Illustration by Katie Doyle
It has been over one year since Robby Thompson, a former board member on the Student Association of George Brown College, raised concerns over the inability of students to display their name and pronouns on student systems such as Blackboard to avoid misgendering. Despite creating a comprehensive action plan to tackle this issue, its contents have not yet been fully implemented.
Following student complaints, it was announced that both changing names and displaying pronouns would be introduced in late February of this year. And while students are now able to enter their chosen name, the second half of this promise has still not been fulfilled. The college hasn’t addressed this issue since its original rollout in February and the SAGBC, which originally brought the issue to the college’s attention in 2020, says it hasn’t followed up with college leadership.
Rho Odrach, a trans, non-binary student who works as disability support staff for the Community Care Centre, never had any issues indicating their name or pronouns on Blackboard at their previous school, the University of Windsor. Many universities and colleges have this feature built-in already. But when Odrach started online classes at GBC last winter, they had to endure their professors and classmates using their deadname – a term which describes the name that they were given at birth and which they no longer use.
While they continuously reminded others of their name and pronouns, their class would forget and default to their deadname, which they saw on Blackboard. Emails to the college to change their name were continuously ignored or sidelined, and Odrach said the entire process of fighting for a seemingly simple change was exhausting.
Odrach and their partner, who is also trans, feel as if they have to be on guard and alert at all times. Odrach has already experienced plenty of derogatory name-calling due to the way they present.
“There’s so many aspects of our life where our gender is not recognized or affirmed. So it just sucks that school takes up so much of our life, and it has to be another space where our gender is not recognized,” they said.
Greg Baross, manager of business process integration and student systems at the college, was hired for his position at the end of March 2021, meaning he wasn’t in the role when the issue was originally brought up last year. Baross admits that the controversy over displaying pronouns only came across his table when we at the Dialog began the conversation.
Baross said the change is not as easy as it may seem to introduce.
Implementation requires manual sorting of how each process interacts with each other, and how information is shared. Multiple stakeholders and resources such as HR and the Student Association must be consulted in its formation as well, says Baross. Data placement needs to be carefully considered as it can affect where the data is used and what reports need to be modified.
“It goes through a lot of different stages, a lot of different steps. That data goes through many different areas of the nervous systems. So I think preferred name was the first phase of that, and then pronouns is just the natural next step,” said Baross.
As an individual who personally used the name change option when it became available and a member of the LGBTQ community himself, Baross feels that this is an important issue, and that he is especially responsible to make this a priority.
Baross has added exploring what displaying pronouns would entail to his team’s business plan for the next fiscal year. His target is to have the change implemented for August 2022.
Echoing Odrach, Baross believes that this situation signals a learning opportunity to all faculty, support staff and administration to use correct reports, and utilize the correct areas where one can see chosen names.
Unlike Baross, Sri Krishna Rajan, the director of education and equity at the Student Association, was on the board when Thompson initially brought this issue to the table.
The SAGBC board was addressed in December, according to meeting minutes published by the SAGBC, that the implementation was underway. No SAGBC board member has brought the topic up again since.
When asked about the delay, Krishna said the long system outage that the servers experienced this summer and the prioritization of making sure the system runs smoothly while most students were learning online may have contributed. He concurred with Baross that a change like this takes time and moves in incremental steps and through several attempts.
He regrets that Baross was not informed about the fact that this needed to be put on the agenda. According to Krishna, the onus was on the college to ensure a seamless transition.
Regarding the lack of discussions of the subject in SAGBC meeting notes, Krishna said that the Student Association had placed trust in the college to implement the changes, and assumed that they had sufficiently conveyed its importance.
“The issue has not been sidelined,” he said. “Once you raise the issue and work on it, and have those discussions with the college, we had the confirmation that those changes were in progress and would be implemented. So you move on to other issues that need to be addressed.”
Krishna admitted that no attempt was made by the Student Association to follow-up.
Given their experience at their previous institution, Odrach feels that adding in pronouns should be a simple process with the ample resources that the college possesses. They speculated on whether the delay was a result of incompetence or indifference.
They also lamented their disappointment in the language that college continues to use. For example, saying “preferred name”, a term that is still displayed on GBC’s website, implies that students have another name, but prefer to use another. This can be incredibly hurtful to trans students, as it diminishes the need for trans students to have their chosen name recognized.
Odrach noted that while trans consultants could have been hired to detect offensive language, staff education via mandatory workshops could go a long way in preventing this from happening in the first place. Staff could learn in these workshops for example, that normalizing sharing pronouns is an effective way to provide a safe space for trans students. Much of the burden placed on trans students to do the work could be alleviated in this way.
“As a teacher, it’s your responsibility to support your students. And I feel like if GBC isn’t encouraging and mandating training for their teachers about trans awareness and how to be respectful, it continues this cycle where the school just isn’t thinking about us,” said Odrach.
In further support of educating faculty, Odrach noted that even after changing their name on Blackboard, some teachers would still use their deadname, which is still immediately accessible to staff. They believe staff were not told why there was a distinction between given and chosen names, and why it mattered to students.
“I’ve always heard things about George Brown being really good. I just expected them to take initiative about this and thought they would have been enthusiastic about implementing these things. I’m honestly just disappointed,” said Odrach. “We have to honour people like us. Especially trans-BIPOC folks, who have been pushing for our liberation and our rights. And unfortunately, especially trans women of colour are often the target of violence compared to any other population. And it’s really important that we give space for that”
“It’s something we all have to be constantly addressing and confronting, but also just celebrating their lives is really important as well. And I just think it’s really amazing and important that we have our own day to celebrate those lives.”
