Dey knows what dey is talking about

Once there was a professor, and they assigned a paper on epicene singular they in common usage around their school. One student interviewed other students as part of their research, and another student cited their paper as part of their research. They handed in their papers on time, as did most of the rest of the students, and the professor graded them. There was a hint of plagiarism in them, and they didn't know what to do about them. In the end, they appealed to the Academic Integrity Committee, and they discussed the matter with them.

Some of the them redefined success. They said that they reaped the benefits of flexibility, whether political or not, and that they did not suffer from problems of ambiguity or sounding illiterate. They, but not all of them, also said that prescriptive grammar was oppressing them, and that evidence of epicene singular they from the Middle Ages was clear basis for belief that subjunctives were dead and that they were only used by sticklers and language bigots. They maintained that they were keeping them down. The grades did not necessarily reflect this. They could infer from them that they had seen a world where they could use several anonymous antecedents of varying gender and number, and they would not need to use artificial gender-neutral pronouns when they could just rely on good and proper epicene singular they. They knew that once language shaped thought enough, there would be no need to expend the extra effort to clarify the doubts introduced by them using the same word to mean fifty different things, because they would just know what they were saying.

They didn't care at all that it sounded incredibly stupid. They only cared that they were right.