Last year’s Eleganza demonstrates how social and political boundaries are often ambiguous for minorities on campus.

At BlackCAST’s annual spring fashion show, four students in the mock a capella group “The Callblacks” performed a skit comparing University President Larry H. Summers’ treatment of blacks at Harvard to that of a plantation overseer.

Singing a version of the Will Smith song “Summertime” called “Summerstime,” the group sang and rapped revised lyrics to the song, including the refrain, “Summers, Summers time, time to get those darkies back in line.”

While the skit was performed at a social event, its political content attracted considerable attention.

“It was a political statement, but it wasn’t as political as it may have seemed,” says Moore. “If they had done the skit in front of Summers’ office, that would have been a different story.”

Both he and Hernandez, the president of RAZA, say they are especially careful of their group’s policies because they may be taken as representative views of an entire racial group.

“It’s inevitable that people think we are representing the Latino community. Whether you like it or not, that’s your job,” Hernandez says.

Moore agrees, adding that sometimes that awareness leads to unintended consequences.

“We have to be careful about what we say because we know how it will be interpreted, and unfortunately sometimes we choose not to say anything. That’s not good for the way we can contribute to discussions on campus,” he says.

Identity groups of all kinds find themselves called upon to speak for their entire constituency to the point where “even not being political is political,” says Losier.

RUS members say they are familiar with this role.

“We fielded calls from the media asking about the Miss Harvard pageant, for example, but I didn’t even know anything about it,” publicity chair Rosenberg says.

But she adds that RUS leaders understand their role as “one size fits all” campus feminists. “Being pigeon-holed means that we can lobby from a political perspective,” Rosenberg says.

A Balancing Act

Ultimately, there is no easy formula to determine the role identity groups should play in students’ lives and in campus politics.