In Rae Paul’s online classes, their participation and presence is linked to a name they no longer use. “I logged in this morning, and it’s like, ‘Hi, blank!’” says Paul, who is a non-binary trans person of colour, goalie coach and social work student at Ryerson University in Toronto. “It definitely detracts from my ability to participate in online learning, in an environment that is already so difficult because of the pandemic.”
With the number of COVID-19 cases still rising, all of Paul’s courses are online this year. In the spring of 2019, Paul—who is in their final year at Ryerson—tried to change the name on their student record under a university policy that allows students to update their documents without a legal name change. The paperwork involves filling out two forms, including one which must be signed by a commissioner of oaths or notary—something that generally involves a fee.
Months after Paul dropped off their paperwork at the student services centre, they were told that it couldn’t be processed because it hadn’t been signed by a notary. Paul, who lived outside of Toronto and was working three jobs, said they didn’t have the time or energy to track one down. (A Ryerson spokesperson tells Xtra that the university has suspended the notary or commissioner of oaths requirement during the pandemic.)
Recently, Paul managed to fiddle with their email settings so that most of their emails go out under their actual name, though some are randomly sent with their old name appended. The 23-year-old reached out to the school’s IT department to ask if a permanent fix could be made. No, came the reply.
“Why do I have to levy a complaint?” Paul asks. “Why is it on my shoulders to have to advocate for my own existence in a way that white cisgender students don’t have to?”
As online learning platforms like Moodle, Blackboard Learn and Brightspace become de facto classrooms, trans and non-binary students who use a different name than their legal identifier are being put under a unique strain. Logging into class might mean seeing their legal names—often referred to as deadnames—plastered across the platform and linked to their participation.
In physical classrooms, there can be workarounds, albeit ones that unreasonably fall on students: They might ask an instructor not to call out their deadname off an attendance sheet, for instance. While the success of that approach depends entirely on the instructor involved, even the most supportive instructors in online spaces often have little autonomy to control where and how a student’s name appears.
“Logging into class might mean seeing their deadnames plastered across the platform and linked to their participation”
And Paul is not alone: This issue has popped up in high school districts and post-secondary institutions across Canada and the U.S. In Philadelphia, the local school district committed to making changes in May after students experienced deadnaming on Google Classroom. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, advocates are pushing for non-legal name and gender fields to be added to a state database of student information to avoid online deadnaming.
In reporting this story, Xtra reached out to 50 Canadian colleges and universities—selecting the largest institutions in each province and territory—about their name change policies and online learning platforms. Most had a preferred name policy that allowed students to change the name in their internal school records without a legal name change. But Xtra found that many of these policies were confusing to navigate and rife with barriers. Others led to incomplete and unpredictable outcomes, including updating students’ names in some locations but not others—such as at the University of Winnipeg, which will update the gendered prefix and display name linked to a student’s email, but not their actual email address.
One thing was clear: The onus has fallen on trans students to MacGyver solutions to being deadnamed and misgendered. In interviews, they describe being tossed from one administrator to the next, bristling at diversity and inclusion policies that don’t line up with actual practice and being exhausted with the bureaucracy involved.
While a handful of schools have had preferred name policies in place for five years or more, many were created more recently. (The University of Toronto’s policy, dating from 2009, appears to be the longest-standing.) Of the 42 schools that responded to Xtra’s survey, eight did not have a preferred name policy in place. The responsiveness of those institutions varied: Some said they would make some updates—like NorQuest College in Alberta, which says it will update a student’s email and online student centre identification, but not their Moodle account—while others, like l’Université Laval in Quebec, said that it has no choice but to invite students to apply for a legal name change. (It costs about $300 to get a name and “sex designation” change in Quebec.)
When asked why they lack preferred name policies, schools largely point to issues with their databases. Brandon University in Manitoba, for instance, notes that parts of their codebase date to the 1970s and don’t incorporate preferred names. A spokesperson says that Brandon University is in the process of getting new software, which they expect will accommodate preferred names.
Florence Ashley, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and the Joint Centre for Bioethics, wrote in 2016 about their experience with deadnaming at McGill University. They say that technical issues are a poor excuse for institutions to ignore their human rights obligations. “Essentially, they’re citing convenience,” Ashley says. “And convenience is just not a viable human rights response in this area of law. The tech issue is an easy scapegoat, but it’s also not a legally relevant one.”
While 34 schools do have some form of a preferred name policy, at least seven of those policies are marred by technical and database failures. At the University of Regina, for example, a spokesperson says that a technical issue is preventing preferred names from being reflected in a portion of the school’s online classes. At Athabasca University, which primarily offers online courses regardless of COVID-19, a spokesperson told Xtra that a change should update a student’s name, but due to the school’s “legacy systems,” it doesn’t always work. At a handful of other schools, getting one’s name updated in online classrooms requires a second request to technology services, after a student completes the paperwork for a preferred name change.
“They’re citing convenience, and convenience is just not a viable human rights response in this area of law”
Of the remaining institutions that have a working preferred name policy, many require a significant investment of time to complete the name change—whether that’s needing to get a notary’s signature, like at Ryerson, booking a meeting with the assistant registrar like at McMaster University in Hamilton, or prior to the pandemic, submitting paperwork in-person and showing identification. What’s more, most institutions said their policies refer only to internal records; for a change on a diploma or transcript, a legal name change is required.
Finding out the steps required at each institution wasn’t quick or easy: Xtra spent several weeks exchanging numerous emails with spokespeople and asking for clarifications on policies—some of which were not available to review online. Schools tended to imply that their processes were simple (some using words like “simply” or “easily”), despite some sounding like a complicated role-playing game where only one person sitting at the table understands the rules.
This fall, Madi Cyr, a trans fourth-year journalism student at Toronto’s Humber College, set about getting their name changed in their online classes. They wanted to make sure that any virtual guest speakers would see their actual name—the one they write stories under—and not their deadname, which was showing up.
They sent an online request to the school called a “support ticket,” asking for their name to be changed on Blackboard, the school’s online learning platform. About a month later, Cyr received an automated response, tagged “Priority: Medium,” noting that their request had been closed—but Cyr said no action was taken. (A Humber spokesperson said name changes are accommodated through an online form, which does trigger an update in Blackboard).
“I get it, they’re probably busy but, you know, I would like something,” Cyr says. “At a certain point, we as humans forgot that the systems that we designed are supposed to work for us, and we’re not working for the system.”
In the meantime, Cyr—who is not able to edit how their name appears on Blackboard—was able to change their display photo. It now reads their actual name spelled out. They also have a short script ready to copy and paste into the interface when someone uses their deadname, though they pointed out that it’s the systems—not the faculty—that are the issue.
Lee Airton, an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies in education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., knows how complicated these processes can be. For two years, Airton has been co-leading a research project with assistant professor of educational evaluation Michelle Searle, mapping the hypothetical trajectory of a trans bachelor of education student who uses they/them pronouns. It took a team of five researchers six months to figure out all the places where a student’s name and gender would be collected, used and shared with external parties.
“The processes are so opaque for how to make sure that the name that is actually your name is appearing to people who have to call you by your name”
“The processes are so opaque for how to make sure that the name that is actually your name is appearing to people who have to call you by your name,” they say. Figuring that out, Airton adds, is a “chronic site of energy expenditure and strain” for trans students. It also has a significant impact on a student being able to complete their program and remain well in the process, they say.
The mental health benefits of correct name use are well-documented. A major 2018 study of trans youth led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin found that increasing chosen name use by a single context—such as school—was associated with a 29 percent decrease in suicidal thinking.
Xtra also asked the schools surveyed whether students are able to independently edit how their names appear in online classes. The majority said that their learning platforms are automatically populated by school databases and do not allow editing. In particular, schools that used the Brightspace platform point out that students cannot edit their display names. Dana Dean, the director of awareness for D2L—the company that makes the software—tells Xtra that name changes must be done through an institution’s system administrator.
One notable exception is York University, which announced in September a fix by its technology team that allows students to edit their display names on Moodle. Most institutions that incorporated Zoom—like Yukon University and Simon Fraser University—were quick to note that students can rename themselves on that platform.
Bella Pick, a fourth-year student and advocate at Huron University and the Ivey Business School at Western University, tells Xtra that in Zoom sessions for their non-Ivey classes, the rename function has been turned off, and adds that they’ve spoken to many other students who have found the same. This is despite default settings at the London, Ont.-based school that require students to log into Zoom from a university account and instructors to use a passcode and waiting room, as Pick pointed out in the Western Gazette last month. (A Western spokesperson says that while instructors can turn off the rename function in Zoom, the default is to allow it).
“It’s not just an issue for a small group of students, it’s an issue that really impacts a lot of people,” Pick says, citing frustrations for any students who may use a shortened version of their name or who don’t want to see their middle name show up.
While Western does have a preferred name policy, Pick says the processing time needs to be sped up. They have been waiting more than a month for their own request, as have others. (Western tells Xtra that it processes preferred name requests in three to five days and that requests are up to date.)
Of the preferred name policies that Xtra reviewed, the best ones were clear and entirely online. They also triggered quick, widespread and uniform updates, without the need for additional requests. Ontario’s Waterloo University, for instance, allows students to update their preferred name in an online portal and clearly outlines where the updated name will show up within 24 to 48 hours, though the policy has only been in place since January. Memorial University in Newfoundland commits to making a change even quicker: Within 24 hours.
For its part, the University of British Columbia was the only institution surveyed that said it would demand change from its technology vendors if students’ deadnames were showing up in the place of their preferred names. Also notable was Dalhousie University, which was unique in having a standalone gender affirmation policy.
Florence Ashley, the legal scholar, says that while preferred name policies are important, even the best ones aren’t perfect. They play into the idea of names as something fixed, not fluid—even though many trans and non-binary people will change their name several times or use different names in different spaces. “Names are [often seen as] a stable identifier that we can rely on to identify, categorize and manage people, and not, for instance, a form of self-expression, which is how I might prefer viewing it,” Ashley says.
As for Rae Paul, the Ryerson student, they’re starting a new name change request in the hopes that it will be processed by the time they graduate this spring.
“I’m basically at square one.”
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