Lavender Graduation for LGBTQ is the only ‘traditional’ ceremony at UAF this year

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A special in-person graduation ceremony for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and others with gender-specific identities will be held this Saturday at UAF.

In-person attendance is limited to graduates participating. A rainbow honor cord and “pride pin” will be given to each participant.

The event is called a Lavender Graduation, created by Ronni Sanlo, director emeritus of the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center. Over 45 campuses across the country now have special ceremonies for LGBTQ students.

The traditional commencement center at the Carlson Center is now a drive-in celebration and graduate car parade on Saturday, May 1 at 9:30 a.m. Caps and gowns are optional and family and friends may not be in graduates’ cars, but may wave at graduates from the parade route.

There will be a festival stage and LED screen for the graduates in their car and the event will be live-streamed.

This week, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District announced it will have outdoor graduations at the high schools next month.

19 COMMENTS

  1. Why is this even news? A dog whistle piece to fire up the base Suzanne? Nothing fires up the Alaska religious right like bashing some gay kids.

  2. Pathetic. If you want to be treated the same as everybody else, get your butt up there with everybody else. Attend the same ceremonies and services as everybody else. You don’t get acceptance or “equal treatment” when you run away with other like-minded folks and create your own little “special” events for your “special” club of people. This is kindergarten school yard politics at its worst.

  3. I am curious if this is something that is being supported and / or paid for by UAF or if this is a private group. Either way, it would seem to go against the fight to deter alleged “discrimination based on sexual orientation” that the leftists have so long rallied for. If it is state funded, it’s unconstitutional. If it is some private group, not funded, facilitated, or otherwise supported by taxpayer dollars or facilities, I don’t see where anyone else should have much of a say in it.

  4. Wow, not a single mention in the article of anyone complaining about this but self righteous “Harbor Guy” has to be sure to slam religion. Everyone stop thinking for yourself and be sure to believe only what he does because he is now the thought police.

  5. If you could read you would see Suzanne wrote a hit piece where she made it clear that the gay kids would get a somewhat normal graduation but the straight kids would be doing a drive in celebration. Thought police? you can think anything you want it makes no difference to me but do not come on here to always expect every one to be in agreement with each other.

  6. What’s with this preferential stuff? Using university resources to allow congregants a chance for a last hook-up in their gowns? UAF has cheapened its brand so low that the diploma is worth less than a few thrungs of toilet paper. And the university Administration really believes they are educating young minds? Special ceremonies are discriminatory on their face. I thought UAF was searching for equity amongst its students. What a confused, mixed-up bunch of fruitcakes.

  7. The Bible condemns, and a majority of both Christians and non-religious persons hardly accept their sexual orientation and activities. I’m in that grouping.
    However, America isn’t a theocracy, nor is it a tyranny. In America, what isn’t specifically forbidden, is permitted.
    I think I will stop here, while I’m still ahead…………….

  8. Making special dispensations for one group will always be wrong, I don’t care what group it is or how they identify themselves. If there is to be a graduation from any university program, it should be one graduation. Adn it isn’t a “hit piece” to point out the hypocrisy of allowing one group to opperate counter to all the “covid” hysteria, while requiring another group to be completely marginalized by demanding less than optimal circumstance for a graduation ceremony, a once in a lifetime event.

  9. Nothing like equal rights under the law at the UA system. Dunleavy was right to cut their budget. Should have stuck to his guns. Cheers –

  10. Harbor Guy you do not have to be religious to be pissed off over this abuse of the system.
    This is not a hit piece if it is simply stating the facts. No Main Stream Media outlet in Alaska is reporting this UNFAIR standard of graduation for UAF Students.
    I for one would seriously like to know if a nickel of UAF monies is going to this SPECIAL groups graduation, ie A double booking for the Carlson Center.
    I guess for you Harbor Guy it is stick to the Spin not the Facts.

  11. Productive Alaskans who have no expectations of Alaska’s third-rate college industry won’t be disappointed.
    .
    At best, the industry seems to operate like an overpriced stash house for over-aged high schoolers kicked out because younger children needed their desks.
    .
    Nothing suggests the industry’s product, though culturally whitewashed, is anything but the same:
    .
    …functionally illiterate, fractious, unpatriotic, immature, social-media addicted, self absorbed, unemployable (except in government) adult-children whose aberrant behavior choices appear to be their only attribute.
    .
    So… sad (and wastefully expensive) as it may seem… no expectations, no disappointments.

  12. I guess it’s too much to ask for a ceremony for the aeronautical engineers, or the industrial technologists, or the philosophers, or the brain surgeons, or the geologists, or the theoretical scientists, or…

  13. I thought they wanted to be equal. Why not graduate with your class?
    Give me a break. So stupid.

  14. I don’t see the need for a segregated graduation for all the gay kids, but I suppose if they really dig the rainbow color scheme they might as well go ahead with it. It just seems like moving backwards when it comes to inclusivity.

  15. Men with purple scarfs and pink ribbons in hair. Hair is fucia and magenta with green highlights. Heels for the boys. Combat boots and knee-high waders for the women. Men carrying purses and women with big knives on belts and the smell of chainsaw oil on their 42- inch waist Levi’s.
    Can we just play some old Boy George tunes and try to get along?

  16. What a sick world we live in. I do not understand why students are taking this lying down. The purple is not traditional, but they surely want you to believe it is.

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