Three BU Students Compete in Pageants This Weekend

Andrea Rustad (CAS’19) (center) will represent the Bay State in the national Miss Collegiate America Pageant. Mackenzie Starnes (CAS’20) (left) and Chrissy Sardano (CGS’18) (right) will compete in the Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Pageant. Photos courtesy of Rustad, Starnes, and Sardano

This weekend, three musically inclined Boston University students are vying for the crown at pageants both near and far.

Andrea Rustad (CAS’19) will represent the Bay State in the national Miss Collegiate America Pageant this Saturday, July 1, in Little Rock, Ark. Rustad currently holds the Massachusetts title in the Miss Collegiate system.

Closer to home, Chrissy Sardano (CGS’18) and Mackenzie Starnes (CAS’20) are among 21 contestants competing on the state level in the Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Pageant, being held at the Hanover Theatre in Worcester, Mass., on Friday and Saturday. Sardano, the reigning Miss Commonwealth, and Starnes, the current Miss Blackstone Valley, won their regional levels to qualify for the Miss Massachusetts competition. The winner will go on to represent the commonwealth at the 97th annual Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, N.J., in September.

Rustad started competing in pageants during her high school senior year in Minnesota after watching a friend compete. She thought it would be a good way to win college scholarship money. She competed in the Miss Minnesota Teen USA and the National American Miss Minnesota Teen, where she was second runner-up. She heard about the Miss Collegiate system when she came to BU. She found out that since she resides here nine months of the year, she was eligible to try out for to the Massachusetts competition, a forerunner of this weekend’s Miss Collegiate America Pageant. A chemistry major, Rustad won the title in October after facing off against 10 contestants.

As Miss Collegiate Massachusetts, she has ridden a float in Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, participated in the Relay for Life walk and Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and regularly performed musical theater at a local assisted living facility with student group BU On Broadway’s community service arm, BU Off Broadway. At BU, she has been president of the Kilachand Residence Hall Association, is a First Year Student Outreach Project staffer, and a College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Host.

The pageant’s national platform is the anti-bullying program Building Respect and Values for Everyone (BRAVE), so Rustad has spent her tenure speaking to children about the dangers of bullying and asking them to share their own experiences. “We talk about how to be an active bystander and we perform role-playing exercises,” she says. “You can never be taught too early to celebrate people’s differences.”

After graduation, Rustad hopes to attend medical school and become a dermatologist. She currently works at the School of Medicine’s Laboratory of Melanoma Translational Research, where she researches skin cancer by manipulating different protein levels in cancer cells to see if there is a way to prevent the cells from proliferating so quickly, a finding that could be applicable to other types of cancer.

Since this weekend’s pageant consists of three parts—interviews, fashion modeling, and evening wear—Rustad has prepped by staying up-to-date on current events as well as by practicing walking in her dress, “because I don’t want to trip on stage,” she says. It probably helps that she’s trained in classical ballet. The winner of the national Miss Collegiate America Pageant receives a prize package totaling more than $50,000 in scholarships, travel, wardrobe, and photo shoots.

Sardano began competing in pageants in her home state of New York when she was 12 at the suggestion of the acting and modeling talent agency she was working with at the time, and she moved on to the Miss America system when she was 16. She says she admires the values that pageants encourage—specifically, volunteering and advocacy on behalf of meaningful causes.

For the Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Pageant, entrants compete in interview, evening and swimsuit modeling, and talent portions, as well as create their own platform to support. Sardano came up with an anti-bullying platform she calls Peer2Peer: Creating Positive Interactions in Schools, which provides ways schools can become a safer environment for all students. “My platform specifically focuses on silent bullying, which I define as alienation, isolation, discrimination, and cyberbullying,” she says. “It is a different perspective on the anti-bullying movement that isn’t getting much attention, and is often kept quiet. Through my platform I am advocating for teaching students and administrators the ways to recognize, prevent, and also cope with bullying.”

It’s a subject Sardano knows well. In an interview with the pageant magazine Bravura in May, she opened up about her personal struggles with bullying when she was younger. “I experienced severe verbal, emotional, and physical bullying, in addition to alienation and discrimination,” she said. “I know firsthand how debilitating it is to experience this as a developing child/young adult, and the effect it has on self-identity and confidence.”

For the talent portion of the competition, Sardano will play two pieces of Irish fiddle music on the violin, an instrument she picked up when she was six years old. She will incorporate both Irish and bluegrass fiddle styles as she performs the songs “Sevens” and “Orange Blossom Special.” She is a member of Stage Troupe, BU’s oldest extracurricular performing arts group for undergrads not majoring in theater.

This is the second state pageant for fellow Terrier Starnes, who started competing in pageants at both the local and state level back home in California beginning at age 14.

The biology and political science major is pushing a platform called Promoting STEM Careers for Women, specifically STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education at the elementary school level. She has promoted this topic before in previous pageants and addressed the issue with a group of Girl Scouts she volunteered with.

Integrating STEM lessons in schools, from kindergarten through college, “improves competitiveness in technology development as a means to prepare students with 21st-century skills,” Starnes says. She believes women’s continued involvement in STEM fields will contribute to female empowerment as well as better the world through scientific research and discovery. “STEM is not an acronym,” she says, “but a lifelong commitment to advancing scientific and social aspects of our worldwide community.”

The Alpha Phi sorority sister will perform on an electric violin during the talent portion of the Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Pageant. She has played the violin since the age of five and was formerly first violinist for the Sacramento Youth Symphony. “I’ll be playing the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean,” she says. “I love playing Disney songs to the kids I visit and volunteer for in the Children’s Miracle Network hospitals, especially Frozen—when they start to sing along, it always makes my day.”

The Miss America winner receives $50,000 in scholarship money.