Faculty at Mount Holyoke College Told to Report ‘Misgendering’ and ‘Incorrect’ Pronoun Use

Faculty at Mount Holyoke College Told to Report ‘Misgendering’ and ‘Incorrect’ Pronoun Use

Telling people to snitch on each other never ends well. Has anyone at the school studied any history?

The College Fix reports:

Mount Holyoke tells faculty to report ‘misgendering,’ ‘incorrect’ pronoun use

Mount Holyoke College rolled out a new directive this fall that requires faculty to report “misgendering, deadnaming,” or using “incorrect” pronouns for individuals on campus.

The directive came from a Sept. 4 email, shared on X, from the Massachusetts college’s administration regarding its recently created Compliance Department.

“It is the expectation of the College that faculty report when misgendering occurs,” the email from Assistant Vice President for Compliance Shannon Lynch and Provost and Dean of Faculty Lisa Sullivan stated.

Faculty has a responsibility to do so “as mandated reporters at the College,” Lynch and Sullivan wrote.

In Massachusetts, mandated reporters are individuals “who, as a result of their profession, are more likely to be aware of abuse or neglect” and “are required by law to report cases of suspected abuse” of children, people with disabilities, and elderly individuals to authorities, according to the state Health and Social Services website.

At the private college, the administrators wrote that faculty should report to the college when “misgendering creates a hostile environment.”

Faculty also should tell administrators when a student reports being “deadnamed,” a term referring to someone calling a transgender person by their given name after the person changes their name to match their “gender identity,” according to the email.

Furthermore, faculty must report if a student “has been subject to incorrect use of their pronouns,” or “mispronouning.”

Additionally, they must report if “there is an open mocking of [the college’s] pronoun policy or an individual’s choice of pronouns,” according to the email.

The email noted that the new directives come in response to the Biden administration’s overhaul of Title IX, which included redefining the word “sex” to encompass “gender identity.” Title IX is a federal law that prohibits schools from discriminating on the basis of sex.

Lynch and Sullivan said in their email that “Title IX regulations expanded to include misgendering, deadnaming, and mispronouning as prohibited acts.”

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