Who knew being polite could actually be against school policy?
The Graduate Center at the City University of New York will no longer allow professors or administrators to use courtesy titles like “Mr.” and “Ms.” in official, written communication to students and prospective students in the interests of gender inclusivity, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In a Jan. 16 memo to Graduate Center faculty, interim Provost Louise Lennihan wrote that the new policy was part of the school’s “ongoing effort to ensure a respectful, welcoming and gender-inclusive learning environment … and to accommodate properly the diverse population of current and prospective students.”
The Graduate Center told The Huffington Post that the memo was actually aimed at advising faculty about the school’s new preferred-name policy, which allows students to go by a moniker other than their legal name on certain university documents.
But the memo said that the policy should be “interpreted as broadly as possible,” WSJ reported, causing some faculty members to fear that they are being told what they can and cannot say.
“My interpretation was that I was being asked to adhere to this policy, as were the other professors who received the letter,” Juliette Blevins, a linguistics professor at the school, said.
CUNY spokesperson Tanya Domi said that the memo and initiative was a part of the way the school was “working within a regulatory framework to comply with Title IX legal principles,” which forbid discrimination based on sex at any institution receiving federal funding.
But attorney and Title IX consultant Saundra Schuster told WSJ that this isn’t necessary to meet the law’s standards.
“They are not mandated to do this,” she said.
It seems this might just be another case of political correctness gone too far.
