[Higher Education] USC will no longer use the word ‘field’ over racist connotations

Smith College follows suit

Smith College program stops using word ‘field’ over ‘negative associations’

https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/...ng-word-field-over-negative-associations.html

excerpt:

Smith College’s graduate School for Social Work will abandon the term “field” — as in “going into the field” or “field work” — from its lexicon, following in the steps of other universities who have claimed the word has connotations to slavery that could be considered offensive.

While “field” can mean an expansive area of land or crops, in academia or the sciences it often describes work done in a real-world environment. A biologist, for instance, may collect field observations on an animal by observing it in its natural habitat.

“We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may hold negative associations,” administrators for the School for Social Work said in a message to the school community last week.

A spokesperson for Smith College said updated language policies at other social work programs played a part in the decision of Smith administrators.

In January, when the social work graduate school at the University of Southern California reached a similar decision, USC school officials said “field work” and similar terms “may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”

“I never really saw it that way before,” Aina Endo, a member of Smith College’s class of 2025, said when informed of the new language policy on Tuesday. “Hearing about it now, I think the word has many different contexts and it’s the way that you use it that matters.”

“But if it bothers a lot of people it’s important to address,” Endo said.

The policy shift regarding the word “field” was not a reaction to complaints from students, staff or alumni, but rather “a proactive decision to bring the language of our program more in line with our goals and intentions,” Carolyn McDaniel, Smith’s director of media relations, said in an email to MassLive.
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