She came to Middleton College to serve as its interim president after a racial brawl precipitated a crisis and brought national media attention. Though "Middleton" is not its real name, the school itself is very real and, in the issues and problems it has had to face, archetypically representative of American colleges in our time.

Small, church-related, in the middle of the Middle West, it was founded during an era of high idealism the mid-nineteenth century, promising to be open to women and men alike, and to all races. By the 1980s the fulfillment of that promise was in jeopardy.

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As Gretchen Kreuter begins her work, the bitterness of the brawl has combined with old issues of male/female inequality and the emergence of new racial agendas. Tensions mount and threats of violence grow. We see Kreuter - under the relentless scrutiny of television cameras and newspaper reporters, state and federal government agencies, elected officials, and a variety of organizations - dealing with unhappy students and an apprehensive faculty.

Amid rising levels of anger, mistrust, provocation, and petty conflict she tries to separate fact from fiction, maintain her sense of fairness and humor, and inaugurate curricular changes, strategic planning, and responsible management procedures. Racial-climate surveys, sensitivity-training sessions, sexual-bias complaints, efforts at multiculturalism and diversity - and always damage control - are all part of the daily routine.

On the eve of commencement, following a showdown over speakers, efforts to heal campus divisions seem to have failed, and it appears that the year might end in disorder and disruption.

No miracles here. The idealism of other times doesn't fit the gritty realities of campus conflict in the 1990s. Yet the story is important, because Gretchen Kreuter's Middleton experience reveals what happens when the old campus world meets the new head-on; it shows too that tensions can be ameliorated and that, even now in this time of rapid change and misunderstanding, campuses can sometimes move nearer to ideals of justice and equality.