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Legal Data Collection

Answers to gender identity and sexual orientation questions are voluntary and do not affect admission.

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In this section

These pages cover how the UO reviews applications, self-reported transcripts, departmental deadlines, residency, and legal data.

Application Review

Self-Reported Transcript (STARS)

Departmental Deadlines

Residency

Legal Data Collection

Why We Collect This Information

As required by Oregon law, the University of Oregon has updated the collection of biographical data to include two new questions regarding gender identity and sexual orientation alongside an existing question on legal sex designation. These questions are voluntary.

We celebrate the diversity of our campus community in welcoming prospective students to identify themselves through these responses. You should know that, regardless of your answers to these voluntary questions, the UO is committed to supporting our LGBTQQIAPP+ students.

Legal sex designation: The UO is required to collect this data in order to comply with federal reporting including IPEDS reporting, student employment, international student status, and the granting of federal financial aid. If you are an employee or federal aid recipient, your designation must match your sex designation with the Social Security office. If you are an international student, your designation must match the sex designation on your passport.

Gender: The UO recognizes that gender is not limited to, nor always congruent with, the categories available in legal sex designation.

Sexual orientation: Along with other biographical information such as race, collecting sexual orientation allows the UO and the state of Oregon to analyze important information related to student success and retention rates for specific communities of students. This allows us to advocate for resources, scholarships, and provide appropriate services at the UO.

The categories listed for all three questions were designated by the State of Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC).

Information shared on the admission application will not be used in admission decisions.

LGBT Education and Support Services

Who Has Access to This Information

Only a few campus offices can see your individual responses. Other departments receive aggregate numbers only.

Unit level data (your name associated with your responses) will only be available to limited staff in offices that are responsible for data collection for the institution—primarily Admissions, Institutional Research, and the Office of the Registrar. Your individual responses will not be viewable by general university departments. Aggregate information (percentages and category totals) will be available to administrative departments at the institution, and reported to the state.

How We Use This Information

These questions are optional. Responses are used only for aggregate reporting.

At this time, the information will only be used for aggregate reporting within the campus and, once requested, to the state. No individual information is to be shared with other offices at this time, until further discussion has taken place. If the policy on information sharing changes, you will be contacted with the updated sharing policy and the opportunity to change or remove your responses. Again, these questions are optional, and your responses are completely voluntary.

How Can I Change My Record?

Legal sex designation can be updated with a government-issued ID. The two newer questions cannot yet be changed in DuckWeb.

To update your legal sex designation, you will need to provide a government-issued ID to the Office of the Registrar if you are a student or Human Resources if you are an employee. While it is not yet possible to update your responses to these two new questions in DuckWeb/Banner Self-Service, we hope to have this option available soon. When we do, this page will be updated.

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Glossary of Terms

Terms used on this page.

  • Agender¹: not identifying with any gender, the feeling of having no gender.
  • Androgyne³: a person whose biological sex is not readily apparent, a person who is intermediate between the two traditional genders, or a person who rejects gender roles entirely
  • Bisexual⁴: an umbrella term for people who experience sexual and/or emotional attraction to more than one gender (pansexual, fluid, omnisexual, queer, etc)
  • Gay³: the adjective used to describe people whose enduring physical, romantic and/or emotional attractions are to people of the same sex
  • Gender queer or gender fluid⁴: an identity commonly used by people who do not identify or express their gender within the gender binary
  • Gender/gender identity⁴: one’s internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or other gender(s)
  • IPEDS: Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System used by the National Center for Education Statistics to collect and analyze data related to education in the U.S.
  • Legal sex designation: the sex that is indicated on government-issued ID, such as a passport, driver’s license, or Social Security registration
  • Lesbian⁵: a woman whose enduring physical, romantic and/or emotional attraction is to other women
  • LGBTQQIAPP+⁴: a collection of identities short for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, aromantic, pansexual, polysexual (sometimes abbreviated to LGBT or LGBTQ+)
  • Pansexual⁴: capable of being attracted to many/any gender(s)
  • Queer⁴: a term for people of marginalized gender identities and sexual orientations who are not cisgender and/or heterosexual. This term has a complicated history as a reclaimed slur.
  • Same-gender loving⁴: a term sometimes used by members of the African American/Black community to express an alternative sexual orientation without relying on terms and symbols of European descent
  • Sex⁵: refers to a person’s biological status and is typically categorized as male, female, or intersex
  • Sexual orientation⁴: a person’s physical, romantic, emotional, aesthetic, and/or other form of attraction to others
  • Straight/heterosexual⁵: an adjective used to describe people whose enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction is to people of the opposite sex
  • Transgender⁴: an umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. The term transgender is not indicative of gender expression, sexual orientation, hormonal makeup, physical anatomy, or how one is perceived in daily life.
  • Trans man⁴: Trans man generally describes someone assigned female at birth who identifies as a man.
  • Trans woman⁴: Trans woman generally describes someone assigned male at birth who identifies as a woman.

Footnotes

1. Genderqueer and Non-Binary Identities & Terminology. Genderqueer Identities. https://genderqueerid.com/gq-terms

3. GLAAD Media Reference Guide - Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual Glossary Of Terms. https://www.glaad.org/reference/lgbtq

4. LGBTQI Terminology. LGBT Resource Center at UC Riverside. https://students673.ucr.edu/docsserver/lgbt/terminology.pdf

5. Definition of Terms: Sex, Gender, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf