By Leila Porteous '02

The show was a drag--but the packed house in the Page Commons Room couldn't get enough.

An evening at Cotter Union in May was devoted to cross-dressed performers and recitation of sobering statistics about discrimination against queer people in the U.S. The audience of students, faculty and administrators gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up to the show. Organizers and performers also were praised by the guest of honor, President Bro Adams (sporting a feather boa), for "connect[ing] their intellectual lives and interests with social and cultural life in a serious but also inviting way."

The show was a success, but like most public triumphs, it was the culmination of considerable behind-the-scenes work and, in this case, discomfiting discussion.

This was the splashiest of the social-action projects carried out by students in a new course, Alternative Popular Cultures, first offered this spring. The course was prompted by requests from students who wanted to investigate queer studies--who wanted a course that would look at society "through the lens of queer culture."

They asked Professor Margaret McFadden to teach the course, and she agreed, though her expertise is in the study of gender or race as represented in mainstream culture, especially movies and television. Queer studies, a relatively new field, presented personally and culturally challenging issues, the class found. In fact, the issues are so challenging that the students and their professor spent considerable time talking to each other about how they would talk to each other. "We really had to work together as a class to find a common language," said Lizzie Parks '03.

One of the first steps, students said, was to introduce the word "queer," an umbrella term that helped ease the anxiety of identity politics. "Queer," according to McFadden, describes "anyone who chafes under the current arrangement of gender and sexuality norms in this culture."

But even after becoming versed in the phraseology of queer culture, it was slow going. "It was pretty disappointing initially because the entire point of the class is queer life, queer history, queer visibility for queer people," Parks said. "It is not how dominant culture will respond to gay disco or whatever. A large percentage of the class kept turning it around on themselves, putting their position in the center, [and] it was silencing the conversation that needed to take place."

The class, said Julie Land '04, "needed loosening up." Students turned to less formal gatherings, like baking cookies and "crazy hat day" as an antidote to inhibition in the classroom itself. "I never anticipated that I would need to establish connections outside of the classroom," said Ellie Berlin '02. "It's one of the hardest classes to get personal and to open yourself [in], but it's the most necessary. Knowing that other people are there [because] they're interested--that's the thing that links us. It makes it easier to share your opinions."

So the collection of international students and football players, straight and queer students, began to gel. Land said what emerged was "a community in itself," which approached its next challenge--raising queer visibility at Colby--with vigor.

The drag show-- featuring McFadden in Dorothy's ruby red slippers and Land and Jaime Muehl '02 as tuxedoed emcees--was followed by a rally for victims of gay-oriented assault. That event gathered protesters at the flagpole in Miller Quad, where a rainbow flag was flown at half-mast, where the American flag normally flies. A forum a few weeks later invited students to come and discuss whether by raising the rainbow flag activists had gone too far.

One of the creators of the forum, Mike Meloski '02, said the event was aimed at bringing new voices into the discussion. "I think a lot of the campus feels like the same people are always talking about the issue. So with two queer people and two straight people [running it] we get a different crowd."

While she declares that the bottom line is that "we're all homophobic," Parks, another organizer of the forum, said the challenge is to understand our homophobia and work through it as a class and as individuals, to address each person's internalized homophobia and create a better atmosphere on the Colby campus.

This fall the course will be offered again. And while it's already over-enrolled, to some students that is not enough. "If everyone took this class, it would be a different campus," said Berlin. "I know you can say that about any class, but this class matters. If I had taken this class freshman year, I would have felt comfortable going to Bridge meetings and establishing myself as an ally. . . . That's the way change is going to happen--straight kids and everybody leaving their comfort zones, going to meetings, opening themselves up."

If everyone thought in those terms, Berlin said, Colby would be a safer place. "Not just for queer students," she said, "but for everybody."