At the beginning of the 2016-17 academic year, Needham Yancey Gulley published an Inside Higher Ed article challenging educators to move away from a seemingly dated term-nontraditional-because it labeled students in a way that could harm their opportunities in the classroom. 1 This is just one way in which the generations have been objectified in higher education, a recent (and popular) question being how to "deal with" or "manage" Millennials. 2 But why must we compartmentalize generations in

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... n effort to "deal" with them? Beyond the obvious condescension in the language, we can no longer describe millennials only as problem students. The older end of the bracket is now (and has been) joining academia as faculty and staff members: a shift that Stanford University has recognized in structuring its faculty mentorship programming. 3