Higher education organizations need to support trans students' use of self-identified first names (in place of legal names given at birth) and self-identified pronouns (in place of assumed pronouns based sex assigned at birth of other's perceptions of physical appearance), but the literature provides little guidance on how best to do so. This article addresses this gap in the literature and uses institutional ethnography (IE) as both a methodology and critical framework for uncovering what IE refers to as texts and relations that can operate in unintended ways to undo practitioners' efforts to provide consistent and effective support of trans students' use of self-identified first names and pronouns on campus. The author uses examples from their experience as a higher education LGBTQ resource professional at the University of Vermont (UVM) to add depth to the analysis.