A 1900 Law!

Last week I wrote about Sweet Briar kicking trans women out, well there is another article about the college.

A Virginia college bans transgender students — based on language from the year 1900

Sweet Briar College's founder's 1900 will stated that Sweet Briar would be a school for girls and women, and the college must abide by the understanding of gender at that time, administrators say.

The Advocate

By Trudy Ring

September 04 2024

Sweet Briar College in Virginia has barred transgender people from enrolling, based on administrators’ understanding of the founder’s will — from 1900.

The private liberal arts college was founded by Indiana Fletcher Williams in honor of her deceased daughter, Daisy. Williams’s will stipulated that Sweet Briar would “be a place of ‘girls and young women,’” college officials told the Associated Press.

Sweet Briar, located on the former Williams plantation in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, “has never had an admissions policy specifically for transgender students but has evaluated and admitted trans applicants on a case-by-case basis,” Inside Higher Ed reports. “The new policy holds that an applicant must confirm ‘that her sex assigned at birth is female and that she consistently lives and identifies as a woman.’”

Sweet Briar President Mary Pope Hutson and the college’s board chair spelled out the new policy in a letter to the campus community in August. The phrase “girls and young women,” they wrote, “must be interpreted as it was understood at the time the Will was written.”

Okay, a question does that mean a college that was created for “freed slaves” cannot have anymore students? Because no one alive has been a slave so therefore the college can have no students.

The will is from 1900, and the college was established in 1901. It began admitting students in 1906. The Virginia legislature codified the will, and therefore the college must follow it. “And based on existing state case law, Sweet Briar leaders are required to consider how Williams viewed women and to honor that intent — even if current social norms do not reflect the founder’s perspective,” according to Inside Higher Ed.

The college has deviated from the will in one major way, however. The will mandated that Sweet Briar would admit whites only. In 1964, Sweet Briar sought the state’s permission to integrate, and that led to a long legal battle. The college admitted its first Black students in 1966 under a temporary court order, and a court struck down the whites-only policy for good in 1967.

So it is okay for bigotry and discrimination against us but not for other protected classes? I would like to point out that the current U.S. Supreme Court in a case from Virginia ruled that Title IX covers trans people. The case was Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board.

Association President Isabella Paul, who is nonbinary, told the AP about 10 percent of Sweet Briar’s roughly 460 students are trans or nonbinary, or otherwise don’t fit the policy’s definition of a woman. It’s unclear how the policy would affect students already enrolled; Hutson said only that Sweet Briar seeks “to ensure that all of our students feel welcome on campus,” according to the AP.

I see a whole lot of lawsuits if they kick out those students.