At first glance, last week's heavily-publicized grape vote seemed like a high-water mark for political activism on campus.

The five-week campaign featured a flood of posters, fervent debates and a higher voter turnout than last year's election for Undergraduate Council president.

But looking closer, many on campus say that the issue was less a firestorm than an annoyance.

Last Wednesday, undergraduates narrowly voted in favor of bringing grapes back to campus dining halls, regardless of whether the fruit bears the label of the United Farm Workers (UFW), which has lobbied for decades for better working conditions for grape-pickers.

The vote, which was preceded by heated debate across campus, effectively ended a 1992 campus ban on non-union table grapes.

Despite the passionate pleas of campus leaders, however, many students say they were unmoved by debate over an issue they consider important but distant from daily life at Harvard.

Almost all students interviewed say that anti-grape voters felt more strongly about the issue than those who voted in favor of grapes.

"I thought it was a joke," says Jay C. Pil '00. "There's bigger issues than grapes."

Pil, who voted in favor of grapes, says the issue was "a fun thing--nothing serious."

"It seemed to me there were some ethnic ties involved--there's a clear identification with people who are experiencing injustice," Adam J. Riess '00 says.

"I think some people cared, especially the people who definitely wanted to vote no, but...I think there are more important things than that," adds Ying Liu '00.

Stacey L. Dworkin '01 says that the attention paid to the issue was generated by a small number of activists.

"You have a lot of left-wingers who try to push their issue towards the majority of people," Dworkin says. "Obviously the majority says they wanted grapes, but most of the publicity was from people against grapes."

Dworkin says that campus protests on behalf of agricultural workers obscured students' support of grapes.

"The majority may not be active, but they still have a voice," Dworkin says.