DISCLAIMER: This week's OC Voice mentions a CHCCS Board of Education member who is related to the author of the OC Report. Neither the OC Report author nor the Board of Education member provided input on the subject or writing of this column.
The OC Voice is a portion of the OC Report newsletter where local residents may have a platform to talk about local issues they care about. Christen Campbell is a French teacher at Chapel Hill High School.
Should students be allowed to choose to identify as nonbinary?
The answer should be a simple: Hell, yes.
Having taught about progressive cultures that have adopted the 3rd-person pronoun, it seems like an obvious choice to allow this option in a learning and social environment where our youth are trying to negotiate who they are, what they want to be, and, ever importantly, how they want to be perceived.
So, why is it so important to allow students to pick their identity? Well, it should come as no surprise that as an educator, it’s my job to make my classroom inclusive and welcoming to everyone. Yup. Everyone. So it was a relief for me this year when I finally learned about the inclusive language that was being used in French. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Romance languages, languages like French are blatantly gender normative. But here’s the thing: my students don’t always fit into those two perfect “pink” and “blue” categories. And while the Academie Française, the governing body in France that is the ultimate decision-maker about allowing words in the French language, voted not to recognize the use of gender-neutral pronouns, such as ‘iel,’ I can guarantee you that people are still using them.
I asked the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board if we could add that nonbinary box to our intake forms, and my heart sank when I learned that it was beyond their control. After inquiring further, school board member and former teacher extraordinaire Mary Ann Wolf responded that, “This is something we would have implemented long ago if we were able. I'll keep you posted about any changes.”
A mere 243 miles away in Washington DC, students can choose how they identify. Progressive, maybe. Inclusive, yes. We’ve added gender neutral bathrooms and survived, maybe, HB2, it’s time to add that choice. Boy. Girl. Nonbinary.
I mean, what are you afraid of? After all, it’s just a box.
