The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has established gender-neutral language that will be embraced in the school’s honor code.
This move is an act of compliance with UNC policy, which calls for university documents to be comprised of gender-inclusive language. According to The Daily Tar Heel, “switching to gender neutrality” can be a long process; it began last semester after a decision was made by the UNC Student Congress to adopt a more gender-inclusive student code.
The change to gender-neutrality in the honor code puts the document more in line with UNC’s Instrument of Student Judicial Government; the pronouns “he” and “she” are not used once in the honor code, but the pronoun “they” is used in six instances.
“It’s great for people who are reading the Instrument, but also for anyone who interacts with our system in any other way,” Undergraduate Student Attorney General Jacob Friedman expressed.
Friedman stated that the entire process was a student-led initiative.
“I think one of the best parts about having a student-led system is that it is so dynamic in that when the student body changes, the system can change with it,” Friedman added. “That’s one of the things that excites me about it, we’re changing with the student body.”
Terri Phoenix, director of the LGBTQ center at the university, states that the significance of the change is found in its inclusivity.
“It’s important because it’s more inclusive of everyone, and it is more accurate, because not everyone identifies with binary,” said Phoenix. “And if you’re using language that is grounded in the binary gender system, then you’re going to be leaving out people.”
Phoenix uses this type of gender-neutral pronoun speech in his online profile for the LGBT center at the school. The gender pronouns “he” and “she” are both exempt from his biography. To make up for this, however, the letter “T” is used multiple times to refer to Phoenix, which presumably stands for Terri.
Phoenix admits that the change does not always come easily and that the university still has work to do to in order to make all documents at the university more gender-neutral.
“The center was among many people that were advocating for this policy change since 2006,” Phoenix explained. “I’ve seen some movement, but there is still work to do. There are some policies that aren’t written in gender-neutral language. Where there is copy of any kind that doesn’t use gender-inclusive language, it needs to be changed.”
Isaiah Denby is a college freshman from Tampa Bay, Florida studying economics and political science.
