I knew a few people at Bryn Mawr

Pharyngula 2025-01-15

It always seemed like a most excellent liberal arts college, and in particular I enjoyed visiting with the late Jane Oppenheimer, a developmental biologist and historian of science. I was doing a quick refresher on Nettie Stevens, the cytologist working on chromosomes at the dawning of the age of genetics, while preparing my introductory talk on chromosomes and learned something new. I knew that Nettie Stevens studied there and was offered a position on their faculty, and I knew that Bryn Mawr was and is an all-women school, but I just learned an interesting fact about Bryn Mawr:

On February 9, 2015, the college’s board of trustees announced approval of a working group recommendation to expand the undergraduate applicant pool allowing transgender women and intersex individuals identifying as women to apply for admission. This decision made Bryn Mawr the fourth women’s college in the United States to accept trans women. Bryn Mawr “recognizes that gender is fluid and that traditional notions of gender identity and expression can be limiting”, and has the official policy of accepting nonbinary students who were assigned female at birth as well. All current, past, and future students are fully recognized as members of the Bryn Mawr community, regardless of current gender identity.

Well, now I respect that college even more.