All in a Name: New Software Benefits Transgender Students

UVM.edu – Author: Jeffrey R. Wakefield

In addition to buying books, making last minute changes to his course schedule, and stocking up on three-ring binders, senior art history major Davin Sokup’s pre-semester to-do list always included one more task: emailing his professors to tell them that, when classes started, he preferred not to be called the name on their class rosters or the pronouns it implied.

Sokup, a transgender student born female, asked professors to address him as Davin, not the feminine name on the class list, and to use the pronouns “he” and “his.”