Essay Sample: Preferred Name and Pronoun for Transgender Students

The number of transgender students in campuses has been increasing in the last ten years. To support these students who have been categorized as transgender, bisexual, queer and lesbians, institutions of higher learning have come up with officers for serving them because transgender expression and identity do not match and reflect the norm upon which the institutions were built. It has become a challenge for transgender individuals because they are disproportionately affected by mental health issues like addiction, anxiety, and depression which is a societal problem (Jones, 2016). On the subject of transgender, many institutions of higher learning have addressed Issues ranging from residence hall rooms and bathrooms being assigned male and female gender indicating single-sex gender and class rosters that do not identify consistent preferred name and gender.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Even though this is the case, expanded their many institutions have support services for transgender students. They have achieved these through implementing gender-neutral bathrooms, counseling services, advocating from transgender mentorship programs, residence life policies, trans-aware health services, and non-discrimination statement. Even though this has been addressed, safety and privacy issues concerning the public announcement of student's legal names do not reflect gender expression. It is the responsibility of the administration and the institution faculty to work on how to change the student's information system that reflects the students preferred names and gender.

The Application Theory - Gender identity theory

Gender identity theory is defined by Jones (2016) as a personal conception. The concept of gender identity is confidentially correlated to gender role defined as the visible manifestation of personality. Self-identification in gender identity results from a combination of extrinsic and inherent or environmental factors which are manifested in the society by observable factors like appearance and behavior. Gender identity is a primary state of physiologic and anatomic parameters. Identification by sex brings out the question of sexual identity and gender identity which can be defined as perineum for sexual identity and cerebrum form gender identity. The world has changed from the standard mutual gender mode of having male and female. This means that conclusions would not be drawn by looking at the physical' sexual growth, eventual sexuality and eroticism even though they are closely related to gender (Nicolazzo, Renn, & Quaye, 2017).

Jones (2016) indicates that the concept of transgender presumes ultimate distinctions between the notions of gender, sex, and sexual orientation. The theories of gender expression and gender identity have been significant explaining transgender. Gender expression refers to behavior that expresses and individuals gender identity, for instance, having a particular hairstyle, wearing different clothing or using certain pronouns. Gender expression is publically visible but gender identity is not something others can view (Commision on Human Rights, 2016). According to social constructionism, genders are socially constructed which is a product of societal and social influence. This means that there is a need to identify gender based on the social structure which means that institutions of higher learning need to protect all students from discrimination. According to the case study, it is mandatory for institutions to implement student preferred names and pronoun as a way of supporting students gender identity.

The implementation of preferred name policy in any institution, some technical requests needs to me met requiring the participation of the whole management. These are because some discrete technical decision need attention which requires high-level decisions that will facilitate in implementing the desired naming policy for the institution information technology system (Commision on Human Rights, 2016). The question of interest, in this case, is understanding when the student's legal name need to be used and also when their desired preferred name needs to be used in the institutional system.

From an IT perspective, the first approach is to choose a location of record which can be defined as an authoritative of primary record system. This is by including the category of the preferred name in the system and deciding whether it could be important to display the preferred name. This is a significant approach specifically for transgender students because the aim is to enable there preferred names to be visible to those who interact with them (Jones, 2016). Institutions must consider usernames instead of automatically assigning them to students. Once the implementation of preferred name policy has been achieved, the institution needs to decide where to change those when requested or automatically.

From a technological perspective, institutions need to decide the extent of accommodating names using expanded characters. The best approach to this case is enabling greater flexibility that accommodates the student's choice of how names should appear. In IT the standard ASCII already sets characters for names but some students who choose preferred names might have characters that go beyond the set standard. This means that institutions should decide on implementing Unicode in UT8 encoding (Bantz et.al, 2016). Other names also exceed the system enforced character limit which is a worrying delinquent for hyphenated names. Short strings of capital letters, past restriction of names might be vindicated by technological confines but would appear detestable archaisms today. There is a need to give freedom and flexibility to students representing their names in either hyphens, spaces or other punctuations. The naming policy needs to consider names with expanded characters on the ASCII strings system that requires simpler representation (Bantz et.al, 2016).

There is a need to have a working integration between the institution and commercial systems ensuring that the policy of implementing pronoun policies and preferred names is achieved. Implementing preferred pronouns helps prevent students from being misgendered by use of wrong and inappropriate pronouns (Bantz et.al, 2016). Even though the common binary pronoun always uses him or her, others who are identified as non-gender, transgender, bisexual, queer or lesbians may prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns like them, they, theirs or hirs. According to EDUCAUSE. (2016), the use of pronouns is becoming increasingly common and incorporating it into the institution information system will be important and helpful in meeting an increasingly gender-diverse campus community.

The area of gender identity which is expanding awareness of options and changing social norms needs to be addressed at institutions to help arrive at a solution that will be comfortable for everyone. This can be achieved if institutions will be able to build information systems that are much flexible and follows the stipulated policies and processes. The federal and state department of education has to take actions in ensuring that all students are protected from discrimination (Nicolazzo, Renn, & Quaye, 2017).

Recommendation

The support for preferred pronouns and gender identity in an institution is presently unavailable and incomplete. It is through this that many institutions are founding it essential to develop their solutions as customization by building consensus on essential functionality of students records systems that support gender identity thought controlling systems in displaying student information on their preferred pronouns, gender, and names (Bantz et.al, 2016). It is also important if the system can store a history of changes because this information can keep changing over time. Since it is hard to predict the decision by institutions on who is allowed to access the information, it is essential and fundamental if a role-based approach is implemented to access control of information. Since the institution will take different approaches, they need to meet the requirements of defining functional requirements which will be essential and effective in crafting comprehensive specifications.

Institutions need to adopt a policy for preferred name changes and stipulate procedures that will help support the policy. It might be hard for students to navigate but with formulating procedures and policies, the administrative burden will be alleviated. The institutions identify and access management system needs to be resilient and flexible to enable manage name changes this will be able to provide a framework for managing identities in the information system. The campus identity management system needs to be a single authoritative so that the activities of managing preferred names becomes easier.

Conclusion

Over the last ten years, transgender discrimination has increased in institutions of higher learning by transgender status, gender expression and identity. To tackle discrimination, many institutions have come up with policy and procedures that help support transgender students. They have achieved these through implementing gender-neutral bathrooms, counseling services, advocating from transgender mentorship programs, residence life policies, trans-aware health services, and non-discrimination statement. The challenge is how to change the student's information system that reflects the students preferred names and gender. Gender is socially constructed as a product of societal and social influence. There is a need to come up with an information system that identifies gender, based on the social structure to help protect all students from discrimination. This can only be achieved through preferred name policy and procedures on preferred pronouns, gender, and names. This information system needs to be resilient and flexible to enable manage name changes this will be able to provide a framework for managing identities in the information system.

References

Bantz, D., Nathan, G., Nixon, A., Semmens, T., & Wells, R. (2016). Supporting Students' Gender Identity: An IT Perspective. Retrieved From: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/12/supporting-students-gender-identity-an-it-perspective

Commision on Human Rights. (2016). Gender Identity/Gender Expression: Legal Enforcement Guidance." NYC, Workers' Compensation Board. Retrieved from www1.nyc.gov/site/cchr/law/legal-guidances-gender-identity-expression.page.

EDUCAUSE. (2016). IT Considerations in Implementing Preferred Name Policies. Higher Education Information Security Council.

Jones, T. (2016). Policy and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex students. Springer International Pu. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-11991-5

Nicolazzo, Z., Renn, K. A., & Quaye, S. J. (2017). Trans* in college: Transgender students' strategies for navigating campus life and the institutional politics of inclusion. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing.