Dear Cast Members of Ole Miss’ The Laramie Project Production,

At DePaul University in Chicago, our student body generally does not have to put up with discrimination.  As a school, we pride ourselves in our diversity and strive to accept everyone regardless of racial/ethnic backgrounds, religion, economic background, and sexual orientation.  When our performance class—very similar to the one that attended your play at Ole Miss—heard about the obscene behavior of the audience of The Laramie Project, we were shocked.  For a group of students to make hateful comments to another group of students in hopes to belittle, embarrass or offend them is absolutely unacceptable.  The amount of disrespect the audience members showed your cast during your performance is infuriating.

For Garrison Gibbons to say that he does not want to see the football players punished but rather shine positive light on garnering support for the LGBTQ community is tremendously selfless and admirable.  It seems all the media attention is focused on blaming the audience for their behavior and demanding Ole Miss come up with some sort of punishment for the football players that instigated the hateful comments.  Instead, we wanted to focus on your cast.  You are the group that deserves the attention.  Despite the comments made and how hard it must have been to continue performing, you all finished the production and conveyed a very important message to your audience regardless of if they received it or not.  We want to say thank you for your bravery and acceptance in a circumstance where you were not given the same courtesy.  The entire cast was brave to not only perform such a difficult play, but to keep the integrity of the performance while faced with uncalled for, hateful comments.

It takes an extreme amount of courage to perform for an audience, something we are learning as a class.  To perform a play that requires putting yourself out on a line, opening yourself up to the world and showing them who you are as The Laramie Project does requires even more courage, something the entire cast exemplified by finishing the play you worked so hard to produce.  Thank you for your courage to finish such an important production.  Thank you for taking a negative situation and making some good out of it.  Thank you for realizing that, while we may never be able to change everyone’s mind, raising your voice can make a difference.

The strength your cast has shown during this entire ordeal has inspired our performance class here at DePaul to raise our voices as well.  As a class we hope to organize a reading of The Laramie Project to honor your bravery, Matthew Shepard, and anyone who has suffered discrimination based on their sexual orientation.  We will aim to raise more awareness in our community and convey the importance that, no matter what you believe, you have no right to degrade another human being.

We invite you all to raise your voice as well and sign our petition to end hateful speech and unnecessary discrimination.  No one deserves to be treated as less than they are.  By signing our petition, you are saying no to all the hateful, derogatory comments and yes to more inspiring, accepting attitudes as shown by the cast of The Laramie Project at Ole Miss.

Please continue to be awesome and raise awareness for gay rights.  You are making a difference.

All our love and support,

The Students of a DePaul Performance Workshop, Instructed by Carolyn Hoerdemann