Faculty at Pennsylvania State University have voted to replace traditional descriptors like “freshman” and “sophomore” with “1st year” or “2nd year,” citing the former’s “male-centric academic history.”
The decision came as part of a Faculty Senate bill on the “Removal of Gendered & Binary Terms from Course and Program Descriptions.”
The introduction states that “[t]he University, as with most all academic institutions world-wide, has grown out of a typically male-centered world.”
“As such, many terms in our lexicon carry a strong, male-centric, binary character to them. Terms such as ‘freshmen’ are decidedly male-specific, while terms such as ‘upperclassmen’ can be interpreted as both sexist and classist. Terms such as ‘junior’ and ‘senior’ are parallel to western male father-son naming conventions, and much of our written documentation uses he/she pronouns.”
The bill, which came out of the Committee on Curricular Affairs, was one of several equity and diversity resolutions to pass at the Senate’s April 27 meeting, according to Penn State News. The changes for gendered terms would apply to all written materials, including both internal and outward-facing documents.
Those changes were proposed in response to a policy allowing students to be recognized by their self-selected name and gender.
The committee’s bill also seeks to avoid “negatively reflect[ing]” fifth-year undergraduates by ceasing to call them “super seniors.”
“Concerns have been raised that numbering years beyond the fourth (4th) would perhaps negatively reflect on students who, for various reasons, are taking longer to complete their (typically) four-year programs, and are also referred to as ‘super-seniors’. In this case, the term does often carry a slightly negative connotation,” it reads.
The resolution passed at the end of April but has since received attention from some media outlets.
According to an example provided by the committee, using the phrase “him or her” was too problematic to survive the proposed edits.
The sample edit altered a theater course description to read “them” instead of “him or her.”
Original: “THEA 270 Introduction to Lighting Design (3). Introduction to Lighting Design will focus on helping each student to develop a design process that takes him or her from script to stage.”
Edited: “THEA 270 Introduction to Lighting Design (3). Introduction to Lighting Design will focus on helping each student to develop a design process that takes them from script to stage.”
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It used to be you could associate institutions of higher learning with intellect, critical thinking, and general smarts. You read this article and you see yet another example in a growing trend of such institutions falling into cancel culture and political correctness. What does one get for their dollar today by sending young adults to the halls of “higher education
? Certainlyh not education—and society is paying a dear price—not only to attend, but in an inferior end product.
What a bunch of so-called intellectuals!! These morons and their use of the supposed male centric world just tears me up!! It burns my *** my tax dollars go to this university so they can come up with new and jackass terminology.
STOP sending your kids and paying these overpaid, under performing institutions. Also do not have them get ANY of our tax dollars in any fashion. Have professors be liable for their stupidity along with all administrators. People have to wake up to this idiocy. This is an example of complete stupidity combined with ignorance, immaturity, psychotic thinking. These colleges and universities have to grow up. Call
AND stop supporting ANY SPORTS team from those colleges. CHOKE OFF their funding.
Oh my, better take the man out of humanity and and the Her & she out of Hershey, to name but 2. Get it all out, get it all down to Devolution and back into the cave.
I have to agree with you, that college educations are more voluntary liberal indoctrination, than actual education. Why parents willingly pay boatloads of money, to send their children to these indoctrination camps, is beyond me. Currently, the USA is comprised of weak minded people and their elders, who have been bullied, harassed and shamed into adopted ridiculous liberal positions and beliefs, to the point where some have gone to the extreme of believing they are obligated to seek gender reassignment treatments for their very young and confused children. Where will the insanity end?
NOT Until parents wake the hell up, and STOP SENDING THEIR ENTITLED BRATS to these places..
When we are all dead.
I graduated from PSU in 2006 and I can tell you these incompetent pointy-headed Academic Commies were even running the zoo back then. It was getting too PC back then, but now it’s outright Marxism. I would give these Commies a cent of my money. I would not recommend sending your kids there either. They will now try to indoctrinate you with CRT and LGBTQABCDEZ123 bullcrap and any other of their disgusting illiberal agenda they can think of.
I meant to say I would not give them a cent of my money!
What you found out even during your time and money you spent hoping. To advance yourself in a career was money wasted for the most part. And what was that money you spent to earn a degree eanenedfor you? Only the understanding thatheEducational System in America was embedded with marxists leaving them who earned their degree with the knowledge that they paided too dearly for a piece of paper
Those elite educator in America‘s public educational Institutions have ,over time, taken over and through tenure have secured ideological communist Associates . these Marxist educators teach the Marxist doctrine to Americas native young students under their daily guidance, A method often referred to ” as brain washing “
I wonder when they will tell us that a colon is also a uterus?
Growing trend?? Surely you jest.. IT TO me, seems damn near all of these places, have LONG SINCE converted to marxism/wokism, years ago.. Not just ‘Starting’…
“[t]he University, as with most all academic institutions world-wide, has grown out of a typically male-centered world.” Why don’t all of you communist Professors and communist Administrators, just eliminate all of us males, because we are all “evil” in your eyes. With all of us males gone, the human race will become extinct, with no ability to reproduce. That will eliminate all of you Marxists in the Universities.
For many years theLiberals, ,Th e ” Progressives, ” Marxists, have pushed hate for , ” The White male and intolerance of those of a different Races all the while these elite of the Democrat party were telling everybody how Tolerant they were…
Perhaps they should lead the way then, if they feel ‘all whites are bad’, by GIVING UP their tenured jobs, to less qualified minorities!
i won’t hold my breath though, waiting to see any of them PRACTICE what they preach.
As a female, I’ve never associated the word “Senior” with being a “gender” word. We have senior enlisted personnel, Senior Petty Officers, I’ve been a high school senior, college senior, senior in my field of Electronics engineering, a senior consultant. It’s just plain nuts that they come up with this ridiculous “someone somewhere may take issue with it being misconstrued as a gender specific word. Just as some wokesters have come up with the Cracker Barrel franchise name is racist, just because once upon a time somebody started the cliche.
Sorry tootsie. You are just one of the 2,999,999,006 women in the world who think the way you do. You probably think there are only two genders too. Bad. Real Bad. You need to remember these people are catering to the 100 who think the school should dig a pond if Joey thinks he/she/ – / is a duck. I bet they are responding to the CNN/MSNBC comment team. LTJG George. (Is Naval a racist term because is sounds like Navel thereby implying you have one?)
https://www.foxnews.com/media/comcast-att-fake-net-neutrality-comments.
This is just another step in trying to make our country a “Socialist Democrat Party State”. Where everyone is equal in every way in the eyes of the dictatorship and all dependant on the “Socialist Democrat Party State” for every aspect of their lives.
The “Socialist Democrat Party State” political officers, Gestapo, Woke and Cancel Culture are just getting started. You will obey, be loyal and support the “Socialist Democrat Party State” or you will be classified as
“Enemies of the State”.
24 Aug. 2020 – Monday on MSNBC’s “Live,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
referred to President Donald Trump and his Republican allies as “domestic enemies” and “enemies of the State”.
This current dishonorable, dishonest Democrat Party has become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY.
Thank you. Old navy men (not person) like you and me are appalled at what the woosey LEFTISTS are making of this once strong, proud and world admired country. Sodom and Gomorrah were pikers compared to what these useful idiot LEFTISTS want to make of our REPUBLIC. Do we throw away the term “human, or humankind” for “people or peoplekind”? It seems that these useful idiot LEFTISTS have no idea of who or what they are when SCIENCE shows that DNA is immutable, so there are two sexes, (MAN & WOMAN). You don’t have a choice on what you are, no matter your inane “feelings”.
Joseph C. Moore [USN Ret.]
AND so many of the kids GOING to these places, seem to be FULLY OK with this insanity happening. HELL In some cases, they are the ones PUSHING IT!
I see there’s 2 post from Navy vets. With the new democrat run military, the Army, Air Force, and even the Marines are being turned into a bunch of PC sissies. But I’ve noticed when watching Naval war movies, the Captain of an aircraft carrier will say “Bring her into the wind.” Or when a ship is heavily damaged they’ll say “She’ll never it in this shape.” Seems like the naval captains always refer to their ships as a female and with todays woke PC wimps, there’s no longer any such thing as he or she. The days of leaders like Patton, MacArthur, Lemay, Halsey, and Nimitz are long gone. Good thing this country isn’t fighting a world war right now. We’d lose!
I honestl feel, if i knew how farbbled up this nation would be in 2020, back in 1991, when i was looking for what to do after high school, i SERIOUSLY DOUBT i’d have joined our military and done 20 years in…
Very disturbing to see how our language is being twisted to appear gender specific, when they are words we’ve all used to indicate a level of accomplishment. Stop the insanity! What’s next? Renaming Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees because they indicate make superiority? What would the new title be?
I CAN Easily see those being next.
The first thing that citizens should understand is that the democrats who are its leaders in positions of power, are Socialists, Communists, and so they would destroy America and rebuild it in the image of a Communist country. The democrat who are in positions of leadership in the party believe, like, HITLER, to use public education to indoctrinate the youth in the proper way of thinking.
As was said “LET me control the text books, and i will control the country”
Warn the little Darlings beforehand that the real World that the University’s that you attend aren’t going to prepare you for th” The real World, ” of reality ” because these professors instructing America’s young people, aren’t interested in the hard realities of nature, especially the differences that no matter what “Semantics the University’s use to describe the real world, there are only ( Two Sexes in all of Nature ,) And their bodies and physical design determines which role in life each individual’s is best suited to fulfill
While we’re “fixing” terms, let’s replace “faculty” with “indoctrinators” (to more accurately describe what they [obviously] feel their JOB is)!
You are right about that . Or BRAIN FREEZERS could be used.
WardMD – Yes, while they are at this nonsense, I believe we should be allowed to make some changes as well. Theirs is a warped and twisted little semantics game based on emotions and over inflated egos. Making changes such as your example of replacing the word faculty with indoctrinators is a revision that is technically and clinically accurate. We should make a lot of such revisions going forward.
You might want to rethink sending your kids to Penn State. Like, Do you really want your tuition going to pay these people?
How long has it been since people’s big worry about Penn State was the varsity locker room and overly friendly football coaches? Have they moved on from pedophilia to gender studies?
These days, IF I had kids, i’d not send them to ANY College it seems.. THEY ARE ALL woke marxist indoctrination centers…
“Allowing students to be recognized by their self selected name and gender”. I think they really meant “self inflicted name and gender”
Isaiah 5:20,21,22,23.
It’s beyond pathetic what’s going on in our ‘universities’ l, it’s criminal. It’s we start dealing with the criminals responsible.
This is what happens when you open the door to freakish mentally ill people.
” Political Correctness, is a, All important matter, ” And if that political Correctness doesn’t Jive with, Real World, that these Marxist University professors see so vividly in their Ivy world of illusions, ” We can Dream it were so, Can’t we …
another nail in the coffins of the male of the species.
Sadly, taxpayer supported PSU has been at the forefront of the “PC”/Political Correctness BS since it started about 20 years ago. Look how that’s turned out! Centre County, where their main campus is located, is one of the few places in western PA that consistently votes blue. Time for the state legislature to step up and put a stop to this idiocy. Unfortunately, even though the GOP has the majority in both chambers, they don’t have the backbone to fix the problem.
Did you ever see that satirical comedy film PCU.. That was a mocumentary of how colleges are going.
IT SEEMS that film was way ahead of it’s time..
Because they obviously have nothing better to do..
This from the great institution that brought you Jerry Sandusky…..
The headline looks like it came from the Babylon Bee. How ridiculous do things have to get before the people paying the bills (the parents) rise up and say “We’re not going to put up with this anymore.”?
Does anyone really think about the gender of words when they use them? Language evolves and flows naturally from use not imposition of extraineous elements. Academia and government are really out of touch with the reality of how people speak, their artificial jargon sounds unnatural, forced, and at times just plain silly. I often wonder how these people feel about foreign languages including Latin in which the words themselves have genders in order to decline them? All languages have varients of the root and dialects so why not recognize a special form of English used by those cloistered from the real world: ACADEMESE!
So, why don’t we all (men, women, and any in between) start wearing the same dull, boring gender-neutral clothing, dye and cut our hair the same, contact lenses to make eyes all uniform in color, a hyper pigment used on the “horrible light-skinned people.” That absolutely nothing to stand out or elude to a specific gender. We can all use they/them. That way, no one gets offended, no one is special, no one can claim preference or prejudice. Humans are quickly developing a hive mentality. If there is such a thing as visitors from another planetary system, take me, please…I want to escape this insanity.
Like was done in Maoist China?
More and more i say, HAND ALL LIBERALS over to the borg, to get assimilated.
WHERE does this INSANITY end ? Every day I read about ANOTHER “Woke” change in our country, and frankly, I am sick of it ! The term “Freshmore, Sophmore, Junior, Senior” has been around for UMPTEEN years, and there is NOTHING WRONG with those terms. Does the faculty of this University have nothing better to do, than spend time making RIDICULOUS, UNNECESSARY changes like THIS one ?
Unfortunately, i can’t see it ending any year soon.. NOT TILL EVERY SANE PARENT left, wakes the hell up and DOES SOMETHING (like ceasing to fund their kids going there).
How incredibly sophmoric. Actually it is probably better that they drop the terms that reflect the idea that todays universities are in any way, shape, or form like the universities of the past. From the Middle Ages on a university was a place where logic was taught, free thought was encouraged, and intelligent intellectual pursuits were followed. The modern university has NOTHING in common with them.
Aren’t toddlers described 1st year and 2nd year children? They are a little young to go to college, you know.
AND if their mentality is STILL that of a 2 or 3 yr old, WHY SHOULD ANY OF THESE over privileged brats EVER BE ALLOWDE TO VOTE!
Since we cannot longer use she, he, it why not just combine them all to become one word (*****) or to be PC can eliminate the “e” in the word.
We can apply this to all democrats cause they want to be known as one without any reference to their birth gender.
They have already been combined into one word:
Comrade!
THe way things are going, china / russia won’t have to fire a single shot, to completely take us over.. They will just wait, then waltz in, and be WELCOMED with open arms by the libtards.
Is it safe to assume they’ve stopped teaching French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish,… language courses?
Otherwise their brains would explode because every noun has a gender! And every adjective in Russian too!
Maybe the only language they’ll teach is Mandarin Chinese, where even pronouns don’t have gender: Same word for “he,” “she,” and “it.”
That is something one of my favorite gals on youtube/blaze tv asked.. WHY IS IT they only ever seem to go after the ENGLISH LANGUAGE, when damn near all others are also gendered!?
One surmises that they are no longer going to have a “junior” class as well? I suppose “senior” could be non-binary…like the citizens who we lost in the last 20-40 years who would never put up with this nonsense, and the ones who are in the queue now and helped pave the way for all this…
And I assume that “bachelor” and “master” degrees will no longer be awarded…
Penn State should also change the mascot name. Lions are know as the KING of the beast and that sounds too macho. How about the Mice? There’s nothing threatening about those.
Tell that to 99% of the female population, who screams at the top of their lungs, every time they see a mouse (Or spider!)
The new titles are:
Freshxshu, Softmore and Seen-yore.
How’s about ‘Mind is mush. Mind has been started brainwashing and :brainwashing complete”
Anyone who believes ENGLISH = Racism is an idiot and not well served by attending an institiution of ‘higher’ learning. I for one, refuse to re-learn ENGLISH after 59 years because some retards with nothing better to do think words we have always used are racist, misogynist, or whatever.