For the past two years, junior Tyler Billett has kept his mouth shut on April 17. He, along with many others across the nation, wanted to silence the harassment that accompanies lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students daily.

The Day of Silence is a national student-led movement to raise awareness for the abuse homosexuals face. But on Thursday, rather than vowing to stay silent, Billett and the LGBT club pushed for everyone to do the opposite: speak up.

“End the Silence is something we worked together to create because a lot of our students, including myself, actually experienced more harassment on the Day of Silence, so I figured it would be better if we did something different,” said Billett, who is also president of the club.

Instead, students were encouraged to wear red to support the LGBT community.

“I don’t think you can make fun of someone wearing a red shirt,” Billett said. “When we were doing the Day of Silence there were a lot of people treating it like a game and not being respectful of what it was about and they took the opportunity to harass you even more because you couldn’t say anything back.”

On May 21, the LGBT club is showing a video during the school improvement hour in hopes to educate staff and students on the multiple types of sexuality and what is considered to be offensive. Some of the club members will also describe issues they’ve gone through and give personal experiences.

“I hope that it’s positive and I hope that it is very enlightening because I don’t think people realize how hard it is to be an LGBT kid in a high school,” club advisor biology teacher Katy Walters said. “I hope it makes them aware of some of the words they use and they may not intend it to be mean but it is.”

Billett hopes the video will spark a difference throughout the school.

“I want to change the climate of the school atmosphere,” Billett said. “I want it to be that people aren’t afraid to come to school because they don’t want to have to deal with harassment. I want this to be an open and accepting place regardless of sexuality and gender sexual orientation, whatever it may be, I want everyone to feel at home in this school. We’ve all heard hundreds and hundreds of times, One Team, One Family, One GH and I feel like we really need to make sure our LGBTQ students are included in that.”