A group of Goucher College students tried to take the campus back to the '50s yesterday, not to the innocent time of poodle skirts and Elvis hits, but to the dark side of the decade when racial segregation was common and legal.

Students heading into lunch at Stimson Hall could take labels that designated them as "white" or "colored."

The two groups were then directed to different silverware, different lunch lines, different tables.

"It was definitely an experience," said Will Vought, a senior. "I had a 'colored' sign, and I found myself picking up the silverware marked for whites. I didn't know what to do, if I should drop it or what."

'So strange'

Vought, who is white, said one of his friends, who is black, had a "white" sign. "We couldn't sit together. It was so strange. It was working on a lot of different levels."

Nicole Price said that the lunch was a reaction to an incident on the campus in mid-February. A visiting artist found a racist sign on the door of the room where she was staying.

"We could have had a rally or a discussion," said Price, who is head of the campus' Umoja African Alliance. "But we wanted to do something different."

Said fellow organizer Michelle Martin, "I think it worked out really well. It challenged a lot of people."

Price and her colleagues tried to re-create what they knew of the days of legalized -- and legally enforced -- segregation.

Yesterday, "whites" were the only ones allowed to get hot meals. "Coloreds" were restricted to salads and sandwiches.

The group of drinks offered to those with colored labels did not have as big a selection as the one for whites.

"It was things my parents told me about," Price said.

School President Judy Jolley Mohraz was one of about 50 students, faculty and staff who participated. Her label said "white."

Not that long ago

"I'm not sure it had the impact on the students who didn't remember when these signs were common," she said. "Growing up in Waco, Texas, I certainly saw them all the time. It's hard for the students to realize that it just wasn't that long ago."

By coincidence, yesterday was also the day of one of Mohraz's regularly scheduled Campus Conversations -- all students are invited to meet with her and talk about whatever they want. A few hours after the '50s lunch, race relations dominated the discussion.

"A lot of the talk was about the very subtle racism at Goucher," Price said. "I'm black and I look at the people who serve me food and they're black. But I look at my professors, and they're white. Or someone gets drunk in a dormitory and messes up the hallway and says, 'Oh, the housekeeper can clean it up.' Is that because the housekeeper is black?"

Vought, who is president of the Student Government Association, said some resistance surfaced to the lunch, which has been a hot topic of campus e-mail since news of the event appeared last week.

"I saw one person I knew who probably didn't want to participate, but probably felt pressured, so he did," Vought said. "He had a 'colored' sign, but he had gone to the hot food line. He stood there at a 'colored' table, not sure whether he should sit down. It affected him."

Price said she first thought of the idea at a meeting called to respond to the racist sign.

"I was scared to say it because I thought people wouldn't like it," she said. "But I'm glad I did. I wanted people to feel something."

Pub Date: 3/12/99