While other students’ desks were covered in homework assignments, textbooks and book bags, junior Ashton Johnson’s desk only had two things – a small white-erase board and a marker to write with.

He was not alone; two other students had the same thing sitting on their desks. In addition to this, none of them had spoken a word since the school day begun.

All three students were participating in the 14th annual National Day of Silence (NDOS).

Every sixteenth of April, hundreds of students nationwide take a vow of silence for one day to raise awareness of the harassment and bullying that members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community endure on a daily basis.

This year at AHS, participation in this event has almost doubled from last year. “I found last years list, and there was only 11 people signed up, but right now we have 21 people so far,” Straight Gay Alliance club sponsor and English teacher Julia Hanneman said this morning.

As the day progresses and the silence grows, however, more students are deciding to sign up to support the cause. “I am letting people join late because some kids see their friends participating and want to do it as well,” Hanneman said.

The new participants hope that being silent literally will help to end the silence about the verbal and physical abuse that members of the LGBT community face constantly. “I hope to teach other people, especially my good friends, that this is a bigger problem than people take it for and it needs to be resolved,” Johnson wrote on his white-erase board that he had been using throughout the day to communicate with his teachers and peers.

All participants are given a NDOS sticker and a small info sheet to carry with them so that way others will not only recognize that they are participating, but also understand what their silence stands for.

Also, all participants, like Johnson, must carry around a notebook or white-erase board to communicate with others when asked to in class by a teacher.

For some participants, being silent for an entire day has proved to be rather difficult. “It is insanely hard not to talk…everyone fails their first time,” sophomore Daniel Park wrote. “Sometimes you just forget and you talk by reflex. It’s very frustrating.”

Others, fueled by personal experiences, find it easy to stay silent for the day. “I have many friends in the LGBT community and I believe that the LGBT community deserves the same rights as everyone else and I’m heavily against the cruelty that they face everyday from anti-LGBT groups,” junior Dayana Zyoud-Cruz wrote.

The majority of the new participants, however, want to participate to simply raise more awareness of the issue. “I think it’s sad that so many people today remain intolerant of gays [and] lesbians, it’s ridiculous,” junior Sahnun Mohamud wrote. Mohamud, like many new participants came to sign up after hearing about the NDOS from friends.

It may not seem like much to some people, but to many, a little silence can go a long way. “Silence is the symbol of ‘the end’ to me,” Zyoud-Cruz said.