Melis­sa Doughty

More than 20 peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to join the Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion on April 20 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus to protest against the bul­ly­ing and ha­rass­ment of teen les­bians, gays, bi­sex­u­als and trans­gen­ders (LGBT). Al­though Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Gopeesingh has an­nounced gen­er­al plans to ad­dress the is­sue of bul­ly­ing in schools the Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion thinks the pub­lic needs to be­come more aware of the is­sue, es­pe­cial­ly among the vul­ner­a­ble group. The foun­da­tion, head­ed by Je­re­my Ed­wards, Ri­an Mer­rick and Isa­iah Alexan­der, is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion that in­tends to draw na­tion­al at­ten­tion to the is­sue of bul­ly­ing and ha­rass­ment, es­pe­cial­ly among les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der (LGBT) youth, through the day of si­lence. The event will be held from 10 am to 6 pm and sup­port­ers will wear red pieces of tape across their mouths, heads, hearts etc. When the si­lence is lift­ed at 6 pm they will re­move the tape and write in­spi­ra­tional quo­ta­tions on a can­vas. UWI stu­dents and oth­er ter­tiary lev­el stu­dents will be in­volved in the protest but no sec­ondary schools will be in­volved.

Asked what prompt­ed this ac­tion, Mer­rick, the group's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, said the idea was Ed­wards' brain­child. Af­ter hear­ing of the sui­cide of George Kazan­jian (a young stu­dent of St Mary's Col­lege who com­mit­ted sui­cide af­ter be­ing bul­lied by his peers), he felt the is­sue need­ed to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed. "Ba­si­cal­ly his vi­sion was based on the sui­cide of George. Je­re­my pulled to­geth­er a bunch of us who were in­ter­est­ed in and who were in sup­port of LGBT youth. We pre­sent­ed to UWI first and then pre­sent­ed to the Hu­man­i­ties De­part­ment, which gave us the okay to start some­thing up," Mer­rick ex­plained. The foun­da­tion was formed on Feb­ru­ary 24 and its mis­sion is "to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment con­ducive to re­spect and self-ac­cep­tance" with the hope of pro­vid­ing "a sup­port sys­tem for mar­gin­alised youth re­gard­less of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty." The silent protest, which Mer­rick said is gar­ner­ing very pos­i­tive feed­back on cam­pus, will not dis­rupt class­es, since each pro­test­er will be giv­en a card that will state why they are tak­ing a vow of si­lence on that day. Alexan­der knows the pain of bul­ly­ing too well and so does not want any­one else to be­come a vic­tim. "Per­son­al­ly, from an all boys' school, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do, you were bul­lied. I don't want any­one else to go through what I went through. I want to help those who couldn't help them­selves," he said. Sil­ver Lin­ing wants to part­ner with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for the In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions to pro­vide coun­selling and oth­er ser­vices and a sup­port sys­tem for young LGBT vic­tims of bul­ly­ing.

Ed­wards' im­pe­tus stemmed from re­ports of sui­cide among ho­mo­sex­u­al teens. "Well, there were some sto­ries in the lo­cal me­dia in which peo­ple were be­ing bul­lied for their sex­u­al­i­ty. When you know some­one who has com­mit­ted sui­cide, as a re­sult it was a re­al­i­ty check," he said. When his friend died, Ed­wards be­gan to look for re­sources which he could use to help vic­tims, but dis­cov­ered there were none. He be­lieves that teens who are vic­tims can eas­i­ly turn to the wrong peo­ple for help and some can even be pushed to sui­cide. Sil­ver Lin­ing's first ob­jec­tive, he said, is to "get wider so­ci­ety to ac­cept us for who we are. We want to car­ry our mes­sage of tol­er­ance across the board, in­clud­ing the min­istry, the re­li­gious bod­ies etc." "In St Mary's Col­lege they are al­ready open­ing up to youth to have dis­cus­sions about the is­sue. It is a big deal to me that the Catholic Church is al­low­ing that," he said. He be­lieves that in every school there is some­one strug­gling with the is­sue and wants to pro­vide a safe place where "you will feel ap­pre­ci­at­ed and loved no mat­ter what." Sharon Mot­t­ley, a found­ing mem­ber of CAISO, is in strong sup­port of the Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion. "I think it is the first step in the right di­rec­tion," she said. She be­lieves that T&T as a so­ci­ety dis­crim­i­nates and is com­fort­able do­ing so. She al­so thinks it is the Gov­ern­ment's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to im­ple­ment re­sources that will ad­dress is­sues such as how boys treat girls, ef­fem­i­nate boys who are gay, boys who are la­belled gay but who are not, and la­belling in gen­er­al. "We need to shape their minds as part of our guid­ance pro­grammes. A holis­tic ap­proach is need­ed to ad­dress the is­sue of bul­ly­ing. It is not on­ly boys but al­so girls who are tomboys etc. who are teased and ha­rassed for their per­ceived sex­u­al­i­ty. "Schools should not have peo­ple like Pas­tor Lee ad­dress­ing stu­dents on the is­sue of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty. "Schools should be mov­ing to a place of tol­er­ance," she said.