IT'S BEEN THE ISSUE for the Class of '93, ROTC, Colin Powell, Leonard Jeffries, the Women's Street Theater Project and the Coalition for Diversity all fall under the umbrella of identity politics--the push for the recognition and protection, in the curriculum and in student life, of differences in race, gender, religion and sexual orientation.

You can quantify the explosion of interest by counting the number of new magazines that have made their way onto the racks of house distribution centers.

But the emergence of such magazines as Yisei (Korean-American), HQ (gay, lesbian and bisexual), the rag (feminist) and Point of Reference (Greek-American) forms only part of identity politics. Rallies and angry letters form some of the other salvos.

Maybe those salvos have found an audience outside the group of activists and student journalists who pay the most attention. Christopher B. Geary '93, who has never joined any group active in identity politics, says he has grown more aware of minority issues.

When Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 linked grade inflation to the size of the College's Black student population, for example, Geary didn't brush the statement off. "Even if you don't give it any credence, you think about it more than you would have.

Or maybe the rallies and letters haven't really changed anything outside the activist circles of the class of '93. Caley M. Castelein '93 and Geary, both white males, see identity politics in the abstract. "I think people talk about it more, but I don't know anyone who's been to the rallies," Castelein says.

After Geary thinks for a moment about the ways in which identity politics has changed his life, he finally declares, "I'm not affected."

And while Michael D. Lewis '93, who is Black, asserts that inevitably "being a minority is part of [minority students'] Harvard experience," not every Black, gay, Asian, female or Islamic student becomes active in "minority" issues. Tae-Hui Kim '93, who expresses her ethnic identity through the arts group Kutguhri and the magazine Yisei, says of her Korean friends, "a lot of them don't have the same concerns as I do. Sometimes I feel like I'm one of the only people who feels this way."

The simple truth is that many members of the Class of '93 have kept out of these debates, and the stillness of the water under the tumult suggests that identity politics is only a passing phase.

I BARELY NEEDED to define the term when I spoke with Geary, Castelein and others. No monolith, identity politics encompasses a range of goals and individual controversies, but the class of '93 has inhabited a Harvard convulsive enough over race, gender and sexuality that its members can recognize the fits of this type of controversy from a mile away.

"Southern pride" clashed with condemnation of the Civil War-era South's treatment of Blacks when two springs ago Bridget A. Kerrigan '91 hung a Confederate flag in her window. The protests that ensued made national news, and in a book that ensued made national news, and in a book that appeared last summer syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff painted Kerrigan as a martyr of political correctness.

Other eruptions have occurred. In November 1991, the staff of the conservative journal Peninsula angered gays and their supporters with a 56-page indictment of homosexuality. Last March, Asian students protested when Junior Parents Weekend organizers initially left Asian-American speakers off three race-relations panels.

These matters have little to do with the University's traditional disciplines--except as sociological and political phenomena--yet it is not surprising that they should emerge with such fervor on college campuses.

Many students from Suburban High School or the Piddlesworth Academy face heterogeneity for the first time at Harvard. Freed from whitewashing influences, they begin to examine how innate characteristics affect their intellectual development and their everyday lives.

"I never really thought of [ethnic background] as an issue until I got here," says Muneer I. Ahmad '93, former co-president of the South Asian Association.

Cultural organizations, urban surroundings and curricular variety make Harvard in particular a crucible of identity politics. Kim "hadn't been able to articulate" her Koreanness in high school. Yet in the last four years, Kim solidified her ethnic identity through Kutguhri, Yisei and contact with Koreans in Boston. And a Divinity School class, "Toward an Asian Feminist Theology of Culture," has fed her growing interest in women's issues.

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.

Lewis left the Black Students Association early. He joined during his first year and served as an officer the following year. No longer an active member, Lewis explains, "I wanted to do other things...There was nowhere else to go in the organization. Maybe that sounds opportunistic."

Opportunistic or not, the up-and-out-quickly pattern exists in other organizations as well. Ahmad served as SAA co-president during his junior year, and Allen as BGLSA co-chair during her first and second years at Harvard.

Experience drains away as a result of an internal contradiction. Students join minority clubs because of a spark of self-searching, but the inherent evanescence of that spark hurts the organizations that fight political battles.

There is a second contradiction. This form of politics exists to help students find and protect their identities, but to win political battles organizations require a collective consciousness antithetical to the individualistic goals of the war.

Rachel A. Bovell '93, who is Black, does not belong to the BSA. "I don't want to get caught up in a group mentality," Bovell says.

She tends toward moderation, eschews confrontation. Bovell disapproves of Jacinda Townsend '91-'92, who responded to Kerrigan's flag by hanging a swastika in a window as a share-the-discomfort gesture. "The very attention that Jacinda paid [Kerrigan] made the controversy worse," Bovell declares.

Those who share her views create a problem for minority student groups. If moderates opt out, their ideas never shape organization policy, and that policy becomes more extreme and less palatable to the rest of the community. A BSA full of Rachel Bovells, for example, might not have invited Leonard Jeffries to Harvard.

Finally, minority organizations may risk losing the support of non-minority students if they retreat too far into themselves. Should the BSA be a social organization for Blacks, or an organization that spreads interest in issues of concern to Blacks? Lewis says, "If I'm in it, it's for the other people in the organization rather than for the greater cause."

And Allen concedes, "I think that one of the risks that identity politics runs is that other people who don't share our identity aren't welcome."

SO THE STUDENT GROUPS have their flaws. But the link between identity politics and the non-activist observer can break down elsewhere.

Campus publications as a group seem to be doing their job competently. Castelein, like Geary, has detected the growth of identity politics through the Harvard media. "Just look at the front page of The Crimson," he says.

And indeed, on last March 8, page one of this newspaper included two stories on the Coalition for Diversity and one each about ethnic studies, a Medical School forum on homosexuality, anti-Semitic graffiti in Lowell House and the date rape debate.

Other publications--The Salient, The Independent, Perspective, Peninsula--cover identity issues as well. It is hard to believe that students who are not identity-politics activists have no means of ascertaining the contending views in any given debate.

How is it, then, that identity politics has left so many students personally unaffected, perhaps even those who perceive and profess some sympathy for its concerns? If identity politics is good enough for everyone that Harvard should embrace its goals, why do some consider it irrelevant? Insufficiencies in minority student groups forms only a part of the explanation; the rest lies with the rank and file.

One possibility is that the Harvard populace has grown more conservative, and campus conservatives have historically showed more antipathy toward identity politics than have liberals.

Allen sees an increase in the conservatism of the former Kremlin on the Charles. "Upsettingly, I stood up in Adams House to make an announcement about the Lift the Ban rally and had people hissing," she says.

Or maybe non-activist students have reached their threshhold. Awareness is enough, and perhaps no amount of activism will convince them that a more identity-sensitive university holds any further promise for them.

The recent activities of the Undergraduate Council may confirm this. In recent years, ideologues like Randal S. Jeffrey '91 have lost races for chair, and former chair David A. Aronberg '93 says, "There's a greater sentiment that we should be handling student services." This year, the council offered no comment on Mansfield's remarks or on the selection of Gen. Colin Powell as commencement speaker.

Presumably the council members reflect the sentiment of the student body as a whole. "What's going to affect people more: the U.C. spending $800 on a Stairmaster or writing a letter about minority faculty hiring?" Students, once made sufficiently "aware," can return to the activities that more directly help them.

A May 1992 demonstration at Brown University suggests that this interest threshhold exists at other universities. John P. Mishovsky, managing editor of the Brown Daily Herald, notes that police arrested 253 students at a protest against need-aware admissions.

People are "captivated" by it, he says, and he suggests that this was the largest demonstration in recent years. Recent agitation for an all-Black Africa House produced bluster among Brown's activists but only 12 volunteers to live in a 20-bed home. On the other hand, the could've-been-me-flavored financial aid debate actually brought the masses into the streets.

In the final analysis, though, the fervor of identity politics wanes because most people do not define themselves with reference to fixed characteristics. Many students who belong to minority groups may not believe that membership influences their lives. And there are enough straights, whites and males at Harvard and in American society that being a straight white male provides little means of self-definition.

Many leave Harvard without feeling any sense of urgency about ethnic, gender or sexual identity. "If you're a white male, you could go through four years not dealing with minority issues," Geary says.

Perhaps this shouldn't be true. Some, like Kim, insist that all students should see the influence of innate traits. "Your own experience isn't some objective experience," she says. "It's your own."

She bristled when she read the senior survey. Kim complains, "They were trying to ask me if I've been treated differently because I'm a minority, as if being a minority is something that's added on."

HARVARD'S EXPERIENCE with identity politics may differ from other universities' only in its timing. Events elsewhere suggest that the road to identity politics, easily discerned by the Class of '93, becomes in time the road through identity politics.

At Stanford, the cradle of the expression "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture's got to go," interest in the debate seems to have peaked, even among the activists. Andrew J. Dworkin, news editor at The Stanford Daily, says that the newest ethnic club on campus is an Irish-American society and that most people remain unsure whether organizers are joking.

Meanwhile, only 70 people showed up for a rally in support of Asian-American studies, and the Daily, which once delegated writers to individual ethnic groups, now puts only two reporters on a general multicultural beat.

Stanford, Dworkin says, is "one of the more responsive universities," and suggests two reasons for the gradual erosion of identity politics: "It may be hard to sustain interest in an issue for a long time. It may be that the demands have been met."

If ethnic studies efforts continue at Harvard, if the number of minority faculty increase, if President Clinton lifts or softens the gay ban that riles ROTC opponents, the internal contradictions of minority student groups may reduce the number of activists and the number of identity-politics issues.

Moreover, the non-activists, having held identity politics at arm's length, will provide little sustaining energy.

And even if Yisei, HQ, the rag and Point of Reference cease publication and fewer identity-politics stories make the front page of The Crimson, most of Harvard, like much of the Class of '93, won't perceive much difference at all.Crimson File PhotoBridget A. Kerrigan '91 drew national attention and condemnation on campus when she hung a Confederate flag in her window two springs ago.