Barnard College will begin accepting transgender women

Barnard College announced Thursday that it will accept applications from transgender women. The school's board of trustees approved the measure on Wednesday.

Barnard said in a statement that it welcomes applications from those who "consistently live and identify as women, regardless of the gender assigned to them at birth." In addition, students who are female at the beginning of their Barnard studies, but later transition to male, will be allowed to finish their degrees. Transgender men and students who identify as neither gender, however, won't be eligible for admission.

"When I first started hearing from trans students, I think as a human being, I couldn't help but sympathize," Debora Spar, Barnard's president, told The New York Times. "I think once you understand the human dimension of this, you want to do the right thing. The harder question then is, what is the right thing?"

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Barnard joins a number of other women's colleges, including Wellesley and Smith College, in accepting applications from transgender women. Mount Holyoke, another women's college, accepts applications from transgender men as well as transgender women and those who don't identify with either gender.