USA Today
05-17-06
'Lavender graduations' gain ground
Echoing a tradition already established on many campuses for minority students
and other groups, a small but growing number of schools are holding "lavender
graduations" to honor gay and lesbian students.
"We're finally ... getting our names and faces out there," says Alex Ferrando, 22,
who helped organize the inaugural lavender graduation last month at the
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Commencement was Sunday.
This year, lavender graduations are being or were held on more than 50
campuses, up from just a handful a decade ago. Among those launching
ceremonies this year: the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University
of Hawaii in Manoa and Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.
Typically, lavender ceremonies — the color, like the rainbow, is of symbolic
significance to gay groups — are organized by campus resource centers for
students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — LGBT, for short.
Specifics vary by campus. But most such events are part of an array of smaller
receptions and awards programs preceding university-wide commencement
exercises. One common theme: Participants receive rainbow-colored tassels to
put on their mortarboards during formal commencement exercises.
And oh, what a difference a decade makes. When Ronni Sanlo organized a
lavender graduation in 1995 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she says
the goal was to honor students "basically for surviving what typically had been a
hostile (campus) environment."
"Three students showed up, and there were maybe five people in the audience,"
recalls Sanlo, who now directs UCLA's LGBT Campus Resource Center.
The growing visibility of lavender graduations — including on many campuses
the participation of university officials — suggests more universities see value in
supporting their gay populations, says Shane Windmeyer, founder of Campus
Pride, a national organization for LGBT youth. "Such an event shows
commitment to the LGBT student not only in recruitment but also in retention and
a connection into their status as alumni."
But such events are not universally embraced. Three years ago, University of
California regent Ward Connerly sought, unsuccessfully, to bar the nine-campus
system from funding separate ceremonies based on race, ethnicity or sexual
orientation, arguing that such events encourage students to segregate.
Jason Mattera, spokesman for Young America's Foundation, a Virginia-based
non-profit that promotes conservative ideals, says he noticed the trend while he
compiled his group's annual list of commencement speakers. "If anyone wanted
more proof of college campuses as leftist breeding grounds, here it is," he says.
LGBT students at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Sarah Lawrence
College in Bronxville, N.Y., meanwhile, weren't interested in such an event,
LGBT center directors on those campuses say. And while Whitney Mackman
participated in commencement exercises Sunday from the University of Puget
Sound in Tacoma, Wash., she chose not to attend the lavender graduation.
"Every part of me contributed to my successes, and I find it inappropriate to
honor my accomplishments as merely a LGBT student," Mackman, 21, wrote in
the student newspaper.
Yoshiko Matsui, associate director for student services at the University of Puget
Sound, says she has "a lot of room in my heart" for that sentiment. But, she
adds, "there are also people who ... need to see that the campus cares."
PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS
A sampling of who holds lavender graduations and when they began:
• Public universities
University of Georgia (2005)
University of Washington (2003)
Iowa State University (1998)
UCLA (1998)
• Private universities
Georgetown University (2005)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2001)
Duke University(1997)
• Liberal arts
Macalester College (2005)
Colgate University N.Y. (2004)