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New “Cultural Graduation Celebrations” planned for Chapman University in Orange, Calif. include a Black Graduation Celebration, a Latino Graduation Celebration, and a Middle Eastern Graduation Celebration.
The Cross Cultural Center at Chapman University, on its Instagram page recently stated: “Cultural graduation celebrations are additions to the university-wide commencement ceremony, [and] students are free to register for these additional celebrations to share the joy of graduation with their friends and family if they choose to.”
The ceremonies are designed “to honor the dedication and resilience of students from underrepresented communities,” according to Jerry Price, Chapman’s vice president for student affairs and dean of students, who defended the additional ceremonies to the Gateway Pundit.
Justin Buckner, president of College Republicans at Chapman University, strongly denounced the events in a statement released to Campus Reform.
“People claiming to be fighting racism are the ones unintentionally re-popularizing it,” Buckner said. “There is no separate graduation for exceptional academic achievement, but one for someone’s skin color. The lack of attention to exceptional individual achievement while simultaneously only looking through the prism of race is concerning for our future.”
There is also a “Disability Graduation Ceremony” planned, but when it was announced, an unidentified person complained on Instagram the “d” in disability was not capitalized, as were the other categories listed.
The Cross Cultural Center admitted their label was “unintentionally offensive” to the Disabled:
“This title was made in collaboration with our [D]isability studies minor faculty to raise awareness of the use of people first vs identity first language as many individuals who have a disability, are not only defined by it,” the center wrote. “If you’d like to learn more, I’d encroached (sic) you to reach out to the advisory group on the status of disability and accessibility.”
The person who noted the slight, wrote in response:
“Great, glad they collaborated, but the non-capitalization feels exclusionary to some disabled people (like me) too. Also, when explaining disability, try to assume you’re not talking to abled people.”