Judith Jackson '87 said she was discouraged from taking courses in Afro-American Studies because the courses were "not challenging enough."

"That's both racist and patronizing," Jackson said, "They're making value judgements about the discipline."

And how did she respond? "I took Afro-Am courses anyway," she said.

Like Clark, Jackson said she noticed discrepancies in the way minorities and other distinguishable groups were treated. Her first-year boyfriend was a basketball player, she said. And he often ate at the Union at special times with the team. She compared these team dinners with complaints that Black students "segregate themselves" by sitting together in the dining halls.

Noting that minorities but not athletes are criticized for sitting together, Jackson said people should attack neither them nor anyone else for eating with whom they choose. "I said that we should be able to sit together just like anybody else," she said. "People who want to sit together can sit together."

Jackson said she had some problems with covert racism in her first rooming group. Since she came from a primarily white high school, Jackson said, "I was probably more accustomed to being with [my roommates] than they were to being with me."

She blames the problems her rooming group had on the first-year stress of being placed in a room with strangers, but feels these normal problems were accentuated by her race.

In contrast, Felicia D. Green '83 said she did not have any problems getting along with white students. Her friendships with white students turned out to be a problem in itself however, she said. "I was told I should fraternize with my own kind" by some other Black students, she said.

Both Green and Jackson rejected that logic. "You don't accept that one group of people can never be your friends," Green said. "You have to make the effort and it has to be sincere."

Jackson said she was involved in minority groups as well as other activities. "I think that I wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to do both," she said.

But for all of the graduates, the BSA was a place to discuss Black life on campus. And several alumni, particularly those from the earlier years, emphasized that the BSA also provided them with a sense of community.

Dawson was struck by the closeness of the minority community in his Harvard years. "When I got here as a freshman in 1977, the things that stuck out most for me were the cohesiveness of the minority community at that time," he said. "It was a very supportive environment."

And "As I moved on," Dawson said, "I began to fill the role that others had filled for me."

But there is less unity among Black students today, Clark said. "When I was a [freshperson in 1977], there seemed to be a greater sense of unity among the Black students," he says. Stressing that he is "not an isolationist," he noted, however, that the campus is more fragmented now. "The Black students don't seem to be connected," he said.

Dawson and other alumni attributed the change in part to the fact that more of today's minority students come from suburban and middle- or upper-middle-class families.