The University of Connecticut Rainbow Center hosted its 19th annual Lavender Graduation ceremony on Friday, April 17 at the Student Union Ballroom.
Photos courtesy of uconnrainbowctr on Instagram
The ceremony was hosted to laud the academic successes of UConn seniors with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations, including those who are a part of theLGBTQIA+ community. Roughly 35 graduates were honored at the ceremony.
Vergil Hart, a fourth-semester structural biology and physics student, said Lavender Graduation “gives us a chance to celebrate the members of our community, whether they spend every day at the Rainbow Center or whether they just popped in occasionally.”
Hart also stated that the ceremony is “a chance for [the graduates’] friends and family to be proud of how far they’ve come.”
The graduation began with opening remarks from Bailey Gaffney, the higher education and student affairs graduate assistant for the Rainbow Center. Gaffney welcomed everyone to the ceremony and gave a land acknowledgment.
Kelsey O’Neil, the director of the Rainbow Center and the next speaker, discussed the history of Lavender Graduation.
According to O’Neil, the very first Lavender Graduation ceremony took place in 1995 at the University of Michigan. The ceremony was incited by Dr. Ronni Sanlo, a Jewish lesbian who was barred from attending her children’s graduation ceremony because of her sexual orientation. Only three graduates participated in the ceremony.
Since 1995, many more colleges began hosting their own Lavender Graduations, including UConn, which hosted its first in 2008.
In addition to sharing the history of Lavender Graduation, O’Neil explained the significance of the color lavender. They said it is a combination of the pink triangle that gay men were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps and the black triangle that recognized lesbian women as political prisoners during the same period.
The next speaker at the ceremony was Angela Rola, the senior director of inclusion and cultural engagement at the Middle Eastern Cultural Programs. In her speech, Rola acknowledges how far the Rainbow Center has come within the 28 years it has existed.
“Watching this community evolve and be shaped so powerfully by student and staff leadership, courage, creativity and care has been one of the greatest privileges of my time here at UConn,” Rola said. “I say that as an outline as the former director of the Asian American Cultural Center, and now as the senior director for Inclusion and Community Engagement, the accomplishments of students connected to the Rainbow Center are many and significant.”
After Rola gave her speech, Ian Shick, the associate director of the Rainbow Center, went on stage and honored the center’s graduating student staff members. Those members were Dahra Dy, Sam Arévalo-Hoefer, Hiis LaRose and Martine Remi. All four staff members were awarded certificates.
The next part of Lavender Graduation was a marvelous speech given by the ceremony’s keynote speaker, Vu Tran. Tran is a UConn alum who graduated in 2010. He is the Emperor ‘22 and ’25 of the Imperial Sovereign Court of all Connecticut.
In his speech, Tran shared his experience being a queer student at UConn. He mentioned his membership in Allies and Queers, Undergraduate Association (AQUA) and Queers United Against Discrimination (QUAD) and how symbolic they were to him.
Photos courtesy of uconnrainbowctr on Instagram
“AQUA and QUAD meetings opened up a whole new world for me,” Tran said. “I never felt so comfortable letting my guard down, and the friends I made, they were genuine ones because I felt like I was being seen for the first time. Through AQUA, I learned I was enough and really came out of my shell.”
Tran also mentioned how QUAD benefitted his prowess in activism.
“At QUAD, I learned the importance of using my voice,” Tran said. “From protests on the Red Cross to advocating for state marriage equality through our solitary of hate speech on Day of Silence to a road trip down to Washington, D.C., to join the March for Equality. If there was a cause, we were ready to go to that for it, and we have a privilege to do so.”
To conclude his speech, Tran read a quote by Pablo Casals, a Spanish cellist from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The quote was about children and their uniqueness in the world and also declared that everyone needs to strive to make the world a valuable place for children.
At the end of the ceremony, all the graduates received their lavender-colored stoles while a PowerPoint slide consisting of each student’s photo, name, pronouns and major was shown on the screen above the stage.
After the graduates received their stoles, they gathered on stage for a group photo.
Quinn Saltas, an eighth-semester geographic information science and applied data analytics student who was one of the graduates, said they enjoyed the personalization of the ceremony.
“I really appreciate how the ceremony was much more personalized than other graduations,” Saltas said. “It really helps promote the LGBTQIA+ community and its peers like me.”