MSA Seeks Leadership, New Focus

Still struggling for members and leadership after laying dormant for nearly a year, the Minority Student Alliance (MSA) is trying once again to revitalize itself.

The group, which serves as an ethnic umbrella organization working in the shadow of the Harvard Foundation, traditionally has had trouble finding leaders. Only three students applied to the group last spring, and none wanted to be co-chair.

Now MSA has no official leaders at all. Former co-chair Ethel B. Branch '01 resigned last fall, and the term of the co-chair she left behind, Sujit M. Raman '00, has since expired. With no one to take over the group, Raman now describes himself as the sole co-chair "by default."

He says the group's declining campus presence can be attributed to a number of factors: a lack of funding, a lack of interest and competition from other ethnic groups for committed members.

A shift in scope has hurt as well. Raman says the group was founded over a decade ago as a more radical version of the Harvard Foundation, but the group today may not be radical enough to attract new members.

"It's harder to form a group consciousness among the minority population at Harvard because there are so many competing interests," he says.

Now, after almost a year away from the group, Branch says she wants to "get the ball rolling."

She plans to organize a group of students to hand out pamphlets in front of the Science Center Thursday, a national day of action for affirmative action supporters. She is also planning an affirmative-action discussion for Thursday, at 8 p.m., tentatively scheduled to be in the Mather House Junior Common Room.

And although Branch no longer holds an official position with MSA, she is holding a general interest meeting tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. in Memorial Hall 303. She hopes the organization will elect new officers and run discussion events.

Still, for all of Branch's dreams, Raman says MSA must face some harsh realities.

Like the Harvard Foundation's SAC committee, MSA--at least theoretically--includes one representative from every campus ethnic group. But the Foundation has more money than MSA, and so students turn there.

"It's always the dollar," Raman says. "They have it and we don't."

Branch maintains that the MSA's role should be to provide dialogue between campus groups, but since her departure, another minority discussion group, independent of the MSA, has sprung up on campus.

Raman says his group should stick to what, in the recent past, it has done best: planning one big, community-wide event per semester.

This strategy worked two years ago, Raman says, when students filled Sanders Theatre to hear a star-studded faculty panel debate affirmative action. Last November, a forum on the effects of randomization, co-sponsored with Diversity & Distinction magazine, also proved popular.

Still, the occasional event may not be enough to define the role of MSA, a group neither student leader wants to see die.

Branch says, "It's always had a very questionable role."