"The Black students have their voice. There's a variety of Asian organizations, and they have a voice. Everybody has their voice," Maxwell says. "We're the one group that doesn't have a say."

In 1988, several Harvard students founded Prism, a group dedicated to giving biracial and multiracial Harvard students a voice of their own.

But lacking willing leadership, the group was inactive from 1992 until 1994, when Khalid K. Brathwaite '97 took command. He organized a meeting last spring that attracted about 20 students of mixed heritage.

Another meeting held in October was sparsely attended, and Maxwell says when Brathwaite decided to return to his West Virginia home for the spring semester, Prism again began to fall apart.

Maxwell, a member of Prism's executive board, says plans are in the works to revitalize Prism next year, and that even though the group hasn't been very active this year, it has succeeded in its most important task: raising awareness that multiracial students "didn't necessarily have to go to the BSA [Black Students Association] or not be involved in anything at all."

Though the people who attended the Prism meetings were of all different backgrounds, Maxwell says "one common denominator" that holds the group's members together is the feeling that they don't entirely belong in any other ethnic organization.

"They might feel uncomfortable [in other ethnic organizations] because they'renot fully whatever that population is," Maxwellsays.

When she has to fill out forms, she says, "Iput I'm Canadian of African descent. I certainlydon't call myself just white and don't call myselfjust Black."

Though Maxwell says she attended "a couple" ofBSA meetings when she first came to Harvard, shesays she didn't feel comfortable there. She saysshe has since decided "not to identify as one orthe other."

"Although I could probably just classify myselfas Black, I choose not to because both halves arevery important to me," Maxwell says. "I reallylook for the balance."

Numbers

Maxwell says she's not alone in striving tohold onto both sides of her racial heritage."We're a substantial sector of the population, Ithink--at least at this College," Maxwell says.

While Harvard administrators calculate racialclassification figures for Blacks, whites,Hispanics and other ethnic groups, they keep nonumbers on the number of multiracial students,says Senior Admissions Officer Roger Banks, whodirects the undergraduate minority recruitmentprogram.

But Banks says that, based on his ownobservations, he believes the number ofmultiracial students at Harvard is growing.

"Increasingly students are construingthemselves as multicultural rather than any oneelement," Banks says. "There are probably morestudents who would so identify than they wouldfive years ago, and certainly 10 years ago."

If the number of multiracial students atHarvard is, in fact, growing, it would reflectpart of a larger trend in the United States. Someexperts estimate there are at least one millionpeople of mixed heritage.