Letter to the editor: Cease the deafening silence at BC

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” both my physics teacher and principal said this on a daily basis (the principal in situations when things went terribly wrong). Today is such a reaction.
There is a deafening silence at Bellevue College, concealing, protecting and allowing vicious and venomous discrimination. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This silence so loud will be countered with words typed and printed, even louder than this silence, words in black and white, incapable on their own of even the slightest sound.
Too much of my life, I spent wondering about the powerful message of silence. The way it dignifies a plan and in its strange way solidifies an idea. The way silence, as anything else of human nature is a double-edged sword. The way silence allows the corrupt to thrive, the way snapping its delicate spine empowers and tips yet again the scales of injustice.
Each of us knows the danger of silence. The needless suffering, the brainwashing that any authority (insecure in itself) uses to force compliance, to bully a victim, stunning them into a loss of words. It works wonders in what it conceals, first disregarding, reducing then allowing a blanket of muffled words to turn into ashy remains of hope. And yet what shatters silence is not sound, or needlessly angry voices, but an idea, a vision awarded and endowed with an understanding on the nature of silence and its balances. My plan is simple. I will meet silence with reasoned speech. And I will do that, again and again, until I am certain that the same silence will not shroud anyone else’s suffering, because what happens to those in my community, happens to me.
Before this dangerous silencecanevertakehold, you will be told you are in the wrong, that somehow something you did is far too great to be forgiven, that you have crossed an imaginary boundary, and you will be told to see it with a million eyes you cannot hope to have. If you accept this image of what you should be—reduced, categorized, labeled and therefore dehumanized, you have accepted a mindset that allows you to welcome silence with open arms, to embrace a poison named injustice, and allowed someone, whomever they are, to have authority over your own person, to say “here’s what you have to be.”
Never for a single moment in your entire life imagine that someone’s bottom rear sits differently than yours.
That being said know your value, your potential, your expressions, your hopes, your dreams, your nightmares, your fears, your vulnerabilities, are not anything anyone can ever define, let alone use in labeling and discriminating against you with apparent bias.
When the dean of [title censored for paper], (ironically), uses my vulnerabilities in silence, threatening to bar me from campus when I say “let’s understand one another” in three ignored emails and a voicemail, I will say on college newspaper “Silence is a breeding-
ground, do not allow silence to take hold.” I will say to hundreds more or less vulnerable than me, if someone uses silence against you, speak up first, and come up with a plan. My plan is reasoned speech, reasoned conversation of equal understanding. The same plan I came forward with to [name censored for paper]. A plan rejected, reduced, and insulted with threats on what a danger I am, a danger based on imaginary visions and stories I do not know or see. If you don’t have a plan, if you simply just don’t understand, come find me if you must. I’m the girl with the headscarf that everybody knows; I’m the girl that won’t mind if you think everyone else wearing a headscarf is my sister. All I care is that my vision, my idea of what we can be, understanding and working against the silence injustice always counts on to exist is forever cleared. All I care is that the person who walks in my wake never walks in fear. All I care is if you are more capable than me, that you reach that capability. All I care is that as a community, and never a cult, that we move forward. Don’t ever allow a silencethatseekstoreduce and create compliance. Not so long as you can see an idea, so long as you can envision an image of what we can be without it. And I promise, I have an image of what we can be, that is a hundred times more beautiful than words can describe, and with it today I give a soundless equal and opposite reaction.