In a storm of feathers, sequins and glitter, five drag queens helped disprove some preconceived notions about students at Eastern.

DIVA 2003 brought five professional entertainers from Indiana to the Union Grand Ballroom Monday for an evening of glitz, glamour and duct tape. Some of the ladies taking the stage were transgendered people in various stages of transformation, others were female impersonators. All put on a show unlike anything Charleston has seen before.

Being a member of Pride, the campus gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/allies group that planned the event, I knew of the show for several months before it happened. I was excited we dared to bring something so controversial, albeit needlessly so, to Eastern. Still, I worried all the planning committee’s hard work would go down the drain. I figured few people at Eastern would cheer on an oddly broad-shouldered woman lip-syncing to Diana Ross, bedecked in sparkling lipstick and stilettos.

I got to the show about 30 minutes early and staked out a spot to snap photos. About two dozen people, many of whom were Pride members, hung by the doors or took their seats. Maybe this is how places always look when one gets there early – that’s pretty foreign to me.

But within the half hour, the place was packed. People stood along the walls, volunteers lugged in extra chairs and I sat in particular awe of the situation. Presumably, the majority of these people were heterosexuals who had never been to a drag show before. Many of my well-meaning, open-minded hetero friends have never seen one.

I’ve been to a fair number of drag queen shows and a lesser number of drag king shows (women dressed as men) and knew what to expect. But the audience, what did they expect? What had they heard of drag shows? Would they get caught up in it and cheer or get up and leave?

But when the queens hit the catwalk, everything around us exhaled. People got up and danced or gyrated in their chairs, they sang, they screamed and they leapt to the foot of the stage, extending dollar bills to the queens’ manicured hands. And I heard never a giggle-people were awestruck by what they saw on stage.

Hundreds of us all together let go of pretense. We quit worrying what we looked and sounded like. We just did as one of the last performers did-pulled our wigs off and cut loose.

I saw so many students who are stereotyped as apathetic and closed-minded come together in celebration of performance, gay issues and World AIDS Day; the inspiration for the show. It made me more proud than ever to be an Eastern student.

Yeah, we aren’t a big liberal university with an office of gay and lesbian affairs and a gender studies school, but we can show our unity when it counts.

I’ve always said Eastern is a great place to be an out gay, lesbian or bisexual. I still think so, and maybe I’m ready to tack “transgender” on that list after Monday’s showing of support.

So thanks, of course, to Pride, for believing in this idea – I wish I had been a bigger part of it.

And thank you to Eastern’s students for proving me wrong.