Students have a more accessibility to change their names on how it would appear on rosters through the access of Starfish, since its official launch back in August.
Starfish is a new tool that the college is offering to better communicate academic performances of the students with their professors.
An email was sent out earlier in the year outlining the features Starfish had to offer to the student body.
It is with this tool that students can login and make the process of changing one’s name just a few clicks away, said Dean of Students Success Leisl Fowler.
“There is a button available that lets (students) change their preferred name at Augustana…it’s not changing their legal name, it’s just changing how things would appear on things like Arches and on the class roster,” said Fowler.
Having a legal name change from the college would require more legal documentation from the government, while this tool would only change how a name is displayed throughout campus.
Once logged in, a student would need to click on the request help channel icon from the Home screen, select under the type category that you ‘would like to change your preferred name at Augustana’, and then just click submit to finalize the request.
Changing one’s name in the system would only take a few business days, said Fowler. If a student wanted to change the way their name would be displayed on their Augustana ID, it would require a trip to see Jack Dunkin in the Security Office down in Sorensen.
Dunkin said in an email that once the forms are received from the Registrar’s Office, the name is changed right away and a new one is printed out, taking a few minutes.
This will be an improvement for many students who don’t feel comfortable with their birth names, especially for those who are transgender.
The ability to choose your own name is something that should be easily accessible to all students, said sophomore and president of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance Anna Serafini.
“It shouldn’t be a difficult process where they would need to jump through hoops,” said Serafini. “In the case of trans people, when you pick your own name it is a big exciting thing and they deserve to have that name that everybody get to see.”
Serafini said many transgender individuals on campus would rather not disclose the fact that they’re trans, especially to a new group of people.
The names sent through emails to professors and in the classroom is something they want to be made public if it’s not their preferred name.
Fowler has said that there have been three requests so far for changing someone’s name since the beginning of the school year.
“Previously, students would come into my office and let us know in person,” said Fowler. “This way we can track it better…we are making sure we are serving the students and that they don’t have to make the trip to see us.”
