Lavender Graduation is an annual ceremony conducted on numerous campuses to honor queer and trans students to acknowledge their achievements and contributions as they graduate their degrees. The Lavender Graduation Ceremony was created by Dr. Ronni Sanlo, a Jewish Lesbian, who was denied the opportunity to attend the graduations of her biological children because of her sexual orientation.

From 2024 to 2026, the Queer and Trans Student Group (QTGS) has planned and coordinated Lavender Graduation ceremonies for graduating post-secondary students in Manitoba. Any post-secondary student from any post-secondary institution in Manitoba (at any level, including undergraduate and graduate students) who identify as 2SLGBTQIA+ who have graduated in the Fall or Spring semester in the previous year, or will be graduating in the coming Summer or Fall semester are welcome to be a graduate in the ceremony. As this is not a formal, institutional graduation ceremony, no parchments will be given. The ceremony is symbolic in nature.

May 25, 2026 marked the third annual Lavender Graduation held at the University of Manitoba and was the second ceremony to honour graduates from any post-secondary institution in the province of Manitoba. In 2026. graduates from Brandon University and Red River College Polytechnic participated for the first time, with graduates from University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, and Université de Saint-Boniface also joining. There were a total of 27 graduates in this ceremony, bring the total number of participating graduates to 64 since 2024.

Photographs provided by Sweet Prairie Portraits, an Indigenous and queer-owned Manitoba based business. 

The Lavender Graduation ceremony that we organize annually is now listed in the Lavender Graduation Ceremony Legacy Project registry. The QTSG at the University of Manitoba are the first Canadian institution to be listed in this registry. The group will also be donating materials from all three Lavender Graduation ceremonies to the Lavender Graduation Ceremony Legacy Project Archives. The archive is a comprehensive archival collection that documents the origins, growth, and diversity of Lavender Graduations. 

We are grateful for the support of the following groups:

• Rady Faculty of Health Sciences
• Robson Hall – Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Arts
• Faculty of Science
• Offic of Equity, Access, and Participation
• The Alan Klass Memorial Program in Health Equity