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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."
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