On October 19th, the Office of the University Registrar at Tulane University announced a change in their first name and gender pronoun policy. A much anticipated change, Tulane now allows students to indicate their preferred first names for student I.D.s and class rosters. Moreover, students may now indicate preferred gender pronouns to the university registrar which will be used on class rosters, and to be shared with instructors, academic advisors, and university health providers. In doing so, Tulane joins the ranks of more than 150 universities nationwide that have established preferred first name and gender pronoun options for students. The policy changes made by the Tulane administration are intended to facilitate the inclusion of international, transgender, and gender nonconforming students; and I, for one, think it’s about time.
I can remember with absolute clarity the first time I was asked what my preferred gender pronouns were. It was on the first day of classes at Tulane in the fall 2015 semester, during an introductory anthropology class, when my professor asked me to indicate my preferred pronouns. Although it seems like a fairly uncomplicated question, I was caught completely off guard, and I wasn’t the only one. It appeared to me that the vast majority of my fellow students were completely unprepared for that particular question. In my 19 years of life, I had never been asked what my preferred pronouns were, never. In that moment, I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of people I had passed on the street, sat in class next to, played sports against, that had, also, never been asked that question. Then I thought about the transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals that had never been done the courtesy of being asked what their preferred pronouns were- the people who are incorrectly addressed every day.
For most of us, getting our names spelled wrong on our Starbuck’s cup is problematic enough; imagine being addressed as the wrong gender every day of your life. This is why the news of Tulane’s policy change is nothing short of a triumph. By allowing students to indicate their preferred pronouns, the Tulane administration is recognizing the rights of its students, as human beings, to determine how they should be addressed. Being referred to by the correct pronouns is a right, not a privilege, and it is a step in the right direction for the Tulane administration to have recognized that. This new policy is an essential building block in the creation of an altogether inclusive and intersectional Tulane community, and it is a lead I hope many communities, both small and large, strive to follow. Hopefully, in the near future, 19-year-olds everywhere will have had the preferred pronouns conversation more times than they could count.