The curtain opens on Sarah Daniels, Dean of Students, talking with sophomore Patrick Tyler Chibas.
The next scene shows Professor Ross Collins, Head of Humanities Burton Strauss and Dean Catherine Kenny waiting to have a meeting with Sarah.
When Sarah comes in, she tells them that freshman Simon Brick, one of the few African-American students, has started receiving hateful, racist notes.
She found the first meeting unproductive and suggests that the next one have some effect beyond a lot of white people discussing how bad racism is.
Burton comes in and informs them that Greg Sullivan has asked him to sponsor the Students for Tolerance organization.
Sarah decides to talk to Simon, but before she can go, Patrick informs her that when he received the scholarship, his financial aid was taken away.
It tells of Patrick being offered a scholarship before the college even knew his ethnicity, which he understands to be tokenism that insults the entire student body.
He informs her that he, the Black Student Union, and almost everyone he knows is boycotting the next race forum and that he is going to another school in the spring because he hates Belmont.
Catherine asks Sarah to write a ten-point plan of how to eliminate racism at Belmont.
She calls blacks lazy, stupid, scary, loud, belligerent, abusive and rude.
Burton thinks that Simon is a "little con artist"[4] who got the administration all whirled up just like Sambo got the tigers.
Several productions include a forum at the end for audience members to discuss the issues raised.
[1][11] The British premiere of the play was at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in January 2001, directed by Dominic Cooke.
It was directed by Mark Brokaw and stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Miranda Richardson and Beau Bridges.
Parts of the film were shot in and around New York City on Governors Island, at Brooklyn College and Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.