"This is going to be a more comprehensively active committee that's focused on trying to make recommendations on permanent curriculum development," Buell said in March.

But as the year drew to a close, the recommendations were not finalized. Though Buell says a draft report exists that calls for sweeping changes, it has not yet reached the Faculty Council, the first hurdle for any major change to the curriculum.

And it is months from reaching the full Faculty, whose support would be necessary for any major curricular addition.

The Faculty discussion, whenever it occurs, would likely reignite the ideological debate that has occurred over the year on campus and nationwide.

One debate is over whether ethnic studies should exist at all. Advocates call its "inclusion" by advocates, while opponents call it the "balkanization" of the curriculum.

The vision espoused by Latino groups at the beginning of the year was for an ethnic studies department with sub-focuses on different groups. The department would grow originally out of an increased number of courses.

Other moderates, while acknowledging the need for education and study dealing with ethnic and racial minorities, have spoken against an autonomous department and for courses within the traditional disciplines on ethnic-related topics.

The student Coalition for Diversity introduced the suggestion of an ethnic studies core requirement, an idea which a number of prominent Harvard officials have publicly opposed. "I don't think ethnic studies ranks on the same level as foreign cultures or science. I think foreign cultures are a different, broader subject, that there's more there," Provost Jerry R. Green said in March.

He said Core divisions are meant to be broad and inclusive, while ethnic studies tends to be more specifically focused.

So the conclusion of the student activists' crusade against Harvard's bureaucratic and ideological barriers can be brought down to the subcommittee and the report it produces, which is the result of both the bureaucratic process and the intellectual debate.

What the subcommittee says will decide the future of ethnic studies at Harvard, along with one other factor: money. In the final analysis, budgetary constraints could shape the vision of any new department Buell and his colleagues produce.

Knowles, who is the ultimate voice on Faculty budget matters, says funds from the capital campaign may be channeled to fund new efforts.

He says they will go "where they are most needed" for student education.

It is for the students, then, to say where it is most needed. They can vote with their study cards and with their feet: Knowles says money will go to relieve oversubscribed academic areas. Until then, student activists will continue the gradual process of trying to exact change in the often-stratified Harvard curriculum.

I don't think ethnic studies ranks on the same level as foreign cultures or science.

Provost Jerry R. Green