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{shortcode-21cc3534b02e5a90dd1b6e61be0fe28423896a7e}t least six Harvard affinity groups will host unofficial celebrations for students graduating next week following the University’s decision to revoke funding and space for the annual traditions.
With only a month of notice, several student and alumni groups are scrambling to fundraise to provide graduating seniors with Commencement stoles and venue spaces for celebrations after an unsigned email from the University announced the change on April 29.
The Department of Education had explicitly demanded in March that Harvard end affinity graduation celebrations based on race or face additional funding threats — though all future federal funding is currently frozen. The University did not explain the decision in their email, and spokespeople repeatedly declined to comment on the motivation.
The affinity celebration cancelation was announced hours after Harvard’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging was renamed to “Community and Campus Life.”
Out of the 10 affinity celebrations that took place last year, six are set to return despite the new policy — including events to honor Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Desi graduates, as well as for veterans and people with disabilities, though they are no longer University-sponsored.
Athena Lao ’12, president of the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance, said the group has raised more than $10,000 to host a celebration off campus and provide stoles for graduates to wear as they receive their diplomas.
“It’s really been a true student alumni collaborative effort,” Lao said. “They created the website, they looked at the venues, they have been sharing the information with their fellow students across all 13 schools.”
The Veteran Student Society is also raising money for a ceremony event for veterans graduating next week, a task Society president Michael H. Lupia said he had expected before the announcement after posing questions to the EDIB Office and receiving what he called “strange” answers.
“They were always cagey,” Lupia said. “It felt like they knew something was happening.”
Lupia said that after the announcement, the VSS was able to fundraise enough money within two or three days to host their own ceremony.
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Other Harvard organizations, including Concilio Latino, a University-wide organization for all Latino affinity groups at Harvard, the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus, and the Harvard Black Alumni Society have also circulated information for non-University sponsored Commencement celebrations.
The University-wide Black Graduation Celebration hosted by HBAS is set to feature speeches from students, as well as a keynote address by Nikole Hannah Jones, who created the 1619 Project, and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Cornell William Brooks, who served as the former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
While HBAS announced their event would take place in a conference space near campus, other groups have refrained from announcing the location of their celebration.
In a document circulating on House email-lists with information about plans for Lavender Graduation — an LGBTQ+ Commencement celebration — event organizers wrote that they were “limiting public details about the location of the event” because of safety concerns.
HGSC President Joseph J. Barretto ’97 wrote in a May 9 email soliciting donations for Lavender Graduation that with the University’s decision to suspend support for affinity celebrations, “LGBTQ graduates are left abandoned,” according to the document.
“We are launching a fundraising drive to provide LGBTQ Harvard graduates with a Lavender Graduation worthy of their ideals and aspirations,” he added.
Concilio Latino has also not published information about their event’s location, but Abbeny B. Solis ’25, an organizer with the group, said it was because they were still in the planning stage.
“We weren’t involved previously in the planning, and so now we have to make up that planning and all those costs, which include venues, stoles, just different decorations,” Solis said. “All the little logistical things that we again, weren’t a part of before, we just have to now consider.”
HBAS declined to comment for this piece. Organizers for HGSC did not reply to requests for comment.
Not every celebration from last year is returning in the same form, however.
Committee Co-Chair for First Generation Harvard Alumni Tori Simeoni ’10 said that rather than a celebration, the group was fundraising to provide first-generation and low-income students with graduation sashes.
“This year there’ll be no ceremony, but at least our hope is that we could provide students with the stole that they could wear,” Simeoni said. “Something to have as a tangible symbol of their perseverance and their accomplishment, really a way to visibly celebrate their unique journey during Commencement.”
The Harvard University Native American Program also informed students they would not be hosting an Indigenous Graduation Ceremony this year, according to Kylie L. Hunts-in-Winter ’25.
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Hunts-in-Winter said that in the absence of a ceremony, graduating seniors would still receive a traditional blanket.
She also wrote that students who led an independent initiative to provide Indigenous students with stoles had surpassed their donation goal “largely thanks to donations from my family and friends” and other students’ connections.
“Originally we were only able to get 19 stoles for those who filled out our form but now we have enough to get stoles for every indigenous graduate,” Hunts-in-Winter wrote.
Though FGHA and HUNAP decided to cancel their celebrations because of the University’s decision to withdraw support, former Harvard Hillel President Jacob M. Miller ’25 said that Harvard’s Jewish affinity groups decided against hosting one even before Harvard announced their new policy.
“I spoke with a lot of students, and there were many people who weren’t so interested in an official ceremony the same way there was last year,” Miller said. “So we decided to have a program that looked very different.”
Rather than an official ceremony with long speeches, Miller said the event would be more like a “happy hour.”
“There’s going to be food and drinks, and it’s just kind of an opportunity for people to celebrate this milestone,” he said.
—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.
—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.
