In Harvard’s Directories, Transgender Students Navigate a Slow and Uneven Name Change System

When students swipe into Harvard’s upperclassman dining halls, their names are covered with cardboard or paper taped to the ID scanners — a precaution taken to hide the legal names of transgender students still programmed to appear on the displays.

Behind the temporary fix is a long-standing problem in at least two of Harvard’s central databases: they do not remove legal names for students who use preferred names instead, whether because of personal preference or gender identity.

Harvard mailing addresses, emails from administrators, and dining hall scanners all default to using students’ legal names and are not updated when students change their names in my.harvard, the University’s central administrative site. The Harvard Alumni Directory allows affiliates to add a nickname to appear in quotes next to their legal name, but provides no option on the website to remove a name.

Harvard Trans+ Community Celebration co-director E. Matteo Diaz ’27 said the directory discrepancies present a serious issue for transgender students, many of whom do not use or identify with their legal name.

“Having a legal name that doesn’t reflect your identity pop up can be a really discomforting, distressing experience — something that’s difficult and can make you feel kind of at odds with your environment, with people around you,” said Diaz, also a Crimson Editorial editor and Diversity and Inclusivity Chair.

Students are asked at the beginning of each semester to verify their preferred name in my.harvard, and can change their name in the system at any time. But when preferred name changes were made mid-semester, students said there was a weeks-long delay before some Harvard systems began reflecting the change, while others simply never did.

Madison Codding ’27, a transgender student who changed her preferred name in the middle of the spring semester, said her name on Canvas was updated more than two weeks after she entered it into my.harvard.

Even after being told by her academic advisor that “the back end of Harvard’s servers” had been updated with her new name, Codding said “there are still a couple significant holdouts,” including the dining hall scanners.

She added that changing a Harvard email to reflect a new name is a “pretty intensive process.”

“The official Harvard email saying my dead name — I’m not really cool with,” Codding said. “That kind of sucks.”

According to College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo, students enrolled in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences can change their name at any time with the Registrar’s Office, but changes made after HUDS and other Harvard offices pull names from the system are not reflected.

“The old name would appear,” Palumbo wrote.

‘A Technical Issue’

In Harvard’s dining halls, trans students’ dead names appeared on screens every time they swiped their ID cards until the scanners were covered earlier this year.

“It’s not a great experience to have your dead name coming up every time you have to swipe in and do a very basic function of life on campus,” Diaz said.

Harvard University Dining Services began taping pieces of cardboard or paper over part of swipe machines that display student names at the beginning of the Fall 2024. Four HUDS employees said the change was made to protect student privacy around gender identity.

One HUDS employee said the scanners were covered after a transgender student made a complaint in summer 2024. According to the employee, the student swiped into the dining hall surrounded by their group of friends, who learned their dead name from the scanner — leading the student to make a complaint.

Palumbo confirmed that the change was made after a student raised a concern over the summer, and wrote that “it is a technical issue between the system where students reflect their preferred name and the HUDS system for processing board plan usage.”

“We are actively working together on a solution,” Palumbo added.

The College’s nine river houses and Currier House started covering student names on dining hall scanners in the fall. As of Thursday, both Cabot House and Pforzheimer House had added covers as well. Annenberg is the only dining hall without covered scanners.

Though the University has not fixed the inconsistency yet, the temporary coverings were an effective temporary measure, Diaz said.

“Coming in this year and seeing HUDS having made that switch — it meant a lot to me,” Diaz said. “Even just seeing that small fix be made, it meant that there was someone thinking about it, and someone making the effort.”

But Diaz added that having preferred names registered in my.harvard also registered with the HUDS system automatically would be the “ideal scenario.”

The issue caught the attention of Harvard Undergraduate Association officials, who were also told administrators would work to find a solution. Former HUA Academic Team officer Matthew R. Tobin ’27 said he met with the Committee on Undergraduate Education, who said the HUDS issue was separate from the alumni directory.

“The fix seems like a very easy fix on Harvard’s end,” Tobin said. “Students already list their preferred names that’s already in the software, so it's just making sure that data point is used when they’re pulling the students information rather than the data point listed immediately before it.”

‘Misgendered and Misnamed’

Harvard’s Alumni Directory, used by current students and alumni from all 12 schools as a networking platform, has even fewer options to update names.

While a student can remove the prefix “Mr.” or “Ms.” from their online profile and choose to add a nickname which is displayed in quotation marks, they cannot add preferred pronouns or remove their legal name from being displayed entirely through the website.

For alumni who change their names legally after getting married, there is a “Marital Status Change Request” form built into the profile editing page on the Harvard Alumni website. There is no equivalent system for trans students who change their names legally.

According to a HAA spokesperson, the Alumni Association will remove legal names and replace them with preferred names if a student emails the association and requests an update.

But the option is not advertised, and the differences between used and listed names has led both the alumni association and potential employers who reach out using the directory information to misgender or misname University affiliates.

Murphy E. King ’24, who founded Harvard Trans+ Community Celebration in 2022, said they are “misgendered and misnamed every single time” someone contacts them through the Alumni Directory.

“Once people know what your old name, your dead name, or your pronouns assigned at birth would have been, it’s a lot easier for them to misgender you, intentionally or unintentionally,” King said.

Having names mismatched either in initial outreach to employers, or from transcripts is an “additional flag” in the hiring process and a detriment to job opportunities, according to King.

“Over the course of six months of last year, I had significantly worse outcomes compared to peers with similar backgrounds and experiences,” King said.

The HAA spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement that the HAA is “actively working to ensure that alumni records are accurate, up to date, and able to sync with other university information systems as appropriate.”

Three transgender students who spoke to The Crimson said they faced extra confusion among employers when applying for summer opportunities with different names on documents — such as resumes and transcripts — and their email address or name.

“Applying for summer funding was kind of stressful,” Codding said. “It was definitely just an uncomfortable process to have my name be different things in different places for a while.”

Fable J. Perkins ’27, who is also transgender, said that when applying for an internship opportunity through Harvard and making it to the interview round, the University only shared his legal name with the host organization — leading Perkins to have to correct the employer upon initial outreach.

“It is still a correction that is at least uncomfortable to try to do that early in an application process,” Perkins said.

Palumbo wrote in a statement that the College is “deeply committed to cultivating a campus where all students are welcome and feel seen.”

“In all cases and with all students, we strive to improve our systems in service of a more inclusive environment, and we acknowledge the work still left to do. Every student belongs and we work to ensure our systems match our commitments,” he added.

Multiple students said they still receive email communications from the College — the FAS Registrar, the Alumni Association, and messages from House Mail Centers — which addressed them with a legal or dead name they no longer use.

Perkins said receiving those emails is a “jarring” experience.

“The fundamental thing is, none of this is hard,” King said. “We just don’t have the systems to support it, and nobody thinks it’s their problem.”

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.

—Staff writer Sheerea X. Yu can be reached at sheerea.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @_shuhree_.