After the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor announced its latest policy allowing students to self-identify using their own “designated personal pronoun” Tuesday, a student decided to change his preferred pronoun to “His Majesty” and urged other students to take advantage of the new policy as well.
Grant Strobl, a Young America’s Foundation (YAF) student leader at UM Ann Arbor, updated his preferred pronoun under the “other” option on his school’s “Designated Pronouns” webpage.
“I henceforth shall be referred to as: His Majesty, Grant Strobl,” he announced after publicizing a screenshot of his new web selection. “I encourage all U-M students to go onto Wolverine Access, and insert the identity of their dreams.”
In an interview with the College Fix, Strobl said he had no problem addressing others by the titles they preferred.
“I have no problem with students asking to be identified a certain way, almost like someone named Richard who would like to be called Dick. It is respectful to make a reasonable effort to refer to students in the way that they prefer.”
He did, however, have a problem with the university institutionalizing the use of people’s personal titles and mandating a certain response from its students for identities that can be so arbitrary. Similar sentiments were addressed at Yale University earlier this month, when Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro joked that he wanted to be addressed as “Your Grace.” Shapiro later expounded on his larger point about offending others:
If we’re all better to one another – not in terms of being oversensitive or worrying we’re all going to offend one another, but in assuming that we probably will offend each other from time to time, and that’s okay … That doesn’t mean we should go around insulting each other. But it does mean that we have to respect facts as facts, opinions as opinions, and insults as insults – they’re not all the same thing …
But to UM Ann Arbor administrators, facts and feelings have merged into one.
“The University of Michigan is committed to fostering an environment of inclusiveness. Consistent with this value, the University has created a process for students to designate pronouns with the University and have those pronouns reflected on class rosters this fall,” administrators informed students in a campus-wide email.
UM Ann Arbor’s new policy will allow all students to self-identify as any gender of their preference, regardless of the gender identity they were born with. On the school’s website, they are given a list of gender pronoun options to choose from. If their preferred gender is not listed as an option, they can write one in the webpage’s “other” option, as Strobl did.
Once students have selected their preferred pronouns, all class rosters using the school’s Wolverine Access system will be updated with the students’ new pronouns. Faculty members will have to ensure the students are called by their preferred pronouns, and other students will be expected to comply as well.
“If you make a mistake and use the wrong pronoun, you can acknowledge that you made a mistake, and use the correct pronoun next time,” students were told.
In an attempt to publicize the sheer ridiculousness of college-institutionalized personal identities, Strobl encouraged his friends to tweet their new identities using the hashtag #UMPronounChallenge. The hashtag took off immediately, as students had fun describing their dream identities and were joined by other Twitter users:
YAF spokeswoman Emily Jashinsky told The Daily Wire she was proud of Strobl’s leadership in addressing his school’s over-the-top policies.
“In his new role as of chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom Board of Governors, Grant is already showing the country why YAF is a force to be reckoned with by creatively and fearlessly exposing the cracks in the Left’s flawed arguments,” Jashinsky said. “Unlike social justice warriors, YAFers like Grant understand that having a good sense of humor can be the best way to address these bizarre new policies. Campus leftists should take note—YAF activists are everywhere and increasingly eager to expose their nonsense.”
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