California Colleges Purging 'Harmful' Common Phrases

At least two California colleges are attempting to curb students from using what they deem "harmful" language and phrases that have become part of the common language through the years.

Stanford University and California Polytechnic State University are issuing recommendations to students with alternatives to frequently used words and phrases, such as "beating a dead horse," that they have determined could "harm" or make other students uncomfortable in conversations.

"The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford. EHLI is one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford CIO Council and People of Color in Technology affinity group in December 2020," the school said on its website, which includes categories of words and phrases to be avoided as well as alternative expressions.

"The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language."

Some examples of problematic words and phrases, according to the school:

• "Beating a dead horse," which the university claims "normalizes violence against animals." 
• Changing "prisoner" and "convict" to a "person who is or was incarcerated" to "not define people by just one of their characteristics." 
• Avoiding the phrase "brown bag" when referring to a lunch because "historically associated with the 'brown paper bag test' that certain Black sororities and fraternities used to judge skin color. Those whose skin color was darker than the brown bag were not allowed to join," the school’s website said.

Even the recently adopted phrase "trigger warning," referring to something non-politically correct that could be offensive, is urged to be changed to "content note" because using the phrase "can cause stress about what's to follow. Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular person."

Meanwhile, an orientation presentation at Cal Poly also promotes its EHLI with a list of things that students should not bring up in conversation or should use alternatives for.

Among those, phrases like "handicapped parking" should be changed to "accessible parking," and instead of saying "I'm depressed," students should use "I feel sad today," or "I don’t feel myself" instead, according to the school.

The presentation also includes a section on using "correct pronouns" for individuals.