Celebrating Pride Month 2024

Dear Members of the NJCU Family:

June is Pride Month — a time to reflect on the long and resolute battle that members of the LGBTQIA+ community have waged in the name of love and equality — free to live their lives openly without fear of violence, discrimination, or persecution.

Pride Month is also an opportunity for visibility and to honor our friends, families, and loved ones in the LGBTQIA+ community and its remarkable history and inspiring resilience, while also proudly celebrating the immense contributions that LGBTQIA+ people have made to the fabric of our society.

At New Jersey City University, we have long recognized that our strength lies in our diversity, and as such, cultivating an inclusive culture and a community of belonging is intrinsic to who we are at our core. At NJCU, we celebrate the unyielding power of a loving, compassionate, and engaged community. We will always strive to be a place where every person can thrive and where the most stubborn of barriers and obstacles are taken down by an extraordinary community of just citizens that are conscious of the world around them. 

This spring, we celebrated our 10th annual Lavender Graduation and honored the achievements and contributions of NJCU's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and gender non-conforming students. The ceremony was a beautiful reminder that our campus welcomes some of the most brilliant and beautiful people that our community is privileged to serve. Together, with deliberate intention, we continue to weave the vibrant tapestry of authentic stories and identities that will cloak the world with much needed compassion, empathy, and love — a world where every voice and every life matters. 

Throughout Pride Month, I encourage you to learn more about the history of our dynamic community and the ways we can continue to shape a better world that isn’t deprived of the talents and passions of all its people.

Uplifting our community to meet its inherent promise is our mission at NJCU. We will always work to foster an educational community that welcomes and elevates every single student, faculty and staff member — and to be a worthy steward of place.

Let's always embrace and uplift the quiet voices so everyone in our community may live authentically — proudly.

Happy Pride Month, NJCU!

Yours in service with love and pride,

Andrés Acebo
Interim President
New Jersey City University