Penn State Likely To Drop 'Freshman' And Other Student Terms

Pittsburgh PA

19 May, 2021

11:46 AM

Description

STATE COLLEGE, PA — Penn State's Senate faculty has voted to no longer use gendered pronouns when referring to students, faculty, staff, and guests in course descriptions and degree program descriptions. The Senate faculty recently approved a measure to move away from the use of academic grouping titles that stem from a primarily male-centric academic history in course descriptions and degree program descriptions. There is no date for the changes to be implemented. But Penn State intends to replace the terms freshman-sophomore-junior and senior year with first-year, second-year, third-year and fourth-year. The university also will replace "underclassmen" and "upperclassmen" with "lower division" and "upper division." "It is time to close the loop and ensure that all people are not only able to choose their name and gender identity within our systems, but that these documents and systems are also structured to be inclusive from the start,"a Senate faculty memo stated. "We suggest that the University consider changes to all written materials, including recruiting materials, admissions materials, scholarship information, housing materials, other outward-facing documents, internal documents, and websites."