These words were written 21 years ago by Daily Collegian Staff Writer Bill DePaolo, who came up with this gem, too: To say that Penn State has had a problem recruiting blacks is like saying that San Francisco has a problem with the 1906 earthquake.

Today, when you walk up to Pattee, the odds that you'll see a black student may not stagger you, but the odds that you'll get to take a course with a black professor will certainly floor you like one of Tyson's left hooks. If you see the shaky silhouette of Professor Charles Dumas as you pull your butt from a wedge of bushes, then you'd better grab his hand if he offers it to you, because he's a boxing manager who can prop you up with an incredible multicultural learning experience. Dumas, of Haitian ancestry, has been with Penn State for four years. Whoever scooped him up bagged a winner, because if a quality education could ever be packaged into a tight little parcel, it would fit into Dumas' Afro-American Theater (THEA 412) class, held in the cramped quarters of Room 6 in the dusty basement of Arts building.

Dana L. McCurley, a white English major, said about Dumas' class: "I enrolled in this class primarily because I wanted to interact with people other than my white English major friends, know what I mean?" She thoroughly appreciates that she's getting a perspective from a black professor and a class with more than a handful of black students. The ultimate goal of a quality education is to train students to last 12 rounds with the tough moral questions of the future as they swing away at the immoral prejudices of the past.

Walter L. Pagan, a theatre arts major, who introduced the class to a Native American "smudge" ceremony, says that "if something hits you hard, it's worth knowing, it's worth experiencing."

Pain ultimately builds character, and a degree from Penn State should mean more than "I sat in class and I took some notes." Pagan confesses that he wouldn't even know how to begin writing Nittany Notes for Dumas' class. "How can you summarize a play being read with drums in the background, tribal chants, people improvising lines?"

Dumas, who just won a Pennsylvania Council of Arts Fellowship for playwriting, believes that art doesn't teach through the head, it teaches through the heart and through the spirit. If we're going to survive after we graduate, we're going to need lots of heart and lots of spirit. Face the facts -- life is not a box of chocolates, it's "Monday Night Raw" where one combatant enters the ring as another gets tossed out with the trash. Dumas puts it this way: "We live in the info age --hyperreality, which means that there's so much info being pushed at us through television, newspapers, all kinds of media. How do we, as teachers, reconnect students' worlds to a reality that makes sense? One of the ways we can do this is by getting them directly involved in what they learn, by taking them on a journey, which is what a play is all about."

Aneesah Trotter (senior-business) concludes that, "A good teacher is one who has had many experiences and can share those experiences." If this is so, then Dumas' experiences in movies such as Die Hard, Peacemaker and Deep Impact; his experience writing drama and acting in stage plays; and last, but not least, his experience as a person of color are invaluable resources for knowledge-hungry students who want to make a difference.

On April 11, 1978, Bill DePaolo wrote an article titled "University alien to blacks…" I wonder if Bill would still consider Penn State to be "alien" to blacks. I wonder when that poetic day might arrive when the rain really does fall on the tulips and the roses, the purple carnations and all of the trees, weeds and plants that manifest God's glorious diversity.