Perhaps the awakening of individual identity can contribute to academia as well as to the personal development of students. Kim's engagement of Korean ethnicity allows her "to start from my own experiences," and she says that it has made her academic life "more concrete." The treatment of identity, in this way, becomes a bridge to academic understanding.

But for many minority students, identity politics means more than joining a certain club or taking a certain class. Ultimately, "identity politics is about who you are, and how much permission you have to be who you are," says Sheila C. Allen '93, former co-chair of the Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Students Association.

The explosion of interest in identity politics, then, should hardly amaze, when race, gender, sexual orientation and religion become crucial ways of delineating the Self.

BUT IS IDENTITY POLITICS something for everybody, or something just for those trying to stake out an identity? The distinction is crucial.

Sustaining the fever pitch of identity politics is easier when all students expect to benefit academically or personally from the enshrinement of difference. Identity politics issues must therefore evolve in a way that directly interests everyone.

That hasn't quite happened--witness the detachment of Geary, Castelein and some of Kim's Korean friends--and the explanation may lie in the way minority student groups operate.

Political scientists Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson propose a model of issue evolution in national politics. They argue that an activist elite--consciously or unconsciously--presents an issue, urges the media to spread the word and hopes that the community will respond.

Campus debate at Harvard works the same way. Minority student groups have served, during the past few years, as the activist core that seeks a reaction from the remainder of the student body.

Academic courses may affect some students' ideas--Lewis reports that Afro-Am 175, "Race and Science," strengthened his conviction that race is merely a social construct--but may have little utility in convincing everyone of the benefits of an identity-sensitive university.

Minority students take ethnic-studies classes with much greater frequency than do non-minority students, and in any case coursework may not instill ethnic sensibility. "I don't think I've gotten it through classes," Kim declares.

On the other hand, examples of student groups' attempts to solicit the sympathies of the larger public abound. The Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Students Association led the protests that followed the November 1991 edition of Peninsula. At an eat-in at the Union, the BGLSA exposed many members of the Class of '95 to homosexual activism for the first time.

Allen was impressed that half of first-years in the Union rose when then-BGLSA co-chair Sandra Cavazos '92 asked them to stand up if they supported gay rights. "The freshmen had only been at Harvard for about a month, but we got half of the Union standing on their feet," Allen recalls.

Some efforts to float new issues do fail. In May, Joan R. Cheng '95 and Haewon Hwang '95, the two co-presidents of the Asian American Association, questioned the ethnic sensitivity of Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, campus race-relations czar.

Yet the issue never received a full hashing-out on the editorial pages of campus publications, primarily because representatives of at least four Asian student groups disagreed with the AAA leaders. Besides Cheng and Hwang leveled the insensitivity charge during exam period, a political doldrum.

What have minority organizations done wrong? It's worth wondering whether the relative youth of the AAA leaders--both are sophomores--contributed to the clumsiness of the Epps episode. The early flash of interest in identity that Harvard produces in its young often fades after a year or two, and this erosion of involvement may reduce the ability of minority organizations to sell issues in the community at large.