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Freshman Levi Sund never told his parents. He didn’t tell his classmates. He didn’t tell his friends. But when he graduated from high school, Sund decided he didn’t want to be silent about his homosexuality anymore.

“I’ve been bullied and stuff for being different but I’ve never stopped smiling,” Sund said. “Even if some people think that I’m less than them, that doesn’t make it true. And now, I feel adult enough to stand up for what I believe in.”

Now a diversity committee representative for the Gay-Straight Alliance, Sund joins the other members in celebrating the National Day of Silence.

From 8:30 a.m. until the breaking of the silence at 3:30 p.m. Friday, participants will surrender their ability to speak in honor of those who are forced to hide for fear of intolerance.

“Our purpose is to give people a safe environment where they can be themselves,” Scott Ireland, GSA vice president, said. “Accepting who you are is a really hard process and what makes it so hard is that you’re scared of being rejected by everyone else.”

The first Day of Silence was introduced in 1996 at the University of Virginia when a small group had the idea that fear of prejudice, bullying and harassment kept people silent about their sexuality. In the following years, the program extended nationwide as growing numbers continued the fight to create safe environments for people of any sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

GSA sponsor Wendi Born said campus participation in the day raises awareness and encourages acceptance of people who fall outside of the heterosexual majority.

“There is an underlying sinister meaning that people are silent because they’re harassed and bullied, but I think that violence is only the hammer at the end,” Born said. “The real silence comes from social oppression.”

On Tuesday, in honor of the Day of Silence, the Baker University Speech Choir performed in the Harter Union Lobby. The reading was based on the Laramie Project, a play about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. Shepard was a gay student in Laramie, Wyo.

Although Sund was often targeted because of his differences, he has found GSA, and the Baker campus, to be a safe place.

"I think that college teaches people to think of themselves as a part of something bigger," Ireland said. "We need to learn not to judge and to accept people for the greater good."<br/>