College Hill is Back

By Kyra Mitchell Lewis

The fourth season of BET's reality series "College Hill" - a "Real World" set at historically black colleges - heads to the University of the Virgin Islands, where the show could just as easily be dubbed "Temptation Island."For the new season, which starts tonight at 10, four male and four female students are picked to live in a tricked-out pad in St. Thomas for one semester. While there are clashes between the stateside transplants and the islanders, there is also a lot of lust.

J.T. Thompson, a music major and aspiring rapper who grew up in Compton, Calif., immediately hits it off with Idesha Browne, 21, a biology major from St. Kitts, and they're caught making out the second night they're in the house. The rub: J.T., 21, left a longtime girlfriend at home."There was that one little issue," says Browne. "I knew he had a girlfriend, so I told myself to stay away from him, but it doesn't always work out that way."But don't mistake her explanation for an apology. "We're young," she continues. "We're allowed to make mistakes." Bed-hopping isn't unusual in reality shows. And while there isn't a lot of footage of the roommates cracking the books, we do occasionally see them in class.

Thompson, who is dubbed "Rev. J.T.," even cracks the Good Book, which must mark the first appearance of the Bible in a reality show. Like J.T., Willie McMiller, a 22-year-old marketing major and actor/comedian from St. Louis, hails from a religious family: His father is a pastor. But McMiller hasn't exactly taken to heart the part about the meek inheriting the earth."I still to this day consider this show the Willie Mac show featuring the cast of 'College Hill,'" he says.

He has plenty of experience in front of an audience. He's performed at the Laugh Factory and the Comedy Store and has done guest stints on TV shows including "CSI," where he didn't play a saint. ("There's only one character a black guy with an Afro can play on 'CSI,'" he says. "I played a thug.") When McMiller's amorous advances toward Vanessa Hamilton, a beautiful psychology major from St. Croix, go unreciprocated, he immediately turns his attention to Krystal Lee, a broadcast communications major from Orange County, Calif."I kind of came off a little wild," says McMiller.Will his parents be watching? "I hope not," he says. "But yeah, they'll be watching."