An Open Letter to President Johnson

Dear President Johnson,

It is unfortunate that students have to keep writing these, and yet it is far more unfortunate that Wellesley College has become an increasingly unsafe place for a great population of the student body. As the years at Wellesley roll by, it continues to astound me that our leadership becomes more conservative. Perhaps there was once a time in which Wellesley was a trailblazing institution; those times are long past now, and rather than joining our peers in the treasured mission to provide a higher education experience for gender minorities, we fall further and further behind.

Your email yesterday, titled “Affirming our mission and embracing our community,” was a direct attack on the lives and experiences of transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse students on your campus. This is not the first time, even this year, that your words have put students in harm’s way, and though I cannot fathom why you felt the need to release this statement, letting students know that their desires are (effectively) useless. Further, it was yet another clear signal that Wellesley is a place in which these students do not deserve the bare minimum respect or acknowledgement of their identities. Make no mistake (lest you “try” again): Wellesley is a historically women’s college that admits cis, trans, and nonbinary students.

Maybe, just maybe, your confusion and harm is rooted in a misunderstanding. When Wellesley students call for our institution to accept its title of a historically women’s college, we are not calling for a school that is stripped of its historical and contemporary importance as a space for gender minorities. Rather, the term historical uplifts this notion: Wellesley, as an institution and as a student body, is united by a shared experience of marginalization on the basis of gender, which inherently implicates transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse students.

There have been, are, and will always be transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse students on Wellesley’s campus. They have lived here before you acknowledged their existence. They live here now (which, of course, means you also admitted them). And they will continue to live here in spite of your gross and dehumanizing attacks. Transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse students belong at Wellesley; ‘consistent identification as women’ is not an asterisk over our identities, an experience or identity you can ethically or truthfully apply to the student body, and is even further a statement that diametrically opposes the principles of higher education as a place that nurtures and fosters growth and change.

President Johnson, I don’t know what else there is to be said. Students at Wellesley have publicly asked for a recognition of their identities (again, the bare minimum), and you have shut them down before even listening to our call or acknowledging the harm you have done and continue to perpetuate. I will say it again: transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse students belong at Wellesley. We are in the classroom, on the field, winning national championships and prestigious grants, and running some of this institution’s most prominent student organizations; our presence here is in no way, whatsoever, a threat to Wellesley’s mission of educating a community marginalized on the basis of gender.

Now, perhaps more than ever before (which is saying a lot), it is imperative that you recognize the gravity of your actions. In just the past week, major progress has been made across numerous states to restrict the healthcare, schooling, and bathroom access (to be brief) rights of transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse people in the United States. Tennessee has just passed a bill which criminalizes the “impersonation” of a gender which one was not assigned at birth. The law is intentionally vague, passed under the guise of protecting children from the (false) threat of drag performers, and poses a great threat to the transgender community, who are watching the erosion of their livelihoods and futures before their very eyes. If Wellesley is to be true to its mission of providing a sacred space of higher education for gender minorities, the administration must do better. The preservation of potential funding sources cannot outweigh the lives of students, yesterday, today, or ever.

Transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse students belong at Wellesley. We always have, and we always will. It’s beyond time you recognize us for who we truly are.

Signed,

William Wellesley