Day of Silence

Emaheevul07
Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:25:57 +0000

They did this at my high school every year. I researched it my senior year for a newspaper article and found that it was largely ineffective-- at our school, at least. Mainly the only students who knew what day of silence was were those who were participating, so the effect of the silence was lost because no one who would have gained awareness from the demonstration knew why they were being silent in the first place, those who were being silent were those who were ALREADY sympathetic to the LGBT experience, and the few non-participators who had picked up on it would just use it as an opportunity to openly bash gays without anyone calling them on it because those who would usually do so were too busy being silent.

Generally speaking my school was a friendly environment for LGBT, very active gay-straight alliance, but it was gigantic school so it was difficult for the administration to effectively handle some of these isolated incidents that were reported for my article. If a random boy said something nasty in the hall, there is a VERY good chance no one on the scene knows his name to report him, so if staff isnt there to act RIGHT at that moment, nothing ever happens because the administration never hears about it. At least at our school, I think different sorts of events would be more useful, “silence” doesn’t work for us.