5th Place Winner: Erica Shekell

Silence is Rainbow

April 25th, 2008 is a day that I hold dear in my heart. It was the day that I found myself surrounded by a group of hateful students because I was guarding a rock. This seemingly terrible situation was wonderful to me because I was backed by 57 others, and because we were guarding more than just a rock – we were guarding an idea.

April 25th was the Day of Silence, when students stay silent to protest the harassment and discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and their allies, and to reflect the silence they face as a result.

I'd participated on my own along with a scattered handful of others for a few years. It was never organized – we just quietly participated, passing out "speaking cards" explaining what we were doing to curious classmates who wondered why the heck we were wearing rainbow armbands and weren't talking.

But 2008 was different.

It began as a reaction to a conservative school board member's blog entry. She said some parents were worried about students participating in the Day of Silence. She suggested that parents volunteer at school that day – to do what, I have no idea. Was she suggesting using scare tactics to keep kids from participating? Was she going to try to get the school to ban students from participating?

My friend Mara and I weren't going to let that happen.

We created a Facebook group for students opposing a potential ban. We asked the administrators' permission to hang a banner in the hallway, and I asked to put in the school paper an article I'd written about the event. Both requests were denied, but we knew there was one thing we COULD do: paint the school's spirit rock.

Five of my friends and I spray-painted the rock the night before the Day of Silence. The next day we wore our Day of Silence t-shirts, rainbow ribbons and wordless smiles.

The first half of the day went well. Then I was informed that some kids had painted over the rock during third hour. My face flushed. I rushed to investigate.

I could hardly see out the windows – people were crowded around them, pointing. I glimpsed a small crowd of people sitting on and around the rock. My heart sped up.

I pushed through the crowd and shoved open the heavy doors. I felt eyes staring at me from behind. I marched across the lawn, my thoughts ablaze.

This wasn't how I'd imagined the day progressing.

I joined the group of the quietly-whispering students, and sat down next to my best friend Lauren.

I paused. "Screw this," I whispered, breaking my silence for the first time that day. "What the heck is going on?"

Apparently the rock had been painted over in black. When my friends had discovered this, they rushed to their cars to get leftover spray paint. Others came to investigate, and without a word of direction, my friends and the other students, many who we didn't even know, repainted the rock exactly as it had been.

Then the counter-protesters returned, spitting on students and the rock, yelling homophobic slurs. One threatened to dump paint on and shoot Day of Silence participants. There was some shoving. The security guards rushed in and separated the groups, forcing the counter-protesters inside, who remained in the doorways, heckling anyone entering or exiting the building.

So here we were, guarding the rock, guarding each other, and guarding our beliefs.

From the doorways, people jeered at us. We ignored them. Then the principal came.

He instructed us to disperse. My friend Emma complained that he should be confronting the harassers, not us. He told us to report anyone who threatened us.

"They're over there! How can we report a nameless person we can barely see?" Emma asked angrily, pointing far across the lawn toward the doors where someone had just called out, "Fags!"

The principal didn't answer. He warned us that the school newspaper couldn't print a word of what happened. Unsure of what would happen if we defied him, we dispersed, shoving through the crowd of gawkers and weathering a few taunts and some jostling and spitting. The protest was over.

I have mixed feelings about that day. I regret that it caused such a disturbance. For a while I worried that the administration would start cracking down on rules about the rock or student speech in general, and look unfavorably upon gay issues. Luckily there was no such backlash.

I matured that day. I feel like I was the most involved in what happened, and thus the leader of it. What happened was my responsibility, even if I didn't mean for it to occur. I learned about the burden of power that day, and just because I CAN do something, it doesn't mean I SHOULD. As a leader, I cannot be reckless; I have to care for my followers, and see that our actions do not negatively influence others' perceptions of us. I must tread carefully and act wisely.

But I didn't learn to stand down. I learned that I have power and that I have rights, and that my voice is invaluable. I'm infinitely pleased and honored to have given those 57 protesters an opportunity to voice their beliefs. It's hard to voice a minority opinion when you're inundated with homophobic epithets, words slung carelessly around in the halls by people you can't even see amongst the crowd. How can you fight something so endemic?

But on that day, we found a way – and for once we weren't alone, and we refused to be silenced. Our silence spoke volumes that day, and I was proud to discover that within my small-town, conservative school exists, from many cliques and walks of life, students who believe in love, equality, and diversity. To me, this discovery is worth more than just a gem, but all the colors of the rainbow that a gem can make.