Founded with political goals, the group is "more social than something like AAA," according to former director Julie C. Kim '97.

She says club members tend to form friendships based on mutual backgrounds and are often content to leave their interaction at that.

But she says the club does try to intersperse political goals with its social activities.

She says KACC tries to work political issues into a cultural performance the club produces every spring.

Kim says past KACC leaders "definitely had more specific political goals in mind."

She adds that these more forceful leaders would often alienate some members of KACC, a result which didn't mesh with her plan for group participation during her tenure as director.

"I've tried to make it more political, but we generally try not to force people to do what they're not comfortable doing," Kim says of her past role as director.

Kim says she tried to inform other members of political issues and opportunities for activism.

RAZA

For RAZA, Harvard's Mexican-American and Chicano club, socializing and activism conflict not in theory, but in the pocketbook.

RAZA's president, Karen Montoya '98, says the club's tight budget, approximately $500 last semester, puts a natural limit on the events it can stage and forces the club to make hard decisions about the nature of its activities.

"There's a conflict between how many we want to be political and how many social," Montoya says.

She notes that fiscal concerns sometimes place club officers on different sides of a programming issue.

"The tension has always been in discussions," Montoya says. "I'm not sure that it went beyond that."

As president, Montoya says she has chosen the social path, but not without reservations.