Kennesaw Pride Alliance and other organizations representing the LGBTQ community hosted a teach-in March 19 on the Kennesaw campus and released an academic letter to address comments made by media sources about a pamphlet released by the LGBTQ Resource Center regarding gender-neutral pronouns.
One of the media organizations that reported on the pamphlet is an online press outlet called Campus Reform. It focuses on universities across the U.S., and on March 1 it published an article about the pamphlet on its website.
Campus Reform said in the article that a student received a copy of the pamphlet from an administrator in the student center.
The student told Campus Reform that, “It is a disgrace because I thought that my school was one of the few schools left that weren’t teaching these things. But when I found this, I felt really disappointed.”
KPA responded with an academic letter to the university explaining that the pamphlet was published in 2013, so it is not new to the university and it does not have any administrative power.
“While the University has historically promoted and protected the LGBTQ community, not recognizing a person’s preferred pronouns on campus does not carry any punishment,” the letter said. “The pamphlet exists to educate the curious, to promote a culture of acceptance and to recognize students who exist outside of the gender binary.”
The letter also explains that the goal of KPA is to “provide a safe, supportive, and inclusive space where students of all gender identities, gender expressions, and sexual orientations can come to receive support, resources, and referrals in order to aid in the realization of their fullest potential as students, individuals, leaders, community members and advocates.”
KPA said that, even though the pamphlet was created five years ago, it has a right to share non-binary pronouns and advise on other ways for students to discuss pronouns.
KPA held the teach-in after sending the initial letter to KSU.
“We hosted the teach-in, mostly, as a way to meet with our general body and get their feedback on what is happening with our organization,” said KPA President Vera Brickell. “We wanted to talk to them to make sure they were informed on the topic and to hear what they were looking for out of the officer board.
“We tried to listen to them and hear their perspectives and give ours so we could make a plan on how we will publicly and internally be handling this,” Brickell continued.
Campus Reform’s mission statement reads in part, “Our team of professional journalists works alongside student activists and student journalists to report on the conduct and misconduct of university administrators, faculty, and students.”
