The University of California will start asking applicants to “voluntarily” identify their sexual orientation this fall.
George Washington University should not follow its lead, columnist Sasha Kobliha wrote in The GW Hatchet.
GWU considered adding such a question two years ago for law school applicants, and its own student government this year approved a gender-neutral option on all campus forms, but putting the question to students “infringes on a student’s privacy with no educational purpose or justification,” Kobliha writes:
Resources for LGBT students should be available and abundant without exact numbers, so students shouldn’t be singled out or made to feel like a statistic that a university can boast. …
Schools shouldn’t be delving into the sensitive subjects of sexual orientation or gender identity at all, let alone prompting students to provide such personal information. Looking at the pool of applicants, these are mostly 17 to 18 year-old students asked to divulge private information they may later regret sharing.
Schools need to respect the evolving identities of their students, not “try to manufacture” a status for each one:
The pressure to respond to the voluntary question could also cause anxiety – especially for those who aren’t yet comfortable with their gender or sexual orientation. Closeted students, for example, might be wary of identifying themselves, and those who aren’t sure of their identities yet could feel uneasy.
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