Day of Silence today in support of students bullied for sexual orientation

On April 6, a sixth-grader in Springfield, Mass., hanged himself after classmates tormented him for months with taunts that he was "acting gay," the child's mother told reporters.

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, 11, who played football and baseball, had not identified himself as gay, nor had he expressed any sexual orientation, his mother said. And she'd received little help from school officials to stop the bullying, she said.

Today, more than 8,000 middle and high schools across the country will take part in a National Day of Silence to bring attention to the bullying and harassment of students because they are gay or lesbian, or are perceived to be.

Today would have been Carl Walker-Hoover's 12th birthday.

In the Philadelphia area, students at 22 public and private schools have registered to be silent today, according to the national Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which is sponsoring the 13th annual event.

GLSEN yesterday released a report that said that schools in Pennsylvania "are unsafe places for LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered] youth."

The report, titled Inside Pennsylvania Schools: The Experiences of LGBT Students, was based on findings from 242 Pennsylvania students who participated in GLSEN's 2007 National School Climate Survey.

"The survey shows that Pennsylvania LGBT students face extreme levels of harassment and assault, skip school at alarming rates because of feeling unsafe and perform poorer in school when they are more frequently harassed," GLSEN said in statement.

Pennsylvania is one of 43 states that do not explicitly protect students from bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, the organization said.

"You don't have to be gay to be called a 'fag,' " said Daryl Presgraves, a GLSEN spokesman. "You learn at an early age, if you want to hurt someone's feelings, we learn to call someone a sissy, or gay and fag."

Students may not even think a classmate is gay, but often "the weapon of choice is anti-gay language," he said.

To remain silent in class today, some students have cleared it in advance with teachers and principals, said Presgraves.

"Where it will be most empowering is the silence in the hallways, in lunchrooms and before school," he said.

ErickaWashington, the Philadelphia School District's bullying-prevention coordinator, said that the district has both anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies.

She said that she hopes that today's silence campaign will encourage adults to work with students to prevent bullying and harassment of all kinds.

"We can make sure that all children in the school district are safe and able to come to school without the fear of being teased and harassed," Washington said.

Earlier this week, district officials began a second year of bullying-prevention workshops, she said.

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.