I would like to preface this petition by stating that this is not an attempt to undermine or invalidate the winners of the 2023 homecoming election. Zach and Connor won fair and square and we congratulate them. This is rather a petition to institute a policy change for future elections.

In 2021 NDSU changed their policy of having a homecoming king and queen to a policy of having homecoming royalty. Prior to this change, the student body would vote for one woman and one man on the court to win the crown. Now the student body simply votes for any two people on the court, and the two top vote recievers win. This policy has resulted in two male winners in two out of the last three elections. This may seem like a trivial and insignificant issue. You may ask why there is such an outrage against this policy. I agree that it is a small issue, but I believe that the little things matter and that we should not ignore them. Here is why:

Homecoming King and Queen is an important tradition. The idea behind it is that we are going to select the most virtuous and good among us, and honor them as people to look up to. We would choose one man to represent what it means to be truly masculine, and one woman to represent what means to be truly feminine. Obviously, in recent years it has become more of a popularity contest which is unfortunate, but this policy only heightens it as such. It is true that men and women are fundamentally different, and there should be two separate titles to recognize them.

We need to hold our public institutions accountable to recognizing this basic truth. NDSU has avoided the gender issue on this topic by choosing to remove gender from the tradition. Although this change was voted on by the student body four years ago, this vote was held in the aftermath of Covid and does not likely represent the ideals of the students today. Furthermore, by not taking a stance on this issue and by hiding behind the vote of the students, NDSU is cowardly walking on the fence in an attempt to not offend either side.  NDSU needs to have some conviction and say "We are going to change our policy back to having a Homecoming King and Queen. We are doing this because we recognize that men and women are fundamentally different, and as a public institution, we need to recognize that. We understand that this may offend a few people, however, it is our duty to represent what is true." We, as students and community members, need to hold our public institutions accountable for recognizing these truths even in the small things.

This issue may seem inconsequential, like it does not directly affect you, and it is silly to put so much outrage and effort into changing it. I hope that you can see how the little things in life do matter. How we should expect our institutions to respect truth in the little things because, if we don't, then they will definitely not respect it in the big things either. It is a shame that the women of NDSU did not have a representative in homecoming royalty this year and we should expect more from our school in the future. Now is the time to push for this change. I thank you for signing this petition and I hope that you share it with everyone you know.

Sincerely,

Landon Allex