A university fired 2 employees for including their pronouns in emails

When Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot decided to include their pronouns at the end of their business emails, they thought they were on the right track: following what they considered to be an emerging professional standard, while also conveying a message of inclusion to the Christian university where they worked.

But their bosses at Houghton University, New York State, saw things very differently.

Administrators at Houghton, which is affiliated with a conservative branch of the Methodist Church, asked Ms. Zelaya and Mr. Wilmot, two residence hall directors, to remove the words “she/her” and “he/him” from their email signatures. say they violated a new policy. When they refused to do so, both employees were fired just weeks before the end of the semester.

Houghton’s firing of the two staff has dismayed some of its alumni, nearly 600 of whom have signed a petition in protest. And it comes as gender and sexuality have become major fault lines in an increasingly divided nation, and after other faith-based organizations, including Manhattan’s Yeshiva University, have argued that the First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom allow them to and treat transgender people differently from others.

While Republican lawmakers across the country have been trying to revive their base by passing laws restricting gender reassignment health care and banning drag performances and classroom teaching about sexual orientation and gender identityChristian colleges have become the scene of these escalating debates.

In particular, institutions such as Hillsdale College in Michigan and Liberty University in Virginia have played a pivotal role, both in producing and attracting movement leaders.

With fewer than 1,000 students, Houghton is smaller and off the beaten path, but it has recently taken other steps that have brought it on par with its conservative Christian peers, and that has alarmed some alumni. As of 2021, it has closed a multicultural student center and environmental sustainability program and revoked recognition of an on-campus LGBTQ club after the club refused to promote more conservative views on sex and gender.

“I think the bottom line is, they want to be trans-exclusive and they want to communicate that to potential students and the parents of potential students,” Wilmot said of his firing.

Ms Zelaya and Mr Wilmot, neither of whom are transgender, said they had professional and pastoral reasons for including their pronouns, as well as practical ones. email correspondence.

“There’s the professional piece, and the practical piece, and there’s also an inclusive piece, and I think that’s the piece that this institution doesn’t want,” said Mr Wilmot, 29.

Michael Blankenship, a university spokesperson, said in a statement that Houghton “has never terminated an employment relationship based solely on the use of pronouns in staff email signatures.”

“In recent years, we have demanded that anything extraneous be removed from email signatures, including quotes from scripture,” he said.

In Ms Zelaya’s letter of resignation, a photo of which was widely shared online, she was told she was fired “as a result of your refusal to remove pronouns from your email signature” and for criticizing a board decision to the student newspaper.

Houghton University is affiliated with Wesleyan Church, who learns that “gender confusion and dysphoria are ultimately the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual consequences of the fallen condition of the human race.” It sees “adult gender nonconformity as a violation of the sanctity of human life.”

The university maintains one public statement of his beliefswho describes herself as “firmly Biblical” and says the teachings of the Wesleyan Church are “central to everything” on campus.

“Sometimes this means affirming positions that are currently labeled conservative,” Houghton’s statement of faith says. “For example, we favor the understanding of marriage between a man and a woman, and the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.”

But Houghton’s statement of faith also expresses some views that conservatives may disagree with, including an acceptance of women in the priesthood and a belief “that we have a lot of work to do to heal the scars of racism in America.”

Some alumni said that open debate and respect for differing views is what they valued about their time at Houghton. Nearly 600 signed an open letter protest against the dismissal of Mrs. Zelaya and Mr. Wilmot, as well as other recent university decisions.

“Our general concern is that these recent changes reveal a worrying pattern of failure on the part of the current administration to respect that faithful and active Christians reasonably hold a range of theological and ethical views,” the letter said.

Earlier this month, university president Wayne D. Lewis Jr. responded to the alumni letter. He said many of the said decisions, including the closure of the multicultural center and sustainability program, were budgetary measures designed to address the financial challenges posed by “many years of enrollment and revenue decline and a significant structural budget deficit” .

And while he did not address the resignation of Mrs. Zelaya and Mr. Wilmot, he reaffirmed the university’s commitment to the teachings of the Wesleyan Church.

“Houghton unapologetically favors an orthodox Christian worldview rooted in the Wesleyan theological tradition,” the president wrote. He also noted that university employees were required to reaffirm at the beginning of each year that they understood and agreed to these commitments.

Molly Connolly, 21, a sophomore and student council member who aspires to become a Wesleyan minister, said the government’s decisions had caused “a lot of frustration” among students, who she says have a wide range of political and religious beliefs. She helped organize a prayer vigil and a sit-in where students could voice their concerns, she said.

“People felt it was political and inconsistent with some people’s interpretation of what it means to be Christian,” Ms Connolly said. “This just shows how divided people are about politics and identity politics and how people understand gender and sexuality.”

Derek Schwabe, 33, a gay man who graduated from Houghton in 2012, said the campus “was never an affirming place” during his time there. He only came out after graduation, saying that gay students usually felt that “if you kept your head down, you could survive”.

Nonetheless, Mr. Schwabe that the board had taken a more neutral approach to LGBTQ issues at the time, for example by allowing on-campus debates and other activities. For students from conservative families, like himself, those events can be revealing.

“With the Houghton I knew, there was room for discussion and acceptance of disagreement,” said Mr. Swabe. “I was exposed to broader views on these issues than before. I am sad to see that even that level of openness has been curtailed.”

In interviews, Ms. Zelaya and Mr. Wilmot said they believed their dispute with the school amounted to a disagreement over the best way to live a Christian life.

They added their pronouns because they wanted to deal with the oppressed of society, as Jesus Christ would have done, they said.

“Ultimately it doesn’t affect what I actually believe or what I think is a sin or isn’t a sin,” Ms. Zelaya, 27, said. “It all comes down to: Do ​​I love people in a way that reflects Christ?”

She said she believed their resignations were instead prompted by the university’s decision to “enter the party line” and appeal to the conservative political beliefs that dominate the evangelical Christian world.

“We currently live in a very divided world where everything is this or that, right or left, conservative or liberal, republican or democrat,” Ms. Zelaya added. “As Christians, I think we’ve gotten so caught up in these ideas of ‘This is what I should be advocating or angry about,’ that we really forget to care about people.”