Fourth annual Lavender Graduation held in Cabell

Logan Bogert
Contributing Writer

VCU celebrated its fourth annual Lavender Graduation, a ceremony dedicated to celebrating the achievements of graduating gender and sexual orientation minority students and their allies, on April 22 in the Cabell Library.

The university is one of 93 higher institutions in the country that holds a Lavender Graduation. In 2012, VCU’s first Lavender Graduation celebrated three students. The 2016 graduation ceremony celebrated 37 graduates, and cumulatively more than 200 VCU alumni have been recognized in the ceremony.

Elementary education graduate Jez Wood gave the opening speech, in which she discussed the history of the ceremony, detailing where event the began in 1995 on the University of Michigan’s campus.

According to Wood, the color lavender is a symbol for the LGBTQIA+ community from when gay men were forced to wear a pink triangle in Nazi concentration camps a black triangle which lesbians were forced to wear as political prisoners in Nazi Germany.

Camilla Buchanan, who graduated first in her class and was one of only two mothers who graduated from the VCU School of Medicine in 1976, spoke next, Buchanan is now a clinical professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at the College of William and Mary and said she has lived as an openly gay woman since 1982. Buchanan discussed the differences in the LGBTQIA+ community in the last four decades.

“(Lavender Graduation) means progress because as Dr. Camilla Buchanan said, 40 years ago this wouldn’t have been possible,” Woods said. “Fourty years from now our kids are going to be the ones telling us we aren’t progressive enough and I can’t wait to see that change.”

The theme of the 2016 Lavender Graduation was “Color the World.” Each of the 37 lavender graduates were presented with a coloring book and a rainbow cord to wear at their regular commencement activities. Assistant Director of Business and Personnel Services for Residential Life and Housing, George Kelly; Special Assistant for LGBTQ Initiatives, Paris Prince; Senior Director of VCU Alumni, Diane Stout-Brown; and Interim Associate Vice President for Health Sciences, Kevin Harris presented the rainbow cords to the graduates.

“The world is changing and it’s changing in a great way,” Kelly said. “For us to be able to do this for students who don’t have anybody they can share their sexuality with or what they’re living and going through, this is a way for them to celebrate and be recognized.”

Lavender Graduation’s allied partners are the Office of the Provost and the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. Sponsors include Amendment Literary and Art Journal, Division of Student Affairs, Equality VCU, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, the Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences, University Student Commons and Activities, the Wellness Resource Center, VCU Alumni and VCU Libraries.