the 12-College Exchange Program with a number of other New England schools, most of which are coed. Male students occasionally attend [url=<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/03/lone_boy_on_campus/]Wellesley[/url”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/03/lone_boy_on_campus/]Wellesley[/url</a>] as part of this program, and the same might also be true of Smith.</p>
<p>impromptulove: Unfortunately, I’m fairly sure that if a trans woman hasn’t legally transitioned, she wouldn’t be admitted to a woman’s college (not to most of them, at least).</p>
<p>And to everyone else, please stop referring to cisgender males as “bio” men. Not only does it sound ridiculous but it also perpetuates cissexism. (We’re all intelligent people here are CC, right? It can’t be that hard to learn a new word.)</p>
<p>This situation will never occur because men are not attracted to insecure females. If this hypothetical situation happened, then the men would be at the top of the class because there would be no attractive women as distractions. That is all.</p>
<p>Whoa. imdone420. I mean, whoa. It’s not 420 yet, so I don’t really care if I harsh your mellow vibes, but check your privilege and your ignorance and your general misunderstanding of the world. I’m very sorry that there will never be a female close enough to you to correct your completely wrong views.</p>