Raise your hand if you’ve lost a friend or two (or 30!) during this election season. I definitely have. As we finally reach the end of a 2+ year run for the presidency, I can finally reflect on what this election cycle has meant to me. I can list thirty million things, but one of the most significant is that I have lost a few friends.
Up until the 2020 election run, I really believed that I could be friends with anyone regardless of their political ideology. I had done it my entire life.
I never met a person who didn’t refer to themselves with he/him or she/her pronouns until my first semester at Cornell. As someone passionate about gender justice and gender equity, I had previously understood the importance of questioning gender pronouns and identifying individuals in the ways that they wanted. However, my knowledge about pronoun use was very restricted to theory classes, news articles, lectures, TedTalks, Youtube videos and social justice conferences. Meeting students, faculty, and community members who identify with pronouns besides she/her and he/him has challenged me to “check” my own bias and to ask for pronouns (and present my own pronouns) during introductions. Two years later, I am in no way perfect.
College has completely turned the tide. For the most part, I am surrounded by people who accept (and, even better, encourage) my political views. Yet, I still really don’t post political.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 has been one of the most inspirational people in my life. I unfortunately never had the opportunity to meet her. But when she passed away just a few days ago, I mourned her death. Experiencing her death and the impact that it has had on so many people has forced me to consider and reconsider our definitions of mourning and grief. I should clarify that I am a big “fan” of Justice Ginsburg.
Please stop calling President Martha E. Pollack “Martha.” It’s disrespectful and your internalized misogyny is showing every time that you do it. Martha Pollack is the highest ranked faculty member at Cornell University, and the way that students refer to her is telling of continued gender biases in higher academia. There is a major disparity in referencing senior staff at Cornell University, with President Pollack referred to more frequently by her first name than Vice President Ryan Lombardi and Provost Michael Kotlikoff. In common conversation, students abbreviate these administrators’ titles to “Martha,” “Lombardi” and “Kotlikoff.”
Every time I hear a student refer to President Pollack by her first name, I remember my academic advisor’s warning during my first week at Cornell. She sat down her ten new advisees and explained the importance of referring to female professors as “Professor” or “Doctor” rather than “Ms.” or “Mrs.” She explained the struggle that she has faced after years in academia and her frustration when students, and worse, other academics downplayed her accomplishments when they reference her.
