Dear Spongebob Squarepants,
Thank you for your interest in Mills College. Your application for admission to Mills College has been carefully reviewed by the Admissions Committee. However, we regret to inform you that we cannot offer you admission at this time.
Mills College is an all-women’s undergraduate college and as such, Mills only considers female applicants for undergraduate admission. Though the Admissions Office was duly impressed by the array of your extra-curricular activities (congratulations on your title “Best Underwater Fry Cook: Krusty Krab Category”) and your exemplary letter of recommendation (a half-eaten lollipop from Patrick), we have to deny your application on the basis of your gender identity.
On your application, you failed to designate yourself as either “male” or “female”; rather, you identified yourself as an “agender sponge.” Our official policy dictates that we only admit applicants who self-identify as females. As such, your admission was denied not due to lack of merit, but due to your lack of ability to provide a government-issued document of proof of gender. (We are sorry to inform you that your inability to provide a driver’s license is not excused by the fact that you drive a boatmobile under the sea.)
We at Mills College strive to provide a high standard for quality in liberal arts education and create a learning community that reflects the diversity of our student body and faculty. Mills College, as an all-women’s institution, is grounded in a history of including marginalized groups that have been traditionally excluded from other mainstream institutions.
Therefore, we do not specifically recruit gender-fluid students, nor do we particularly welcome applications from such students due to the level of extra paperwork required. While trans* inclusiveness seems to align with our position as an institution that opposes gender oppression, our case-by-case policy regarding trans* applicants shows that it is in the school’s best interest to retain an ambiguous policy so as to not hold ourselves accountable to our own school mission of diversity and inclusivity.
In short, while our lack of clarity and official policy regarding trans* inclusiveness makes it appear that we, the college administrators, wish the problem to “go away,” that is simply not the case. We fully support gender fluidity and the right of any Mills student to identify as any gender. Once admitted, any student who completes the college’s graduation requirements will be awarded a degree regardless of that student’s gender status. This means that Mills will recognize and respect your “agender sponge” status upon your admission to the college. But until your admission to Mills, your “agender sponge” status is the basis for your revoked admission. (If you have any questions, please refer to our website, www.mills.edu, where we helpfully do not have any information regarding trans* inclusive admission policies.)
We have no doubt you would have succeeded at Mills. We want you to know that as a Mills student, we would honor your gender identity once admitted. But we cannot currently admit you because you identify as an “agender sponge.”
Again, thank you for your interest and we wish you the best of luck in all your academic endeavors.
Sincerely,
Mills College Admissions Office
P.S. The Admissions Office would like to thank you for the complimentary Krabby Patties sent to the office. In answer to your question, we cannot accept a dozen Krabby Patties in lieu of a passport, or any other government-issued proof of gender.
P.P.S. For future reference, it would be helpful if you could provide a property deed for your pineapple under the sea. The Mills Admission Office is not accustomed to dealing with underwater tropical fruits as places of residency. We would request proof of residency in the event you chose to reapply, which we sincerely hope you will.
