On Tuesday, Oct. 15, Baylor University sent out a social climate survey. However, the results from this survey will not accurately represent the social climate given Baylor’s failure to make the survey gender inclusive.
On Oct. 26, 2016, the Human Rights Campaign published official guidelines for collecting inclusive data in the workplace in terms of gender identification and sexual orientation. These guidelines, or similar ones, are implemented by R1 Institutions (schools with high research activity) such as Harvard, Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Georgia State, Auburn, Mississippi State, Florida State and more. Duke is a religiously affiliated university (United Methodist Church) and still implements transgender inclusive guidelines in its research programs. The lack of Baylor’s compliance with these gender inclusive guidelines hinders Baylor’s ability to excel as a research institution while R1 institutions continue to progress in its diversity inclusion.
Baylor limiting the gender options in the social climate survey to male and female only demonstrates its resistance to the changing social climate in the world outside of Baylor, but these changes exist on Baylor’s campus.
Morgan Koziol
Junior
Professional Writing and Rhetoric
