Harvard students toil on a divided campus, but they are also part of a generation that is balkanized socially, culturally and politically.

That presents a challenge for activists who want to mobilize the so-called Generation X. The question facing leaders of groups like Third Millenium and Lead or Leave is whether, as many authors argue, twentysomethings are totally oblivious to politics.

"I don't think so," Richard Thau, executive director of Third Millenium, says when asked if he is preaching politics to a generation that has no use for them. "We're trying to create awareness that there's a crisis."

Thau represents a new wave of political activism: generational advocacy. Third Millenium is political group which sees itself as a voice for disenchanted twentysomethings.

Technological Tools

While young people in the '60s took over university buildings, advocacy groups such as Lead or Leave or Thau's Third Millennium rely on MTV, electoronic mail and other technological tools to push their agenda.

The groups tend to support such measures as reducing the deficit, means-testing social security, holding companies more responsible for pollution and lengthening school years to improve education.

Lead or Leave attempts to get congressional candidates to sign an agreement that if they do not make a substantial effort to reduce the deficit within a given number of terms, they will not seek re-election.

Thau's group, too, remains interested in government economics, particularly the deficit and the possible future bankruptcy of the Social Security Administration. Third Millenium leaders say they want to slow down the normally rapid cycle of politics and instead focus the nation's leaders on the long term.

"We're looking for a redirection from a 'next-election' to a next-generation' cycle," Thau says. "[Politicians] today are so short-sighted in policy making that we're putting future generations at risk."

Less than a year after it was founded, Third Millenium claims to have signed up 1,000 members. Newsweek and The New York Times have written stories about the group, and MTV regularly covers its activities.

But all that doesn't mean the organization has caught on among twentysomethings. In fact, several Harvard students questioned by The Crimson said they had never heard of either Third Millenium or Lead or Leave.

Thau, however, says numbers are not important; he is not, after all, trying to build a generational army. "The last thing we want is a generational battle," he says. "But leaders are fearful of a generational shift...[Young people] feel they need an external force to get things moving."

Lack of Support

Recent Ivy League graduates hold down four of the 14 seats on Third Millenium's board of directors, but the group has failed to win over Harvard students.