By Vicente Vera
In the San Jose State University Music building, artists recite and compose music at all hours of the day, even during the School of Music and Dance director’s
lunch break.
The sounds of woodwinds, xylophones and other percussion instruments rang through the walls of Fred Cohen’s chamber-like office.
He sat comfortably behind his desk, soaking up the sunlight beaming in from the window right beside him.
As Cohen looked outside to the students walking by Seventh Street Plaza, he recalled the day that Director of Choral Activities, Jeffrey Benson sought his approval to adapt two of the choir courses in the music department.
“My response to him was, ‘It is about time,’” Cohen said.
In 2017, Benson decided to rebrand the Men’s Glee Club as the “Spartan Glee Club,” and the Women’s Chorus as the “Treble Choir.”
Though he knew the tweak had to go through the school’s curriculum committee, Benson said he didn’t expect any controversy to arise. As it turned out, there were no objections to his proposal.
“No one ever made a thing of it,” Benson said. “I think that’s why it went unnoticed by people outside of the music department for so long.”
The modification was approved by the committee, but Benson still had to wait one year before he could see his efforts materialize. SJSU’s course catalog and class syllabus for that year had already been published.
Cohen explained that renaming classes in the course catalog would be a lengthy process, but it was imperative to him that the course adequately recognize all of its students.
“The catalog change was necessary since many students see the class name for the first time through the catalog,” said Cohen. “We don’t want students to be discouraged from taking the class because their gender identity is not recognized in the title of the class.”
As of fall 2017, Benson’s class syllabus for MUSC 51 and MUSC 151 no longer contain any references to gender.
“Your voice and singing are a part of your identity, and the art form can be really personal,” Benson said. “We don’t want the name of the class to carry a negative connotation.”
Before Benson made his idea known to the music department, Cohen was already warming up to the idea of forgoing gender exclusivity in class titles because of his own experiences.
“Our department has hosted a recurring workshop for local high school music students called ‘Real Men Sing’, and in an attempt to be more inclusive, we wanted to put together a similar workshop for female students,” Cohen said.
Cohen soon realized that replacing the word “men” to “women” in the name of the workshop would not read as well as the original classes’ title.
The title of “Real Men Sing” is intended to be a play on the assumption that men don’t sing in choirs, therefore switching the genders would also do away with the title’s original meaning.
“Obviously, there was no way we could use that title and have it make any sense,” he said with a chuckle.
During a faculty duty day on campus last year, Cohen participated in a workshop that required participants to wear name tags with their preferred pronouns
attached to them.
“Those nametags really instilled in me that we should care about how people wish to be referred to, it matters,” he said.
Many of the students enrolled in Benson’s men’s Choir class were vocally supportive of the change when it was announced in spring of 2017.
“[Benson] is a pretty friendly guy. He always keeps the class in the loop on the things he’s doing,” said music senior Kevin Schoenfeld. “I’m happy about doing away with gender in music class titles, it’s harder to do that with some subjects.”
Music composition senior Natalie Jessop played bass in the choir and she had anticipated the name change when she heard rumors about it.
“I didn’t know it was a thing until I actually saw it on the roster,” she said. “It was really nice to see that there is now recognition that women sing bass in choir too.”
Benson said though the process to amend a course name wasn’t a particularly difficult one, he is extremely happy the School of Music and Dance carried
out the change.
“College is already such a stressful experience for a lot of people and we want to do everything we can to accommodate all students.”
