Sergio J. Campos '00

Flung into the spotlight after a fellow student group leader took a leave of absence, he became a central voice in "The Great Grape Debate."

Sergio J. Campos '00 only became chair of the Latino Political Committee, the political wing of RAZA, the Latino/ Mexican-American student organization, after the former chair took a semester away from Harvard. Timing, though, is everything.

"You could feel it in the air that something was about to happen," Campos says.

It was then--the fall of 1997--when Harvard Dining Services began considering removing its long-standing ban on grapes in the dining halls, provoking strong reactions from students on both sides of the issue.

Campos and RAZA were at the forefront of the anti-grape coalition, charging that grape workers in California, many of them Mexican immigrants, suffered under unfair working conditions.

"It's a big sticking point in the Mexican-American community," Campos explains.

RAZA conducted a "campaign of awareness" that included frequent debates, editorials in campus publications and flyers to counter the pro-grape coalition.

Despite these efforts, students voted to bring back the grapes in a College-wide referendum.

"I didn't come with an agenda," he says. "The grape thing was really reactionary. It was something important and something we could do something about on campus. I didn't care if I got famous; I thought it was something important to do."

Since then, Campos has served as president of RAZA, but after completing his term mid-junior year, he has since turned his attention to his studies. He wants to use his Harvard education to gain a leadership role in the Mexican-American community so that he is in a good position to address these issues in the future.

At Yale Law School next year, he hopes to learn more about issues of labor law.

"I want to have a bit of social conscience in whatever I'm doing," he says. "I'd like to say I had that while I was here too."