We didn't make it through a full academic year without a student group ambushing some Harvard administrator with charges of insensitivity.

Maybe it's just as well. The college wouldn't have been Harvard without a few irascible letters to The Crimson treading heavily on the ground of those "deeply offended" by perceived racial or ethnic bigotry.

Don't get me wrong: There's plenty amiss with the way Harvard handles race relations--namely that it almost doesn't. And there's enough misunderstanding and mistrust among racial and ethnic groups at Harvard-Herzegovina to make anyone complain.

The recent attack on Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III by the co-presidents the Asian American Association (AAA) reflected these problems. Every fact in their letter managed to be flat-out wrong or extremely suspect, and the next day everyone within about 25 miles called The Crimson to say what we knew all along: Epps is no racist.

The fact that the two presidents of the largest minority organization on campus could string together a lot of hearsay and blather about Epps to reach the wrong conclusion is frightening.

What's worse, however, is that Joan Cheng '95 and Haewon Hwang '95, in their zealous attempt to harsh on Epps, diverted attention from their more important (and accurate) allegation: that Harvard handles race relations poorly.

True, this year we avoided a repeat of last year's carnival of acrimony, when the Black Students Association charged that Harvard ran a "plantation" and when a coalition of minority and majority groups formed to protest a speech in Sanders by Leonard Jeffries, who talks about how great the world would be if all white people were killed.

No, this year it was back to normal: an uncomfortable coexistence, with house life gradually balkanizing (Asian American in Quincy, white on the River, Black in the Quad) and the administration issuing thick but directionless "reports" on what to do.

But the answer for students should not be to toss around unfounded charges of "insensitivity" when the deeper plight--the ineffectiveness of the way the College deals with difference--remains unaddressed.

Was the Lampoon being "insensitive" when it published an article joking about a fictional Arab assault on American soldiers? Probably, although Arab-Americans aren't particularly disenfranchised at the Lampoon.

Was Harvey Mansfield being "insensitive" when he conveniently left out a host of explanations for grade inflation--and decided instead to blame the whole thing on TFs' alleged fears of giving Black students low grades? Probably so--he's always seemed to derive some childish pleasure from pissing off groups he dislikes. Last year, for example, he called Women's Studies a "little ladies' sewing circle."

But even if the Lampoon and Mansfield have offended us, they can always claim that their offense "wasn't intended." They can talk of P.C. hegemonies and First Amendment violations. They can argue that their remarks were taken out of context and that all matter of horrifying implication was unfairly attributed to them.

The point is that debating the issue seems silly when we have more structural problems to address--like changing the way the administration thinks about diversity. This is not to say that we should never be concerned with statements that make groups of people feel unwanted. But we should realize that accusing people of insensitivity has become the community's de facto race relations policy. We use charges of insensitivity to avoid an honest discussion of difference on campus.

Really improving race relations will take much, more. In the first place, it will require the recognition that politics, as broadly conceived and executed, are dead at the College.

Any pluralist community survives by binding its diverse members to some generally agreed-upon ideals. Politics is the struggle among people who share those ideals but who disagree over how to achieve them for society. On the campus, politics is more than Students for Clinton. It's working together in campus institutions to solve our own problems.