Groups of students congregate on the University Center's lower level, clutching their morning cups of coffee. Women and men, casually attired, lounge in overstuffed leather chairs nibbling at croissants and perusing the day's scheduled events in folders marked in purple with conjoining gender symbols. A soft flutter permeates the hallway as the Tartan cheerleaders arrive, their red pom-poms at their sides.
The growing crowd continues to represent myriad ages, races, and styles–older men with suit jackets and hats beside young female athletes in oversized gym shorts, their hair piled high in tight buns. The draw for such diversity is Carnegie Mellon's annual one-day conference on gender issues, Mosaic, and from the looks of the audience and presenters, the conference is aptly named.
Signs are posted outside almost every room on the University Center's upper level announcing what activities will take place inside. The day's headliner is inside the McConomy Auditorium; WNBA basketball star Sheryl Swoopes tells the overflowing crowd what it was like for her to publicly reveal that she is a lesbian in the heterosexual-dominated world of professional sports.
Upstairs in the Skibo Café, a much more intimate crowd gathers to hear students read short stories that weave gender issues seamlessly into a variety of plots ranging from shoe shopping to spousal abuse. Ashley Birt, a fourth-year creative writing and drama student, is among the student readers. Her work of fiction, titled Sorry, depicts a young girl struggling with the concept of her older sister's homosexuality.
After the reading, Birt joins her friends for one of the catered lunches in the Rangos Ballroom. The room is full of students, families, and members of the Pittsburgh community sharing both their tables and their thoughts on the day's events. When Birt finishes her rosemary-seasoned potatoes and grilled chicken, she and her friends go to a panel discussion on how sexuality is portrayed in movies shown on campus and in advertising for student events.
The rest of the lunch crowd also disperses to different discussions throughout the University Center. Same-sex parents, rocking cooing babies in their arms, are involved in discussions about nontraditional family structures. Cheerleaders perform their routine to a thumping musical beat before discussing the athleticism of cheerleading, body image, and the spectrum of body types.
For the rest of the afternoon, the University Center is an alternative hive, a mosaic of voices and attitudes and lifestyles sharing the day.
