Last spring, a group of 10 Duke University students sat around a dinner table discussing how homogenous their campus felt -- by which they meant the same style of dress, same handbag, same political attitudes. The conversation quickly focused on antigay sentiment (a few years earlier, a Princeton Review guide had named Duke the nation's most homophobic campus).

The friends, both gay and straight, came up with a style idea of their own: T-shirts that read, in one-inch type, ''gay? fine by me.'' Among them, they decided they knew 450 students and faculty members they could persuade to wear the shirts on one designated day. ''We thought maybe it was possible that these people didn't have a way to make it clear that homophobia is not something they believe in,'' says Leila Nesson, a graduate student in history. ''We would give people a really visible but not aggressive way to say, 'I'm not homophobic.'

''Most of the protest activity on campus had fallen into a hackneyed method,'' she adds. ''There was a lot of marching around with signs. It was too easy to dismiss. We wanted to try to do something that was much more inclusive and reached a broader audience.''

On April 14, the group gave away 700 shirts, and most recipients put them on immediately. Crucially, they made sure they got basketball players (this being Duke) and professors. They also produced baby-doll-style shirts so no one could complain the tees weren't cute enough.

The shirts quickly became popular. What began as a T-shirt giveaway has evolved into a nonprofit organization (finebyme.org), with shirts selling for $7 each. More than 2,000 have been distributed at Duke, and the idea has moved to other campuses, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Greensboro, Wake Forest, Bucknell, Arizona State and the University of New Hampshire.

As a sign of success, the phrase has entered the Duke lexicon. An editorial about parking tickets in the student newspaper last fall ran under the headline: ''Tickets? Not fine by us.''

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