Celebrating Diversity with Multicultural & Lavender Graduation
This year marks the fifth annual Multicultural Graduation ceremony and the fourth annual Lavender Graduation ceremony at Chatham University. Held in addition to the campus-wide commencement ceremonies, Multicultural and Lavender Graduations seek to provide a safe space to celebrate students of color, international students and students who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
We sat down with Juan Mendizabal, associate director of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and head of this year’s program to learn more about this unique Chatham tradition and the importance of celebrating our students.
What does your role entail?
Juan Mendizabal: I do a lot of overseeing of student programming. I oversee the students who facilitate our BIPOC family dinners, our students who facilitate the Queering Leadership Program, our Diversity Dialogue series, and any of our other ongoing programs and retreats. I also work to develop some faculty and staff training as well. I really do a mosaic of diversity, equity and inclusion things. I’m a trainer, an advisor, a mentor and a program supporter.
What is Multicultural Graduation?
JM: Multicultural Graduation is specifically intended for students of color at Chatham, and international students. So anyone who either racially, culturally, or ethnically may not subscribe to Chatham’s predominantly white student population. Each graduate is honored at the ceremony with a Kente stole. Kente cloth is made from Ewe and Ashante weavers from Ghana, and each pattern and unique design has a name and special meaning. It is said to date back to the 12th century, when royalty and other important members of society wore it for special occasions. Though each design, pattern and color on a Kente cloth represents its own theme or story, the Kente cloth tradition itself holds broader value to people of African descent living outside of the continent, displayed in honor of their ancestral heritage or as a symbol of overcoming the struggles of displacement. While Kente stoles are mostly considered an African-American graduation tradition, students from many ethnic backgrounds wear Kente graduation stoles and participate in multicultural graduations like this every year.
What is Lavender Graduation?
Faculty and students at the 2019 Lavender Graduation
JM: Lavender Graduation is for any students who identify as queer, trans, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or anything not straight. Despite having a sizeable queer student population, we want to create a space for them to acknowledge their presence on campus and celebrate their accomplishments. The first Lavender Graduation ceremony was held at the University of Michigan in 1995 after Dr. Ronni Sanlo, a Jewish lesbian, was encouraged by the Dean of Students to create a ceremony to honor the academic achievements and contributions to the campus community made by LGBTQIA+ students. The color lavender is significant as it is created by combining the colors pink and black. Pink and black were the colors of triangles that LGBTQIA+ members were forced to wear in concentration camps in Nazi Germany—pink triangles for “homosexual” men and black triangles for lesbians/political prisoners. These symbols of hate and exclusion have been reclaimed to create a symbol of pride and community.
Why is it important to host a separate ceremony for these identities?
JM: So for folks who work in higher education, it is always important for us to remember that higher education was not created for anybody but cis, straight, white, wealthy, men. Since 1636, when Harvard first opened its doors in the United States, that was the model for who deserves access to higher education and the opportunity, financial, and social privileges that come with that. For the majority of our nation's history, we have tried to keep anybody else out of universities and colleges. In 2022, despite what a lot of people might think, we still know that if you look contextually at the history of higher education in the United States, it is a radical act of resistance for people of color, and queer folks to be out, visible and thriving at our higher education institutions. For people for whom the social, political, and even legal odds have been stacked against them, graduating isn’t just about academics, it’s about social life and finding a way to survive in a space that was not designed for you. That’s a huge accomplishment in and of itself.
What’s in store for this year’s ceremonies?
Students at the 2019 Multicultural Graduation
JM: Faculty and staff who represent the celebrated identities will be present to welcome students and there will be a keynote alumni speaker at each ceremony. Then there will be the presentation of stoles which is a really important part of the ceremony. In years prior, these were placed by faculty and staff members, but this year we are giving students the opportunity to elect someone to place the stole on them. This gives students yet another opportunity to empower themselves and to make that day about their identity and the people who have supported them. It will be followed by a toast from the Alumni Association and will hopefully be an opportunity for people to build community. We know it's a busy weekend. We know there's a lot for people to do. But, in the hustle and bustle of the official graduation ceremony, we hope that students will take one of many moments to just pause and celebrate themselves because it's a huge accomplishment that we want them to revel in.
How does this event fit in with ongoing efforts in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion?
A student receives their stole at the 2019 Multicultural Graduation
JM: When we do diversity, equity and inclusion work, we have some programs that are accessible to folks of all identities. So, we have that bucket of programs that anybody from anywhere, can appreciate and learn from these identity development experiences. But also, we have things like Multicultural and Lavender Graduation, which are very much in the same vein as our Queering Leadership program that we launched this spring semester or our BIPOC family dinners. These are spaces where we say, “okay, we've done our due diligence, to educate the entire campus on a variety of identity, diversity and inclusion topics, but now we need to take care of folks who are the most vulnerable in these spaces that may not attend other programs and events because they still see it as either a white coded space or as a straight, cis coded space.” Providing these other community spaces where people can not worry about their identity being a marginalizing factor is really important.
Lavender Graduation will take place from 11am-1pm on April 23 in the James Laughlin Music Hall Welker Room. Multicultural Graduation will take place from 3pm-5pm on April 23 in the James Laughlin Music Hall Welker Room. For more information, contact the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.