The University of Oklahoma’s homecoming court has dethroned its traditional “king and queen” categories, opting instead to crown two students as “homecoming royalty” regardless of gender. The student body elected two male students, Justin Norris and Reece Henry, to the throne last month during the school’s annual homecoming celebration.
The University of Oklahoma now joins several other Big 12 universities, including Iowa State, in making their homecoming courts gender neutral, according to local news outlet KOKH, which originally reported the story.
Henry, who is straight, told the news outlet he was “shell-shocked,” and Norris, who is gay, said the victory “just made me feel very validated in my identity.” The royal duo donned white and red sashes as their regalia instead of the conventional crowns typically given to homecoming kings and queens.
The University of Oklahoma reportedly made the transformation to bolster equality on campus.
“Congrats to Reece Henry and Justin Norris on being named the 2021 Spring Homecoming Royalty!!” OU Student Life wrote on Twitter following the students’ crowning.
According to the new rules, on-campus organizations nominate candidates for homecoming royalty, while faculty and staff choose a dozen students who have demonstrated superior service and leadership to be on the homecoming court. Students elected to the court then vote for two monarchs without using gender as a criteria.
“I feel like it’s a really important and positive shift,” Henry told KOKH.
The old rules were just “filling a quota of ‘we need to fit this equal number of males and females’,” added Henry, who is a pre-law student and campus tour guide, according to his LinkedIn profile. He said the new policies allow students to elect “people who have made a really great impact on campus.”
The amended standards for recognition also allow LGBTQ+ students to feel welcome on campus, according to Norris, who works as a peer educator at the university’s Gender & Equality Center.
“I’m sure there are so many queer students here on campus, white students, Black students who have been able to look at this court and see themselves in it,” he told KOKH. “Not just I can be on the homecoming court, but I can really do anything I set my mind to here at OU and people are going to support me for it.”
Norris added that the school’s new gender-neutral homecoming court is also a sign that the world is evolving, and that the university is evolving with it. “With this court not being equally split six and six, you know, male and female, it just shows there are so many different types of people who deserve to be recognized,” he said.
The University of Oklahoma joins a number of colleges and universities in embracing gender-neutral homecoming courts in recent years.
In 2017, Northwestern University started electing one student its “Homecoming Wildcat,” who can choose between a tiara, crown, or gender-neutral cap, according to the Chicago Tribune. That same year, Iowa State’s homecoming committee began selecting “two royals” instead of a traditional gender-specific king and queen, and the University of Minnesota traded in the convention binary labels of its homecoming court for the title of “Royalty.”
Other states to join then include Penn State University, Purdue University, and Tulane University, which all have adopted gender-neutral courts since 2018.
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