The Deep Springs application process is exhaustive, with an initial submission of three essays totaling 2,500 words, a list of all the books the applicant has read in the past year, and a list of extra-curricular activities. At first, the applicant submits no teacher recommendations and is granted no interview. If the applications committee (also run by students) is intrigued by an application, the prospective student is invited to the second round, which consists of more essays and a four-day visit to the campus.

I definitely felt out of place in the Kierkegaard-quoting, Art of War-toting applicant pool, but I was eager to apply and see what happened. Besides, if rejected from the first round, my plan was to pester the applications committee with emails until they accepted me out of sheer annoyance.

But I lost even that opportunity on January 8th, when a court injunction prohibited the school from further considering me or any of the other female applicants.

Upon opening the email of that particular news, my heart sank. Here is what happened.

When the board made their decision on co-education in late 2011, they voted ten to two. The two trustees who voted against the decision were alumni of the school who believed the importance of remaining in the bounds of the trust—which states that Deep Spring's purpose is to educate young men.

My initial reaction to finding out I couldn't apply to Deep Springs was anger. These trustees nullified the application that I had spent hours crafting because of an archaic sentence which pertained to "the education of promising young men." In the fall, I had been given the chance to apply to my dream school, and just a few months later, these trustees took that away from me suddenly, and in my opinion, unfairly. I was hurt.

To figure out in detail what had happened, I spoke with both David Neidorf, current president of Deep Springs, and Kinch Hoekstra, University of California Berkeley professor and one of the dissenting Deep Springs trustees. I was nervous about approaching Hoekstra in particular, but he was exceptionally empathetic and helpful to my understanding of the case.

David Neidorf explained that in 1923, five years after Deep Springs was founded by L. L. Nunn, it became a charitable trust instead of a nonprofit organization as most colleges are. According to this trust, the purpose of a Deep Springs education is to teach generous, highly capable young men to become leaders and live in service to humanity. To Neidorf, the emphasis on an all-male environment is negligible. He thinks that the most important aspects of Deep Springs do not come from the single-sex aspect, but from the tight bond formed between the students in the unique setting. "Because of the fact our students come here and work in a very small, intense community with a lot of mutual responsibility that is an all-male community, they sometimes associate that aspect with their feelings of the school when in fact it is a multitude of factors that makes Deep Springs such a unique place." Neidorf said that to honor Nunn's mission to educate future leaders, accepting women would be a step in the right direction.