This Wednesday, April 21, local schools will join with thousands across the country in observing the eighth annual Day of Silence. Founded in 1996, the Day of Silence has become an annual student-organized event working toward creating safer schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. The University of Virginia held the first Day of Silence in 1996 with over 150 students participating, and last year over 1,900 middle schools, high schools and colleges joined them.

GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has since taken on the Day of Silence as a national project in collaboration with the United States Student Association. For the Day of Silence, GLBT students and their allies take a day-long vow of silence to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment – in effect, the silencing – experienced by GLBT students and their allies who are oftentimes afraid to speak out.

The San Diego chapter of GLSEN is working with local gay and straight alliances in schools and with the organizers of Youth Pride to coordinate observance of the Day of Silence throughout San Diego County.

“San Diego is really blessed in terms of acceptance of the Day of Silence,” Jeremy Kraut-Ordover, chair of the San Diego chapter of GLSEN, told the Gay & Lesbian Times. “Overall, it goes over really well. The students get really excited and it provides a great opportunity for some good dialogue between all of the constituencies in a school environment. Some administrators naturally have some concerns about the implications of it, but it provides an opportunity for those issues to come to the surface, and in general, students report that once the dialogue has happened, they have really positive interactions surrounding the Day of Silence, so it’s an opportunity for some visibility to come to an issue that most people deal with on a daily basis and it’s a show of solidarity for those folks that don’t have the opportunity to speak out in their day-to-day life.”

Locally, there are 10 high schools participating in the Day of Silence, including La Jolla High, Rancho Bernardo High, Carlsbad High, Point Loma High, Chula Vista High and Francis Parker. For many of the schools, the Day of Silence has become an annual tradition.

“I think it’s becoming more of an accepted practice,” Kraut-Ordover said. “I know my high school in New York was one of the first to do it in the mid-’90s and now they wouldn’t think of not doing it. I think that’s becoming the case here in San Diego as well. It’s one of the things that come around every year – just like Black History Month, so too does come the Day of Silence.”

Notably absent from the list of schools participating are any schools from the Grossmont Union High School District, where administrators have removed references to sexual orientation from programs that are supposed to teach tolerance in the schools.

At the collegiate level, UCSD and SDSU are participating in the Day of Silence.

“We get a lot of members involved in it, so that’s a good thing, and the faculty is very supportive of it; but the general student population is kind of blah about it, like they are about everything else,” said Ben Cartwright, president of SDSU’s LGBT Student Union.

Already, 50 students have committed to not speaking for the day at SDSU, and Cartwright is hopeful that more can be recruited to participate. Participants will be dressed in black, and there will be a silent demonstration with signs in the free speech area on campus during the lunch hour to explain the meaning of the day.

Cartwright said that an email would also be sent out to every faculty member on campus explaining what would be happening for the Day of Silence, and that some students may present them with cards in their classrooms explaining the reason for their silence in class.

“In past years, we’ve always had support from faculty members,” Cartwright said.

As will many of the schools participating in the Day of Silence, SDSU will hold a “breaking the silence” party at the end of the day, and there will be representatives from the school’s counseling department talking with the students about their experiences during the day.

“There are a lot of schools that do a lot of follow-up after the Day of Silence,” Kraut-Ordover said, “and their GSA’s go out and do a lot of education before and after on LGBT history, sexual orientation versus gender identity – all of those issues around being a sexual minority – and bring those issues out of the closet and make it much less of a thing to hide from, so it goes well beyond one Day of Silence in most high schools.”