How to include nonbinary students Nonbinary students face a wide range of problems in colleges, frequently finding themselves ignored and erased in all parts of college life. If all official materials and communications from a college are phrased to ignore the existence of nonbinary people or when it is an uphill struggle to get basic details recognised this can lead to nonbinary students becoming detached and disconnected from college life. This list of simple suggestions and considerations will hopefully lead to nonbinary students being actively included. The suggestions are based upon the much larger guidance on Including Transgender Students at University of Cambridge and it is recommended that this is read along with these suggestions. http://www.lgbt.cusu.cam.ac.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2014/01/IncludingtransgenderStudentsat CambridgeUniversity.pdf
Checklist: This checklist should act as a quick summary of actions which will better include nonbinary students and each point is explained in more detail below. ● All communications and documents from the college should use gender neutral language ● Dress codes should be gender neutral ● Make sure students can have nonbinary genders and titles on records ● Use the pronouns a student asks you to ● Support staff should know how to support nonbinary students ● Where possible make bathrooms gender neutral
Pronouns: Nonbinary students use a wide variety of different pronouns to refer to themselves in the third person, such as they, ze or ey. These should always be used to refer to the student unless they have said otherwise. Nonbinary students may also use the pronouns he or she and it should not be assumed that these always indicate a male or female identity. If a person is unsure how to use someone’s pronouns correctly then it is ok to ask them (it would not be acceptable to avoid using pronouns completely for this person or to use incorrect pronouns).
Communications and other materials from college: These can include emails, letters, webpages or any other material the college creates and in these gendered language should be avoided. This means that phrases such as ‘ladies and gentlemen’ should be replaced with descriptors such as ‘students/residents/guests/members of the college’. Where documents use pronouns, such as licenses to occupy, it is recommended that ‘they’ is used instead of ‘he/she’, ‘he or she’ or any other variant which uses gendered pronouns.
Records: Where colleges keep records of a person’s names, title and gender options which are gender neutral should be offered. For titles this should include no title and ‘Mx’. For gender this should include ‘other’ and ‘none’. In general the most inclusive systems will allow anything to be entered in these fields. It should be made easy to change any of these pieces of information and colleges should publish easily accessible guides on how a student could go about doing this.
Support staff: When nonbinary students seek help from staff in colleges they frequently find themselves being subjected to prejudice or that staff are so uninformed that they are unable to correctly support them. Staff in support roles should be provided with information on how to support nonbinary students and made aware of the issues they face. If a nonbinary student makes a complaint against another student or staff member then their concerns should be treated very seriously and not dismissed. It is of paramount importance that a student is not further victimised when seeking support or redress for incident which has targeted them based upon their identity as a nonbinary person.
Bathrooms: Mens and womens bathrooms can present a problem for nonbinary people who frequently face violence in them if they are not seen to fit. new developments and refurbishments should attempt to include single stall gender neutral toilets and many of these already exist. These should be labeled in a neutral manner with signs such as ‘toilet’ or ‘WC’. Signs which say ‘unisex’ or which include both the mens and womens bathroom signs are discouraged. Where a nonbinary person uses a gendered toilet, they should not be questioned or otherwise harassed for doing so.
Dress Codes: Where dress codes are required for certain events the guidance for what is acceptable should be presented in a gender neutral fashion. Instead of providing lists for men and women either provide sets of acceptable clothes or a list of acceptable clothes from which students can then choose what is most appropriate. An example of how to do this is the academic dress code for graduation. http://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/yourcourse/graduationandwhatnext/degreeceremo nies/academicaldress
Singular they: Some people still object to using ‘they’ to refer to a singular person on grammatical grounds. Singular ‘they’ remains the prefered style for online communications of the UK government https://www.gov.uk/guidance/contentdesign/writingforgovuk (writing to GOV.UK style), it is being adopted by a growing number of newspapers and has been used by many famous authors throughout history. https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singulartheyandthemanyreasonswhy itscorrect/ It should be noted that any objections they have do not constitute a valid reason to not use it.