LISA BARNES has a problem. "I think college is important, but every time I set our for class, I remember some picket line or some union meeting that I have to attend," she said.

And so, while enrolled as a student at MIT for two years and Radcliffe this past Fall, Lisa has organized fishermen in Nova Scotia, hospital workers in Boston, clerical workers in Brighton and has spent a total of three weeks in class.

For the Radcliffe woman who has second thoughts about the academic life, Lisa's career suggests a way out--a way out of the classroom and onto the streets were at least admission to a union meeting is sex-blind.

At 23 years old, Lisa can hardly qualify as a hard-nosed union organizer. But in five years she's achieved stitches, broken bones, fond farewell letters from schools and numerous employers and five years of organizing wisdom.

Lisa is currently working for Hospital Workers Union 1199, a predominantly female union of nurses aides, maintenance men and non-professional hospital workers. Some of the Spanish workers dislike the idea of a women taking a leadership position in the union. But Lisa, hardly 5 ft. 3 in., said this results in little more than a brief and initial awkwardness between her and some of the workers.

In fact, her size and sex has helped her gain the edge on smug employers and administrators. When I first saw Lisa in action, she was explaining to the Harvard dean of Freshmen, F. Skiddy von Stade, '37,--twice her size--why a group of striking hospital workers had disrupted a class at the Graduate School of Design. The Dean was no match for Lisa's calm and intelligent reasoning. "I have no qualms about disrupting your University's classes, it is clear to me that the dispute at the hospital is as important to the education of your students as their daily homework assignments," she said.

Lisa spent more time interrupting than attending classes at Harvard last Fall. On three consecutive Fridays in November, workers from 1199 had entered the class of Mortimer B. Zuckerman, an instructor at the GSD and a part-owner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. The workers, currently involved in a strike at Mass Rehab, demanded that Zuckerman explain his role in the wage dispute. After ignoring several warnings from the administration, the workers were invited to a tete-a-tete with the dean.

Two weeks after Lisa's meeting with the dean, the workers were summoned to appear in court on charges of trespassing and disturbing an assembled body. Lisa had not been identified. Nobody knew at the time that she was currently enrolled at Radcliffe. A settlement was worked out between Harvard and the workers which prohibited the workers from disrupting the class in the future. The workers begrudgingly accepted the settlement. "When you don't have power, you have to make compromises," Lisa said.

Neither demonstrations nor classes bring Lisa to Harvard any more. Her time is pretty much filled by the strike at Mass Rehab and the union's organizing drive in Boston hospitals--no simple task.

AS A "SUBVERSIVE," Lisa has quite a record. Back at public high school in Croton-Harmon, a small town outside of New York, Lisa's guidance counselor did her a favor of informing the colleges Lisa had applied to of her radical activities in and out of school. Activities like organizing school cafeteria fasts to raise money for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and antiwar agitation. Lots of students were agitators in their local high schools but few stepped beyond the bounds of practical wisdom and got themselves thrown out of high school. Agitating against the war in 1966 was not treated as lightly as agitations four years later when protest became more widespread.

Lisa's mother, a bit more pragmatic, suggested she apply to MIT which was hungry for women at the time. Lisa tried and was accepted. She lasted for two weeks.

The first day of school Lisa searched for the Boston Draft Resistance group instead of course books. She spent her school days working for the resistance group and a publishing company in Brighton--beginning the first in a long series of union fights.

When Lisa, on full scholarship, applied for the job with the company, she had only the single-minded intention of earning some money. She was hired as an editorial assistant, i.e. a switchboard operator and typist.

The 15 women who worked with her each had different lunch shifts and were separated by divisions between their desks. They rarely spoke to each other, that is, until Lisa and several other secretaries noticed that what management was presenting to them as an incentive plan was really a work speedup. The senior editor of the company called the women together and explained to them the new plan he had in mind. According to the outline, the women would receive pay increases if the total cost per page went down and pay decreases if the cost per page went up. Good incentive to speed up the secretarial pool. The only catch was that the cost per page was dependent on the speed of the editors and the authors of the articles. Thus the secretaries' salary would depend on the work rate of the editors and hardly be influenced by their own speed.

The 15 secretaries shocked management and turned the proposal down. Lisa, who said she did not feel she played any special role in encouraging the secretaries to nix the proposal, was out of her job within the week.