Melis­sa Doughty

Ten peo­ple clad in white or red T-shirts stood or sat op­po­site UWI's Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary yes­ter­day with strips of red tape over their mouths, faces, or throats, and re­mained silent in a sym­bol­ic protest. They were demon­strat­ing against the bul­ly­ing and ha­rass­ment of les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der (LGBT) teens.

The Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion held its day of si­lence at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies yes­ter­day. By 12 pm the board they had set up was full of in­spi­ra­tional quo­ta­tions and say­ings such as "Stay strong, there is a rain­bow af­ter every storm."

Stu­dents and sup­port­ers such as Col­in Robin­son of the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for the In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) were seen around cam­pus al­so wear­ing pieces of red tape. Al­though as far as the foun­da­tion was con­cerned, the ac­tiv­i­ty was suc­cess­ful, there were mem­bers of the stu­dent body who felt the event should have been bet­ter ad­ver­tised.

Many peo­ple on cam­pus were not aware of the protest. Jaleesa, a 23-year-old so­cial sci­ences stu­dent, felt, "If it was a bit more wide­spread more peo­ple would have tak­en part." The Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences was not aware of the silent protest, and nei­ther was the Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment, which asked the foun­da­tion to end it at 2 pm in­stead of 6 pm as sched­uled.