Ellen Carolyn Dishman Spring2024 39 COURTESY OF CAROLYN AND ELLEN DISHMAN AND NANCY AND GREGORY BUECHLER ing meetings of OSU’s queer student group, soon known as the Rainbow Continuum. After a meeting, they took note each time they spotted other gay students — taking comfort in seeing their relationship reflected elsewhere in the student body.“It was like a celebrity sighting on campus for us,” Ellen says. “Like, ‘There’s somebody like me right there.’” In 2000, members of the Rainbow Continuum began lobbying to create the Queer Resource Center. On March 14, 2001, more than 350 people piled into the Memorial Union ballroom to observe a Student Fees Committee hearing. The committee voted unanimously in favor of the proposal, approving a $7,000 budget. In 2004, the building became the Pride Center. The center,and queerstudent clubs before it,were part of an effort by students to make these relationships more visible, and to normalize them on campus. In the process, it became a place not only for community and connection, but also where love sometimes bloomed, Konrad says. B BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA, THERE WAS THE Daily Barometer. In the ’70s, and to an even greater extent in the ’80s, the newspaper published personal ads in its classified section. Students bought space to trade coy, romantic missives, addressing each other by initials or nicknames and even writing rhyming couplets. They might profess admiration or slyly reference a recent date. HOW ANYONE CAN CALL love PERVERTED OR IMMORAL IS beyond ME. “ It was about a week into the winter term of their first year. Ellen Weigant and Carolyn Dishman had just moved in together — as roommates — when they realized there was a spark. This made things a little complicated: neither had been especially aware that they were queer, and the late ’90s campus climate was not especially welcoming of same-sex relationships. Eventually, they became leading figures in the movement to establish a queer cultural center on campus. “I do think that it brought us closer together, to work so hard to accomplish something,” Ellen says. It must have helped fuel their determination to marry, too, which they did four separate times due to the vicissitudes of Oregon samesex marriage laws. After the Oregon Supreme Court overturned an earlier constitutional amendment, Ellen and Carolyn gave it another try in 2014. “That one stuck,” Ellen says. ↗“We realized we’d sort of already been dating and had just been in denial,” Ellen says. Nancy Gregory Buechler Picture this: a rainy December evening, typical of a western Oregon winter, 1982. Nancy Ford, ’85, is waiting in her all-women’s dorm for her floor’s scheduled meeting with residents of an all-men’s dorm for what they called a “Cinderella Dinner.” “The ladies participating each threw a shoe into a box,” Nancy explains, “which was dutifully carried across the street, where your dinner date was based on who chose your shoe.” That night, Nancy, then a sophomore, was wearing cowboy boots. Gregory Buechler, ’85, spotted the boot amid all the tennis shoes and was intrigued. They talked all through dinner. They have been married for 38 years. ۄ One boot made the difference for Nancy and Gregory.
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