An Afro-American Society was started at Andover last year; but it has two white officers out of four. The school requires that it not be segregated. Al Ingram, one of the founders, said it was started because of "the fantastic unawareness of people on this campus of the problems of Negroes in this society." There are between 35 and 40 blacks at Andover (out of 850). Half of Afro's members are white, and the purpose of the organization is not one of cultural identity.

Exeter has something called the Afro-Exonian Society. It has as members two whites (it is not allowed to be segregated) and most of the 40 blacks on campus. One student said, "In every dining hall there is a black table. Most prep school Negroes are white blacks who are mostly middle class. There's this guy in our admissions office who's really good and gets a lot of militants."

Exeter Afro held a black mixer with black girls from prep schools in the area. The band was a soul group from Exeter called the Precisions. The Precisions are rumored on campus to be unpopular with the administration because there aren't any whites in the group.

The blacks don't smoke marijuana or take other drugs at Exeter. The commonly-held reason is that coming to prep school was a more unusual alternative than taking drugs. More importantly, they aren't within the social group that takes drugs.

SOCIAL GROUPS are organized vertically throughout all four classes at Exeter because, in contrast with Andover, their dormitories include students from each year. The vertical orientation strengthens groups like Afro and passes down habits like drugs to the younger classes. Drugs started two years earlier at Exeter (in 1965) and it was often seemed a more sophisticated school because everyone picks up the traits of those older than him.

Most students get their drugs from Harvard freshmen or contacts in Cambridge or New York. Some students try to get in on every deal, partly because they want a cut and partly because it is important to their social identity. A few have used drugs as a source of power in cliques--becoming suppliers makes them important.

The campus is cold, compact, and Kafkaesque. Little new has been built on the campus since the 1920's; and its buildings are the repeated module of Italian Renaissance and New England architecture. It's very pretty in the summer. But most of the time students are there, they are knee deep in snow.

The town of Exeter is the kind of small New Hampshire commercial nothing that was filmed so often in the McCarthy primary. The townies are hostile to the studies (pronounced stoodees). A motorcycleless motorcycle gang called the Hell's Avengers periodically beats up an academy student.

But now there's even a group of townies with long hair and paisleys ("teeny-boppers" the Exies call them) who turn on with the academy types.

Most students take their drugs out across the playing fields near the Exeter River by a tree made famous in John Knowles' novel, A Separate Peace. They use little acid, and some amphetamines. They never use speed to study for exams. They use it for escape