Drumroll Please

Ashanti Decker’s common room is a model of modern comfort, with seating for twenty, plush, fluffy pillows, a coffee table cluttered with candles and ashtrays, and a silvery blue curtain adorning her window. “Sorry it’s such a mess,” she says, explaining that she spent the previous night (Monday) clubbing and was still a little out of it. At first glance, Decker appears the modest girl from Phoenix, Arizona, well on her way to a career in I-banking. But she’s sweet, ambitious and a whole lot more.

It all began during her sophomore year when she was walking down Mt. Auburn street on her way home to Dunster House. “This guy was driving by and just stopped,” she remembers. “He got out of his car and told me I’d be perfect for a modeling shoot.”

Since then, Decker has dabbled in the fashion industry, dealing mostly with random photographers who catch her beauty as she walks by.

“I don’t know what they see in me. But they just stop me and ask if I’d like to be in a photo shoot,” she says. “Sometimes I get bad vibes, and I turn them down, but sometimes I say yes.”

Decker has been tracked down by photographers in Boston to Miami’s South Beach. And, last year, she walked the runway in Providence, Rhode Island.

“I really like the runway. There are people watching and the spotlight is on you, and you get to meet other models. It’s exciting.”

But she’s not sure if the catwalk is in her future. “It’s just a hobby,” says Decker. “It’s something I do for fun. It’s not something I’d like to make a career out of.” She lights a cigarette and begins to explain, somewhat drowsily, her modeling career, her brief stint in the Harvard Band, where (if anywhere) her modeling career is going next and how that fits into her I-banking plans.

Decker quit the Harvard Band after one semester her freshman year because she found its on field antics distasteful, but she is still a percussion queen. “I started drumming my freshman year of high school,” says Decker, who went on to lead her drumline to first in the state. She switched from marching band standards to playing hand drums for Sister Sledge, the soulful, 70s version of Destiny’s Child on the band’s 1998 album “African Eyes.” “They came over to my house once,” says Decker, whose mother had sung with them before, “and heard me play and I guess that was that.”

Now in her senior year, Decker has been taking a break from the fashion world. But she would still consider an offer. “It’s something I do when I have the time,” says Decker. “I don’t really go out looking for it but if it comes to me, I’d probably take it up.”