Julio Rodriguez said he was once walking with a group of friends when someone shouted “faggot” at them.
The incident showed Rodriguez, who said he identifies as queer, that there is still a need for awareness of hate crimes, said Rodriguez, president of the Queer Alliance at UCLA.
Rodriguez and other members of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender student groups held a silent demonstration against discrimination and violence Wednesday on Bruin Walk.
In an attempt to call attention to homophobic actions committed against the LGBT community across the nation, a group of students pledged to stay silent for a day at UCLA and other colleges, including UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, as part of the 11th annual Day of Silence.
Demonstrators choose not to speak during the event and some remained silent all day to commemorate the lives of people who have been killed or hurt for identifying as a sexual orientation other than straight, Rodriguez said.
Though demonstrators did not speak, they got their message across by passing out red “speaking cards” that asked students to think about the silence discrimination has caused.
Participants could be identified by the red cloths covering their mouths, signifying their silence, and by their black T-shirts imprinted with the question: “What are you going to do to end the silence?”
The Day of Silence began in 1996 after a group of students at the University of Virginia decided to draw attention to people who have suffered from homophobic crimes, including both students who identify as LGBT and straight allies.
The project gained national attention the following year, and in 2001 was sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, said Daryl Presgraves, a spokesman for the group, which focuses on preventing hate crimes against LGBT students in public schools.
The Day of Silence was first introduced to UCLA in May of 2004, according to Daily Bruin archives, and became a day for LGBT groups at UCLA, such as BlaQue, QueerXGirl and Mahu, to collaborate and unite.
For many demonstrators, the event has become a way to peacefully let the UCLA community know the struggles LGBT students still face, said Edgar Alvarez, cochair of La Familia, an LGBT group for Latinos at UCLA, which also collaborated on the event.
“A lot of people think that homophobia doesn’t exist anymore. … This is a way to let people know that (crimes) happen every day (because of homophobia),” Alvarez said in an interview a day before the event, because he planned on remaining silent all day Wednesday.
In 2004, Robert Grosfield, a UCLA student, was charged with a felony after being arrested for a series of attacks on UCLA’s LGBT Campus Resource Center, which included throwing a rock into the center.
Rodriguez said there is a need for the event because there are still offenses being committed against LGBT students.
“I think at UCLA there is not a lot of physical violence, but there is still lots of verbal violence, constant hate speech … and (LGBT students) being called derogatory terms. It’s a lot more common than you think,” Rodriguez said.
Alvarez said the event is particularly important because he believes a lot of the apathy toward the crimes comes from within the LGBT community or from students who have not yet come out. He also said he expected the event to draw a lot of people because it was not a typical demonstration.
“People can hear us all the time, but this is different from what people are accustomed to. People are going to see us gagged and ask questions,” Alvarez said.
The Day of Silence is typically held on a Wednesday in April and has over 450,000 participants, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s Web site.
The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group aimed at defending and speaking the truth, will hold a national Day of Truth today to counteract what they call “the homosexual agenda” of the Day of Silence.