By Juliana Pearson (March 11, 2002)

Graphic by Viviana Cordova
Several times this year, colorful hand-drawn announcements for the Crayon Box, one of George Mason’s newest student organizations, have been a prominent feature in the halls. Perhaps they have left some to wonder: what exactly is the Crayon Box? What are the club’s main activities and goals? 

The Crayon Box is a group of students who meet after school to discuss issues related to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth (sexual minority youth or SMY). Although the organization is not an official school club, it functions like one in many ways. The group is supervised by a faculty liaison, FLE teacher Tamara Ballou. In an E-mail to fellow faculty members last month, Ballou explained that the purpose of the organization is to promote diversity and tolerance. The members of the Crayon Box "are trying to educate people about the discrimination and, in particular, the harassment that SMY and other youth face and the ways in which this kind of harassment hurts both SMY and other youth who may be targeted or teased" wrote Ballou. The organization is completely student run and organized, while Ballou offers occasional advice.

The club formed at the beginning of the school year when a group of students approached Ballou expressing the need for a forum to discuss issues involving SMY and to educate people about these issues.

"We’re a group fighting against anything anti-sexual in orientation especially since so many kids use ‘gay’ to mean something offensive, " said junior Jenny Davis, a founding member of the Crayon Box.

Although the Crayon Box is a relatively new organization, students have formed similar organizations in the past such as the Gay-Straight Alliance and Shine, which have embodied similar goals.

The Crayon Box and its predecessors fall under the umbrella term of the gay-straight alliance (GSA’s), organizations which allow SMY and others students to cooperatively address issues including harassment, discrimination and bias based on sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. 

"It’s important to keep in mind that the Crayon Box is a gay-straight alliance. Any decision for students to discuss his or her personal sexual orientation is his or her choice. I don’t know which kids in the group are SMY and which aren’t," said Ballou.

Ballou explained in her faculty E-mail that the student members of the Crayon Box see their cause "as an understanding and appreciating diversity issue, hence the choice of the multiple colors of the crayon box in their name."

"We decided on the name our first meeting. We just decided on Crayon Box because it included all different types of people," said Davis. 

Issues surrounding diversity and SMY are important to students throughout the nation. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national organization advocating an end to anti-gay bias in K-12 schools, estimates that over 1,000 GSA’s have formed throughout the United States in the past 10 years.

Many argue that such organizations are needed in schools because SMY confront issues such as physical, verbal and sexual harassment based on sexual orientation, the most common being verbal harassment. GLSEN recently conducted a survey of 496 SMY from 32 states. The survey found that over 90% of the students reported that they sometimes or frequently heard homophobic comments in their schools. Another study, performed in 1993 by the Massachusetts Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, found that 97% of the students in a Boston Public high school said that they heard homophobic comments in their school.

"It’s not just kids who are homosexual who are harassed. Perceived sexual orientation is used as a form of harassment, a form of hurting," said Ballou.

Davis echoed these sentiments. "So many kids in the group have been harassed and we want to end it. We want to promote dialogue," Davis said.

The group is planning several important activities in the upcoming months. On April 10^th, members of the Crayon Box will participate in a national Day of Silence to protest anti-gay bias in school. In 1996, Maria Pulzetti, then an 18 year-old student at the University of Virginia, founded the Day of Silence after she wrote a paper on nonviolent protest and grassroots organizing. It has since grown into a national effort involving thousands of college and high school students throughout the nation. 

Participating students remain silent throughout the day to represent how the voices of SMY and their allies have been, in many cases, unheard, ignored and disregarded. 

"Such silence and silencing affects us all in a profound way. Just as profound, however, can be the use of silence as a form of protest. The Day of Silence moves the power of these personal experiences to a community-focused effort. The Day of Silence is a way of turning silence on its head, of reclaiming silence as a tool," states the Day of Silence’s Internet site, www.dayofsilence.org.

Although they will remain silent on April 10^th, participating members of the Crayon Box will wear pins and pass out "speaking cards" that include a powerful message: "What are you going to do to end the silence?"