Over the past year, there have been many injustices brought to light that have impacted the Penn State community.

Most recently, the racist “Zoom-bombing” on the Black Caucus left a stain that is hard to get rid of, especially since the university hasn’t done much to combat it.

Racism is not the only thing that some Penn State students have to go through on a daily basis. They experience sexism and xenophobia; they get judged because of their age, ability, or socioeconomic status. In other words, they don’t feel like they can be themselves at Penn State.

This brings me to a tweet that made the rounds on Twitter last week. It comes from a user named Emily, who is a Ph.D. student in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. She was told by Penn State that she could not add her pronouns to Zoom.

What she is saying is that there is no place on Zoom for someone to put their pronouns so that they’ll show up during class. Penn State uses the directory to get all of its information, which is why your legal name is used on Zoom calls and on Canvas. Pronouns are not a part of what is included in the student directory.

Penn State does have a policy called Administrative Policy AD84, which talks about one’s preferred name and gender identity. A person can change their name to reflect if they go by a nickname, their initials, or if they are transitioning. They can also change their gender from the gender they were assigned at birth, but that is not the same as providing pronouns.

As Emily stated, the only option is the prefix that is used to go before your name.

There are loopholes that allow people to add their pronouns to the display name on Zoom (like renaming as a host), but why should people need to take initiative to do that? Penn State should give students and staff a place where they can have their pronouns be automatically shown. A person’s pronouns are a part of who they are, and that shouldn’t be excluded.

Penn State can focus on roundtables and anti-racism commissions all it wants, but there comes a time where it must act. Even if it is as small as granting people the ability to change their pronouns or make their pronouns public to the rest of the community, it would make a difference.

I don’t have an easy solution nor a perfect solution. But reckoning with social justice means that there are no easy answers.

So, Penn State, take some time to think about what may be called “simple.” It may not seem like much to focus on pronouns, but to a lot of people, it matters. Being able to fully be themselves matters. Adding pronouns shows you’re not just committed to them but to the long road of work that it takes to make this campus a better, safer place.