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Some universities from the United States are adopting modern and new admission approaches. From the fall of 2015 Smith University will accept transgendered women.
Smith College is among the schools that welcome female transgender students. The renowned women only university, will start accepting applicants who are transgender persons who see themselves as women starting with the fall of 2015, announced the school’s board.
Smith College has joined the list of schools embracing gender equality by welcoming female transgender applicants. It seems that he main reason which lead the board to make this decision was to encourage the understanding of female identity that keeps evolving in society.
The way Smith university sees its own values, is shows it its commitment to be opened to diversity, to respect the dignity of every single person and to educate women to become leaders in all the fields of the society, explained the president of the university, Kathleen McCartney.
With this new policy, Smith if giving transgendered women equal opportunities and perspectives. The decision has been debated for over a year between committee members, small group discussions with faculty members.The board has also asked for the opinion and input of students from around the globe.
People were also given the option of people giving their opinion online in which were involved almost 2,000 students, parents, friends and employees of the university.
However, the university will not accept students that were born in a female body but have chosen to become a male.The one applying for a place at Smith have to pick female as their gender for them to be considered eligible for a place.
Students who are transitioning during their years at Smith, will not be affected by the situation. On their website it is stated that once a student gets admitted into this university, she will have the complete support of the institution.This statement referred also to men wanting to become females.
Smith university has been involved in a tense situation in 2013 when it refused the admission of a transgendered student called Calliope Wong for the reason that she was not recognised as a female by the law of Connecticut. Wong managed to obtain a petition of 4,000 signatures from people supporting her and Smith had to review its admission rules and requirements.Wong has been admitted and is studying at the University of Connecticut.
With this new approach Smith is another university from the United States that include transgender women in their admission rules.
The first university to adopt this policy was Mills College from Oakland, California and the next ones were Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Simmons and Wellesley.
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