Graduation is right around the corner and seniors are experiencing the bittersweet feeling of leaving their home of the last four years.

This year, the St. Edward’s University Black Student Association (BSA) is celebrating a particular group of people at their Black Graduation event. This graduation is meant to celebrate black excellence in a country that often overlooks it. Hilltop Views interviewed Penny Driver, president of BSA, on her inspiration and plans to celebrate a “super minority” overcoming the systematic racism that is around, including in education.

Edited for length and clarity.

Hilltop Views: Some people may argue that Black Graduation is exclusive, and that regular graduation is enough. How would you respond to those claims?

Penny Driver: There are people who think that graduation is enough. But, CAMP has a graduation for the Hispanic students, veterans have their own ceremony and the LGBT community is having their own graduation this year as well. Universities and colleges all over the United States have separate graduations.

For example at UIC, there is a big graduation for everyone and there is also a smaller graduation for honor students. 

We want to honor and congratulate our students, letting them know we recognize their hard work and support them. If you haven’t noticed, black students are a super minority, we deserve to be have an event that celebrates our hard work and dedication.

To those that would argue that Black Graduation is exclusive and unnecessary, I would say, “Please come to Black Graduation. This event was not planned with the intent to exclude. It was planned with the intent to celebrate. It gives black graduates the opportunity to say ‘Thank you’ to faculty, staff and peers that have personally helped them attain this achievement.

It is a chance for the graduates to be seen, for their accomplishments to be more than a line on a resume, because working two jobs while leading an organization and maintaining your grades is an accomplishment … regular graduation, while it is amazing and magical in its own way, simply can’t highlight all those things.

Hilltop Views: In what ways do you connect Black Graduation and Black Lives Matter? Does the connection go deeper than just celebrating this tremendous accomplishment of graduating?

Driver: Black Graduation is a celebration of black excellence, in other words — black  women and men getting their degrees and moving forward in the world, making a name for themselves and their people. 

The connection is that the Black Lives Matter movement aims to shed light and actively pursue changes in which we face systematic racism in numerous ways.

The thing that a lot of people fail to mention is that the movement is also aimed to celebrate essentially “Blackness” — culture, hair, music, food etc. 

This is because in the mass media black people are often depicted in ways in which we don’t connect to because they are often times jaded, harmful stereotypes.

Our BSA graduation is a mere reflection of celebrating black excellence, positivity that our fellow brothers and sisters are exemplifying by graduating college and moving in a progressive way into the world. 

It’s a way to uplift and show that we appreciate the dedication they have spent over the past four years.

It’s a coming-together of SEU’s black community to say “we see you and we are proud of you, your win is our win.” 

The graduation celebrates our youth exceeding the expectations of society and laying the foundation for greater ones….

Driver wishes “everyone could attend,” but there is simply not enough room to accommodate for everyone. 

Those students who are participating are encouraged to RSVP to the event on May 6.