By Ceoli Jacoby

Shige Sakurai has long fought on behalf of transgender and nonbinary individuals. 

As the Director of Leadership Initiatives and Associate Director of the LGBT Equity Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, Sakurai founded Lavender Leadership Honor Society–the first known collegiate honor society focusing on leadership for LGBTQ+ social justice– in 2015. Sakurai also created a study abroad program at this university focusing on movements for LGBTQ+ justice in Thailand and the Asia-Pacific regions, and worked to develop an online presence for the university’s LGBT Equity Center. With these accomplishments under their belt, Sakurai’s latest project focuses on something close to their heart as a non-binary person: pronouns. 

As of Feb. 11, students have been able to list their pronouns and name pronunciation in Canvas, the university’s online learning system. The feature was released in January by Canvas’ developer and publisher Instructure, but change was a long time coming. 

In 2014, the LGBT Equity Center submitted a proposal to the University Senate that sought to remedy issues with record keeping that excluded transgender and nonbinary students. Until the proposal was approved in 2017, official University of Maryland documents did not accurately distinguish between gender and sex, nor did they allow students to specify if their primary name differed from their legal one. 

In addition to amending official forms, the proposal also suggested that the university adopt a feature that would allow students to add their personal pronouns and primary name to Canvas.

“Our office’s job has mostly been to educate, advocate, and try to name what some of the community’s concerns and issues are and how best to resolve them,” Sakurai said.

The LGBT Equity Center worked closely with the Division of IT, and were originally planning to accomplish their goal using NameCoach– a software with the primary function to record and store name pronunciations, and also includes a field for pronouns. 

However, when it became known that Canvas would offer this function as a built-in feature, it seemed to be a better fit, Sakurai said.

“It wasn’t as simple as ‘this thing happened because Canvas offered this feature and that’s why we offered it,’” they added. “It was more that this [initiative] came along and it was good for what we needed at the moment.”

Students can access the new feature by logging into Canvas, clicking “Account” and going to their profile. After selecting “Edit Profile,” students will be able to choose from a dropdown menu, which includes 21 preset pronoun options.

Sakurai said that the feature could be helpful to many people, even if they do not identify as transgender or nonbinary. They said that since its launch, over 1,000 people have chosen to add their pronouns to the system. Out of those, only approximately 100 have selected they/them pronouns.

However, not all students at the university view the change as positive. 

“I don’t think it’s necessary because in my opinion there are only two genders, male and female,” said undecided freshman Isaac Butz. 

For those students who do not agree with the recent move, Sakurai suggests that they simply do not opt-in to the feature.

“It’s sort of basic to human dignity and respecting other people,” Sakurai said. “I think that it disrupts the idea that you know what somebody’s identity or gender is or how they would want to be referred to.”

Sakurai explained that being referred to by the wrong name or pronoun can be invalidating for a non-binary or transgender person, especially if it occurs repeatedly. They referenced data from the 2018 Campus Climate Study in which nonbinary students reported feeling the least physically and emotionally safe out of any gender group. 

However, they hope that encouraging an open dialogue about pronouns and gender identity will make strides toward changing campus culture. 

“I’ve had many classes this semester [where we] have talked about pronouns and professors reminding people to respect other’s pronouns,” said junior journalism major Sarah Dilworth. “It makes me happy to see that the school is becoming so accepting and showing their students respect.”