How much better would our world be if all you had to do to fight injustice was be silent?

Our country may not normally work that way, but our collective silence on Friday will say it all.

For the past 15 years, more than 4,000 schools have made the silence deafening.

The Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, has sponsored the Day of Silence since 2001 and has made the annual event a conquest for the rights that every LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) student deserves in their school.

From its humble beginnings as a demonstration of non-violent protests by a group of University of Virginia students in 1996, this class assignment turned national event spread to almost 100 colleges and universities in 1997 and has kept branching out to school campuses across the United States.

Here at Foothill, the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) plans on carrying the torch in support of the fight for every student to be given the chance to thrive in their own school environment.

If you want to put the importance of showing your support of the event into perspective consider this:

·        GLSEN’s 2009 National School Climate Survey found that nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students report verbal, sexual or physical harassment at school in the past year due to their sexual orientation.{sidebar id=13}

·        At least two-thirds of LGBT students have reported feeling unsafe or uncomfortable in their school because of their sexual orientation and almost 30% of LGBT students have reported missing at least one day of school in the past month because they feared for their personal safety.

·        The reported GPA(grade point average) of students who were more frequently harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender expression was almost half of a grade lower than for students who were harassed less often (2.8 versus 2.4).

 Only 10 states (Calif., Ore., Wash., Colo. Minn., Iowa, Ill, N.J., Vt., and Maine) and Washington D.C. have instituted non-discrimination laws that protect students based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and another 3 that protect students based on sexual orientation but not gender identity (Wis., Mass., and Conn.).

That’s thirteen states out of fifty that choose to protect their students to the full extent of the law. Only 26% of the schools in the nation have decided to require that their teachers intervene when they see one of their pupils being verbally tormented because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Negative comments about race, religion, and physical and/or mental disabilities are legal grounds for detention, suspension, expulsion, or more severe consequences. But, of course, the boy in a pink tee or the girl in cargo pants that were beaten into submission by slurs or fists aren’t worthy of the basic human right of security and are, in some cases, just told by administration to ‘change their behavior’ so that they might not be attacked again.

There are even those that directly defy and contort the meaning of the Day of Silence into something poisonous with their messages of hate.

Some protesters of the Day of Silence during last year’s event decided to completely contradict the purpose of the mission by calling their event “The Day of Defiance” and proceeded to pass out misleading pamphlets that denounced the day as an attempt by “militant liberal pro-gay teachers and administration” to lead children into the sinister grips of the ‘gay agenda’.

If they did their homework, they might have discovered that the function was not a school run event, but one that is entirely student motivated.

 This discrimination is wrong. Even if you don’t support gay marriage, adoption, or whatever else it is that you disagree with for whatever reason, surely you don’t believe that LGBT people should be robbed of their basic human right to security? You don’t believe that physical or verbal violence is in any way proper or righteous, do you?

So even if you don’t support the LGBT community, show your support for every American’s right to reach their full potential, to feel comfortable in their schools and on the streets, and to be given a chance to pursue their individual idea of happiness.

The average man speaks about 2,000 words a day, and the average woman speaks around 7,000 words a day, but how many of those words do we use to harm others, and how many are said to help them? How many words have we not said for fear of ridicule? How many times have we hurt people with our silence?

But on Friday, your silence will take on a new and more significant meaning. All that you have to do is take the pledge of silence or wear the color red, and you can join thousands of other young adults in asking the country for a better and safer tomorrow for everyone. And this time, we mean everyone.