IF YOU GO
What: Day of Silence
Where: SU campus
When: Friday, all day
How much: Free

Erin Rand experienced the power of silence firsthand. The communication and rhetorical studies professor watched a demonstration from the Women in Black, a group of middle-aged women who stood in silence in Fresno, Calif., to protest war and violence.

Though the women involved did not speak a word, Rand said the silence screamed.

“In a way, things have gotten very noisy. We’re bombarded,” she said. “Silence speaks louder than all that noise. Silence is the surprising thing. It’s the thing that shocks us.”

SU students, faculty and staff members will be involved in the Day of Silence, a national silent effort to raise awareness about issues important to the LGBT community, on Friday. The Day of Silence, which started at the University of Virginia in 1996, is centered on fighting silence with silence: LGBT students and straight allies refuse to talk to represent the silence some people find themselves in regarding their sexuality.

This is the seventh year SU will participate in the Day of Silence, said Lauren Hannahs, coordinator of the SU event. Students will wear tags displaying the reason why they won’t talk. At 4:45 p.m., those involved will gather on the Quad to break the silence, both symbolically and literally, with a cymbal crash and bullhorns.

After breaking the silence, speakers from around the Syracuse community will talk about the meaning of the day and why it is important to LGBT people and their allies.

Hannahs, a graduate student in the School of Education, went to a small high school outside of Syracuse and said no one at her school talked about their sexuality. She said the quiet was unsettling.

“I think, looking at my high school experience, it was all wrapped up in the notion of silence,” Hannahs said. “No one talked about LGBT things. No one was gay bashing, but they didn’t talk about it. The existence of the silence kind of shed a light on something that is not talked about or something people don’t allow being talked about.”

Though the event will take place on the Quad, Hannahs said, most of the participants in the past were local high school students. The campus serves more as a location for people to gather than a source of student support, she said. High schools that have participated at SU before include Nottingham High School, Baker High School and Liverpool High School.

SU collaborates with the Q Youth Center in downtown Syracuse, which provides an outlet for young LGBT members in the city, she said. Many of the high school students who come to SU for the Day of Silence are involved in the youth center.

Rand, the communication and rhetorical studies professor, said it is good for high school and college students to speak out for what they believe in.

“There’s no age that’s too young to start,” she said. “I think there are ways of doing age-appropriate awareness all along. Of course, high school and college are important because kids are breaking out, exploring things in their own lives.”

Nick Deyo, a sophomore at SU, said he was a prime example of youth activism. His high school experience showed how silent students felt in relation to their sexuality, he said.

As a junior in high school, he moved to London and started attending the American School in London. He came out before he registered in the new school. He said he was surprised when students were uncomfortable about his sexuality because several faculty members were openly gay.

“Nothing was said to my face, but people were uncomfortable about it,” he said. “It changed the way that people operated in that school before. The school newspaper even wanted to do an article on me. I was kind of against it, but ultimately, I thought it would be good to encourage other kids to come out.”

After the article was released, several students did come out, Deyo said. He felt he had inspired students and showed them it is acceptable to be comfortable in their own skin, he said.

SU is unique from other universities because of the LGBT Resource Center, he said. He said he is comforted by the fact that students do not have to look far to find support.

Deyo and other students said they feel the Day of Silence does not fit well with a college student’s schedule. Carlos Palencia, a senior acting major and an openly gay student, said he supported his friends during the last two Days of Silence but could not participate because he needed to speak for performance classes.

Palencia said students participating in the Day of Silence fight against anti-gay statements, but also show the real problems are ignorance and misunderstanding.

“You choose to let a word mean something to you when you’re insulted like that,” he said in a phone interview. “If someone called you a ‘retard,’ a ‘slut,’ a ‘dumbass,’ it’s kind of the same thing to me. It’s one of those things where you say, ‘I choose to not identify with that word.’”

SU community members said they feel the Day of Silence shows quiet is a hindrance and an asset.

“Queer people get silenced by institutions,” Rand said. “They’re made invisible. They’re victims of violence. They’re sometimes literally silenced through murder. Silence is clearly something that we need to work against.”

“When we can consciously redeploy silence, I think it’s a way to reclaim something very powerful. It’s like taking away someone else’s weapon and using it yourself,” Rand said.

 

Published on April 14, 2010 at 12:00 pm