Monday, November 29, 2010
Ze-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named Day, Namechecked in Doonesbury
Zonker Harris day, on the Wesleyan University campus, is a day when students gather and not-so-surreptitiously partake in a not-yet-legalized substance. The scene on Foss Hill is a funky cloud redolent of hippiedom, and named after a character in the Doonesbury comic strip. Gary Trudeau has taken notice in today's strip.
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6 comments:
Actually, it's "Z" not "He"....ever since Wesleyan banned it a few years back.
Actually, it's "Ze" and it doesn't stand for "Zonker" even though it replaces "Zonker." "Ze" is a gender-neutral pronoun that replaces "He."
"Gender-neutral pronouns have found limited success in academia. Among Wesleyan University students in Connecticut, for instance, the preferred alternative pronouns are 'ze,' 'zim' and their possessive, 'hir'..."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/4915919.html
I chill corrected.
F**king townies.
I've lived in Middletown for 21 years, and I continue to be saddened by the state of town-gown relations. I've taught at other universities, on the east coast and in the midwest, and I've never seen such antagonism. It diminishes the quality of life here for everyone.
Having said that, I offer a correction and an admonition:
Wesleyan has never "banned" the use of he/she, him/her, etc. Students who prefer a gender-neutral pronoun respectfully request professors to consider using the pronoun in class. The last time I taught a class at Wes -- fall of '09 -- I told my class that I would stumble over 'ze' every time and wouldn't be using it. And that was the end of that. No one, students or faculty or staff, evinced any objection, or even hard feelings. Thanks, Gary Trudeau, for propagating this caricature of Wesleyan students.
To the person who wrote, "F**ng townies": if you are a Wesleyan student, and not a troublemaker pretending to be one, shame on you. "Townies"?? Really? You talk the talk about fighting an oppressive class structure, and you address people as "townies"? Does this strike you as a tad elitist? Try to put your privileged education to better use, and while you're at it, expand your own vocabulary beyond "f**ng" to express your opinion.
Any questions as to why the country is as f**ked-up as it is?
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