In high schools across the nation, hundreds of thousands of teenagers wake up, get dressed, and do their best to make it through the school day without any major conflicts. But for a particular minority group, these seemingly-simple everyday tasks can turn into a nightmare of discrimination, insults, and silence.

To help non-LGBT students gain a better understanding of their LGBT peers daily obstacles, the Gay Straight Alliance club is hosting the Day of Silence this Friday and the Night of Noise dance Friday night. Tickets for the dance cost $7 at the door, and the night includes games, a DJ, pizza, and a fashion show.

“The Day of Silence is an awareness campaign where you don’t speak for the whole school day, and the idea is to represent the way LGBT people are silenced in society and how those people can’t necessarily be themselves or express themselves the way they want to in school and in society,” Ray Paul, senior GSA member, said. “Then the Night of Noise is a dance following the Day of Silence that is a celebration in commemoration of the awareness event.”

Although the GSA club is the main promoter of the school-wide Day of Silence, other schools also get involved in the  dance festivities.

“My favorite part is that we invite other schools, so I really enjoy getting to make connections with kids I don’t normally get to see. We’ve had a lot of different schools like Barrington, Stevenson, Palatine, and some farther schools, like kids who come from New Trier,” Paul said. 

Over 5 percent of American high schoolers identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT), and 92 percent of those students have been verbally harassed or been subject to homophobic remarks, according to siecus.com. While it may be difficult for a non-LGBT student to understand all of the daily struggles faced by LGBT people, the Gay Straight Alliance club’s Day of Silence campaign is trying to at least make people aware the problems exist, according to Paul.

“I think [Day of Silence and Night of Noise] are important because they recognize an issue that people don’t always like to talk about. It also creates community among people when you’re all participating in the same event and you all get to celebrate it together,” Paul said. “You don’t have to be in GSA or a part of the LGBT community in order to come, everybody and anybody is welcome.”