A Penn State alumnus hopes to use his short film, I Am the Standard, to promote "tolerance, diversity and cultural awareness," but he's not going to dumb down the message for anybody, even if that means simply adding captions or dialogue.

"I wanted people to appreciate their peers in society so that more of us can live extraordinary lives," Lamar Richardson, Class of 2005, said of his first film.

The film, available for free viewing at www.iamthestandard. com, consists of 13 short segments shot in New York City. Each dialogue-free scene shows a diversity of people, whose differences span race, gender, sexuality, mental illness or other traits.

Richardson, who studied psychology at Penn State and is now pursuing a master's degree in nonprofit management, said he resisted requests by schools to add voice-overs or captions to the film. Richardson even turned a school down for this reason.

"I'm not going to dumb down my projects to fit everybody," Richardson said. "I think that if you're in college, you should be able to grasp the understanding. There are high school students that can grasp it."

For example, one proposed caption for a scene with a transsexual would have been "she was born a he." But Richardson said he would rather allow people the chance to "use their brains and analyze the content" through reflection on their own lives and their peers, rather than having to have things spelled out.

Jamal O'Garro, Class of 2004 and one of the film's producers, said this technique attracted him to the project.

"One of the most important things about a short film is you need very strong images and very strong message," O'Garro said.

In addition to the transsexual, the scenes include a dog with a leg cast, a pregnant lesbian woman and her partner, and a Muslim man offering a prayer at Ground Zero of the Sept. 11 attacks. Richardson said the reaction of passersby during the filming of these scenes demonstrated the necessity of diversity education.

During the Ground Zero scene, for example, the actor was stared at and commented upon constantly. Another clip features a little person, and that actor was subjected to shouted slurs from a cab driver because it took him longer to walk across the street because of his size, Richardson said. And just a few weeks ago, Richardson said Laverne Cox, the transsexual actress, was attacked on the street for her transgendered status.

"That just goes to prove that a film like this needed to get coverage," Richardson said.

He said people often cut themselves off from others instead of interacting with people who are different.

"A lot of people, they segregate themselves because, I guess, they're scared to talk to people that are different from them," Richardson said. "And this is black, Hispanic and white. We all tend to cling to images of ourselves."

I Am the Standard also aims to promote individuality. Richardson pointed to celebrity-oriented media as a distraction that stops people from thinking about self-improvement and questioned why people would follow the lives of famous people who "don't know you [and] don't care about you" instead of focusing on themselves.

"All of the time we choose to devote to [Britney Spears] could be devoted to improving ourselves," Richardson said. He described "tabloid" celebrities as those that court the media by generating press through self-destructive behaviors, such as excessive partying.

Richardson described this media as "trash" and "smut," and said the demand for that content makes it difficult for him to pitch his ideas.

"People want me to pitch a bunch of crap," Richardson said. "I'm trying to keep it very clean, calm and very uplifting."

Richardson said he no longer bothers to read celebrity blogs, for instance, because he finds them a waste of time.

"I'm in grad school. I don't have time for it," Richardson said. "I'm gonna hit the gym. I'm gonna go to the library. I'm going to date. I'm going to hang out with my close friends; I'm going to talk to my brothers and my family. I'm going to work on my projects."

O'Garro said people can believe in the film's message that "you should be happy with who you are, even though you don't fit into normal society." O'Garro said even a small thing, like children being excluded from an "in-crowd" in school, reflect these issues.

"There's always somewhere in your life where you're not going to feel like you fit into that standard mold," O'Garro said.