Sean Kennedy     End the Silence Coming on the heels of a disappointing Fishbowl Conversation on sexuality two weeks ago, the Day of Silence here yesterday should have been a refreshingly galvanizing opportunity for queer students on Grounds. The event, designed to raise awareness of gay and lesbian rights, appropriates the silencing of queers by straight society and then transforms that silence into a symbol of oppression. Granted, any chance to promote discussion about gays and lesbians at this school needs to be taken since queer visibility is so low -- and I applaud the organizers of the Day of Silence for initiating that discussion on a (relatively) large-scale. By the same token, though, I don't think the Day of Silence is the best way to do it. Silence = Death, the famous slogan of the AIDS activism group ACT-UP, has empowered thousands of queers since the late '80s to end their silence in the face of homophobia and anti-gay rights efforts. Breaking that silence, after all, is the necessary first step in restoring fundamental human rights to gays and lesbians -- rights, such as freedom from discrimination that queers have been denied historically for the sole, completely arbitrary reason of which gender they're primarily attracted to. In fact, silence is one of the ideological structures that any dominant group of people uses to oppress other groups. It's a time-worn method of keeping people down. Which is why queers and their comrades voluntarily undergoing that silence in the form of the Day of Silence strikes me as potentially educational at best, and dangerous at worst. Although the event does an important job of highlighting the silence forced upon gays and lesbians by straights, thereby showing that an oppressive ideology is systematically working against queers, there are other, equally valid ways of calling attention to that silence besides actually being silent. After all, the last thing gays and lesbians need to be is silent. "Frankly, queer people and their allies remaining silent sounds more like Jesse Helms's paradise than a civil rights protest," said third-year Matt Chayt, a comment which proves doubly meaningful. On the one hand, if queers are silent, we can't vocally criticize straight society's denial of our basic civil rights, like marriage or child adoption -- and if we don't publicly (and consistently) contest that lack of rights, we'll never have them. On the other hand, voluntary queer silence, even if intended as a protest, runs the risk of perpetuating the very institutional nature of that silence. Is whatever value the Day of Silence has worth that risk? Then again, "there is always the danger that silence will be passed over in silence," said Heather Love, an English graduate student here, and that danger seems particularly possible with the Day of Silence. How many of you reading this column even knew the event was happening yesterday? And if you did know it was happening, did you notice anyone participating? Finally, did the participants' silence make you aware of anything? It seems myopically optimistic to think that, at a school with about 10,000 undergrads and about 20,000 total students, how can the small number of people who do participate in the Day of Silence actually make the event, and what it stands for, visible to everyone else, especially if the participants are silent? That lack of any real, practical impact on the student body is what ultimately calls into question the effectiveness of the Day of Silence. "It seems to me that speaking up about that silence might be a more effective way to draw attention to it," said Love. Even if a day of loudness (or a "day of screams," as Chayt envisions) wouldn't be plausible at this conservative university, simply speaking with students about gay and lesbian rights, homophobia, and, above all else, pointing out how straight society oppresses queers would spotlight our presence here and get our ideas into widespread circulation -- something the Day of Silence fails at. "I wonder if the best thing for queers at U.Va. to do isn't to get in people's faces a bit," said Love. "I hardly ever see that happening here." It's about time it did.

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