SOME PEOPLE SAY that this is the end of American civilization as we know it. It is difficult for Harvard undergraduates to tell whether America is collapsing or not because we can only study what our country was like 50 years ago. But despite our lack of historical reference, most of us harbor the nagging feeling that something is awry.

Unfortunately, the topic is unwieldy: it ranges from Dan Quayle to single mothers; from crack houses to race. In a phrase, I am describing the decline of America. I am not grappling with an amorphous moral problem or some spiritual misgivings. The problem is more practical than that.

This summer I worked in a nice town most of us call their second home. I worked for a public service agency in central Cambridge called Just A Start.

Every summer, Just A Start puts about 100 underprivileged (meaning living below the poverty level) kids to work. Though the youngest is 14 and the oldest 18, their demeanor--their existence--is already a tragic hybrid of childhood and unholy tribulations.

These kids, most of whom I spoke with over those three months, were the product of declining America. At least 60 percent came from fatherless households. Some dealt drugs before work. In the back of their minds, the other kids knew that for all their hard work they would make about one tenth, if not less, of what the dealers made that day.

Concerning one discipline case, I almost blundered when talking to the young man's guardian by calling her his mother. The woman was his grandmother. If she was older than 50, it wasn't by much.

One of our "trainees," as we respectfully dubbed them, got himself stabbed. You might have visited the place where the incident occurred--it was the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, about three blocks from Harvard Yard.

EVEN IN A CITY That Harvard students think of as safe, there is a side hidden from us. The fact is, 90 percent of the people attending Harvard have lived in basically the same seclusion their entire lives. We hear about poverty, drugs and broken families like those in Cambridge. We read about and statistically manipulate the numbers. But until you live it, you will never know what it means to have no hope like poverty stricken kids in Cambridge and across this entire country.

Crusaders constantly emphasize that there is no justice in the United States, that our country is declining. They ask for recrimination and retribution. We have created a subculture of guilty white liberals who watch "Yo! MTV Raps" and believe they understand the ghetto. Most people are really only capable of understanding, whether they want to or not, "Beverly Hills 90210." The result is a highly educated, tolerant and ultimately uninvolved caste of people who sympathize for the "less socially mobile."

I am not a crusader; neither a liberal nor a conservative. But I do think America needs preventative medicine. America has lived for decades without caring about the ghetto--why should it start? Because now the inner city has begun to grow at a phenomenal rate. It will soon erupt. More of your friends and families bloat the problem each day as they lose their jobs, use drugs and are sexually careless.

The problem has grown because now there is less money for many more people who create larger needs for themselves. The problem is volatile because a select few in the inner city have most of the money and keep it by selling drugs and killing anyone who gets in their way.

The majority of people in underprivileged areas are law-abiding, ambitious and more diligent that we give them credit for. Regrettably, a small percentage of that population sees another way to alleviate its problems, and quickly. They turn to a job that pays $1200 a day, cash. Guess which one that is.

They believe that lovers or babies will fill the void left by hateful, negligent and even abusive parents. Violence becomes both an outlet and a source of their anger. Some of these people are incorrigible, but the others do the same thing you would in their shoes. On top of all that, they taint the lives of the ordinary citizens in the neighborhoods with the fear of death and the reminder that hard work rarely gets you anywhere if you are from the ghetto.

If the problems of the inner city have touched you recently, which is likely, then you must sense that something needs to happen. Reading Chuck D's and Hank Shocklee's media-hyped jabber in Spin and buying Kriss-Kross records does not solve anything--it just gives middle and upper-class consumers some temporary mental satisfaction about their own efforts to be good citizens.

If you are like me, you are too busy or reserved to be involved with an activist group. At the very least, you must vote smart. You must vote for the opinions, not figureheads, that acknowledge that the problems of the ghetto are your problem too. Should you choose to ignore them, they will end up in your face; by then it will be too late. Consider the Los Angeles summer a glimpse of future attractions.