PRESS RELEASE: DFI Urges the Education Department to Investigate Four Women’s Colleges for Violating Title IX and Engaging in Substantial Misrepresentations to the Public

WASHINGTON — Today, the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI) filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and Federal Student Aid (FSA) against Bryn Mawr College, Agnes Scott College, Wesleyan College, and Stephens College. The complaints allege violations of Title IX, as well as the Higher Education Act’s ban on substantial misrepresentations by educational institutions participating in the federal student aid program. 

Each complaint details how each college portrays itself to the public as a female-only, single-sex institution of higher education dedicated to educating women exclusively. Applicants and their families rely on this information to make consequential life decisions, including taking on federal student loan debt. Yet, inexplicably, the schools permit men to apply, enroll, and participate fully in campus life, including sharing housing, intimate facilities, and sports teams.

These women’s colleges admit men under the following policies, quoted directly from each institution:

• Bryn Mawr College “considers as eligible to apply to the undergraduate college all individuals who have identified and continue to identify as women (including cisgender and trans women).”
  
• Agnes Scott College “admits students who were assigned female at birth as well as those who were assigned male or female at birth who now identify as female, transgender, agender, genderfluid, or non-binary.”
  
• Wesleyan College “will consider for admission all applicants who live and identify as women, regardless of biological sex.”
  
• Stephens College “is restricted exclusively to women, including students who are legally identified as female and who self-identify as women; students who document an ongoing transition to female and who self-identify as women; and students who are legally identified as female but do not fit within the gender binary.”

The colleges variously allow men who identify as women to participate in women’s sports and access women’s facilities, including bathrooms and locker rooms, in violation of Title IX. Because their admissions policies materially conflict with the educational experience advertised, these institutions are also engaging in “substantial misrepresentation” in violation of Title IV of the Higher Education Act.

“For decades, each of these schools carefully crafted an identity as an institution exclusively dedicated to the education of women,” said Robert S. Eitel, President and Co-Founder of DFI. “No doubt to the shock of many alumnae, donors, and students, these schools have willingly sacrificed this unique identity on the altar of gender identity.”

Failing immediate corrective action by the colleges, DFI is urging OCR to open an investigation under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and FSA to conduct a program review under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, as amended, of each institution.

To read the complaints, click here.