Help Wanted: Extracurricular organization with predominantly white and/or male membership seeks students with variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds for purposes of diversification. Please bring your unique perspective to our introductory meeting."

Classified advertisements calling for minority membership won't be appearing in campus publications any time soon but the ad's message is one that has been circulating among extracurricular organizations for quite some time.

E-mail lists, signs, presentations, advertisements and personal pleas have become the tools of the diversification trade as student groups try to draw in a more diverse set of volunteers, tour guides, or editors than their organizations have usually attracted.

The Black Students Association (BSA) has received visits from Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) programs seeking volunteers and the campus' umbrella group for public service also sponsors a minority students open house.

In addition to addressing topics like bilingual education or its Race@Harvard project, the Institute of Politics (IOP) has made diversity a consideration in the selection of their top officers, members told The Crimson earlier this month.

And The Harvard Crimson has taken out full page ads in campus publications and postered the Yard with signs announcing that the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Caucasian male cronies are over.

And while some ethnic organizations insist that their members shouldn't be recruited on the basis of their background, other groups such as the Asian American Association (AAA) say they actively push their members become involved in other campus groups.

Both recruiters and recruited have jumped on the diversification bandwagon but their reasons for doing so are as diverse as many major campus groups would like to be.

Why Diversify?

Crimson Key members represent the school; therefore, they must reflect the composition of the student body, says Jamil A. Ghani '99, president of the Crimson Key Society.

"We haven't made it our aim to simply beethnically diverse," Ghani says. "We want to beethnically, culturally and extracurricularlydiverse."

To achieve that diversity, Ghani says CrimsonKey members employed a more "grassroots effort" inthe latest comp season.

"We approached student leaders who wereacquaintances and friends of ours," Ghani says."They can pass on the word: Crimson Key does infact want all different kinds of students."

Ghani says such efforts have increased thenumber of applicants over the last two years.While one's ethnic background is not the primaryconsideration when determining which candidatesare the ideal tour guides, the Crimson Key Societynow has a more diverse pool from which to chooseits members.

"The membership of the Key has definitelychanged from the group I knew when I joined twoyears ago," Ghani says. "It has become a betterrepresentation of what Harvard is."

Diverse membership, while valuable for theCrimson Key, is also significant for publicservice efforts, according to PBHA programmembers.