The furniture is pushed back along the walls, and the oriental rugs are rolled up. About 60 people are dancing to the driving beat of the Gargoyles, a Yale band. All the beer is gone.

The band plays a couple more songs, and the lights go up. As some students try to restore the large room to its normal state, others hang out and talk.

"I suspect there is a larger community [of gay students], but I don't really see it that much," says Douglas G. Chang, a senior from Palo Alto, Ca. He says one of his freshman roommates came out in the spring of their first year.

Many of the other students also say they have friends who are gay. The vast majority of Yale students, they say, are tolerant of the vocal homosexual community. Yet in the next breath one of the students at the party says it's easy to recognize a gay student: He or she probably majors in comparative literature and wears black.

The cold, damp New Haven night passes. The morning doesn't look or feel much different.

The final scene is Patricia's, a diner a couple of blocks from campus. Next door is the Holiday Inn, in front of which disgruntled workers are picketing, trying to win a contract. In the busy diner, students grab a quick brunch before heading for the Yale-Brown football game, and New Haven residents sit at the counter warming up with a cup of coffee.

Sarah E. Chinn and Kris L. Franklin, both wearing funky earrings dangling below their short stylish haircuts, are sitting at the table. "Two eggs and toast. How?" Chinn asks Franklin with a smile.

"Overeasy," replies Franklin.

"That's it. We're broken up," Chinn jokes in her British accent.

The two women, now juniors, have been together since their freshman year, when Chinn says she came to terms with her sexuality. The two met during Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days (GLAD) week in the spring of their freshman year and started going out immediately afterwards. Now Chinn is co-coordinator of the Gay and Lesbian Co-op, and Franklin is co-coordinator of Yalesbians.

"You need a group of people, you need an organized thing, especially when you first come out," says Franklin, adding that she came out while still in high school in a small town in Florida, where she says she felt very alone.

Chinn and Franklin, who live off-campus with two other women, one of whom is straight, say that gay jokes are not common in public at Yale, but within students' own groups of friends degrading homosexuals is more acceptable.

"There is homophobia at Yale, as there is everywhere," says Chinn, a member of the rugby team. "Each peer group has different standards of what's acceptable and what isn't. In general, people are more respectful."

"Maybe if I'd gone somewhere else, I wouldn't have come out until I was 45," she says. The strong support groups for homosexuals and the relatively open atmosphere make being gay easier, she adds.

Says Franklin, "You can come out because of the courage of the people who came out before you."