Ntshanga has even won over Police Chief Paul E. Johnson, whose department he has charged with racial harassment. (Johnson, Harvard lawyers and police officers have denied the charges.)

After Ntshanga accused a University security guard of harassment last week, the student met with the guard and Johnson on Thursday. The meeting went so well that, after it was over, the police chief offered to let Ntshanga ride along in a police car for a day. Ntshanga also called the security guard a "nice guy."

"The more I get to know him, the more I understand him a little better," Johnson says.

'I Went to Jail'

His 1992 arrest radicalized Ntshanga. He says he would not have come forward with his story if Harvard police had not sent him to jail.

"Before the 1992 incident I would have not talked to anyone," Ntshanga says. "[But] I went to jail."

Ntshanga was arrested in December 1992 for trespassing in Matthews Hall by Harvard police who thought he was homeless--he was actually working for Harvard Student Agencies.

He spent a couple hours in a Middlesex jail and now has a permanent arrest record. Prosecutors offered to drop the charges, but on the advice of his attorney, Ntshanga went forward with the case and was acquitted.

Ntshanga says that if University officials had been more responsive to his requests for an explanation, he would not have publicized his story.

"I like to know the logic behind a situation," Ntshanga says.

Harvard seems to have learned as much from Ntshanga as he has from it. Now, the student says, University officials listen to him when he talks about the police. He says he is particularly satisfied with Harvard's response to his allegation of harassment against the security guard last week.

Ntshanga says, quietly: "I'm happy I was listened to.