Christian College Workers Fired for Including Their Pronouns in Emails

Two staffers at a Christian university in New York were fired after choosing to include their pronouns at the end of their work emails, according to a report. Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot both worked as residence hall directors at Houghton University and chose to respectively include “she/her” and “he/him” in their email signatures. Both were told to remove the pronouns on the grounds that they violated a new policy, and both were fired after refusing to comply, according to The New York Times. Neither Zelaya or Wilmot are transgender, but both had been misgendered in email correspondence on account of their uncommon first names. “I think it boils down to: They want to be trans-exclusive and they want to communicate that to potential students and the parents of potential students,” Wilmot told the Times. A university spokesman said the school had never terminated an employment “solely on the use of pronouns in staff email signatures.” Zelaya’s termination letter, however, cited her “refusal” to remove them from her work email along with a public criticism she made of an administration decision.