Eugene H. Chung '94, who is Korean-American, says he avoids minority organizations because "they're too isolationist for me."

"To maintain diversity, you have to get out there and associate with everyone else," Chung says.

In some cases, a few early encounters with a campus minority group can turn a student off. Fagan went to a few Freshman Black table and BSA meetings during her first year here. "It was very cliquish," she says, adding that she found BSA "too politicized," plagued by "too many factions." As a result, she chose not to get involved.

And there is also a "phenomenon" of "minority students who don't necessarily identify with the dominant minority culture," and therefore shy away from organized minority groups, says Olivia Fields. Fields describes herself as one such student. Joining a group is a matter of identity, and Fields says she identifies more with being a woman than with being Black.

Finally, some minorities don't even have a choice about whether to join a group. Manuel S. Varela '94 was born in Spain. At Harvard, he found organizations for Mexican-Americans (RAZA) and Puerto Ricans (La Organizacion), but not for students from Spain. "To some extent I was turned off by that," Varela says, and as a consequence, he "didn't really get involved" in any Hispanic groups.

Those who choose not to become involved with their ethnic or racial communities are often sensitive to reaction from members of those groups.

"I guess a lot of people would say that they didn't consider me a real Black person," says Pamela D. Meekins '94. Meekins says her friends come from a variety of backgrounds, and that she does not let her race become a defining factor in her identity.

Yet Meekins says she is sometimes accused of neglecting her background. "This is something you hear a lot if you're a Black person who is not stereotypically Black."

Eugene Chung says he experiences the same problem with fellow Asian students. "I'm sure some feel that I'm shirking my identity or that I'm trying to be more white," he says. "Some call it the banana syndrome."

But there is no consensus about the extent of such intragroup resentment at Harvard. Fields, for example, says that while she felt "animosity" from Blacks at her high school, she has experienced nothing of the sort at Harvard.

Students, however, list just as many reasons favoring involvement in racial or ethnic organizations as they do for avoiding them. For many, the groups play important social, political and cultural roles. Anton N. Quist '92, co-president of the Harvard African Students Association, says the groups help minorities feel more at home and allow them to interact with students from similar backgrounds. The groups also help unify a minority community in case it "is the target of some sort of injustice," Quist says.

Muneer I. Ahmad '93, co-president of the South Asian Association, also cites a variety of reasons for being active in an ethnic group. The Association, he says, celebrates ethnicity and serves as a support and networking group. Getting together with other South Asians makes it easier for Ahmad to share his culture with others. And the organization itself provides an institutional basis for interaction with other groups, he says.

Hillel serves a unique role for Orthodox Jews on campus. Religious law says the students must pray twice a day and eat kosher food. So Hillel, with its religious services and kosher dining hall, becomes a necessity more than a choice. Approximately 120 students, mostly Jews, eat dinner at Hillel every night, according to Rabbi Sally Finestone.

The ethnic, racial and cultural groups function as support networks for many of those who belong to them. Nelson B. Boyce '92, a BSA member, says, "the common thing at the base of the whole matter is that we're all Black and in that, we should come together and celebrate Blackness, and look out for one another and make sure that not only do we graduate, but that we all graduate with honors."

And for Mario Delci, when it came time to choose a concentration, it was RAZA people who convinced him that he would be able to write an honors thesis for Social Studies. "That's where the support came from," Delci says. "Not from the University, but from RAZA."