Every Negro college in the country was stunned when the article came out--undoubtedly by a shock of recognition. For there is almost nothing in the article that does not ring true, however glibly stated. People at Shaw read it and saw drawn for them an excruciatingly accurate and humiliating picture of themselves.

Anxious about their authority, remembering how hard they worked for their degrees, and worried by how much they have forgotten or not kept up with (faculty members), require their students to memorize scraps of wisdom in much the same fashion as a bad high school, an old-fashioned Catholic college, or a provincial teachers' college does. (Riesman and Jencks)

Whether or not the Riesman article was the precipitating factor in our being invited to Shaw is unimportant. It does seem clear, however, that we were hired to prove that Shaw is doing something; that Shaw is not just another Negro college. Perhaps, too, it was hoped that the tutors would be favorably impressed with Shaw and that Shaw would thus be vindicated by a second set of Harvard eyes.

We were also hired, of course, to teach. But at the inception of the program, when the Harvard people were in Cambridge and the Shaw people were in Raleigh, the tutors were regarded only in their objective function. Only when we arrived on campus did we become racial threats. Only then came the nagging realization that there was something in it for us. Why had we wanted to come? Shaw people could conceive of only two reasons: either we were brought by neurotic missionary impulses or, worse, we came out of cold sociological curiosity.

Above all, the administration did not expect the tutors to be critical of what they have done and are doing. On paper, the Shaw record is impressive. Since James Cheek took over as President in 1964, big changes have been made. Only six months after he was installed, the new President had pulled Shaw out of the red. In three years he has raised faculty salaries 150 per cent. Last year things looked so good that Cheek launched a $14.5 million building program. By almost any standard, the figures are encouraging.

For better or worse, most private Negro colleges seem likely to survive. They will continue to recruit most of their students from all-Negro Southern high schools and to send a substantial proportion of their graduates back to teach in those high schools, unable to break out of the cycle of mis-education and deprivation. (Riesman and Jencks)

It would be wrong to conclude that Shaw is ignoring academic problems. Under Dean King Cheek, the President's brother, the old academic program has been scrapped. Cheek has introduced a non-graded system with a heavy emphasis on remedial work. Students now go through Shaw at their won rate, taking as long as six or seven years.

But if Shaw people hoped that the tutors would repudiate the Riesman article, our role was absurdly miscast. We were not impressed with how Shaw has improved -- we were over-whelmed by how damaging it still is.

The climate at Shaw is repressive. The campus policeman, known by students as "Deputy Dawg," is a powerful symbol. Students accuse him of "hunting for trouble." citing his nightly rout of couples from a popular tunnel that runs under a super-highway. A rigidly enforced curfew requires upperclassmen girls to be in the dorm by ten, and they must sign out whenever they leave the campus. A glance at the sign-out book on an ordinary day exposes trips to the laundromat, to the post-office, or to Woolworth's.

The rules are for our own protection. I know what's right for me, but there's a lot of girls at Shaw who don't. The girls who are doing something wrong are the ones who want the rules changed.

Deputy Dawg and the sign-out book are mostly symbolic. The deans of students are for real. Even the printed regulations, thorough as they are, do not reflect the extent of the deans' authority. Their jurisdiction reaches into the private life of every student; they prosecute everything from messy rooms to illicit sexual behavior.

Students are quick to impute vindictive motives to the deans. Frequently, however, discipline at Shaw seems to represent an honest effort to maintain Shaw's reputation in a largely Baptist community. Raleigh is a town where even the graffiti are pious--and Shaw cannot afford to make enemies.

Well, it's Saturday night again, and wild thoughts are flying through the air. The smokum is beginning to make the room look like a small London town on a cold winter night. The red light is on showing the past-future may be yours.

PUPLIC opinion is not the only explanation for the deans' hyperactivity. They want their students to dress modestly and attend church regularly. The dean of men, a Baptist lay preacher, chided Radcliffe tutors for wearing "shorty-short skirts." Unless his eyes were deceiving him, he told us, Shaw girls' hems had risen since we came. If anything, his tone was apologetic: he seemed only to be expanding on Southern Baptist morality in an attempt to outshine the white middle-class variety.

The emphasis on good conduct appears also to be an effort eliminate vestiges of Samboism in students. A students who is lazy, inefficient, untrustworthy, happy-go-lucky is not just a bad student--he is a disgrace, a symbol of Negro failure.