High schools and universities across the country have started to make their prom or homecoming elections gender neutral. While it’s still a relatively new concept, the idea behind making gender neutral royalty elections is a progressive step forward to not measure people by their gender, but by their merit as people in their school’s community.
Those who support gender neutral royalty regard this proposed change as a movement towards equality; students would be elected because their peers believe them to be the best representative for their class. By running elections this way, it also opens the avenue for non-binary and transgender students to be voted in as homecoming royalty without having their gender identity misrepresented.
People who oppose a gender neutral election are concerned about a lack of equal representation of genders in the court. If Liberty were to have a gender neutral election, for example, the ballots would say something along the lines of, “Vote for the six people that should be in homecoming court” instead of, “Vote for three boys and three girls that should be in homecoming court”. Those who oppose a gender neutral court are concerned with the potential that all six will be boys, or all six will be girls, and that this will end up becoming a step back in gender equality.
So the real question for the Liberty student body is how do they define equality? Is it by equal representation, or is it by disregarding those barriers and voting based off who is the most fit for being a part of homecoming royalty?
While I do feel concern over whether fairly equal representation will remain in royalty, I also think that Liberty is an open-minded school that is prepared to handle gender neutral elections. I think of equality as regarding people by who they are, and not by their gender identity. The proposition of a gender neutral court here at Liberty, in my opinion, is a challenging, yet worthwhile, step forward for gender equality.