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As she walked across the green away from Randolph Hall, the young handsome black woman, casual in her new jeans and faded tanned leather jacket, glanced idly toward the scattered groups of students trying to get in final papers before the Easter Holidays.

Yowanda Taylor smiled softly to herself, looking forward to the get togethers with different relatives up an down the old lower middle class neighborhood where her parents had lived. Especially nice would be the time spent with her cousin's kid, Curtis, an amiable and sometimes frighteningly bright teen.

He'd not had many of the breaks Yowanda had been given. Her father's scholarship to college, his stint in the Navy and current job as a systems specialist at the Naval Weapons Station, all afforded the young woman opportunities not readily available to her poorer kin. But Curtis was special and opportunity was waiting for the ambitious youth to reach out and grab his own brass ring.

While she thought on the recently completed thesis the Sociology major had ready for Professor Wiley's class, exuberant shouts from students and faculty alike, an impromptu scrimmage taking place not far from where she walked, echoed across the green.

"Yowieeeee! " a near piercing scream, delivered with recognizable delight, brought forth a grin as she saw a thin pale ghost of a girl waving at Ms Taylor from near Towell Library. "Heyyy, girl! "

This one was her room-mate at the student residence just off Bull and Coming Streets, an impossibly chipper white girl, descended from Southern aristocracy, Terry Elizabeth Cullen.

Her family, failed plantation owners who'd crossed into other venues during the chaotic Reconstruction, soon had a number of prosperous concerns in manufacturing. This post-war profiteering by his forefathers enabled Yancy Cullen to keep his daughter in the upper class style to which she'd become accustomed.

But such history didn't seem to concern this Carolina Blossom, the rich girl unaffected by such things, readily making friends with everyone she met.

Bright eyes shining, the petite honey haired beauty bounded across the lawn and almost knocked Yowie over with the force of her exuberance.

"Whoa, girl. " laughed the other, reflexive in pulling back slightly from the gushing enthusiasm of her best friend. "Don't go running me over. "

"You thinkin on taking summer courses, this year? "

"Jeez, Terry. " laughed Yowanda. "I'm just getting my final papers together for this quarter. You think I'm thinking that far ahead? "

In truth she'd finished up with her academics adviser earlier in the day making sure of that very thing. While her goals for the future weren't specific, Yowie wanted to make sure she stayed ahead, not behind, in her education.

"So, what are you thinkin on, girlfriend? " Terry asked so cheerfully that she didn't even think on the ludicrous slang rolling off the tongue of this lily white child. But even as Yowanda rolled her eyes when others tried to ingratiate themselves to her this way, the belle who smiled with undeniable charm could easily get away with it.

"I'm thinkin on what Professor Wiley has in mind for our last couple classes before we go on holiday. " giggled Yowie, even while the two college girls watched some student advisors herding would-be applicants up St. Phillips toward the SCFA building.

"Cross to your left is Randolph Hall which was built round 1828. It houses offices for Graduate Studies and Intercultural programs as well as the College President's main office. " The tiny girl, immaculate in her trim blue dress suit, looked to Yowie more the hostess at a tea party dishing gossip than campus historian. "A little known fact is that this was where students and faculty made a stand of some three days, during that unpleasantness back in 1979, til South Carolina Guardsmen were able to break the siege.. "

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