Each September on Founders’ Day, the students of Sweet Briar College march together to a far corner of the tranquil Amherst County campus and up Monument Hill. When they reach the top, they lay daisies at the gravesite of the college’s founder.
The tradition has been the same at the women’s college for decades: Seniors don their graduation robes, while the other three classes wear white.
This year on Founder’s Day, Trin Lowman-Bokan wore black.
The sophomore topped off their all-black ensemble with a large transgender pride flag secured around their shoulders and flowing down to their knees. On their face, they colored one eyelid and temple in shimmering pink eyeshadow, the other in blue, matching the shades of the flag.
To Lowman-Bokan, who uses they/them pronouns, Sweet Briar felt like home. They identified as nonbinary when they arrived, but over that first year away from home in Northern Virginia, they grew increasingly confident identifying as transmasculine.
It was where they experimented with short hairstyles and explored their sense of style, knowing all the while they weren’t the only genderqueer person on campus. There were other students exploring their gender identity too, they said, and the campus felt like a safe and supportive place to do so.
A few weeks before the fall semester began in August, the women’s college updated a small portion of text on its admissions website. Starting with the fall 2025 incoming class, Sweet Briar would no longer consider applicants who are nonbinary — who don’t exclusively identify as male or female — or transgender.
Students learned of this change not from an official announcement, but through a social media grapevine and screenshots circulated in group texts. They wondered what “living consistently as a woman,” a prominent phrase of the new admissions language, meant and who would judge whether students were adhering to it.
No longer could a nonbinary or transgender student like Lowman-Bokan apply to attend.
Lowman-Bokan turned to the student life office, which assured them that the new policy didn’t apply to current students. But to Lowman-Bokan, the message from the college was clear: Students like them were no longer welcome.
“It was sneaky and weird. No real answers were given” when students asked the administration about why the policy was changing, Lowman-Bokan said during an interview in November. The student hadn’t set out to attend a women’s college, but they liked the small classes, a degree program that combined their interests in archaeology and history, and generous financial aid they found at Sweet Briar.
An exemption to Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in schools, allows private colleges like Sweet Briar to restrict admissions by gender. But the new admissions policy puts it in a small group of women’s colleges that have narrowed, rather than widened, their definitions of gender inclusivity.
It was only 10 years ago that the college was on the brink of shutting down. Its traditions and pink-and-green decor have been steadfast, but enrollment at Sweet Briar has not fully recovered, now sitting at two-thirds of what it was in the years leading up to the attempted closure.
Sweet Briar’s decision comes at a time when colleges are scrambling to recruit a shrinking pool of students. The new admissions policy could alienate potential applicants seeking schools that are LGBTQ+ friendly.
Some current students who feel betrayed by the policy change are trying to figure out how to navigate the remainder of their time at Sweet Briar, and whether it’s worth staying.
New admissions policy bans transgender, nonbinary students
Sweet Briar’s new policy states that an applicant must confirm that her sex assigned at birth is female and that she “consistently lives and identifies as a woman.” Applicants must mark “female” on application documents in order to be considered for admission.
There are no requirements regarding sexual orientation.
Current students are not included in the updated policy and may continue to attend.
Previously, Sweet Briar did not have a published policy for admitting transgender or nonbinary students and considered them on a case-by-case basis, according to an email from the college president and board chair to the campus community in August.
The board of directors voted to change the policy on May 28, but it was not posted to the Sweet Briar website until Aug. 1.
The college has said in letters to students and the wider Sweet Briar community that it changed the policy because the Common Application, which allows students to apply to multiple colleges using a single online platform, has expanded its options for applicants to list their sex, gender and pronouns. The school, Sweet Briar claims, must maintain its specific mission as a college for women.
Sweet Briar was founded by the will and estate of Indiana Fletcher Williams, who died in 1900. The will specified that a school be created for “girls and young women.”
Cardinal News sent the college a list of questions about the admissions policy change and its early impacts on Sweet Briar and requested an interview with college president Mary Pope Hutson or the chair of the board of directors. The college scheduled an interview with the president, then canceled it a few hours before the call due to travel delays affecting the president’s schedule.
The college said it was unable to reschedule the interview prior to this reporter’s deadline. A spokesperson for the college did not provide responses to six of the seven questions that were provided by email.
Cardinal News spoke or exchanged messages with a dozen students of varying gender identities who described feeling shocked by the admissions policy change.
They criticized the school for failing to engage in meaningful dialogue with them about why the change was necessary at all, let alone right now.
Most of the students asked to remain anonymous, for fear they would be targeted by administrators for speaking out. Juniors and seniors were especially concerned that if the college learned they had talked to a reporter, they could be blocked from graduating.
Sweet Briar has stated in correspondence with students and on its website that current students are not included in the new policy and that only self-reporting will be used to determine whether future students have violated the policy and must leave the college.
Living ‘consistently’ as a woman
There are about 30 women’s colleges left in the U.S., with varying admissions policies. Sweet Briar’s new policy is among the most restrictive.
About two-thirds of women’s colleges admit students who self-identify as women, regardless of whether they were assigned female at birth, according to policy tracking by Genny Beemyn, a scholar of LGBTQ+ students in higher education who directs the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Some of the schools in that group take their policy a step further, specifying that they welcome applicants who are gender fluid, nonbinary and transgender.
Meanwhile, most of the women’s colleges that don’t admit nonbinary students allow students to stay and continue their studies if their gender identity or expression changes after they enroll.
Hollins University, the nearest women’s college, only admits students who use she/her pronouns. Students who transition to male or nonbinary while at Hollins can still complete their degree there.
Only three women’s colleges prohibit transgender men from remaining at the school if they transition after enrolling, according to Beemyn’s data: Bennett College, a historically Black women’s college in North Carolina; Stephens College in Missouri; and Sweet Briar.
Across the spectrum of gender policies at women’s colleges, many reference living “consistently” as a woman. Kristen Renn, a professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University, explained the phrase is often used because, on the surface, it seems easy to understand. But it’s an ambiguous phrase that could refer to dress and hairstyles or about life goals or choices about one’s body, she said.
“It has the benefit of being plain language, and people think they can understand it. But the downside is that the interpretation of what it means to live as a woman changes radically all the time, and it’s not a particularly durable policy as what it means to live as a woman will change over time,” she said.
Sweet Briar’s policy refers only to applicants verifying they identify as a woman, according to its FAQ page. There are no restrictions on student appearance relating to clothing or hairstyles.
They came to Sweet Briar for its inclusivity. Now they feel betrayed
One nonbinary first-year student from Virginia said they weren’t initially interested in attending a women’s college. They checked out Sweet Briar at the suggestion of their father, who attended Hampden-Sydney, a men’s college about an hour away. The student was looking for a small school that was LGBTQ+-friendly.
When they visited campus for a tour, “It was beautiful,” they said. It was obvious there were students of various gender identities and sexual orientations on campus, and “they were very big on pronouns” at Sweet Briar.
They made their deposit that day to save a spot in the class of 2028.
They found out two weeks before moving onto campus that the admissions policy had changed. They worried their new college wouldn’t be as inclusive as they expected. “I was so scared about this policy,” they said.
Sweet Briar did not respond to a question about how many current students would be ineligible for enrollment under the new policy.
LGBTQ+ students have always been a topic of discussion for historically women’s colleges, Renn said.
In the 1990s, increasing enrollment of openly lesbian students was a concern across many of them. Some women’s colleges distanced their marketing from the all-women atmosphere and focused on academics because they didn’t want to be seen as “hotbeds of lesbianism,” Renn said.
In the past 15 years, though, women’s colleges have had to think less about sexual orientation and more about how to accommodate trans and nonbinary students, as more transgender people have begun living openly. In 2014, Mills College in California and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts were the first women’s colleges to admit openly transgender students.
Overall, college applicants identifying as transgender or nonbinary are still rare. Fewer than 2% of students who applied to college using the Common App for fall 2024 admission marked they were nonbinary. Combined trans and nonbinary students made up 2.47% of the more than one million student-users during that time.
A representative for Common App said it doesn’t share applicant demographics for individual schools using the platform.
The new policy spurred considerable negative feedback from current students, including those identifying as LGBTQ+ who felt shunned by their college.
About 45% of the student body signed a September letter urging the board to rescind the policy and adopt one that included nonbinary and gender-nonconforming students.
In October, an anonymous survey of 224 students conducted by the Student Government Association found that 69% strongly opposed the new policy. Fifteen percent of respondents said they strongly supported the new policy.
Twenty-five percent of first-year students and 38% of sophomores who responded said they were planning to or considering transferring for fall 2025 if the new policy remained. The survey results and the text of the open letter were published by the president of the student government association, who is nonbinary, in a private Facebook group used by opponents of the policy.
Some students protested the new policy in formal and informal protests on campus during the fall semester, including marching with pro-LGBTQ+ signs during a September board of directors meeting and wearing black on Founder’s Day.
After the annual march up Monument Hill for Founder’s Day, Sweet Briar students eat dinner together in the dining hall. On the warm September day this fall, Lowman-Bokan left their trans flag up in their dorm room but retrieved it once they realized Sweet Briar president Hutson was sitting at the next table. Hutson didn’t say anything about the flag, and Lowman-Bokan didn’t say anything to the president. But the student felt like the table of administrators finished dinner and left rather quickly.
“Even if it’s just clothing, makeup, just wearing a little flag thing, it’s like, ‘Well, at least I’m doing something,’” Lowman-Bokan said.
But not all students who opposed the new policy felt safe protesting it.
“Even if they say they [the administrators/college] don’t target you, I feel like they do, once they recognize who you are,” said a first-year student.
The pink bubble, burst
Sweet Briar’s residence halls and academic buildings sit a half-mile off U.S. 29 Business in Amherst County, past a guard shack that checks who you’re there to see before letting visitors in.
In one sense, it’s as idyllic as a college campus can get, with nearly 3,000 acres of rolling hills, a host of brick buildings, and a peaceful quiet that’s hard to find at more urban campus locations. Students talked about visiting their professors’ homes, a handful of which are located on campus, for group dinners. Some students who take part in Sweet Briar’s highly ranked equestrian programs bring their horses to school.
But the flip side of idyll can be isolation. Aside from a regular campus shuttle to Walmart, students without their own cars are essentially stuck on campus, surrounded by Sweet Briar’s unyielding feminine aesthetic. The college’s logo and website prominently feature rich magenta. Common spaces are filled with sweet blush shades of pink, on armchairs, ottomans and area rugs. The student body is often referred to as Vixens, and a female fox mascot wears winged eyeliner and a coy smile.
Several students Cardinal spoke with described being drawn to Sweet Briar for its quirks, a feature they found difficult to explain as prospective students and somehow even harder to pin down after attending for several semesters. They embraced Sweet Briar’s idiosyncrasies, from its secretive tap clubs — the college’s version of sororities — to its traditions that have been handed down for nearly 120 years.
Students often refer to life at Sweet Briar as being inside a pink bubble.
But the admissions policy change has caused some students to question whether they want to stay at Sweet Briar, whether it’s worth holding onto the things they love about the small school even though they or their friends feel persecuted by its administration.
The first-year student who was afraid to protest the new policy is in the process of transferring. She’s from Virginia, and over winter break, she worked on applications to several state colleges, all much larger than Sweet Briar. She would rather attend a small college, she said, but thinks a larger school might better support student diversity. She is not a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
She said it’s frustrating having to apply to college all over again. “But I don’t want to stay in a place where others are seen differently,” she said.
The student said some of her first-year classmates are also looking to transfer. And she said she has noticed that faculty members are leaving, as well. “They’re going to end up with no teachers because of the policy too,” she said.
She said she feared if faculty members left, more students would leave, which could lead to the college closing — and she had heard about the closure attempt by the board that was stopped in 2015, she said.
She said the idea of being at Sweet Briar if it closed was scarier than going through the steps of transferring now.
In August, the faculty senate submitted a resolution calling on the board of directors to rescind the admissions policy. The resolution proposed a revised policy that would include nonbinary and gender nonconforming students “if they feel they belong in the community of a women’s college.” The faculty approved the resolution 48-4, with one abstention.
In a late-September letter to the board of directors, the college faculty said their resolution had not been acknowledged. The letter claimed faculty had been told not to discuss the policy in class “for fear of intimidating students who support the policy.” But students had often brought up the policy on their own, including during the core “Women and Gender in the World” course required for all students.
Students who feel it’s too late to transfer may be able to accelerate their coursework.
One junior told Cardinal News she plans to graduate a semester early. She identifies as a woman, but that wasn’t always the case.
The student from outside Virginia used they/them pronouns when she arrived at Sweet Briar because she didn’t fit into what they had learned growing up a woman was “supposed” to be.
She now uses she/her pronouns. “Sweet Briar is a place I grew so comfortable with identifying as whatever, and seeing there are many different versions of womanhood,” she said.
She said the part of the policy requiring students who transition to transfer out of the college is “extra scary.”
“Sweet Briar used to be a place where you could talk about these things,” she said.
The student consulted with her advisor to figure out how to earn enough credits to graduate early. The policy change was the main reason for their accelerated effort, but she said the recent departure of faculty members from her major and minor due to the policy change was also a factor.
“I don’t know if I can morally and financially support the institution anymore,” she said. She loved Sweet Briar for her first two years but feels like that safe, welcoming space is gone.
“This is not a good place to be,” she recalled thinking in the fall. “This isn’t the pink bubble I know.”
Enrollment appears steady as students consider what comes next
It’s unclear whether the policy change will impact enrollment at Sweet Briar.
Sweet Briar had 437 students in fall 2024, according to data from the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia, a number that’s been fairly consistent over the past few years.
Prior to 2015, the year Sweet Briar was slated to close, the college typically had enrollment of more than 700.
By the start of the spring 2025 semester, 20 students had left Sweet Briar, according to early semester estimates from SCHEV, bringing its enrollment to 417. That drop of about 4.5% of the student body is modest in comparison to other years. In the years since the attempted closure, the college has seen fall-to-spring enrollment drops of between 6% and 22% annually.
A Sweet Briar spokesperson said that only two students who withdrew cited the admissions policy as a factor in their decision to leave. One, they said, was opposed to the new admissions policy, while the other supported it.
Some students who have been outspoken against the policy are deciding to stay, including younger students who could potentially transfer more easily than a junior or senior.
The first-year student who had sought out an LGBTQ+-friendly school considered transferring because they feel that the college no longer cares for them and their friends who are trans or nonbinary.
Still, they can’t imagine going to school anywhere but Sweet Briar. “I got there and I instantly started thriving,” they said over winter break. “I found the people I needed to find, and I’ve become so much stronger and independent and confident in myself.”
They have gotten involved in the student government association and GLOW — an acronym for the club “Gay, Lesbian, or Whoever” — because of the policy. They want to stay at Sweet Briar to help change it for LGBTQ+ students who come after them.
Lowman-Bokan, too, decided staying was important. Part of that decision rests on their determination to complete their degree after three semesters of earning credits toward a major in history and archaeology, a program they said is rare among colleges in Virginia.
The other part is about simply showing up. They’ve already gotten past the point of exploration, Lowman-Bokan said. They know they are transgender.
“It’s saying, I’m not going anywhere,” by staying at the college, they said. “Trans people, nonbinary people, literally anyone not cis[gender], you know, we’re here. We’ve always been here. We’re always going to be here.”
Sweet Briar students spent much of the fall semester waiting to hear what Virginia’s attorney general said about the policy.
The only reason the state attorney general’s office is involved in goings-on at a private college is because Sweet Briar was established through its founder’s will. The attorney general’s office executes wills that don’t name any heirs.
In September, the college asked for the state to determine whether the new policy is consistent with the law and with the will and trust that set up the college.
Discussion of the new policy grew quiet as the semester progressed and finals drew near.
In November, the college and the attorney general’s office submitted a nonjudicial settlement agreement for approval in Amherst County Circuit Court. That agreement stated that the will established a school for girls and women, meaning “female persons in the traditional sense, as those terms were understood by Williams, the testatrix, at the turn of the twentieth century.”
A judge approved the agreement on Dec. 20. The joint agreement is legally binding.
Students were away on winter break by the time that agreement was approved in court.
In an email to students on Dec. 20, board chair Mason Bennett Rummel said, “Affirmation that the board’s action is consistent with state law is important because the Williams Trust must endure so that Sweet Briar can endure.”
A group of students began chatting over the break about ways to fight the new policy during spring semester and beyond. They said that even if the policy were to be rescinded, the administration and the board have damaged the school’s reputation as a welcoming place for LGBTQ+ students.
The morning of a scheduled board meeting in late January, students hung a trans pride flag from the bell tower that overlooks the campus quad.
Within an hour, it was removed.
Decision could fray generations of alumnae trust
The admissions change shocked Sweet Briar’s thousands of alumnae as much as it did the student body.
When students apply to Sweet Briar, they quickly learn how critical its alumnae network is. Generations of Vixens help recruit new students, share career opportunities with new grads, and flock to campus for regular reunions. Some even attend summer work weeks where they volunteer to do maintenance projects on campus. Students know that when they graduate, they’ll still be part of the Sweet Briar family.
Some students now say they no longer want to be a part of that tradition. And some alumnae are sharing a similar wariness of their alma mater.
A Sept. 14 statement from the college Alumnae Alliance Council, which was created by the board of directors in 2015 to ensure the engagement of alums, explained that it asked the college and board to revisit the policy and seek alumnae opinions about it.
“The College failed to engage key stakeholders, including alumnae, in creating the policy or assessing its potential impact,” the statement said. It went on to say that while there are varying opinions about the new policy, the group took umbrage that the college made no attempt to determine “prevailing alumnae views and to appropriately align the policy.”
In comments on social media posts and in threads in Facebook groups, some alumnae have said they will not donate to Sweet Briar while the policy is in place.
It’s too early to tell whether the new policy will significantly affect alumnae giving. The college did not answer questions about whether it had seen any change to donations since the policy was announced. It did not answer a question about how November’s Giving Tuesday fundraising campaign compared to the previous year’s.
Women’s colleges are dependent on alumnae for fundraising and helping recruit new students, Renn, the Michigan State professor, said. “They tend to have pretty engaged alumnae bodies” due in part to their shared choice to attend a women’s college instead of a coed institution.
“When you choose a specific kind of institution, it does build some affinity,” Renn said. “There is this way of inculcating affinity, loyalty, pride that I think carries through to alums. And in many cases, that does translate into alumnae giving.”
Sweet Briar’s position as an outlier among women’s colleges could result in decreased interest by applicants simultaneously with a decline in engagement by alumnae and those students nearing graduation.
The junior student taking extra courses to graduate early said she had previously recommended Sweet Briar to younger family members and people from her church. She feels like she can’t do that anymore.
She knew of three people who had been planning to apply to Sweet Briar after hearing about her experience there. All three decided not to once the admissions policy changed.
Another junior at Sweet Briar said she had considered transferring out after the policy changed but discovered it would be too late to do so without retaking a lot of credits at another school.
Instead, she says she’ll finish and never look back. “When I graduate as a senior, I just don’t have to be involved anymore,” she said.
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Editor’s note: Cardinal News communicated with a dozen Sweet Briar students in the course of reporting this story. All of them voiced similar concerns about the direction that the college has taken regarding trans students; most were reluctant to speak publicly, saying they feared they would be targeted by the college’s administration. We granted them anonymity to share their personal experiences and opinions.