St Benet’s to lift ban on female students

Monks’ faith to be tested?


St Benet’s is seeking to overturn almost 120 years of boys only tradition by admitting female undergrads.

The hall is at present ‘canonically prevented’ from accepting female students according to Werner Jeanrond, master of St Benet’s, as it also houses and trains monks.

Some of the St. Benet’s chaps

However a planned expansion and acquisition of new premises will allow the Benedictine hall to admit women, only 135 years after women were first allowed to enter the university.

No date has yet been set for the change and the new entrants would still be separated from the four studying monks.

St Benet’s no longer resembles an eight year olds’ treehouse

With three female-only colleges Cambridge is now the last university in the UK that can claim to officially discriminate on grounds of gender.