Massachusetts public university lists student-athletes’ pronouns on team bios

At Bridgewater State University, player bios for student-athletes now include preferred pronouns.

Student-athletes on the 20 teams at the NCAA Division 3 Massachusetts university have their preferred pronouns listed on their player bio pages in sports ranging from football and men’s basketball to women’s field hockey and women’s tennis.

Not all the bios list pronouns, suggesting it might be optional. However, student-athletes on women’s teams appear to list preferred pronouns more frequently than male athletes. For example, every member of the women’s field hockey team has pronouns listed. 

The athletes with pronouns listed generally go by traditional pronouns, “he/him” or “she/her.” However, one member of the women’s equestrian team goes by the “they/them” pronouns most commonly used by people who identify as neither male nor female. 

Bridgewater’s official pronoun policy says students can use whichever pronouns they want. 

“Any BSU student, faculty/librarian, staff, administrator or alumnx may indicate their First Name in Use, Gender Identity and/or Pronouns in Use so long as the purposes are not due to fraud or misrepresentation,” the school’s website says. 

Bridgewater is not the only Bay State college or university that lists pronouns for its student-athletes. Others, including Brandeis University (Waltham, Massachusetts) and Springfield College, do the same, as NewBostonPost reported in 2022. However, Brandeis and Springfield are private schools. 

Brandeis claims it added pronouns to its rosters to help sports reporters and broadcasters. 

“Brandeis student-athletes were offered the opportunity to include their pronouns on rosters because we prefer to use correct pronouns when we refer to students,” the spokesman told the publication in the report. “This is especially important when we or opposing schools write competition recaps, and when broadcasters refer to student-athletes in the course of streaming. It is an emerging trend for professional and university athletic departments, and listing pronouns for our staff and student-athletes is completely voluntary.” 

At the time, Brandeis, an NCAA Division 3 school, had two transgender-identifying athletes. One was a female who competed in men’s cross country, and the other was a female who initially competed in women’s fencing but later switched to the men’s team.