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The Dean at North Carolina University may have set a precedent in language that will be replicated at campuses across the country at both the college and high school level, changing the term “freshman” to “freshmores.”
Incoming students will no longer be referred to as freshman at one North Carolina University. These first term students will now be referred to as a “freshmore.”
In an effort to be more gender inclusive, Jefford Vahlbusch, dean of the Honors College at Appalachian State University began using the term “freshmores.” According to the Appalachian student newspaper, Vahlbusch introduced the term when he first came to work for the school two years ago.
But that wasn’t even the first time he employed the term. He coined the phrase, while he was working at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, as the result of trying to come up with the phrase that could be used to describe freshman in a “non-sexist way.”
“We have women and men as college students, and I think having a non-gender specific way of talking about them, of addressing them, just shows that we’re aware of the power of language,” Vahlbusch said.
While some people are sticklers for tradition, and are resistant to change, “freshmores” falls comfortably in line with sophomores. It’s a step in the same direction and feels like it belongs. It’s not such a drastic change that it can’t be comfortably accepted. It’s also a term that produces the desired result – a non-gender way of referring to a body of students.
Arguments have already come up for the term “mankind,” which also implies gender. But we already have a perfect and oft-used substitute for that word: Humankind.
A term many people use to describe a group of people, especially in both the Northeast and West Coast is “you guys.” In the South, this term is replaced by “y’all.”
When I worked at a small private West Coast college during the mid-1990s, I had one female student complain about my using “you guys” to address a mixed-gender group. When I asked this group of people what they thought, at that time, most people felt it really didn’t matter and she was making a big deal out of nothing. Although, I certainly understood the inaccuracy of using such a term and she wasn’t exactly wrong for feeling the way she did.
Later, when I moved to the South, where everyone uses “y’all” everywhere you go – I took the “when in Rome” approach and used the language of the locals. I no longer used “you guys.”
That said, we are living in very different times, where the specificity of language has come to matter – in a big way.
Today, many people take offense at the use of certain terms – even when no offense is intended or when the speaker is unaware they are doing so. That’s because language expectations and implications have changed. We have to keep in mind that language isn’t fixed, it’s always evolving.
Nonetheless, in the current PC climate, “you guys” is certainly not too far from its critical examination and possible extermination on the chopping block.
