Acknowledging a Third Gender
The University of Vermont has just recently enacted a new school policy which recognizes a third, neutral gender. For a long time the issue of being labeled with a certain pronoun or called the wrong name in class was a problem that floated throughout the L.G.B.T. community. In introducing a third neutral gender, the university now has gender-neutral options when it comes to the pronoun with which students and teachers regard someone who considers themselves a neutral gender. Those students will rightfully now be referred to by terms like “them” and “they.” Students will also be allowed to choose whichever name fits them best, even if it is not their legal name. The work that both students and faculty have put into this recent achievement for the university is admirable. Older role models have done a great job of pushing for what is the right step towards a more inclusive environment for faculty and students alike.
The encouragement of positivity by including and accepting every member of the community is essential to running a successful campus.
With the university’s recent acceptance of a neutral gender, it may seem that this turn of events was the product of a short chain of events, when in reality it took almost a decade of discussion, the formation of a student run task force, faculty and $80,000 of staff time to create a software patch. It was the dedication of people such as Dorothea Bauer that helped the project succeed. More casually known as Dot, Bauer works as a mental health counselor Bauer herself dealt with a long strand of identity issues while attending the university in the 1990s. As a counselor, she consistently heard of the troubles that affected the L.G.B.T. community when it came to the issue of the school I.D. system. Students voiced how they had accidentally been outed in the middle of a class just because of the use of a wrong name or pronoun. As a faculty member, Bauer was one of the first to reach out to the administration about making changes to the school wide identification system. Since 2009, she has guided members of the L.G.B.T. community on the right path to completing the mission of finally being recognized for who they are.
Rocko Gieselman, an undergraduate at the university has always had a problem with the way she is identified by others. Gieselman considers herself to be transgendered. For Gieselman, being referred to as “she” or a “girl,” always felt a bit wrong, and the same went for terms such as “boy” and “he.” Although Gieselman knows that every once in a while teachers may slip up and use the wrong pronoun or even the wrong name, the recent acceptance of a neutral gender allows her to feel a sense of freedom. This is where the true importance shines through. Throughout all the long nights organizing ideas and the long discussions circulating a simple thing such as pronouns, there is a sense of freedom within the atmosphere at the university. Something as simple as being called the wrong name once tainted the day-to-day lives of young students who see themselves as a neutral gender, but now the acknowledgement of their right to be called a certain name or a certain word has lifted that day-to-day burden from their shoulders.
Robyn Ochs, an educator who has steadily worked as an educator and founder of the L.G.B.T. community at Harvard, has given her perspective on the recent developments at the University of Vermont. She calls the acknowledgement of a third neutral gender lifesaving, and that is because it absolutely is lifesaving. The encouragement of positivity by including and accepting every member of the community is essential to running a successful campus.