Critics allege that allowing separate graduation celebrations based on race and sexual preference at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville is fostering "neo segregation."
“They are working against Martin Luther King Jr’s famous idea that people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin,” said Laurie Higgins, a cultural issues writer with the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a Christian organization that is affiliated with the American Family Association. “We're completely moving away from that and trending towards judging people based on just a few things, whether they embrace sexual deviance and what their skin color is.”
Higgins was responding to documents obtained by the Record showing that the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville is facilitating separate graduation Zoom celebrations this month for Black, Hispanic, Rainbow, Non-Traditional and BIPOC students. Rainbow refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and ally students while BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.
“We're moving further into systemic racism and systemic homosexism brought to you ironically by Diversity and Inclusivity devotees,” Higgins said. “Segregated graduation celebrations do nothing to unify our different backgrounds, different interests, and different beliefs.”
Doug McIlhagga, executive director of marketing and communications at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, said the various pre-commencement graduation celebrations had arisen over the past three to four years and had proven to be highly popular campus-wide.
“When Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Dr. Jeffrey Waple joined the University, he began receiving feedback that various student constituency groups, who tend to be marginalized in society-at-large, would benefit from graduation events that celebrated their academic success and underscored the University’s commitment to their achievements,” McIlhagga told the Record.
Marginalization, however, serves a purpose, according to Higgins.
“Inclusivity really should mean we engage civilly with everybody, but that doesn't mean civility and respect for human persons requires us to approve of all behavior,” she said. “What is the rainbow student graduation celebrating? Graduation or sexual deviance? We need to have a discussion about that but left-leaning groups shut it down by labeling us haters.”
Non-traditional refers to undergraduate students whose journeys to higher education did not follow the typical path, which generally encompasses older adult students, some who had some college credits but had not finished their degrees and chose to come back to school, according to McIlhagga.
“Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville is a state university and Illinois taxpayers are funding these celebrations,” Higgins said. “It doesn't cost much for a Zoom party but if they are going to continue with this divisive neo-segregation in the future, someone needs to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out how much these celebrations are costing the taxpaying public to foster segregation, which I think many Illinoisans, including Illinoisans of color, will object to.”