One of the older universities in Mississippi is dealing with an ongoing crisis over the name of the institution. Attempts have been made in the past to change it, but objections raised by alumni have repeatedly derailed the effort. They’re still trying to work out a solution, however. So what is it that’s so horrible and offensive about the name? It must have something to do with racism, right? As it turns out, that’s not the case at all. The school in question is the Mississippi University for Women, commonly known among students as “The W.” So was it the inclusion of the word “women” that made it problematic? Yes, but perhaps not for the first reason that might jump to mind.

The school has been around for a long time. It first opened as an industrial college in the 1800s. In 1920 it was renamed the Mississippi State College for Women and in 1974 it took on the name it bears today. But the problem is that the school started accepting male students in the early 1980s, barely ten years after being defined as a university exclusively for women. The President of the University, Nora Miller, says that she understands how the current name presents “challenges,” but a task force is being formed to propose new names. (Associated Press)

Forty years after Mississippi University for Women started enrolling men, its president says the school should consider choosing a more inclusive name.

Previous attempts to remove “women” from the name, including the most recent one in 2009, have brought strong backlash from alumni of the school, nicknamed the W.

Men make up about 18% of the 2,700 students at MUW. In a letter to alumni, President Nora Miller said the university is creating a task force to examine a name change, the Commercial Dispatch reported.

Is anyone really bothered by the fact that the school has “women” in its name? Guys have been enrolling there in small numbers compared to the girls every year. (And probably enjoying the heck out of the prospect.) The school still maintains that its principal focus is on supporting education for females, but continuing to only allow girls to enroll had caused problems as well.

Going unsaid in the University’s president’s announcement is the other glaring problem for them in the modern era. If you call it a school “for women,” somebody is going to eventually have to define what a “woman” is, and we all know how impossible that is today. Not everyone at the college is a biologist, you know. People are probably becoming confused all of the time.

Single-gender school systems have been running into problems for ages. Male-only military academies basically don’t exist anymore, with all of them allowing females to apply. We used to have a girls-only school near where I live. It’s called Wells University. In 2004 they began accepting male students for the first time and a significant number of their alumni (including one woman in my family) immediately swore off sending them any more contributions. It turned into quite the debate, but the transition eventually took place.

In the end, the Mississippi University for Women will probably wind up selecting a new name, likely honoring some historic female who fought for women’s rights. But they are clearly missing out on what should be a more obvious solution to this dilemma. Why not go back to only allowing female applicants? Then they could leave the name just as it is and have it be accurate as well.

Oh, wait. What was I thinking? That would never work because on the first day they did it some trans women would show up and they would drown in a sea of lawsuits.