Like most of her 1,600 classmates, Kelly K. Johnson-Arbor '96 sat down one day in 1991 to fill out her application to Harvard.

She breezed through the essays and short answer sections but stopped dead when she came to one question about personal identification: "How do you describe yourself?"

For many of Johnson-Arbor's classmates that question is literally a black or white proposition. But the former Exeter student was stumped.

"Those boxes always annoy me," says Johnson-Arbor, whose mother is Black and father is white. "I check everything that applies-Black, white, other...everything but [Pacific] Islander, Native [American] and Hispanic."

For Johnson-Arbor, checking only one box would not only be inaccurate, but would hide a mixed heritage that she is proud to claim.

"I'm very happy about being biracial," Johnson-Arbor says. "I don't want to be just Black or white."

Johnson-Arbor is part of what many call an invisible but growing minority at Harvard: biracial and multiracial students.

Of course, just as there is no box on the College application form marked "Biracial," Harvard administrators say they have no official count of the number of students of mixed heritage.

"My impression is that there [is] an increasing number of biracial children," says Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III. "Biracial children are often straddling or integrating two worlds and represent in a way a cutting edge of racial relations because they mediate different racial communities."

But paradoxically, as the number of multiracial students at Harvard seems to be increasing, membership in organizations dedicated to their concerns seems to be languishing.

Though there is no definitive explanation for this paradox. Many students suggest that on a campus rife with fears of and discussion about racial self-segregation, it is difficult to hold onto two ethnic identities.

From the moment they are forced to select the appropriate box on their college applications, biracial Harvard students say they often find themselves under an enormous pressure to choose one identity or other.

Voice

According to E. Linda Maxwell '96, part of that pressure to choose comes from the fact that biracial students lack significant influence as a group in the Harvard community.

Maxwell, whose father is from Ghana and mother is a French Canadian of mostly Irish descent, says she identifies herself as being biracial.