On April 17 Boris Bastidas partnered with Carly Cass of the Resident Student Association (RSA) to hold the Day of Silence event on the Boca campus. The event aimed to raise awareness of the harassment that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community face.
The Day of Silence is part of a national campaign for awareness that is hosted by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). To participate, some students took a vow of silence to honor the GLBT community while some student organizations distributed information for awareness.
The Day of Silence has been done at middle schools, high schools, and universities since 1996 — but at FAU, students focused more on rallying for awareness, not necessarily taking a vow of silence for a full day.
Cass thought it was important to raise this awareness outside of Lamda United, a primary source of GLBT information on campus. The club encourages a positive, safe school community that accepts all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
“Because I am a student leader on campus who happens to be gay, I thought it was important to host events like this on campus to show some across-campus awareness [for gay and lesbian rights] outside of just the Gay-Straight Alliance, [which is]Lambda United,” says Cass, a freshman on the executive board of RSA.
Cass and Bastidas, a member of the Student Government House of Representatives, also formed the Day of Silence to collect signatures for a petition that would add sexual orientation to a list of “protected classes” as part of the university’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment regulation. If approved as part of Regulation 5.010, “Protect and Acknowledge All” (House resolution BRHR-09-03) would set up procedures for students who are discriminated or harassed because of their sexual orientation and help ensure that they are protected.
Currently, FAU’s Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy only protects “race, color, religion, age, disability, sex, national origin, marital status, veteran status or any other basis protected by law.”
Bastidas authored of the resolution, along with the help of Cass and Amy Milin, president of Lambda United.
“The student body is upset and outraged that this [resolution] has not been created yet. It’s just like common sense that you would have sexual orientation as part of the anti-harassment policy,” says Milin, a junior anthropology major. “How can we be a diverse campus if we do not acknowledge the existence and protect the rights of the GLBT community?”
According to Bastidas, FAU is actually one of the last universities to add sexual orientation to their list of protected harassment issues. The petition is currently awaiting approval from the SG House of Representatives on all campuses
Many campus organizations passed out information to raise awareness — Lambda United, in addition to Victims Services and victim advocate Angie Gifford, distributed the numbers to emergency hot lines and other victim-related literature.
“As the victim advocate, it’s important for students to know that, regardless of their sexual orientation,” says Gifford, they have a non-judgmental place [office of Victim Services] to go “for support, for advice, and to know what their options are in the system. Information is the key. The more information you have, the better off you are.”
Student Minds Advocating Rational Thought (SMART) participated in the Day of Silence by encouraging discussion about the separation of religion and politics, in addition to “people who enforce the religious definition of marriage onto a secular society,” says Gabrielle Stern, SMART’s president and founder.
By participating in this event, “We’re hoping to show that this affects a lot of people. Chances are you know someone who’s being affected by anti-discrimination policies,” says Stern.
The primary aim of many of the organizations that participated in the Day of Silence is to stop the problem of harassment and discrimination before it starts, or before it gets worse.
“When the small stuff does not get answered, that’s when the big stuff comes up,” says Amanda Dier, vice president of Lambda United.
“If not, then all of a sudden, someone winds up dead,” adds Lambda’s secretary, Julie O’Connor.
Senior Michelle Velez, who signed the petition, cannot imagine what it would be like for people to not understand her personal choices. Velez says that she has a hard time when people harass her about voluntarily actions, but cannot fathom what it would be like she was harassed for something involuntary, such as sexual orientation.
“I feel like everyone should have these rights,” says the biology major. “It doesn’t make sense not to. I guess it’s immoral to me for everyone not to have these rights.”
Following the main activities in the Boca campus Breezeway, speaker Marc Paige from Project Yes, which aims to prevent suicide in GLBT and all youth, recounted his personal experience of coming out in the 1970s. Paige spoke about the discrimination he faced, and that FAU students will have to fight to pass the “Protect and Acknowledge All” resolution.
“All people are created equally and they should be treated as so. Everyone deserves the right to be treated as a human being,” says sophomore Veronica Alvarez, a multimedia journalism major, who signed the petition to support the resolution. “If someone gets harassed, they need to feel comfortable that they’re going to be protected.”
