Another debate has erupted on campus, Recently the issue of Latino faculty hiring and Latino studies has received much attention from administrators, students and faculty. It seems that many in the community believe that this is simply a phase in the Latino community--that soon enough, the students will drop the issue, stop bothering the deans and watch the storm die down.

This, however, is not the case.

The students involved with the fight of Latino professors and Latino studies won't drop the issue. What we seek is academic excellence. What we want is to improve out education. What is so terribly wrong with that? Harvard needs to understand that this is a just cause.

Our efforts aren't driven by some ephemeral obsession with self-glorification of ethnic pride. Our efforts come from the frustration of not seeing any brown faces lecturing in our class-rooms and from the earnest belief that Latino faculty can contribute a great deal to this campus.

Latino studies are as valuable a field as any other already taught in the curriculum. The study of Latino communities in the U.S. sheds much light on government, sociology, history, social studies and other fields.

Yet this multidisciplinary field of study isn't even recognized at Harvard. It is a shame that the top university in the nation doesn't have a Latino Studies Department or even related courses. Many other prestigious universities have surpassed this.

The reality is that Latinos are becoming an increasingly important part of American society in many ways. Latino professors and Latino studies courses at Harvard would educate the community about the fastest growing minority group in the country.

How many students of American history realize that at the same time the colonists were settling the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mexican people were already in the present-day Southwest? How many Harvard students know exactly how Puerto Rico became a commonwealth of the U.S.? How many students can actually cite when Puerto Ricans began immigrating to the mainland U.S. in large numbers?

The ignorance of Americans has led them to believe that Latinos are a very recent immigrant group in this country. This is simply not true. Mexican-Americans have been here long before colonists started to move West. Puerto Ricans have been here since the early part of the century.

How many Americans even realize that when the U.S. took the land in the Southwest, there was a large Mexican population there which was promised full citizenship under the Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty? How many Harvard students know that in the 1930s, the U.S. government contracted Mexican laborers to build the railroads, to mine the coal mines and to work the fields of the Southwest? In 1954, Congress made this program a law.

Even today, as much as the American government may deny it, it is fully aware that illegal Mexican labor is an integral part of the Southwest's economy. Were it not for the cheap labor which Mexicans have historically provided, the Southwest would never be developed to the extent that it is today.

These facts have tremendous socio-economic implications for Mexican-Americans as a group. Yet Harvard fails to see the significance of this. This history isn't taught to elementary school students, and it isn't taught when they come to college. These facts are as much a part of the history of the United States as are the pilgrims and Plymouth Rock.

Latino studies is not an attempt to glorify Latinos and suddenly make them a part of American history. We have been a part of American history for as long as Europeans. The true collective history of this country lies in the study of all of the people who have contributed to the formation of the United States.

I know about the history of the pilgrims, the settlement of the 13 colonies and the American Revolution. Yet how many American students know about the history of expansion in the Southwest, the discrimination against Mexicans in public schools and the social, economic and political exclusion of this group when settlers took over their land? How can we study who we are and where we come from without looking at the complete picture?

Even more important, however, is not that we should study our true collective history but that we look around and see the people living with us.