“Why must you speak?” my roommate keeps asking me.

In my head, the question remains all week. He persists in saying, “Just let it go.”

But can I?

In a way, he is right. It would be easier just to forget about it. He makes me wonder if there is even a purpose in speaking out against something everyone knows is wrong.

Last weekend, the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) made posters for the petition signing they were holding. Those posters were hung up in the main academic building with pride.

With wretchedness, a fellow student proceeded to rip and tear down the posters in anger. My roommate and I both agreed that this was wrong. Nevertheless, we stand divided on how to respond to this incident.

“If justice meets this case, then he will be punished,” my roommate says. “If not, then so be it. He had the right to his own opinion, freedom of speech. Let it go!”

I agree that we can all form our own opinion as to what the problem is. Yet it is up to each of us to decide what to do about the problem.

For me, the time to speak is now.

Now, on this Friday morning, is time for us to speak. In Quaker tradition, the Darrow community comes together for 15 minutes to discuss issues raised during the week, or for silent reflection. I recline in my seat and wait in silence as the minutes pass.

From across the room, I receive a cold, disheartening look from my roommate. After 10 minutes fade away, nothing is said. In my mind, there had always been a vast difference between possessing courage and taking initiative.

I thought of Thurgood Marshall, Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Change has not come in our history by remaining silent. Silence must be broken.

So I rise from my pew and face my peers. I read: “Creating a display exemplifies free speech. But destroying something that is already extant, on the other hand, is to eliminate free speech. Blind rage doesn’t express any position; it removes the expression of another person’s position. Those displays could have been hung for any one of a thousand reasons. But rather than creating a forum or outlet to support your own beliefs, you sought merely to attack and remove those of another. To whomever destroyed the GSA’s poster: Take a stand on your own opinion; do not destroy others’.”

That morning, I knew I had planted a seed that I hoped would grow in every mind as the day progressed.

My voice alone will not change the mindset of this community, but from my words, a new thought or idea arises. When students discuss what I said, they passed the seed from one mind to another. It is with one message and one mind that the cycle of change can begin. This is why I speak. And until change comes, I will not be silenced.