General Discussion

But silence can just mean you don't want to be argued with by everybody and put down or have them angry at you.

A few weeks ago on the day of the campus walkout against ICE a Trump supporter brought in a Trump flag. I told him to put it away. It vanished, from my perspective, but he'd put it on his desk; the assignment was on computer and the flag was under it. When I got up and saw it, I told him to stop trolling other students and just put the flag away, as in immediately. He complied.

Another student was visibly upset by this idjit. But nobody said a word to confront him--and even my "confronting" was straightforward district and state policy--keep politically controversial topics out of the classroom unless relevant, then let all voices be heard in a moderated format. Since mine is a science classroom, politics (unless it's content-related, IDK, NASA funding?) has no place.

The upset student finally asked to see the counselor but just she just sat in the counseling office to get over her angry and sense of hurt. But did she say anything?

No. As the Trump supporter said in defense of having his flag out, nobody said anything so they must all agree. (No, she was insecure about her environment and refused to say anything. Silence implies silence--we can infer consent or intimidation or non-confrontation or simple indifference, but that's on us.)

If silence implies consent, then it's at best a subcategory of preference falsification.