Yale University will no longer formally call first-year students "freshmen" as the university is officially changing its terminology to be gender-neutral.
So instead of being considered an "upperclassman," a student with multiple years of collegiate experience will be officially considered an "upper-level" student.
According to Yale's student newspaper, administrators are not expecting students, faculty and staff to change how they refer to freshmen or upperclassmen. The change is one that is merely to be used in official titles and correspondence.
“It’s really for public, formal correspondence and formal publications … we’re not trying to tell people what language to use in their everyday casual conversations,” Yale Colleg Dean Marvin Chun told the Yale News. “We’re not trying to be language police.”
The new gender-neutral terminology was unveiled in the 2017-18 edition of the student handbook.
Yale's student newspaper reported that administrators have been considering the change to gender-neutral terms for several years. The paper added that there have been growing calls for greater gender inclusively at Yale.
