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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Respecting All Identities

Everyone is anxious on the first day of school. You walk into a new classroom, you scan the room in the hopes you know some people, you pray the syllabus is reasonable, then your professor walks in, starts to take roll and you settle into the swing of it. But for gender nonconforming students, this process is even more stressful. Most students quietly wait for their name to be called, correcting their apologetic professors when they accidentally botch pronunciations, but genderqueer and transgender students often must explain their identity and gender preferences to their professors and classmates that might not understand, isolating them from their peers from the outset.


The Preferred Names Project is a big step forward for these students and for the LGBTQ cause more broadly on campus. Announced in an all-school email from Andi Lloyd, Shirley Collado and Drew Macan on Oct. 2, this new feature allows students to choose their name and preferred gender pronoun, which will appear on class rosters and in other college communications.


The email states that the change “puts Middlebury at the forefront of gender identity and expression initiatives nationwide,” and it joins a string of recent initiatives, including all gender housing and gender-neutral bathrooms, that make Middlebury a more inclusive space for students across the gender spectrum.  


But how progressive are we actually on this issue? As seen in the Oct. 15 New York Times Magazine piece titled “When Women Become Men at Wellesley,” gender inclusivity is being heavily discussed on many college campuses, and these policy changes at Middlebury are certainly big steps in the right direction; however, there are significant areas in which we still lag behind our peers in terms of staff support for our LGBTQ community. 


Queers and Allies (Q&A) and other LGBTQ groups have been asking for an LGBTQ coordinator on campus for several years. Many of our peer institutions, including Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Tufts, and Oberlin have such a position. This staff person would support LGBTQ-identifying students and allies personally, academically and socially. The request for this position seems to have slipped through the cracks in the recent round of administrative shifts and hires.


Director of Health and Wellness Education Barbara McCall provides this support for many LGBTQ students and has received high praise from students for her efforts, rightly so. But her job title includes far more responsibilities, including alcohol education, sexual assault awareness and prevention and a host of other pressing issues that do not allow her to dedicate her full energy to the LGBTQ community the way an LGBTQ coordinator would.


While we have focused here on the needs of the LGBTQ community on campus, the kinds of support we are calling for are needed by all minority communities at Middlebury.


For many years, Dean Collado has been a person to turn to for students fighting for greater inclusivity on campus. By working with students on initiatives like the Intercultural Center and JusTalks, as well as her commitment to the Creating Connections Consortium (C3) and to our Posse scholars, she has proved a powerful engine for promoting diversity and inclusivity. However, as seen in President Liebowitz’s email on Oct. 17, her responsibilities will be decentralized for the next year and a half, giving the incoming President the opportunity to shape this role. While we are confident in her replacements’ abilities to carry out the work she has done, we worry about this power becoming so decentralized. When Chief Diversity Officer and Title IX Coordinator are no longer tied to Dean of the College, there is inherently less influence in those positions. As this turnover ensues, we must ensure that students are still able to find powerful allies on their projects, be it shaping the future Intercultural Center or changing the AAL requirement. 


We hope the new staff person at the Intercultural Center can serve as a point person, but as we stated earlier when looking at Health and Wellness, resources can only be spread so far with one person. We hope an LGBTQ Coordinator will join the staff of the Intercultural Center, as well as a group of support staff for all different student identities.  


At Tufts, they have the Group of Six, with the LGBT Center, the Women’s Center, the Africana Center, the Latino Center, the Asian American Center, the International Center and Tufts University Student Affairs. While a larger student body requires more resources, Middlebury could adopt elements of this model to provide specialized support to different campus communities and their allies.


In addition to increasing staff support for students, we can train our existing faculty, staff and students to create a more inclusive campus. For starters, faculty and staff should be well-versed in the Preferred Names Project and respect the preferences that students indicate on the roster. It is no secret that many members of our faculty and staff are not adequately sensitive to students’ gender and identity preferences, which is completely unacceptable. This kind of cultural awareness should to be a part of continuing education for faculty who need new tools to bridge a growing generational gap. Perhaps faculty members who are already engaged — asking for gender pronouns on the first day of class and respecting student preferences — can help educate their colleagues on gender sensitivity.


As for students, JusTalks presents an important opportunity to talk about identity early in a student’s Middlebury career. While JusTalks has grown over the past few years, we recommend JusTalks be mandatory for all first-years and sophomore febs. Now entering its third year, JusTalks has proved its popularity and value. Increased participation would only help create a more inclusive community by exposing students to these concepts early and in a safe space.


By expanding support for students and educational opportunities on inclusivity, we hope Middlebury can become a place where all students feel comfortable being themselves and identifying however they prefer.  The Preferred Names Project is an important step, but we have a long way to go. Hiring an LGBTQ staff member and making gender sensitivity an integral part of our language, as both students and faculty, is required for the hallways and classrooms of the College to be a welcoming space for all and uphold our institutional commitment to creating a diverse and safe community for all students.


 Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH


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