Virginia women’s college institutes new policy to keep college for women only, barring men

A private women’s college in Virginia announced that it would no longer allow males to join beginning in the Fall 2025 semester. 

Sweet Briar College’s Chair of the Board of Director Mason B. Rummel and its President Mary Pope M. Hutson announced the change in an email to the community this August. The college leaders explained the policy changes as a result of the will of the school founder, Indiana Fletcher Williams.

More specifically, Williams’s will mandated that Sweet Briar would be an institution for “girls and young women,” something that the college’s leadership notes “must be interpreted as it was understood at the time the Will was written”--meaning that men who “identify” as women could not be accepted into the women’s college. 

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The new policy will only apply to future students, and not retroactively affect men who “identify” as a woman who are already attending Sweet Briar. 

The announcement noted that its decision is justified because “Federal law allows Sweet Briar to determine who is qualified for admission so that it can carry out its mission of providing a single-sex educational experience.”

The school leaders wrote that holding fast to the will recently “provided the legal avenue to save Sweet Briar from efforts to close it.” 

Before the college updated its admission requirements, there was no consistent policy regarding what to do with potential students who “identified” as having a different “gender identity” from their actual biological sex. Admissions were conducted on a “case-by-case basis.”

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According to their website, Sweet Briar College would only admit a student “if she confirms that her sex assigned at birth is female and that she consistently lives and identifies as a woman.”

“We want to assure all members of the Sweet Briar community that the College and its leadership remain unwavering in their commitment to diversity among the women who make up this institution,” Hutson and Rummel wrote. “At the same time, we are committed to ensuring that the College remains true to the purpose for which it was founded and continues to provide an exemplary education to ‘girls and young women’ for many years to come.”

Campus Reform has contacted Sweet Briar College for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.