photo by DiaboloSpinner
Especially poignant after the recent suicide of 11 year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, the National Day of Silence will be held this Friday, April 17, by youth in schools across the country. I'm not sure what is being done at schools locally, but I hope we can get an update via comments or the tipline.
We spoke about the Day of Silence last year (and here):
Silent students hand out cards to speak for them:The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools...Hundreds of thousands of students will come together on April 17 to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.
Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence (DOS), a national youth movement bringing attention to the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling and harassment. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness and making a commitment to address these
injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the Silence?
Posts
Today both Napa High School and Vintage High School are participating in the Day of Silence. I'll be able to give you a report of how everything went here at Napa High School along with the first hand experiences the GSA club members went through today once school ends
ReplyDeleteWPC. Looking forward to your report. I'm especially interested in hearing, from your perspective, how pervasive and severe the anti-LGBT harassment is in our community among school age people. Do they still use "that's so gay" to describe anything that is undesirable? Or has it been replaced by other anti-gay phrases? Do teachers intervene and correct bullies when they use put-downs, and is physical or verbal intimidation something you have to deal with daily or very often? Does the school have an anti-bullying policy including perceived orientation? I'm also curious if there will be a day of stigmatization on Monday? I guess they call it something different, (day of truth?) when in fact it is a day of lies, but instead of being silent, they speak out against equality in favor of discrimination. Is that happening here? Well, hope that doesn't sound like a term paper assignment, but those are things many of us would like to know about. Again, looking forward to your report.
ReplyDeleteHey everyone! so overall...I have heard good and bad things about this day at school...I have to go off tonight so i wont be able to give you a detailed report till the morning but I will be working on it later tonight. I will fill you in on some of the things that did happen just to give you a taste. The day started off with people not really sure of what was happening at Napa high, by lunch time people were a little more filled in. The three classes I did have today, all of the teachers were ok with me doing this form of silent peaceful protesting. There was a good number of students involved but exact numbers are unknown to me yet. I was called a fagget today by some rude commenters. I heard a worse story over at Vintage about something that happened but I will let you know more on that later. Yes students still do use the phrase "that's so gay"...Majority do without even thinking. I've heard of LGBT teens who say it but they are usually the ones that don't really care and are of a younger generation. There are laws in place to protect students from harrassment and discrimination whether its real or perceived sexual orientation. Monday is actually Queer Youth Advocacy Day in the capital and there are going to be Hundreds of students out there lobbying for more student rights and LGBT Bills, one of which is the Harvey Milk Day Bill. Teachers...thats a tricky subject...most are passive about slurs on campus. Today in my Math class a student was discussing with the teacher about baseball teams one of which was Vintage. The student said out loud on front of the class "Vintage is so gay" and all the teacher said back was "I know" I winced(spell check?) at that but no one else really bothered with correcting the teacher. Today I was silent but on monday I am going to talk to my teacher about that issue before I take it to the Admin. of my school. I know he means well and may not have realized what he says so i am giving him a chance, but if he does not respond in the correct way I will end up reporting him.
ReplyDeleteSo that would be a little part of my day. I will give you a full report by tomorrow morning. Sorry for all that being in one paragraph along with there being spelling errors I'm sure, yet I myself am in a tid bit of a rush. I will also see if my friend from Vintage will give me a report on how it went over there exactly.