Active Minds and Mental Wellness Center, two nonprofit organizations focused on raising awareness about suicide prevention, hosted a Send Silence Packing exhibit Monday at UCSB’s Student Resources Building, where they lined the lawn with 1,100 backpacks to represent the number of college students who take their lives every year.
Passersby were invited to walk along the exhibit, where friends’ and family members’ memorial letters were attached to a number of the displayed backpacks. The testimonies told stories of the students who have been lost, and many included pictures. According to Send Silence Packing coordinator Lee Duffy-Ledbetter, families directly affected by suicide donated about a quarter of the backpacks.
Though this exhibit has never come to Santa Barbara before, Active Minds has displayed Send Silence Packing at over 100 locations nationwide, beginning with Washington D.C.’s National Mall in 2008. Since then, more than 320,000 people have experienced the backpack display, as stated on the Active Minds website. So far, Active Minds has established chapters in over 400 colleges and universities, where, Duffy-Ledbetter said, “students are pretty receptive to the message and also thankful” for exhibits like Send Silence Packing.