It’s obvious that the gender barrier is fading fast. Hilary Clinton is Secretary of State, Oprah Winfrey is one of the richest people in the world and “Modern Family”’s Cameron Tucker is a stay-at-home dad.The growing notion that school— mostly colleges— want to change the term “freshman” to “first year students” is surprising. Is our country so politically correct that every word has to be re-formatted so it’s gender neutral?
Such changes would be insignificant, and wouldn’t solve the problems that gender-equality activists advocate.
Changing “freshman” would mean other words, like “fireman” and “salesman,” also would have to change because they contain male-specific suffixes. Additionally, it’d be nearly impossible to effectively integrate new versions of these words into everyday language.
Small changes like these don’t solve gender-bias problems.
The word “freshman” bears very little significance to students, so why fix something that’s not broken?
Michael Farley, a reporter at the “Vermont Cynic,” argues that the University of Vermont’s idea to change the word is foolish.
“Is the beef with freshman that it has ‘man’ in it rather than just it being archaic?” Farley writes in his April 12 article “Point Counter Point—‘freshman’ versus ‘first-year.’” “If that’s the case, do PC people want to change history classes to peoplestry classes?”
There’s no conclusive evidence to prove female students would feel more included after the word change, so colleges should channel their money into a more productive, tangible change, like introducing more sports or internship/job opportunities for everyone, regardless of gender.
Someone • May 24, 2011 at 7:54 am
Who cares? Seriously. Being politcally correct just annoys me.
Rick Deutsch • May 5, 2011 at 1:06 pm
haha the freshmen have been so dissapoitning this year. First a taser, then bb gun, then the grafitti!
Anon • Mar 25, 2011 at 12:46 pm
there comes a point where it stops being political correctness and just becomes somebody fighting for a meaningless cause simply for the sake of fighting for something, this is that point
legion • Mar 21, 2011 at 7:33 am
man
WOman
oh god, there’s a masculine insinuation to a word reffering to the female gender. Quick, change woman to female!
😐
Anon • Mar 17, 2011 at 11:13 am
This article gives no mention as to their reasoning behind the change. It brings up gender bias and the change in terminology, with correlation implied, yet no where does it actually say their reasonig was gender based. While it may very well be gender based, the new terminology could have had other motives. “First Year Students” sounds more formal than “Freshman”, which is almost derogatory in some perspective, even if no one really cares.
Anonymous • Mar 14, 2011 at 7:56 pm
Police officer. Fire fighter. Congressperson. It’s not that hard, people.
Irrelevant • Mar 11, 2011 at 11:58 am
Why this article has any impact at all is beyond me. The vast majority of female students simply do not care whether they are called “freshmen” as first year students. Regardless of whether the semantic change creates gender equality or not, this article isn’t worth discussion.
jeffries • Mar 7, 2011 at 6:24 pm
I wish the writer would have consulted other institutions of higher learning that uses the first year, second year, etc. title. UVA is the one that immediately comes to mind, but it is not alone. This is also the terminology used at most schools in the UK. Where does the author get information supporting the assumption that it’s a question of political correctness/gender equality? If this is the case (and it might be), there must be some sort of support for it. I realize this is a short opinion piece, but it’s poorly supported.
LifeLongLearner • Mar 7, 2011 at 9:29 am
From the Office of the Dean of Students at UVA: “First Year, Second Year, Third Year, Fourth Year, instead of freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. Why? To be a “senior” implies that a person has reached the final phase of learning, a feat that Mr. Jefferson believed impossible, arguing instead that education is a life-long process.” Don’t think this is about using gender-free words…maybe it’s about adapting Thomas Jefferson’s well-thought out approach to a new setting (U of VT) and a younger generation?
OG • Mar 7, 2011 at 9:23 am
no. there freshman. always will be. relax world.
average student • Mar 7, 2011 at 9:22 am
this is feminism gone 2 far. freshman is not sexist in anyway and before this article anyone at whitman ever thought of this. Its WhitMAN u want to change that now.
HPgirl • Mar 5, 2011 at 11:49 am
Why is there no mention of Harry Potter in this article? they call their students first years, second years, third years, etc.. To anyone who knows this, this article just seems unsupported and dumb.
justsaying • Mar 4, 2011 at 8:34 am
Why is there no mention of UVA in this article? they call their students first years, second years, third years, etc.. To anyone who knows this, this article just seems unsupported and dumb.