“The culture that Bob Jones is requiring of its students is a turn-of-the-century white culture,” says Rice University sociologist Michael O. Emerson, the author of Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. “They would say they want their students to act Christian, not white, but that is determined by culture.” Certainly many rules seem rooted in Victorian prudery and social roles. Only boys can attend ministry classes (called “preacher boys,” as in, “I have a test in preacher boys tomorrow.”), while girls who are so inclined must content themselves with such classes as The Minister’s Wife and Women in Christian Service. Boys also enjoy privileges that girls do not, such as being allowed off campus without having to sign out. Boys can wear shorts when they play intramural sports, but girls have to wear long sweats. The pool, gymnasiums, and dark places like the planetarium are segregated by sex. The handbook states that magazines such as Esquire, GQ, Premiere, and a bunch of others “are almost entirely without redeeming qualities.” They are off limits, as are jazz, country, folk, and even praise and worship music. Between the restrictions on sex, drinking, bed-time (11 p.m. lights out), music, clothing, and media, students live in a prolonged pre-adolescent limbo.

So what accommodations does a young man like Schimri make to exist at Bob Jones? Aside from the obvious libidinous ones, he can’t wear his baggy pants or favorite Titans jersey, and he can’t watch his favorite movies, like Space Jam or Rookie of the Year. (Music infractions, for example, carry 50 demerits, and after 150, you’re “shipped” or expelled.) He makes an effort to enunciate his speech, and he adjusts his vocabulary “not to be offensive,” he says. Sitting under the gazebo by the library, I ask him if he feels his sense of identity is imperiled. During this first year, he will continue mostly hanging out with his group of white friends from camp. He thinks for a while. “I don’t think I lose my ethnicity,” he muses. “I’m me wherever I’m at. No one who knows me from home would say I’m an Uncle Tom or anything like that. There are cultural differences, and you cannot ever assimilate in totally. I’m just the way I am no matter where I am.”

Then again, Schimri is an adaptive fellow. He’s a model player, the game guy who has effectively waved off the lunch-table problem of voluntary segregation that confounds so many other colleges. But Pamela Quansah, a black freshman from the public schools of Queens, eats most of her meals with three or four new friends who are black, Filippina, and Singaporan. Bob Jones, she says, was “a culture shock, but you get used to it. Every Christian goes through trials.”

Senior Karen Dendy grew up forty-five minutes away, where she attended public schools and a black church. “At first I hated it here, but to have a complaining spirit was not going to help,” says Karen, a financial management major whose mother wanted her to enroll here. “There’s never racial tension going on. Guys still hold doors for you and are polite in general. But it is hard to relate to people. They don’t understand your culture. When you’re with your own kind you appreciate it more. I like traditional black music better.” Her best friends here have been black, but one graduated and one is taking the semester off. There isn’t a large pool left.

It is unlikely that scores of minorities will descend on campus in the near future. The reality is that most religious black kids grow up attending black churches, and most black churches are not fundamentalist and thus not likely to lead to the God’s Glory Garden of Bob Jones University. Still, they will trickle in. “We’d like to see more minorities in ministry services that a typical WASP cannot reach,” David Christ, the admissions director at BJU, says. “From an evangelical perspective, we’ll win more souls, and more may be interested in coming to Bob Jones.”

For Schimri, it’s all part of God’s plan. As someone who has straddled Christian fundamentalism and his upbringing in what he calls “ghetto fabulous,” he has become, for better or worse, a campus ambassador between the races. “I put people at ease, I don’t throw blows,” he says. “I tell people they should feel free to ask me anything. I’ve never felt the future of the black race on my shoulders, but there’s a certain responsibility. I realize my actions and decisions affect the way others look.” By the end of his first year, that attitude will help get him elected to be Sophomore Class Representative. For better or worse, he is a school booster, all the way. “I have a responsibility to myself, to my race, and to God to be courteous, to have a good time. God wants me and I have a purpose here.”

I remember how he looked Saturday on date night: Schimri was standing on the sidewalk outside with some friends, waiting for the girls to come out of their dorm. This was dating the way he liked best, in a posse. No flowers required. He looked a little awkward in his father’s black suit and blue print tie, standing just a little apart and detached, both alone and not alone. It was a good stance for not wanting to get too committed to either a girl or a place. Still, it signified a passage between worlds that he was used to.

“I like dressing up,” he said. “I always had to look good for church. Suit and tie, I’ve been doing this since I was young.