The logo for "TGNC10: Commemorating TGNC Inclusion at MHC." It prominently features the acronym "TGNC" in large, bold blue letters, which stands for "Trans and Gender-Nonconforming." It uses the colors blue, pink and white, with a bold, clean typography. Photo courtesy of Lily Rood ’27.
By Jesse Hausknecht-Brown ʼ25
Managing Editor of Layout | Features Editor
Content warning: This article briefly mentions transphobic messaging.
At the beginning of the 2014 fall semester, Mount Holyoke College students, faculty, staff and community members gathered in the Gettell Amphitheater for Convocation. The College’s then-president Lynn Pasquerella made a surprise historic announcement during her speech at the event: Mount Holyoke had put into writing one of the most inclusive admission policies for transgender students to date, both within the institution’s history and compared to other similar historically women’s colleges.
As described on Mount Holyoke’s Inclusive Admissions webpage, the College is a “women’s college that is gender diverse” and “welcome[s] applications from female, transgender and nonbinary students.” Upon its introduction in 2014, this policy put into clear writing that transgender women, transgender men and nonbinary people — regardless of sex assigned at birth — were invited to apply.
The announcement came as a surprise to advocates for greater trans inclusion on campus, who had planned to continue their support for a more inclusive admissions policy throughout the 2014-15 academic year. Members of Open Gates, a student-led organization committed to fighting for the inclusion of trans women at the College, had already become more vocal on campus during that period.
On Pangy Day the previous spring, Open Gates members had photographed students, alums and community members holding handwritten messages about why trans inclusion at Mount Holyoke was important to them; signs included phrases such as “Trans exclusion is discrimination against women” and “Womanhood does not reside in documentation. Trans women belong at Mount Holyoke.”
A week before Mount Holyoke’s convocation announcement, Mills College, another historically women’s institution, revealed that they would allow trans women to apply. As Pasquerella said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News following the 2014 convocation, “Our policy is a bit broader. We allow for self-identification. [Mills College] wouldn’t allow for trans men; [students] have to come in as a woman and identify as a woman. We allow for those who identify as men, women or neither … or both.”
This academic year, for the policy’s 10 year anniversary, the College is launching a trans and gender nonconforming — or TGNC — student-led project called TGNC10: Commemorating TGNC Inclusion at MHC. What began as a Lynk-funded individual research project this summer, spearheaded by Lily Rood ’27, has grown into a collaboration between TGNC students, the Office of the President, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Office of Community and Belonging and many more groups both on and off campus.
Rood, the first openly trans woman to be a class president at Mount Holyoke, explained in an interview with Mount Holyoke News that, before 2014, trans women were not explicitly barred from applying. However, all legal sex and gender markers on an applicant’s official documents had to be female.
“As a young trans person who has not had the opportunity to go through the intense, demanding, expensive legal process to change every single document about my life to reflect my gender identity as opposed to my sex assigned at birth, I, along with most, if not all trans women — and at the time, trans men and non-binary folks who were assigned male at birth — we all were practically barred from applying,” Rood said.
Reflecting on her transition and relationship to her own gender identity, Rood explained that she had limited options when she was applying to college and identified as nonbinary. “Mount Holyoke was the only historically women’s college to which I could apply,” Rood said. “There was no other institution with a policy that I'm aware of that included me.”
TGNC10 started as Rood’s independent research project under the guidance of Nohelya Zambrano Aguayo ’21, former Assistant Director of Diversity Programming and LGBTQ+ Resources in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Over the summer, Director of the Weissman Center for Leadership and Professor of English Amy Martin, Associate Professor of Music Adeline Mueller and Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Kijua Sanders-McMurtry served as Rood’s project advisors. DEI Fellows Raven Joseph ’25 and Emma Quirk ’26 are also collaborating on the project. Sanders-McMurtry’s role, as they described it, has been to “freedom dream, support, plan and advise as a listener and a planner working closely with [Rood] and later with the DEI Fellows.”
Rood sees the project as a way to commemorate the 2014 policy change, and to open up a conversation about how to become even more inclusive of TGNC community members on campus.
“The project is really working … to both celebrate how far our community has come in being a space that is inclusive for TGNC folks and also recognize, bring attention to, and drive progress on the areas in which we still have further to go in becoming the most inclusive space for TGNC folks possible,” Rood said.
TGNC10 is comprised of numerous events, exhibits, guest speakers and opportunities for structured support of TGNC students. Exhibits centering trans life and activism on campus include archival, photography and art exhibits, all of which will have opening receptions when they launch. Events to support TGNC students in navigating specific issues within the Mount Holyoke community, such as name changing in the College’s database, will be held throughout the year. A celebration of chosen family during friends and family weekend is also being planned. Additionally, Rood is working on an oral history project that will fall under the scope of the larger TGNC10 project.
A community garden dedicated to TGNC people is also in the works, although there is not yet a timeline for when it will be finished.
“I am also so excited about [Rood’s] vision for a community garden which she and Joseph will be working on this year, hopefully with other students,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “I believe deeply that when our work includes spaces for grounding, healing, [and] loving our bodies and our minds, we can develop the strength and resilience needed to continue showing up fully present in our activism around trans inclusion.”
One aspect of the project that Rood is most enthusiastic about is the opportunity for TGNC students, community members and student groups to plan and host their own TGNC10 sponsored events. She emphasized that it is important to her that this project be led by TGNC students, and therefore wants to make the programming as accessible as possible and reflective of the needs and wants of the community.
Sanders-McMurtry is excited to welcome Prentis Hemphill ’04, a therapist, somatics teacher, facilitator and political organizer, back to campus in October. They will visit classes and lead workshops based on their book, “What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change The World.” According to the book’s official description, Hemphill’s writing asserts that the principles of embodiment, identified as “the recognition of our body’s sensations and habits, and the beliefs that inform them,” are instrumental in individual and collective healing.
“I hope for much more expansive policies, practices and dialogues around gender at Mount Holyoke as we continue to develop knowledge and capacity in collaboration with other women’s colleges,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “What a beautiful world we will create if we finally dismantle the gender-based hierarchy that exists, which is harmful to all of us who are marginalized, targeted and experience violence because of our gender. I have big dreams for collective liberation around gender, and the full inclusion of TGNC community members is a critical part of fulfilling our promise of becoming a gender-diverse women’s college.”
In the spring, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is working to establish the first Trans Students at Women's Colleges Conference and hopes to invite people from historically women’s colleges across the country.
Rood is proud of how far Mount Holyoke has come, but believes there is more work to be done to achieve “comprehensive, intersectional trans equity and inclusion.” She cited incidents of hate during the 2023-24 academic year, including transphobic messaging found in Blanchard Hall on Trans Day of Visibility, and has filed many bias incident reports and been repeatedly deadnamed in her time at the College.
“Mount Holyoke began to include TGNC folks in 2014. I think that’s a fact. Whether Mount Holyoke welcomes TGNC folks? That is an open question that many different folks have many different experiences with,” Rood said. “For myself, I feel welcome in many ways. And I think that to feel truly welcome in every way, some of the experiences I’ve had as a trans woman at Mount Holyoke can’t [continue].”
While she sees work to be done, Rood is looking forward to a celebratory atmosphere at Convocation on Sept. 3, where members of the College administration will officially announce the TGNC10 project to the community.
“I’ve poured my heart and soul into this project, and I have immense gratitude for folks who have collaborated with me in that,” Rood said. “I hope the community can get excited as we start rolling out the announcement of this project.”
Editor’s Note: Emma Quirk ’26 is a member of Mount Holyoke News.
Abigail McKeon ’26 contributed fact-checking.