Weeks after Mills College became the first single-sex U.S. higher education institution to allow transgender applicants, Mount Holyoke College (MHC) has now done the same.

According to the Huffington Post, MHC President Lynn Pasquerella announced the policy change during her convocation address Tuesday, kicking off the fall semester. The all-female school will now allow applications from anyone who self-identifies as a woman.

(The announcement of the policy change comes at the 38:50 mark in the video).

Under the new policy, only people who are biologically male and self-identify as such will not be allowed to apply. Like Mills, MHC also welcomes any student "who do not fit into the gender binary" of either male or female.

Jennie Ochterski, a gender studies major at MHC, is an organizer at Open Gates, a group that had been advocating for such a policy change.

"We at Open Gates are so excited for Mount Holyoke's future as a college dedicated to the full inclusion of transgender women," she told Inside Higher Ed. "We know there is a lot of work to be done in terms of consciousness raising, education, and making sure that MHC is as welcoming and supportive a community as possible for all its students and prospective students. We applaud Mount Holyoke for pioneering this change and look forward to discussing the specifics of the policy with the administration and the student body as a whole."

"While we have welcomed trans students in the past and for several years have been in conversation with campus constituencies about how best to foster a respectful environment for all students, we need a formal policy," Pasquerella said in her address. "One that would articulate our commitment to core values of individual freedom, social justice and diversity and inclusion.

"We recognize that what it means to be a woman is not static... Just as early feminists argued that reducing women to their biological functions was a foundation of women's oppression, we acknowledge that gender identity is not reducible to the body."