“Okay,” he says. “The idea is you’re an eyewitness to this happening and you’re sharing it with us in your cabin, as it were.” Then Dave tells him to raise his wrists as in shackles over his head. He tells him to mimic rubbing salve on the wounds of a beaten man. It’s a jarring moment in the universe: One of the college’s few black students being told how to perform for a lily-white Bob Jones audience what it means to be enslaved in 1843. I can’t help but wonder how the 11th grade curriculum will treat the era of desegregation, but no one else in Studio 5 seems worried about it. The small team bows heads to pray that this will go smoothly and they roll the film.

The scene is classic Schimri: He’s Mr. Accommodating, while surrounding him are people both over-eager and a little uncertain. Like the university itself, they are walking a line between liking him for who he is and exploiting him just a bit for his difference. Schimri is one of a dozen minority scholarship students this year, part of a new drive to recruit diversity at Bob Jones. He has received $2,500, which, with the work-study money from a special school program, covers most of the year’s tuition, room, and board.

Just three years ago, the media was haranguing Bob Jones for its interracial dating ban and its description of Catholicism as a cult. Reacting to the attention, the college lifted the dating ban in March 2000, and last year, several alumni set up the minority scholarship fund. The college’s recent, still very small-scale integration is both like and unlike the earlier integration of Southern colleges. It’s not about facing down racists and getting ready to crash the sock hop. Rather, the Greenville, South Carolina-based university has been seeking out minorities. Beyond needing them to help scour its sullied image, it needs to tap a growth market in the business of converting souls, and in an era of increasing competition between Bible colleges.

As Schimri goes about his classroom and extra-curricular rounds, he carries the weight of a lot of expectations and symbolism from both sides of the color divide. Pretty much wherever he goes he is surrounded by something of an entourage. Although it’s early in his freshman year, he is known. “Hey Schimri,” says one guy, chucking a backpack against the wall as he approaches the utensil bar in the dining hall. “Hey Schimri,” says another. Schimri points to him in response. “Nice tie!” he says.

Katie, a sophomore broadcasting major, joins Schimri in line. So does Grant from Bible camp. Schimri takes two glasses of chocolate milk, a plate of noodles topped by an immovable, gelatinous white sauce, and a slice of white bread. It’s been a busy morning. Schimri got scolded by his dorm supervisor for not making his bed. Then there was a vocabulary quiz in English class followed by a discussion of fallacious disjointed syllogisms using biblical examples, then orientation class for a lecture on the college’s art collection (proclaimed to be the second largest collection of religious art in the western hemisphere, after the Vatican’s). Then chapel, a resounding sermon by none other than Dr. Bob Jones III himself on the pernicious evils of sodomy and atheism.

It’s enough to make you very hungry. Schimri and his pals bow their heads and murmer a quick prayer. And then they eat, carefully, so as not to spill sauce on their ties. The dress code is “morning business attire.” This means Schimri and his fellows are wearing ties but no jackets, long-sleeve shirts, khaki pants, and dark shoes. There is not a facial hair to be seen. The girls are wearing skirts that follow “the three L’s”: loose, long, and lots. It looks a lot more Bible than business. The dining hall is retirement-home bland and huge, with row after row of long, brown Formica tables and blue vinyl chairs. Schimri is the only black guy at his table. In fact, he’s one of the only black guys in a room of close to 1,000 people.

The table talk quickly turns to dating outings. Even though they are more than a month away, Schimri has already been asked out by two girls, one white and one black. And one of the girls’ “literary” societies -- quasi-sorority-cum-home-ec-and-prayer-groups -- has asked Schimri to throw in a tie, to be drawn anonymously, for another date. Such happy circumstances would have been unthinkable just two and a half years ago. These invitations are known here as “reverse etiquette,” since girls do not generally ask boys on dates at Bob Jones. Big nota bene: When students here “date,” none of the standard lovey stuff is involved. No hand-holding (that’s a “demerit offense”), no kissing, and no unsupervised time of any sort. No movies, no dancing, and no TV, either, unless it’s the pre-taped and edited ABC newscast playing in the student center. Do not even try to get past the lobby of the dorm of the opposite sex.

Whatever, Schimri is happy to oblige. Tall, good-looking, and gregarious, he seems fated for Big Man on Campusdom. He flirts with the girls, shoots hoops with the guys, and volunteers for the ex-slave theatrical parts. Girls even do his laundry. To many students here, he is both exotic and cool. He knows that many students at Bob Jones have never been around black people before. Tending to represent the most fundamentalist of the fundamentalists, many BJUers were homeschooled, and most of the rest attended predominantly white churches and Christian schools in non-urban areas. In the freshman class, only 11 percent come from public schools.

Schimri thinks there are clearly some advantages to being different. “I’m going to get asked on a lot of outings because of the curiosity factor,” he says.