University officials considering bill to simplify updating personal information in the UMD database
The University Senate Executive Committee voted unanimously to charge the Committee on Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion with reviewing a bill that would enable students and employees to more easily update personal information in university databases.
The equity and diversity committee will be responsible for reviewing the bill’s proposal and consulting several administrative offices about university and federal reporting requirements, Reka Montfort, senate director and executive secretary, wrote in an email.
LGBT Equity Center Director Luke Jensen, who is sponsoring the bill, says the issues the bill addresses are interrelated.
Some students and employees want to be addressed by a name different from their legal name. Because of this, an employee change his or her primary name, and a student is able to use a preferred name, which is stored in a separate database from the student’s primary name.
Because the primary and preferred name databases do not communicate with each other, one can overwrite the other at any time, Jensen said.
“There was a need to have a broader conversation to set some polices about how the use of these names should operate on campus and be in conformity with one another,” Jensen said.
A sub-element of the SEC’s charge will give the Student Affairs Committee the responsibility of considering preferred name issues for students, Montfort said.
Gender data are also kept differently for university employees and students, respectively. Employees are given more flexibility to update their gender “at will,” according to the bill, while students must “submit a request and supporting documentation” if they wish to change their gender.
The two options available when selecting sex are “male” and “female,” which presents an issue for transgender students who do not feel comfortable identifying with either choice and international students who use a third option in their country of origin.
“I don’t think there’s a uniform third response that we could put up there,” Jensen said. “But I do think by making [gender identification] an optional question … you are not forcing someone to answer a question where neither of the options are appropriate.”
Additionally, students, unlike employees, cannot choose honorifics such as “Mr.,” “Ms.,” “Miss,” “Mrs.” or “Dr.”
According to the proposal, many campus units use the sex or gender field in records to add a “Mr.” or “Ms.” in front of the student’s or employee’s name.
The proposal suggests that employees and students be given the same options when selecting an honorific, including opting out of selecting one.
Jensen was unsure as to which entity within the university would be responsible for carrying out these changes. However, he suggested the implementation of an electronic system similar to the University of Michigan’s, which allows students to change their own names.
“All vocal members were in favor of at least investigating the plausibility of these changes, although there are some practical concerns about changes to the UMD databases being quite laborious to implement,” Anu Challa, a senate executive committee member and junior computer engineering major, wrote in an email.
