Sweet Briar and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Really Bad Admissions Policy

Note: This article has been updated to correctly state that people who self-identified as female on their state issued identification documents were eligible for admission under the prior policy. It was not a case-by-case basis.

“We are constrained to believe that this suicidal indifference, to say the least of it, is the result of ignorance of the real merits of the question involved…”

– Trustees of the Estate of Indiana Fletcher Williams to the Virginia Legislature, January 30, 1901

Indiana Fletcher Williams was a progressive woman for her time. In 1899, she drafted a will and left her estate to a trust with instructions to establish a school to educate women. Her vision was so unique at the time that it had to go to the Virginia Legislature to get the charter approved, as nobody had ever tried to start a school after they died by way of a will before.

The above 123 year old quote was in response to Amherst County officials who opposed the Virginia Legislature granting a charter to the Sweet Briar Institute. Their arguments against granting the charter were short sighted, irrational, and not based in fact.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In 2015, an insulated board took a major action to try to close the college without first consulting the institution’s stakeholders – a decision that ultimately resulted in their ouster. That board sent threats of legal action against those fighting to keep the college open. Though the college was saved from what looked like certain closure, the internet, as it always does, kept the negative press associated with the attempted closure forever. That undoubtedly financially damaged the college for years as many prospective students did not get word that the college in fact did not close.

Fast forward to 2024, and once again, an insulated board has taken action without first consulting stakeholders – or apparently doing any research at all – that is already having a deleterious effect on the college.1 They too are sending nastygrams to those who are publicly challenging their policy decision. I suspect it is just a matter of time before the current board is taken to court as well.

Now, if you fall in the “I don’t want to read and hear about all that gender stuff” category, let me drop a chart on you right here:

Regardless of how the alumnae, faculty, board members, or administrators feel about the issue doesn’t matter nearly as much as what current and prospective students feel about it. Without students, there is no college, so you might want to open your mind a bit and learn more about “all the gender stuff.”

The TL;DR on this issue for all you kids in the back of the room is that the board slipped through a new admissions policy that banned all trans and gender non-conforming students. There’s an outside chance their intent was to only ban trans students, but words have meaning, and that’s not what the text of the May 28, 2024 policy they initially tucked away six nested menu levels down on their website says:

Consistent with the Will and the Charter of Sweet Briar College and with Virginia and federal law, the Board of the College has adopted a policy that an applicant must confirm that her sex assigned at birth is female, and that she consistently lives and identifies as a woman. Should the applicant’s sex assigned at birth not be female, and should the applicant not consistently live and identify as a woman, the applicant is not qualified for admission.

As a toddler could have predicted, the AP picked up the story, and that story is now the 6^th hit when prospective students google “Sweet Briar College.” If they click on “News” after that search…oof…that’s going to leave a mark.

Under the new policy, Sweet Briar no longer remains true to the original standards set when the school first opened, as it is no longer competitive with any other major women’s college when it comes to having admissions policies that are fully equal to its peers.

The Seven Sisters colleges all changed their policies on gender non-conforming admissions in 2015.2 Dr. Genny Beemyn tracks trans admissions policies at historically women’s colleges on her website. There are 23 women’s colleges that permit the admission of at least some trans students, 2 that explicitly ban trans men from remaining at an institution, and Sweet Briar has now joined two others that prohibit trans women from being admitted- even though Sweet Briar has admitted transgender students in the past.

Additionally, the “only those who live and identify as a woman” part of the policy is a huge poke in the eye to a lot of currently enrolled students.3  The student life office did a survey and 30% of respondents identified as gender non-conforming. The SGA president, who herself identifies as non-binary, estimated the number gender non-conforming students at around 10-15%.

A recent letter sent to alumnae from the chair of the board of directors and president said the board and administration “wish to reiterate that all members of our community continue to be valued and welcomed at Sweet Briar College.” The sentiment shared by a number of people is that the new policy – a policy that would have banned that sizeable group of existing gender non-conforming students, including the current SGA president from applying – adds “we just don’t want any more like you here” to the statement that they are valued and welcomed. Or for those who are not directly impacted by the new policy, such as all the gender conforming students who voted for their current SGA president: “we just don’t want any more people like your friends here.”

And by “we” I mean a majority of the members of the current board. The decision to change the policy was not unanimous. One board member resigned in protest. My hat is off to the minority of current board members who fought this policy change. Keep making good trouble and fight the good fight.

But the board didn’t even need to address the issue. This was a fight of their own choosing. The policy before was all on a case-by-case basis. The policy before was set in 2016 that people who self-identified as female on their state issued identification documents were eligible for admission. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that a third party (Common App) adding a new gender checkbox on a form necessitated such a change – especially since that change happened two years ago and since several other colleges have no stated policy.

It appears the board made no effort to research or understand how Gen-Z and the up-and-coming Gen Alpha view the world – or if they did, they completely ignored it. Those generations are their prospective students, and they are extremely inclusive generations. If you think a lot of kids wouldn’t pay any attention to an institution’s inclusiveness policies when selecting a college, you would be dead wrong.

Just for some context, a Gallup Poll in March found that 22% of Gen-Z kids identify as LGBTQ+. That means a lot of straight kids have LGBTQ+ friends, and they care about and support them. The BestColleges 2023 College Choice and Admissions Survey found that over half (55%) of all students would consider transferring if their college were to abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and 59% said that if a college they were considering had abolished DEI initiatives, it would have impacted their decision to enroll.

When broken down by demographics, a majority each demographic segment aligned with the overall group, including the straight students:

Notice that LGBTQ+ students were more likely than cisgender straight students to say that if the college they were considering had abolished DEI initiatives, it would have impacted their enrollment decision (69% vs. 56%).

55% sounds like a whole lot, but how does that translate to Sweet Briar? As turns out, it totally tracks.

An SGA student poll of current SBC students last week asked several questions about the new admissions policy. 77% of the 224 respondents oppose the new policy:

This is how it broke down by class:

The survey went on to ask if students were planning on transferring if the policy is not changed. The results lined up with the overall national survey results. 55% of students said they will or are considering transferring, or want to transfer but can’t because they would lose their aid (scholarships) or can’t because they can’t transfer credits. That means fewer than half of the students on campus would want to be there if the policy isn’t changed, and a third won’t want to be there but are held captive by financial aid or an inability to transfer degree credits to another institution.

This is how the results broke down by year:

The last question on the survey should sound an enormous alarm for the current board and administration. It was the chart at the top of this article that showed only 20% of students said they would recommend Sweet Briar to friends and family. Here’s how it broke down by year:

In addition, the faculty voted 48 to 4, with one abstention, to call on the board to rescind the policy. If that’s not a five alarm fire that you have completely lost the confidence of a large majority of the people on campus, I don’t know what is.

Some have asked what actually enforcing this policy would look like, especially since Virginia law allows people to change their birth certificates without surgically transitioning. I would think the problem could be easily solved just by adding a curtained booth next to the table at college fairs.

Why now of all times?

In terms of enrollment, Sweet Briar has still been struggling to get numbers up to where they need to be. Many of you who read this blog when it came into existence for the purpose of saving Sweet Briar from closing back in 2015 know that Dan Gottlieb and I spent an inordinate amount of time digging into enrollment and financials. At the time, we speculated that it would probably be a decade before the college recovered and was back on track. It is behind that schedule.

Someone recently sent me the link to Sweet Briar’s Strategic Operating Budget Model. Even though it says it is a living document, it has not been updated since it was posted two years ago. I literally laughed out loud as I read it. I texted a link of it to Dan, and his reply summed it up:

The budget model centers around enrollment of 650 students, and it planned to hit that mark by the 2026-2027 school year. Newsflash: It’s nowhere close to 650 students. Of all times to make a major admissions policy change that anyone with half a brain would have known would cause a media firestorm, and that has real potential to impact current retention and enrollment…what on earth was this board thinking? I think anyone could look at this chart and realize that taking an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach on the admissions policy would have certainly been the correct approach:

The closest the college ever got to 650 enrolled students was in 2008 when there were 640 full time degree seeking undergrads enrolled. That was the peak going all the back to 1990, which is the extent of the data Dan and I looked at in 2015. The other thing to note is the blue dotted line on that chart. It represents the number of freshmen who return for the sophomore year. That’s called the retention rate, and it runs around 74% on average.

Some people have postulated that the new policy might attract more conservative students who like this new policy. However, the school previously did not have a stated policy, so it is not as if there was something driving those students away to begin with. Also, applications, admissions, and enrollment numbers just don’t seem to support the idea. Applications and acceptances were way up from 2018-2022, but even so, first time enrollment has declined 20% from 177 in 2021 to 142 in 2024. (Application and acceptance data for 2023 and 2024 is not yet available on IPEDS.)

So the board thought causing a completely unnecessary yet predictable firestorm would…help enrollment?

Adding to the mess, the college is relying heavily on annual giving to maintain operations. The endowment has gone down since the 2015 attempted closure debacle. Donor fatigue is a thing, so taking a controversial action that alienates donors right now is terrible idea. Numerous alumnae have said they are withdrawing from giving, resigning as admissions ambassadors, and will no longer come to volunteer work days at the campus unless the policy is reversed.

Overall, it is an incredibly unnecessary self-inflicted wound at time when the college really can’t afford it.

Actions speak louder than words

The original words in the will of Indiana Fletcher Williams said the trustees were to establish “a school or seminary for the education of white girls and young women.” It was a different era. The progressiveness of integration was not really part of the Virginia landscape in 1899. But Indiana knew women were the largest group of marginalized people, and she took action to change that by leaving her estate to help advance women in society. In 1964, the board at that time went to federal court to get “white” removed so the school could integrate. The key phrase there was “the board went to federal court.” The board did not get taken to court. They did it because they knew it was the right thing to do. They saw a marginalized group of people who were being denied an education at Sweet Briar because of the color of their skin rather than the content of their character and their academic qualifications.

If the majority of the current board truly believes that the current students who would not have been admitted under the new policy are truly valued and welcomed at Sweet Briar, why aren’t they going to bat for them? Why aren’t they going to court to do everything possible to ensure a marginalized group of young people are not denied an education at Sweet Briar based solely on how those young people see themselves rather than the content of their character and their academic qualifications? And why are they making the nightly news by sending letters threating to sue people who had a differing opinion?

Unfortunately, it appears the current board doesn’t have half the balls of the 1964 board. Instead of going to bat for kids who are different and are part of a marginalized group of people with one of the highest suicide rates, they are throwing the bat at them by asking the Commonwealth of Virginia to sign off on their new discriminatory admissions policy.

The side of history an institution chooses to be on is just that – a choice.