Fresh Kidz

Toast sent me a link to this story, and we’ve been having an interesting conversation about it. Anyway, I thought I’d throw it out there, along with my thoughts, and see what others make of it.

AMHERST, Mass. There are no freshmen at Amherst Regional High School.

Following in the steps of several area colleges, ninth-grader is now the official term used for first-year students. School officials say the term freshman was dropped because of the male connotation of the word.

Assistant principal Marta Guevara said yesterday that the change to ninth-grader was initiated nearly two years ago during a week that highlighted issues surrounding violence against women.

Ninth-grader Sam Hart of Shutesbury told the Springfield Republican that he doesn't see the term freshman as sexist. And he notes there are other words that have man in them.

And what, pray tell, are we going to call college freshmen? Thirteenth-graders?

I understand, and support, a certain amount of what is usually derogatorily referred to as language policing; substituting humankind for mankind is clearly preferable, and making changes like policeman to police officer, or fireman to firefighter, are not purely symbolic (as the anti-PC crowd would have us believe), but a good way to honor the women who increasingly join these professions. But removing the word freshman from the lexicon doesn’t seem to serve any but a symbolic purpose, because the word no longer has male connotations outside of its etymology. Our cultural understanding of it is different—policemen may yet conjure an image singularly populated by men in uniform; freshmen does not yield the same results. Is there really anyone who hears the word freshmen and thinks of nothing but a group of apple-cheeked lads in jackets and ties anymore?

There’s something about this that is primarily offensive to my sensibilities as a lover of language and as a student of culture, something that the other aforementioned changes in language (which aptly represent a change in culture) do not evoke. And perhaps someone will be keen to argue that such offense shouldn’t supercede a feminist’s interest in subverting patriarchal signifiers, irrespective of whether they are symbolic or not, but I also find my feminist sensibilities questioning the wisdom of linking the eradication of a word like freshman with “issues surrounding violence against women.” A lot of adults, never mind 14-year-olds, aren’t prepared to understand a convoluted causal link between language and violence. Without an entire course on explaining it (to which I would certainly not object, but I don’t see it being offered anytime soon in American high schools), I fear the eradication of this word that doesn’t have obvious patriarchal (or even specifically male) connotations will seem silly and easily dismissed, with the end result a wholescale rejection of any lessons the school attempted to impart. Eradicating violence against women is too important to be potentially undermined by symbolic gestures.