In the face of five high-profile stories of American students committing suicide last month after enduring harassment from their peers for their perceived sexual identify, members of the Ballard High School SLAM club spent the early morning hours Oct. 4 writing messages of acceptance and love in chalk outside the high school.

SLAM, which stands for Student Lives Always Matter, is Ballard's suicide prevention club. It spends its time doing educational outreach to help students who need it and to let students know how to help their friends.

The chalk messages, such as "Just be yourself" and "You are loved," are part of the second-annual national You-Are-Loved Chalk Message Project. The project was started in 2005 by a student at Drew University in New Jersey to highlight the extra risk of suicide faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer students.

Paul Barry, mental health therapist at the Ballard High School Teen Health Center, said statistics show young people who are sexual minorities think about and commit suicide more often than their heterosexual peers due to harassment.

According to the You-Are-Loved Chalk Message Project, LGBTQ students are three to nine times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight classmates and an estimated 60 percent of LGBTQ students feel unsafe in school due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Ballard senior Sydney Jarol, president of SLAM, said the chalk project is about helping people who are feeling insecure and unloved by letting them know there is someone out there who cares. She said she hopes seeing the positive messages makes those students feel better.

"A lot of teenagers think they are alone," said sophomore Genevieve Barlow, a SLAM member. "It's only heightened when they feel persecuted."

Heather Carter, LGBTQ OUTLoud project coordinator for the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, helped coordinate Ballard High School's chalk project. She said the students at the highest risk of suicide are those still questioning their sexual orientation and what their coming out would mean to their friends and classmates.

The chalk project lets those students know that there are people who are open to them and can identify with them, Carter said.

Even though students don't know who wrote the messages, it's important for them to know there are people out there who feel that way, Barlow said.

Jarol said harassment of students for their sexual orientation isn't as big a problem at Ballard or in Seattle as it is elsewhere, but it still happens. And, Barry said he hopes the project will help all Ballard students who are feeling ostracized, regardless of sexuality.

"I think it's tragic that students end their lives so early," Jarol said. "They don't understand that there are people out there who want to help them."