EDITORIAL: Is A-A-Ron here?

For decades, some students have had to spend the first day of class making sure their teachers understand how to pronounce their names. See Key &Peele’s hilarious send up of classroom roll call in their substitute teacher sketches.

In today’s hypersensitive campus environment, however, students must not have to endure this grave injustice. Thanks to a new, adulthood-delaying app, students at Stanford University can record their names — and even their preferred gender pronouns — for faculty and staff before they even step foot in the classroom.

Professors at Stanford typically make it a point to memorize student names prior to the fall semester, and then greet the kids personally when they arrive at their dorms. But what happens if the professor doesn’t know how to pronounce a student’s name or is unsure of the correct gender pronoun to use?

Outside of the university setting, it would be up to the student to communicate such information — to talk or speak using words. This is how real life works. At Stanford, however, real life is being replaced by an app.

“The simple human interaction of saying, ‘Actually, that’s pronounced … ’ is too low-tech, too clumsy, for our time, and that’s a shame,” wrote Karin Klein this week in the Sacramento Bee.

The app, dubbed NameCoach, was invented by Stanford grad students and will be rolled out this fall. The app has also been used at several other high schools and universities, including Towson University, the University of Memphis and Wesleyan University. More than 300 of Stanford’s incoming students have used the app so far, and the university eventually plans to integrate it into the school’s electronic class rosters, learning management system, and select housing websites.

“We want to encourage a culture of respect on campus, and one of the best ways to convey respect to someone is to get their name right — and to get their pronouns right, too,” University Registrar Tom Black wrote in a letter to students.

Stanford’s associate dean Dereca Blackmon says NameCoach helps students who want to be sensitive to their peers’ pronouns but still feel unsure how to approach the subject.

“Our gender-nonconforming students have come to expect that our community will make an effort to ask for the correct pronouns before assuming their gender,” Blackmon says. “This service makes it easier for students’ identities and cultures to be respected.”

Do you know what’s also respectful? Not assuming the worst in people. Is there an app for that?