As president of HSA, Harvard's multi-million dollar student-run for profit corporation--the world's largest-- Cheng has set himself up well for future employment in the business world. Past HSA managers have gone on to the nation's top business graduate schools and to work in Fortune 500 companies. Presidents of HSA are virtually guaranteed admission to the prestigious Harvard Business School.

For the first time, Cheng has begun to consciously think about his ethnic identity.

"When I came here, I really for the first time became Asian," Cheng said last week in an interview in Church Street HSA's office.

Cheng says he really became conscious of his ethnicity when he first addressed HSA's board of directors, composed of Harvard administrators and past HSA alumni.

"There are no Asians on our board," Cheng says. "At first, it made me a little uncomfortable."

Some say the increase of Asian-Americans in campus leadership positions may indicate a penetration into traditionally non-Asian arenas.

In addition to Cheng, the new president of the Phillips Brooks House Association, the new publisher of Perspective, and the new business manager of The Crimson are Asian, as well as are the outgoing treasurer of the Undergraduate Council and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Political Review.

This has prompted some to hail the end, at least at Harvard, of the so-called glass-ceiling that has held back many Asians from management and leadership positions in the real world.

But Cho cautions these optimists.

"While the growth of the number of Asian-Americans occupying campus leadership positions is something to comment on, perhaps one shouldn't get ahead of oneself necessarily in hailing the end of the glass ceiling," Cho says.

Cho says Harvard is in no way the real world, where he believes discrimination is still rampant.

"I think a lot of people, when they get out of here, will be disappointed when they are discriminated against," Cho says.

According to Cho, a number of factors have contributed to the increase of Asians in leadership positions, including the fact that Asian-Americans make up more than 20 percent of the student body.

Cho also notes that there is still "an almost universal assumption, both facetious, and then again not, of Asian=premed and therefore in premed related activities."

Asian=Premed