Written by Dakota Griffin and Sam Arslanian
Starting today, USC students will have the ability to change their preferred name or gender pronouns online through myUSC. While students could previously change their names through the LGBT Resource Center and Title IX Office at USC, the new update streamlines the process by allowing students to make changes online themselves.
The implementation of this new policy aims to create a more welcoming and accommodating learning environment at USC, according to an email sent to students by the Chief Information Officer Doug Shook.
"Student choices may reflect nicknames, middle names, Americanized names, or names that better align with their gender identities," the email said.
The changes will appear on the university directory, class rosters and Blackboard, but will not apply to financial aid or medical records, which still require students' legal names.
"The ability to go by your preferred name or pronouns in a classroom setting can add to the mental well-being of students," said Emerson Whitney, a USC teaching fellow in the gender studies program.
Whitney said the new policy allows all Trojans to feel welcome in the classroom, a feeling that boosts student engagement.
"Their ability to access that back-end of the system and change it in advance before class, I think, is a really wonderful thing for those students for both their well-being in the classroom and their safety in general in and outside of the classroom," Whitney said. "It creates an atmosphere that encourages participation when people feel like their whole being is invited into the room."
Jordan Trinh, an Asian American studies major who uses the pronouns they/them, said the ability to change pronouns in myUSC significantly simplifies the process.
"I was really excited because before getting to USC I tried talking to the LGBTQ Center and the Title IX Office on the process of doing that, and it involves emailing each office to request a certain change," Trinh said. "Ultimately, it was too tedious to go through the labor of doing all that. Making it a simple page on myUSC is going to make it so much easier."
USC joins other major California institutions such as UCLA, Stanford and UC Berkeley in allowing students to change their preferred names and gender pronouns. USC English Professor Chris Freeman said the change removes any discomfort students might face in the classroom when explaining what their preferred names or gender pronouns are.
"It's very awkward for them to tell the teacher, tell the class to be working with a name they no longer use or a gender that they no longer identify as," said Freeman, who also teaches regularly in the Department of Gender Studies. "So many of these changes are symbolic. And what they represent is an acknowledgment of belonging—they represent inclusiveness."