T-Shirts express tolerance

Tuesday was the same as any other day, with students lying on the Cathedral lawn, going to… Tuesday was the same as any other day, with students lying on the Cathedral lawn, going to classes and eating with friends.

The only difference was that 1,000 of them were wearing the same shirt.

The “Gay? Fine By Me” T-Shirt Project, which has more than 20,000 people across the country wearing T-shirts with the same motto, came to Pitt as part of a national campaign to combat homophobia.

Pitt joined other Pennsylvania schools such as Penn State campuses and Bucknell University in hosting a T-shirt drive this spring.

“We had 12 boxes of shirts at 10 Monday morning,” said Sara Fatell, chair of the Student Government Board’s Diversity Committee. “By 1:30 p.m., they were all gone.”

The following day, Pitt students — gay and straight — wore the shirts to show their acceptance of and support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

The project began over dinner at Duke University in Durham, N.C., two years ago. Lucas Schaefer and several friends were discussing the 2003 issue of the Princeton Review rating Duke as the most homophobic school in the country.

“We wanted to see if our peers really were homophobic,” Schaefer said.

The group figured out a short, snappy slogan and raised enough funds to give out 500 T-shirts bearing the inscription “Gay? Fine by me.”

“In 10 days, there were more than 2,000 people wearing them on campus,” Schaefer said.

The project soon spread to Notre Dame and Boston College, which were also rated gay-unfriendly by the Princeton Review.

This year, Duke has dropped off the review’s top-20 list of homophobic schools, and Fine By Me Inc. is growing.

Schaefer said that the project was designed to give people who are opposed to homophobia, both gay and straight, a human face. T-shirt drives similar to Duke’s have appeared in churches, neighborhoods and schools in 43 states.

“Tuesday was the day to tell everybody, ‘I don’t have a problem with gay people’,” Fatell said. “Hopefully, we can do it again next year.”

The success of Pitt’s drive surprised and pleased members of the Student Government Board, which allocated the funds to order the shirts from Fine By Me Inc. as a supplement to the Diversity Committee’s budget.

“People came up to my office looking for more T-shirts, and we got support from the faculty, staff, even people just walking by,” Fatell said.

Feedback from students and staff was generally positive, although some people on campus objected to the message the shirts displayed.

“Some people on the street or in class had comments, like they didn’t agree with our shirts,” Fatell said.

An article in yesterday’s edition of the local newsletter Pittsburgh Standard assailed the drive as promoting homosexuality, saying “it is not fine.”

“The view that SGB and Rainbow Alliance have of homosexuality is not shared by all,” Ramesh Reddy wrote in the article. “We need to love everyone, including homosexuals, but need to hate the act itself and not the person.”

Fatell thanked SGB during their meeting Tuesday night for “taking the risk” to buy the shirts.

“SGB is doing big things promoting diversity,” Fatell said. “It’s good when all diversity doesn’t rely on minority groups promoting themselves.”

Tuesday’s event came after the end of Pride Week, when gay people celebrate their identity. However, just because the T-shirts are off, Fatell said, “every day’s a good day to say you don’t stand for homophobia.”