Campus staff fired for including their pronouns in emails

Alumni are criticising a small New York Christian university for firing two employees who refused to remove gender pronouns from their email signatures, writes Josh Marcus for the Independent. In April, Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot, residence hall directors at Houghton University, were fired from their positions, after they put “she/her” and “he/him” on their emails.

In a widely circulated termination letter to Zelaya, the school wrote that it fired her shortly before the end of the semester “as a result of your refusal to remove pronouns in your email signature” and because she criticised the decision in the student newspaper.

Wilmot said he was also accused of making a “threat” towards the general superintendent of the Wesleyan Church. The university is affiliated with the conservative branch of the Methodist Church. Wilmot had written what he described as a “constructive letter” to Superintendent Wayne Schmidt about the church’s views on gender identity and expression, saying they were outdated and problematic.
Full report on the Independent site