So, in the past week or so, there has been a lot of discussion (I hope) regarding Wabash's current status as an all-male institution, and a new proposal to have an acceptance of trans-gender applicants to the College on the books. As a Student Senate Representative and as a friend to those who are pushing this through the Senate, I have my own convictions on how important it is that Wabash remain all-male (this is well known to you, I think). And while I will put it out there that I do not agree with the resolution, and where I can see inherent problems of autonomy and giving up of a unique element of the College, I still think that the issue of gender deserves good discussion. And I think that it could be had in talking about multicultural women writers who have verged on this.
If we think back to our somewhat heated discussion regarding the principle of the gentleman, and how that connects with other same-sex institutions like St. Mary of the Woods, I think that we can see a point where traditionalism plays a role. It certainly plays a role in Wabash's case, which prides itself on flowing with the times of social change, yet remaining all-male and preserving its customs. Along with this, and more importantly, this issue deals with many variables that can either support or destroy the leigitmacy of such a resolution as we see here now. They are the issues of pre-op vs. post-op; being accepted to this school simply because you say you are male, but may clearly be otherwise (I hate to relate it, but this could be seen as being dishonest); and finally to the sticky issue of gender fluidity, to where an individual flip-flops on his/her gender. And what if a student undergoes a change during their time here? Do we kick them out? These considerations and more strike me as legitimate cocnerns.
But how do we relate it to our discussions in class? We can do this by talking discrimination and traditionalism together, because it is these that the authors that we have read thus far have had to deal with. Naturally, along with this comes the personal issue of identity, and (to the controversy) whether it is viable for one to associate him or herself as a male or female, and how we verge on discrimination. Again, we have touched on this once before in class; but I think we need to futher connect this issue with the experiences that these authors have went through. Whether we can merely imply them or not is irrelevant; what is important is the discussion.
I agree with you on many cases that Traditionalism plays an important role at Wabash College, even with the changing of times. I, too, also agree with your stance on this subject. In accordance to relaying this topic to class topics, I believe the topic of identity and coming-of-age are ones at play. In our pieces that we have read so far this semester, identity and one's coming-of-age story are topics that stick out, in a distinct way for each author. Does this mean that Wabash's coming of age story is to break away from its traditions and open up to something new? It has done before in the past, albeit, in not a big of deal as many see this to be (chapel sing, for example). It is definitely an interesting topic and I would like to see how people would see Wabash's identity if it were to change this policy vs. how they see its identity now.
ReplyDeleteYou both have made very good comments about keeping the tradition of Wabash alive while also trying to keep up and implement with social change within the Wabash community. I believe trying to do this is one of the hardest things to do. If we were a co-ed school, we could easily say that transgenders are allowed. However, at Wabash, it his hard to implement this change in our culture because it can go against the tradition we have. I believe that the only way this can be resolved is to either not allow transgenders at all, or make a female and male transgenders both allowed. I say this because there is controversy when distinguishing whether a male is someone who is born with the male anatomy, or someone who identifies themselves as male. If we were to exclude either one of these, we would be excluding a "male," thus, Wabash would have to allow female and male transgenders to enroll, or neither.
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