Dropping the Political Ball: During a memorial service for radical activist Abbie Hoffman at his boyhood temple in Worcester Wednesday, former Boston Celtic Bill Walton recalled meeting Hoffman while he was underground, on the run from a possible life imprisonment for cocaine trafficking charges.

Walton--himself an anti-war activist who was then playing professional basketball--said, "We had a lousy night. I was feeling pretty low. I was walking through the streets. I was very angry--kicking cans, kicking boxes, kicking dogs. Then suddenly, this short guy pops out of nowhere and says 'Hi Bill, I'm Abbie.'

"He immediately began telling me how to improve my play. `You've got to start doing this and stop doing that,' he said--a typical short, Jewish kid telling a big guy what to do," Walton told the laughing audience at Temple Emmanuel. "Thank you, dear Abbie. You were the Celtics true sixth man."

Many of Hoffman's friends and admirers reacted with shock this week to a coroner's report which determined that the 52 year-old activist committed suicide last week. "Abbie was just too full of life to commit suicide. It just wasn't his style," one friend said Wednesday. "If Abbie were going to kill himself, he would have called a press conference first."

It's probably hopeless, but at least we should show them that we deserve to represent our school."

--Undergraduate Council member Athan G. Tolis '91 on the upcoming meeting between student representatives and the Corporation, Harvard's seven-member chief governing board.

"To the extent that women that otherwise would be majoring in economics do not do so, our educational mission is damaged."

--Economics Head Tutor J. Bradford Delong on the low numbers of women concentrating in the department.