On July 22nd, 2025, employees of the University of Kansas received an email stating that starting July 31st  "university employees - including student employees - are required to remove gender-identifying pronouns or gender ideology from the signature blocks of their state email account." Not only is this a violation of independent thought and expression, it's a transphobic rule that prohibits the discussion or acknowledgment of queer identities in the workplace. 

Doug Girod, by bowing to the Kansas Board of Regents, has undermined KU's origins as an institution built on social progress and reform and has disrespected the Lawrence community's LGBTQ+ population and our collective fight for progress. This directive empowers the hate and silencing of queer identities, and with the removal of organizations on campus like The Center for Sexuality and Gender Diversity, students impacted by this will have nowhere to go for support. This endangers the students Doug is meant to advocate for and protect.

Without a strong backbone to fight against policies like this, KU will blend in with every other university in this country too afraid to lose funding to do their job of educating and protecting America's youth. We should want better for ourselves as an institution and as a community harboring said institution. 

KU employees are fully capable of determining for themselves what they would like to include or not include in their email sign-offs without the help of Doug Girod or the government. This type of control over language sets a dangerous precedent for what could be prohibited in the future. This is a threat to cis and trans students and community members alike. 

Please sign this petition in solidarity for those affected and to show KU that the Lawrence community that houses them is embarrassed by their decision-making skills. 

EDIT (July 25, 2025): Hey everyone! I appreciate your support and for sharing. Please continue to share the petition with folks in the community. Just wanted to add here a little more on what this will lead to. 

Something I've mentioned to people as I've sent this out is my expectations. I am not enough of an optimist to believe that this petition alone will make our leaders suddenly come to their senses and repeal it. Although that is the best case scenario, and not something I encourage anyone to give up on, my immediate intentions are a little different. I'm not sure where the end goal number is, but after the petition has slowed and I feel we've gotten the most engagement we could in this time, I plan on writing incessantly to both the Kansas Board of Regents and to the leaders of KU. Using the success of the petition as a starting point, I want to enunciate to our leaders that we see them, and are ashamed of them. They have done the most to ensure that queer people in their communities feel shamed, and pushed down, and rejected. They make these decisions because they are arrogant enough to believe that their word means something, that something about their lack of individuality makes them more important. They believe that they should be able to control our language. It's arrogance, it's unfounded confidence, it's being out of touch, it's senile.  

There is an anxiety with being visibly queer in public. That anxiety comes from knowing that there is a very solid chance that the strangers you are surrounded by may harbor violent intentions towards you because of your identity. There is an anxiety because you know that they could decide to act at any moment. Directives like this empower that hate. The removal of all DEI initiatives empowers that hate, and fuels that anxiety. 

They deserve to know that their community is ashamed of them so that they might be privy to that anxiety. 

I really need to enunciate with this that I am not encouraging any violent or hateful action, I can not be dealing with any form of incitement charge, can you imagine? Good lord. This petition is a humbling.

Anyway!!! Lol thank you, please keep sharing.