The Day of Silence was held on Friday, April 23. It was organized by the Gay-Straight Alliance club, whose mission is to stop homophobia and anti-gay harassment in our school and around our area.

The Day of Silence protests discrimination against LGBTQ students, who often feel silenced because of their gender identity and/or sexual orientation. Participating students, teachers and administration members stay silent the whole school day — including during classes.

Faculty co-adviser of the Gay-Straight Alliance Ms. Kristin Hannings said, “The Day of Silence is a good opportunity to make public the struggles of the LGBTQ community. It’s a really nice event because oftentimes, the LGBTQ community feels invisible. The club holds it to bring awareness to the fact that many people are marginalized due to their gender identity or sexuality. They can sometimes be victims of persecution or microaggressions.”

The event happens on a nationwide scale. It was started by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network in 1996, which works to stop LGBTQ bullying and harassment in schools.

The Day of Silence is held annually at HH around this time. Despite these weird times, the event was held with little changes compared to a normal year, except that virtual students staying silent were instructed to let their teachers know beforehand that they were participating and set a specific Teams background if they turned their cameras on.

For students in school, pins and ribbons with the gay pride flag on them were distributed.

The week leading up to the Day of Silence was dubbed a “rainbow spirit week.” On every day of the week, students, teachers and administrators wore a certain color to show support for the LGBTQ community. Monday was red, Tuesday was orange and yellow, Wednesday was green and blue, Thursday was purple, and Friday, the actual Day of Silence, was black.

The Day of Silence has a significant meaning to the members of the Gay-Straight Alliance.

Ms. Hannings said, “It’s probably the biggest event of the year for the club and is a time to encourage everyone to get involved. People who are not active members and allies of the community are encouraged to participate. It is something that is easy to be involved with but creates an overwhelming sense of unity.”

Gay-Straight Alliance public relations chair JJ Miller said, “The event is really important to a lot of us because we see people who are not part of the community, even teachers and admin, participating — it shows that even if we feel alone, there are people who support us.”