Abstract
The purpose of this project was to write a California state bill, and have it passed into law, so that, the term “freshman” would be replaced by the word “first year” in all ninth through 12th grade, California public high schools. At the time research was conducted, the term “freshman” was, and remains, a common, yet archaic term that is non-descriptive and non-inclusive of the diverse student population of California public high schools. Research was conducted around key areas such as: the history of words, language, and education law.
Creation of a California state bill was anticipated to be sponsored by a California legislative member and move forward into law and have California public high schools eliminate the term “freshman” and replace it with “first year.” As a result of the proposed bill, another anticipated outcome would be changes to forms, banners, signs, merchandise, schedules, teacher assignments and all other first year (ninth grade) related labels that currently exist in California public high schools. After the researcher created a draft bill, 18 evaluators took part in providing feedback that would assist the researcher in consensus building efforts, address concerns of potential voters, and receive the opinions of professionals who this bill would directly or indirectly affect.
After taking into consideration the evaluators’ comments, the researcher found that party line issues and the current state of the political climate overwhelmingly saturated the responses of evaluators instead of the issue of creating more inclusive and equitable language and environments in the California public education system. Through the system of education, “students should be moving toward more mature stages of intellectual, epistemological, and ethical development” (Belenky et al., 1997, p. 468). Throughout history, society, culture, and norms have changed and language has not been an exception to changes to its use and meaning.