But Witt acknowledged yesterday that time constraints were not the only factor affecting his decision not to publish the photos.

Witt said he told Winter that the content of the photos concerned him.

"One of our concerns is that we do not want our office to become exactly what it has become--a center of controversy," Witt said.

"Aside from being frankly titillating, the photos also portrayed black males in a manner that is frankly demeaning," Witt added.

Witt said he was concerned that black students would be offended by the sourcebook and that parents would protest the fact that their children were required to purchase the material.

"The one thing I do not want to have is the Peninsula and parents calling me and raving at me and saying, 'Why is the sourcebook office publishing pornography?'" he said.

Although the omission of the photographs may have temporarily stifled controversy, the controversy seems likely to arise in the future.

Bryson said he will teach the course again next year with Professor of Fine Arts Henri T. Zerner. He said he is likely to include the Mercer article in the sourcebook again.

And this time he will leave plenty of time for the sourcebook office to obtain copyright permission for the illustrations in the article.

"It depends on what Henri and I cobble together," Bryson said this week. "But I'm quite keen for the Kobena Mercer article."

Witt said yesterday he will deal with that issue when it arises. "This office is not in the business of censorship," he said.

"[But] academic freedom pertains not only to faculty but also to people like myself." Witt added. "I have to be thinking about the young black women [who work at publishing the sourcebooks] who probably would not want to see this kind of thing."

Winter said last night that to exclude the photos for any reason other than copyright law would be inappropriate.

"Witt has projected the possibility of offense in the African American community by his reading that those images demean black men, but there has been no investigation of the response of that community," she said.

At the same time she questioned "whether in fact there might not be more offense in segments of the community offended by the homo-social or explicitly sexualized suggestions in the imagery."

Ironically, the omission of the article from the sourcebook may have created a controversy despite the fact that few students have actually seen the images which accompanied the text.

Winter said the most controversial images, such as "Man in a Polyester Suit," are not in the University's slide collection and thus have not been shown in class.

"We have both shown a selection of Mapplethorpe photos," she says. "They are not the most provocative and explicit of them."

Winter adds that the class is not focusing on Mapplethorpe's work but on the use of photography as an art form.

The text of the article with the original photographs is on reserve at the Fine Arts Library