More than 70 protesters gathered in the rain outside of the Armed Forces Recruitment Center at University Plaza Friday in objection to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

The rally was planned four days after Binghamton University student Charlotte Rendon was rejected from enlisting on the grounds of her sexual orientation.

Protesters held picket signs, some stating, “Silence is not golden,” supporting gays in the military. Some wore duct tape over their mouths in a show of solidarity, while others chanted and shouted their support of Rendon’s cause.

Event organizers met with officers from Vestal Police Department prior to the rally for input on location and conditions, said Joe Mullins, a Patrol Division Lieutenant for VPD. Officers were on scene to observe, rather than supervise, the event.

Rendon said she spoke with a recruiter about misconceptions of the recruitment process during a visit to the center April 12 and that he said they should be honest with each other.

“He was asking for my honesty and I told him one of my concerns is that I am a lesbian, and there is this Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy,” she said.

Rendon said she was told that by being an openly gay American, she would not be able to serve or enlist in the armed forces.

According to Rendon, she knew of the policy when she went to the recruiting center, and knew the consequences of trying to defy it. She said she felt it was necessary to bring up the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy when the recruiter told her she could serve in active duty for up to seven years.

“That is a very long time to be hiding a part of who I am and be giving so much of myself to my country to be investigated and discharged based on who I decide to be with,” she said.

Representatives of the Armed Forces Recruitment Center said they could not comment on Rendon’s situation or the rally itself.

Still, Rendon, an undeclared freshman, said that she plans to reapply if the policy is ever revoked, and that she had been considering enlisting since before she came to BU.

The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was implemented under the Clinton administration in 1993. Until then, homosexuals had been strictly prohibited from serving in the military under a Department of Defense directive from 1982.

BU’s chapter of the Right Side of History campaign was one of the key organizers of the event. The chapter is an on-campus group based around a national organization dedicated to speeding up the rate of social change in America, focused especially on the rights of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is on its last legs,” Sam Sussman, vice president of BU’s chapter of Right Side of History, said to the crowd. “The president says it’s a bad policy, our highest ranking general says it’s a bad policy, but the citizens haven’t said it loudly enough. This is the beginning of the end of discrimination.”

Sussman said that the ultimate goal of the hour-long protest was to dramatize the effects that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has on Americans.

According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a non-partisan, non-profit, policy organization dedicated to ending DADT, since the enactment of DADT in 1993, over 13,500 military service members have been fired under the law. Since 2001, DADT discharges have dropped incrementally in every armed conflict that the U.S. has been involved in since its enactment.

However, there are those who maintain that DADT is an effective policy that should be upheld. At a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting in February, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia stated that servicemen from the gay community have served, and will continue to serve, valiantly in the U.S. armed forces, but that military life is fundamentally different than civilian life and functions under a different set of rules.

“Examples include alcohol use, adultery, fraternization and body art,” Chambliss said at the meeting. “If we change this rule of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, what are we going to do with these other issues?”