Seattle Pacific College graduates passed rainbow flags to the varsity’s period in-between president as he gave out their diplomas on Sunday to protest of the varsity’s anti-LGBTQ insurance policies.
The protest went viral on TikTok, raking in thousands and thousands of perspectives.
“It began simply as a dialog amongst scholars that we didn’t actually need to shake the president’s hand at commencement,” pupil and organizer Chloe Guillot advised CNN. “So, we concept, what are we able to do as an alternative of that? And the speculation got here up: Why don’t we hand out a satisfaction flag?”
She stated about 40 to 50 graduates participated within the arranged motion. Some declined to shake period in-between President Pete Menjares’ hand and handed him a flag as an alternative.
Guillot stated that when giving Menjares a satisfaction flag Sunday, she advised him, “We’re no longer going to forestall till the coverage adjustments.” She is making plans to go back to the college as a graduate pupil.
Menjares advised NBC Information in a remark that Sunday “used to be a ravishing day to have fun with our graduates. Those that took the time to offer me a flag confirmed me how they felt and I appreciate their view.”
Seattle Pacific College is affiliated with the Unfastened Methodist Church USA. In keeping with the varsity’s web site, it’s “authorized and reserves the fitting to desire workers or potential workers at the foundation of faith” and expects its workers to chorus from sure behavior “described within the College’s Worker Way of life Expectancies.”
The ones expectancies come with refraining from “sexual habits this is inconsistent with the College’s figuring out of Biblical requirements, together with cohabitation, extramarital sexual process, and same-sex sexual process.”
SPU’s board of trustees made up our minds closing month to uphold that coverage regardless of protests from the varsity’s scholars and college.
“The verdict way SPU’s worker behavior expectancies proceed to mirror a standard view on Biblical marriage and sexuality, as an expression of long-held church instructing and biblical interpretation,” the board stated in a remark on Might 23.
SPU scholars and alumni also are two weeks right into a sit-in on the college to protest the coverage. The college recognizes on its web site that it has LGBTQ+ scholars and insists it’s “dedicated to variety, fairness, and inclusion for all undergraduate and graduate scholars” regardless of its discriminatory coverage for personnel.
The graduating scholars’ protest coincided with Pleasure Month, an annual birthday party and confirmation of LGBTQ+ communities world wide.
