Posted on 04/27/2006 2:53:17 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Middle and high school students across the Madison area, the state and the nation are silent today. But it's not a collective case of laryngitis or a sudden religious vow that's cut down on the conversation.
Instead, students are joining together to protest bullying and harassment of gay and lesbian classmates through the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network Day of Silence.
Brian Juchems, program director of GLSEN's south central Wisconsin chapter, said all Madison high schools, a number of area high schools and "a large chunk of Madison middle schools" have students who are participating in the event that includes many heterosexual as well as gay and lesbian students.
At Cherokee Middle School, for example, about 80 students signed up to participate, Principal Karen Seno said.
The Day of Silence, Juchems said, has been around for about 10 years with growing local interest. He said middle school involvement is relatively new, but that sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students are particularly aware of bullying and harassment, especially based on real or imagined sexual orientation.
The event coincides with today's release of the national GLSEN organization's 2005 climate in the schools study, which reports that a third of all students, gay and straight, have been physically harassed based on their perceived gender identification and that three quarters of all students have regularly heard students being called "fag" or verbally bullied.
Many of the students will break their vow of silence tonight with a rally at the Capitol at 5 p.m. which will draw attention to anti-gay bullying in schools and will protest the proposed ban on gay marriage that will go to referendum in Wisconsin this fall.
Sixth graders are 11-12 years old.
If they gays would all sit down and shut up, AIDS would not have become the problem it is today.
Isn't liberalism beautiful? Our government schools are cesspools of it.
... they left out transgendered. :-)
Hooray! Gay advocates stfu!
This happened at my daughter's school here in Calif. yesterday. These stupid kids don't know enough about sex with anyone else in the room to make a stand on this subject, and that's what I told her. It's just tragically hep to pull this crap right now. The instructors are actually PARTICIPATING and ENCOURAGING it.
They said "clams," heh, heh!
SIGNED UP !!!So this was a sponsored event. Public Schools=Public orientation.
These guys have quite a little motivational website here:
http://www.dayofsilence.org/
You can register to get all sorts of fun stuff like hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers and pins. Also news updates and propaganda emails.
I registered as jkerry@ bj.com...
At my elder daughters former high school, Mira Loma, dozens of Ukraine students protested the 'rainbow crowd' after school.
In Roseville just east of us, thirteen were suspended. At my younger daughters high school she counted maybe five or six that were participating. One protester was in a class with her and the kid's friends were trying to get the silent one to talk. "Hey 'Jamie', knock knock?", "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" etc.
Now if they could only learn to think.
Best regards,
Hell in a handbasket. I'm starting to believe the opposition - this is no longer a Christian nation.
This is beyond obscene. Children are already being sexualized enough by the media in the single digit ages - is anywhere safe?
LOL...maybe the kids will actually learn something in school that day. Of course, they will probably spend the day text-messaging.
It's the sort of suggestion you wouldn't want to make at a board meeting for fear somebody'd take you seriously...
"Let's not be too harsh. Someone has figured out a way to get middle and high schoolers to be silent. :-)"
That was my first actual Belly Laugh today, LOL! My son is 18 now and in college. I never, EVER want to re-live those Junior/Middle School years again. He was one big raging, spastic hormone who ate like a moose and never shut up until he passed out from exhaustion at 11pm at night!
I was stupid enough to go on many a field trip with he and his classmates. A barrel of monkeys isn't fun...it's terrifying, LOL!
LOL! You are wickedly evil...and my kind of person. ;)
Can we get them to make this a year long event?
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