Two Houghton University employees were fired after not following the school's email signature guidelines on pronouns, USA Today reported.
Dorm directors Shua Wilmot and Raegan Zelaya – he/him and she/her, respectively – had included pronouns in their email signatures, refused to remove them, and in April, received letters notifying them of their termination.
The Christian university cited the two’s “continued use of pronouns, and [their] email signature and violation of institutional policy after [they] had been asked to remove them.” It also said Zelaya made defamatory remarks about the school's diversity efforts and that Wilmot threatened to publish an open letter to the General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church about its views on gender.
The university has never fired employees solely based on the use of pronouns in staff email signatures, it said in a May 22 statement.
"Over the past years, we've required anything extraneous be removed from email signatures, including Scripture quotes," the school said.
Wilmot and Zelaya said Houghton had sent out an email letting employees know how to format their signatures for branding purposes, including avoiding bible verses, links, odd fonts, and differing color schemes. Wilmot had put his pronouns instead of a phone number.
“In my role … I don't post my phone number,” Wilmot said in a joint video. “Where I would put my phone number, I instead put he/him."
