For two of the three remaining non-religious, four-year, all-male colleges in the United States, legality determines the sex of students.
Wabash College in Indiana and Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia both boast all-male student bodies, and unless a person changes their gender legally, the colleges will not consider them for admittance.
Protected under the Indiana Civil Rights Law, which says “it shall not be a discriminatory practice for a private or religious educational institution to continue to maintain and enforce a policy of admitting students of one (1) sex only” (IC 22-9-1-3-q3), Wabash College maintains a practice of reviewing each applicant’s ability to apply, and if they don’t meet certain requirements, such as gender, they are denied.
Jim Ameda, Wabash’s chief of staff and director of strategic communications, told The Daily Caller Wabash “does not have a specific policy” on admitting transgender students, but uses their legal consideration to decide whether or not they can apply.
Similarly, Hampden-Sydney College uses the legal definition of gender to admit students. The college’s dean of admissions, Anita Garland, told TheDC admissions will consider an applicant “if the person is legally considered a male.”
Morehouse College in Atlanta, the third remaining all-male college, declined to comment.
Barnard College is the most recent of the all-women colleges to “consider for admission those applicants who consistently live and identify as women, regardless of the gender assigned to them at birth.” The college declared the new policy in a statement June 4.
While all-women colleges and universities are beginning to turn toward transgender rights, at least two of the all-male schools maintain their tradition of accepting applicants whose gender is that which the law recognizes, and have yet to allow transgender people into their student bodies.