The decades-old, grafitti-ridden surfaces and drawers of Alexander Change's standard-issue Quincy House desk and wardrobe have been carefully covered with smooth, black contact paper. Leftover bits of the paper--cut and arranged into decorative patterns a la Henri Matisse--frame a massive, gloomy Jane's Addiction poster. "Just call them shards of contact paper framing a poster," the artist Chang says.

There is more black--a black poster of various distrorted images of director Spike Lee, a class project, grace another wall--but Alex Chang is more than an artist who likes to make things black. Fluorescent City-Step posters and a wooden-encased, 70s family-style television break up the room's pretenses at modernism, as do the walls, which Change has repainted a "warm" white: "Dusky Santa Fe Rose." Two long rectangular mirrors hang horizontally, the longer on the bottom, above his bed. "People usually go, 'ooh kinky!' but I just though they made my room much larger." Except for a black satin bodysuit hanging in his closet amidst black leather jackets and old graphic design projects, one wouldn't know that the artist, a government and visual and environmental studies double concentrator, is also an accomplished figure skater.

These days, Chang is reluctant to mention his ice-skating past, a sport he began at age 5 but put aside after the 1992 World Championships to become a full-time student. The alarm clock set to 4 a.m., the practice rink reserved from 5 to 9:30 every morning, the late days at school to make up for lost time--they are in the past now. In fact, when Chang first arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1989, he didn't expect competitive skating to play any role at all in his college career. But the transition to "all school and no skating," as well as college life with America's best and brightest left the Seal Bench Calif., native disoriented.

"I felt everyone was so amazing. 'I have nothing,' I thought. Skating was in the past and I didn't know how to translate it into the present," Chang says. "I got here freshman year and realized we had to figure out 'where's my niche, where do I fit? What makes me special?...I didn't know how else I could do it other than skating. I'd done it for so long, committed my life to it."

Skating was reassuring amidst the "chaos" of his first year. "Freshman year I felt I needed something to give my life structure. I thought skating was something very centering, structuring." He decided to resume training and competing when he went home for summer vacation. During his sophomore year, Chang began competing on the East Coast and fulfilled his goal of qualifying for the national championships. "I didn't do that well, but...the judges and the skating community liked the fact that I was a positive role model--staying in school and skating."

But after sophomore year, he switched to skating full time. During his year on leave, he won the 1992 National Collegiate Championship. Representing Taiwan, he competed at the World Championships, finishing 26th out of a field of 40 skaters.

After the 1992 season, Alex realized that it would be difficult to continue both Harvard and skating. If he continued skating, he would have to transfer to a California college to be with his coach. He decided Harvard was too valuable to leave behind.

"It meant a lot to be able to get into this school, It meant so much just being here," Chang says.

Life at Harvard, before and after skating, was not so simple and structured as life on the ice.

"One of my biggest fears was coming to terms with my sexual orientation," Chang says. "I'm from Orange County, California. It's very conservative. I didn't really know [I was gay when I was younger] simply because I don't think I was in tune with anything. It was do what you have to do: School skating school skating. When I thought about being gay, I'd think `Maybe it's too early to say. I still haven't had any meaningful experiences that would allow me to know.'"

He began to accept his identity after a trip to a gay club during his freshman year made him realize that the gay community "was much more diverse than [he'd] imagined."

"They [weren't] all drag queens. I'd assumed it was all flamboyant; but it really is a wide-ranged community."

When he decided he was ready to come out, he was heartened by the support he found from his friends. "I didn't expect it. From movies you have a stuffy, stilted image about Harvard. I had no idea the whole area was as liberal as it was....Harvard is a very tolerant environment that allows people to be comfortable with themselves."

"I came out to my girlfriend [freshman year], but she was wonderful--we were best friends," Chang says. "I don't feel that I would necessarily have been able to do that at other campuses. People couldn't be that intelligent, tolerant, understanding about things and willing to put themselves on the line for other people."

But according to Perry Chen '93, his roommate of two years, Chang's own personality has played a major role in fostering and improving the very tolerant environment he lauds so much. "He's very generous and easy-going. He's not petty....We've had big talks where we've learned so much and challenged each other's thinking on issues."