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I would like to meet someone who is outraged by the phrase “upperclassman” or “freshman”. If you are one of those people, please email me at eric.italiano@teamcoed.com to explain to me how on Earth you have the time or energy to be upset about the word freshman.
Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, apparently f*cking not, because Yale University has now joined the growing list of schools that are doing away with such phrases for more “gender-neutral” terms.
Look, I’m all for sexual identity (not sure if that’s the proper nomenclature, but roll with me). You want to be gender non-binary? Be gender non-binary. You want to be both a male and a female? Go ahead. Want to get plastic surgery to turn yourself into a purple giraffe? None of my business. But at what point is the gender-neutralization of benign terms become ridiculous? I understand the whole bathroom thing, I really do, but if you have an issue with the word “upperclassman”, that’s a you problem, not an us problem — that’s just facts.
via Fox News:
Yale University has kicked off the new school year by officially scrapping the terms “freshman” and “upperclassman” and replacing them with the gender-neutral terms “first year” and “upper-level students.”
“It’s really for public, formal correspondence and formal publications … we’re not trying to tell people what language to use in their everyday casual conversations,” Dean Marvin Chun told the school newspaper. “We’re not trying to be language police.”
Chun applauded the “modern” terms, saying he hopes they will be used exclusively in all communications by next academic year. Rumblings for more inclusivity began last year, and by spring administrators began using the new terms.
Cornell University, Columbia University and Dartmouth College have all inched away from the old labels in official documents as well.
You just watch — give it another 5 or so years and we’ll be debating whether we should rename “mankind” — that’s where we’re headed at this rate.
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