Make Pronouns “Stick”

When Harvard graduate student, Diego Garcia Blum, started attending classes at John F. Kennedy School of Government, the first thing he did in class wasn’t what you’d expect your typical student to do. 

 On orientation day at Ivy League institution Harvard University, they provide a name placard for each individual enrolled at the school with hopes that the bond between professor and student will grow by the professor(s) learning the student’s names. On the first day of classes, Mr. Garcia Blum took a sharpie to his placard and wrote “he/him” right next to his name. In many of the days following this action, numerous students also added their desired gender pronouns next to their names as well.

These initial actions sparked an even bigger response when the John F. Kennedy School of Government, agreed to issue stickers containing the four options (“He/Him,” “She/Her,” “They/Them” and “Ze/Hir”) that students could opt in and place next to their names on their placards. Many students at Harvard University have supported this idea and have taken to it as the stickers “challenge the norm that most assume an individual’s identity is based on their appearances”, states Raven Graf, 25, a nonbinary student at Kennedy whose pronouns are they/them.

The New York Times states that, “as young people who have grown up with a more expansive concept of gender identity bring those ideas to college classrooms, universities have responded in varying ways, with some professors and schools quickly accommodating a wider range of gender pronouns, and others struggling over whether and how to institute new policies”. Numerous schools have allowed the addition of the students’ gender pronoun preferences to be added to the school’s database, giving the professors access to the desired pronouns before the first day of school.

So far the turnout has been great, with 39 schools accepting and honoring this idea to make students feel more comfortable in front of their professor(s) and peers in the classroom. One issue that has risen in regard to addressing individuals by their desired gender pronouns is a case between a philosophy professor and his student. In 2018 a court case occurred where Professor Meriwether at Shawnee State University in Ohio “refused to call a transgender student by feminine titles or pronouns, stating that it would violate his religious convictions”; however, the case was dismissed as “the university argued that it had the right to manage its professors’ teaching methods, and that the manner in which he addressed a transgender student was not protected by the First Amendment” (Hartocollis, 2020).

In order to help students be more comfortable in the classroom, some professors have adopted introducing themselves on the first day of class with the gender pronouns that they prefer to go by. Ms. Hayes, a professor at Evergreen State College, made a script that she uses on the first day of class with her students – it includes her pronouns. Although the idea of adding this was new to her, she realized the importance as she says how important it is psychologically to get it right, because “gender is so close to our core” and “a lot of students who are transitioning, trying to figure this out — there’s a lot of depression, their suicide rate is high, there’s a lot of emotional turmoil attached to that, the least we could do is make it an OK thing to be open about who you are.”

Individuals in college are typically younger individuals who are just starting/or have recently started to find out who they are. Many move away from home and are starting a chapter of their lives in a place that could be new, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable to them. Having professors who start the semesters off by allowing the preferences of individual gender assignment is a huge win for the LGBTQ+ community and their acceptance for who they are as individuals. Fostering inclusivity in college classrooms will help students succeed. 

 Until Next Time,

Shayla Bannert, MPH(c)

Hartocollis, A. (2020, February 19). Gender Pronouns Can Be Tricky on Campus. Harvard Is Making Them Stick. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/gender-pronouns-college.html