Oxford backtracks on non-binary graduation ceremony terms

Telegraph

10-05-2025

Oxford University has backtracked on making its 800-year-old Latin graduation ceremonies fully gender-neutral.
In March, the university voted to remove grammatically masculine or feminine Latin words from some ceremonies, to appease non-binary students.
In an amendment to those changes, the university has said some gendered words will be retained. It argued that, even though they were masculine, they were 'statuses' and could be treated as being without gender.
The original proposals involved dropping masculine words including 'magistri' (masters) and 'doctores' (doctors) and replacing them with 'vos', which is a neutral pronoun meaning 'you'.
But Dr Jonathan Katz, the university's public orator, and Dr Tristan Franklinos, a classicist, said that the words 'magistri' and 'doctores' would still be included in the ceremony as salutations.
The university said the decision to maintain the gendered words came because 'they form part of the tradition handed down to us and they connote the respect shown by University Officers to graduands in the ceremony'.
'Warmth and humanity'
The university added that the changes had been made to restore warmth and humanity to a traditional proposal that was felt to lack feeling. It argued that the original intention was to create a single Latin text for the ceremonies, which has been done.
The partial U-turn followed criticism from academics that tradition was being lost in removing the words from the Latin address.
David Butterfield, a professor of Latin at Ralston College in Georgia, previously told The Telegraph: 'I regret that striking and beautiful phrases, such as 'domini doctores' are being replaced with the empty, and rather abrupt, ' vos'.'
He said: 'It is heartening to see 'doctor' and 'magister' restored to the Latin ... on the grounds that we don't speak of a woman as a 'doctrix', or having a 'Mistress of Arts' degree.'
But Prof Butterfield said he saw it only as a partial victory, because some gendered words have been removed. The historic 'dominus' or 'domina', meaning sir or madam, has been replaced with the word 'sodalis', meaning comrade or fellow.
'It remains a fudge that sodalis, the form of both the masculine and the feminine, can allegedly be interpreted by the non-binary listener as neither in one gender or the other,' he said.
'While deliberately ambiguous Latin can be deployed, it is literally impossible for Latin to be used without any gender at all. Ceremonial Latin, centuries old, should not be make-believe.'
The amendment was added following a vote attended by 28 academics, who agreed to introduce the new Latin into graduation ceremonies from October to cater to those 'who identify as non-binary'.
Two votes took place – one for the gender-neutral Latin changes, and one for their amendment. Twenty-four academics voted for the changes to be made, and 22 for the amendment to be introduced.
An Oxford University spokesman said: 'Congregation has voted to accept the proposed changes to the text for graduation ceremonies with an amendment that restores salutations to the start of some of the phrases used.
'The changes will come into effect from October, and will create a single simplified text for each ceremony as intended in the original proposal.'