Indiana women's Catholic college reverses plan to allow trans students to enroll after backlash

St. Mary's Catholic College in Notre Dame, Indiana has reversed course and will no longer be accepting trans-identified biological male students into the female-only university.

President Katie Conboy sent an email on Thursday announcing that the board had decided to reverse its decision back to its initial policy following mass outcry when it was revealed in November that St. Mary's would be accepting transgender women come fall 2024.

High-ranking Catholic officials such as Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who oversees Fort Wayne-South Bend, were among one of the first to condemn the acceptance of males into the university.

In an email obtained by the Daily Signal, Conboy announced the policy reversal and issued an apology for creating "division in the community: "This has weighed heavily on our minds and in our hearts."
 

"There have been many voices responding to us from many places and perspectives. We have listened closely, and we have heard each of you," she wrote. "Some worried that this was much more than a policy decision: they felt it was a dilution of our mission or even a threat to our Catholic identity."

"Moreover, we clearly underestimated our community’s genuine desire to be engaged in the process of shaping a policy of such significance. As this last month unfolded, we lost people's trust and unintentionally created division where we had hoped for unity. For this, we are deeply sorry," said Conboy. 

"Taking all these factors into consideration, the Board has decided that we will return to our previous admission policy," she continued.

"Although this has been a challenging time for our community, we believe that the College should continually grapple with the complexity of living our Catholic values in a changing world," she concluded.

Following Conboy's declaration of the policy reversal, alumni, students, and Catholic officials have expressed their elation at the decision.

"I'm so proud of the women at Saint Mary's who were willing to stand up against this anti-women, anti-Catholic policy. God's truth will always win," said student Claire Bettag, who is in her junior year at St. Mary's.

Patrick Reilly, president and founder of The Cardinal Newman Society, welcomed the policy reversal with open arms.

"This is such welcome news in this season when we celebrate Christ, Wisdom become true man, and Mary, true woman and true Mother of the Son of God," he said, according to Daily Signal.

"This is the truth which is the foundation of Catholic education and not 'the complexity of living our Catholic values in a changing world,'" said Reilly.

Before St. Mary's decided to reverse the policy, Bishop Kevin Rhoades lambasted the updated policy and said the all women's college had strayed from fundamental Catholic teachings.

"To call itself a 'women's college' and to admit male students who 'consistently live and identify as women' suggests that the college affirms an ideology of gender that separates sex from gender and claims that sexual identity is based on the subjective experience of the individual," said Rhoades, according to the Daily Mail.

In November, President Katie Conboy sent an email to faculty and staff announcing that: "Saint Mary's will consider undergraduate applicants whose sex assigned at birth is female or who consistently live and identify as women."

Biological men who identify as transgender would have been accepted beginning in the Fall 2024 semester if the policy had not been recently reversed. The initial announcement came after Conboy established the President's Task Force on Gender Identity and Expression earlier this year.

The group is tasked with making suggestions regarding housing issues and community education regarding women's college identities and Catholic identity.

As per the Women's College Coalition, Saint Mary's is among the less than forty active women's institutions in the United States. The non-discrimination policy states that the College's admissions procedures are guided by Title IV of the Education Amendments of 1972, which permits institutions that have traditionally catered to women to have single-sex admissions procedures.