; Who decides which words are offensive?
: ''Our word list is composed of words that are found in any one of several college-level dictionaries. If the word appears in our source dictionaries only in senses that are tagged as being offensive(or an equivalent label), then we consider it offensive.''
; Who decides which offensive words are slurs?
: ''The initial selection was made by [[John Chew]], and it has since been revised based on public input, and is as of late July being debated by the [[Dictionary Committee]].''
; Who decides which words will be deleted?
: ''The words in the proposed list will be individually checked against [[Merriam-Webster]]'s current online word list to confirm that they are labelled in all lower-case senses as at least sometimes disparaging, offensive, obscene or vulgar. All that meet these criteria will be deleted. For words that do not appear in MW, a more complicated set of rules will apply.''; I find a particular word offensive. How can I get it added to the offensive word list below?: ''If you find a word in one of our source lexica that should have been deemed offensive according to our rules, please bring it to our attention. We will review it and make sure that it is in the next edition of our offensive word list and not in the next major release of the NASPA School Word List. If the word is not listed as offensive in Merriam-Webster, try contacting their Customer Service to express your views.''; Can you send me an unscrambled list of the words?: We will publish our final draft to NASPA [{{SERVER}}/cgi-bin/services.pl Member Services], but are not distributing unscrambled copies of earlier drafts such as the one that appears below.; Why did you start talking about this now?: ''[[Cesar Del Solar]] asked on the NASPA Member Concerns Facebook group what were doing as an association about Black Lives Matter. [[Jim Hughes]] suggested that we could show solidarity with BLM by removing the N word, Cesar agreed, and a spirited discussion ensued.'' === Archived Questions === The following questions and answers are preserved for historical interest, but are not current anymore.
; How long will the poll run?
: ''When the rate of responses drops down enough to suggest that most interested parties have responded, a statistical summary will be presented to the AB (this happened on 2020-07-05); the poll will continue indefinitely.''
; Does it matter what race I am as a poll respondent?
: ''If it is important to you, please let us know in the comments field in the poll.''
; I find a particular word offensive. How can I get it added to the offensive word list below?
: ''If you find a word in one of our source lexica that should have been deemed offensive according to our rules, please bring it to our attention. We will review it and make sure that it is in the next edition of our offensive word list and not in the next major release of the NASPA School Word List.
; Why did you start talking about this now?
: ''[[Cesar Del Solar]] asked on the NASPA Member Concerns Facebook group what were doing as an association about Black Lives Matter. [[Jim Hughes]] suggested that we could show solidarity with BLM by removing the N word, Cesar agreed, and a spirited discussion ensued.''
== Offensive Words by Category ==