Advice Needed

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Titchou

Perhaps it has devolved to this but I took 3 years of Latin and was raised Catholic when everything was in Latin. That's how it was then.

And either way, she would never be "an alumni" as alumni is plural.

Lol, ok no need to flash your Latin credentials at me.

Thing is your explanation is off for the romance languages as well, the gender doesn't reference the total population but the sample size that is being examined. Groups that contain one male and X females are referred to in the masculine, but never is a single female referred to in the masculine. I doubt that this changed over the past 50 years and suspect that you are remembering wrong as I am pretty confident that I'm right here. Can a MysticCat (or suitable facsimile) weigh in?

Wiki also notes that alumni is misused so frequently since most publications use the plural almost exclusively. Personally I prefer using alum as its gender neutral.

ETA: Lol again at "devolved." I kept looking it up in case it was 'old' usage (again, 50 years and less is not old for Latin) and the dictionaries all seem to agree with me)

[Titchou]

Well, I went to 4 catholic schools (2 grade and 2 high schools) and all 4 use it the way I do. Perhaps the nuns and priests are wrong??????? God forbid!

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Can a MysticCat (or suitable facsimile) weigh in?

Awww. pshaw.

If the nuns and priests were teaching that a female could be an alumnus, I fear they were mistaken or confused. (And let's face it -- alumnus isn't a common word in liturgical Latin.) Alumnus is masculine. It means "foster son." The masculine is indeed the default and correct word to use for mixed sexes, even if there is only one male in the group, but a single female graduate is not "mixed sexes." She is totally female. You don't work backwards from the mixed group and say any single member of that group must be treated as masculine.

A male graduate is an alumnus.
A female graduate is an alumna ("foster daughter").
A group of male graduates are alumni ("foster sons").
A group of female graduate are alumnae ("foster daughters").
A group of male and female graduates are alumni.

And if you want to get really technical, alumni is properly pronounced a-lum-nee, while alumnae is properly pronounced a-lum-neye.

ETA: Slight modification: If one is referring to a single graduate but doesn't know if the person is male or female, or if one is referring to a single graduate in general, alumnus is properly used. For example, it would be grammatically proper for promotional material to say "When you become an alumnus of Fantastic College, you'll find a nationwide network of alumni ready to help you make your mark." But it would not be correct to say "Congratulations Susie! You're an alumnus of Fantastic College now, just like your father!"

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Awww. pshaw.

If the nuns and priests were teaching that a female could be an alumnus, I fear they were mistaken or confused. (And let's face it -- alumnus isn't a common word in liturgical Latin.) Alumnus is masculine. It means "foster son." The masculine is indeed the default and correct word to use for mixed sexes, even if there is only one male in the group, but a single female graduate is not "mixed sexes." She is totally female. You don't work backwards from the mixed group and say any single member of that group must be treated as masculine.

A male graduate is an alumnus.
A female graduate is an alumna ("foster daughter").
A group of male graduates are alumni ("foster sons").
A group of female graduate are alumnae ("foster daughters").
A group of male and female graduates are alumni.

And if you want to get really technical, alumni is properly pronounced a-lum-nee, while alumnae is properly pronounced a-lum-neye.

ETA: Slight modification: If one is referring to a single graduate but doesn't know if the person is male or female, or if one is referring to a single graduate in general, alumnus is properly used. For example, it would be grammatically proper for promotional material to say "When you become an alumnus of Fantastic College, you'll find a nationwide network of alumni ready to help you make your mark." But it would not be correct to say "Congratulations Susie! You're an alumnus of Fantastic College now, just like your father!"

There's no one who really IS a reasonable facsimile MC, you know that.

And thanks, I was thinking about the generic singular - where one doesn't know the gender of the alumnus - glad to know I did grasp that correctly. I'm still going to stick with alum, quasi-neologism though it is. (Don't really know how new it is, but it's certainly not 'proper')

[*winter*]

Congrats on UGA and your scholarship! I did ROTC for a year and we had two girls who were both contracted cadets and in NPC sororities. I was in the National Guard and a service sorority. I had to miss one of our biggest events because of Drill but that is how it goes sometimes.

ROTC stuff at our school ran pretty concurrent with regular class stuff- except AM PT (and no non-military college org has anything going on at 6AM so that's never a conflict!) Military Science classes and leadership lab were all afternoon things like any other class. The STX lanes training, overnights are like once or twice a semester so you might have to miss things if they overlap with your military stuff. However there are 16 weekends in a semester so hopefully there won't be too many conflicts. My understanding is junior year is the worst, since that is when you are preparing to go to Advanced Camp. I didn't do Basic Camp because I did Basic Training so IDK how that one works.

ROTC is neat, it's like its own family organization. Most of the military stuff isn't "hard" so there's not much studying involved. Once you get to soph/junior year there is a lot of paperwork with things like Op Orders but those become routine after a while.