Riding the horns of one of the biggest bull markets in history, the value of Harvard's endowment has shot up by more than $300 million in the last three months to an all-time high of more than $3 billion, University financial officers said this week.

The bulk of the jump in the endowment--the largest of any American university--comes from what Harvard's chief investment officer called a 17-to-18-percent increase in the return on Harvard's portfolio of stocks and bonds in the last two months.

"These are the kinds of results you would be happy to get in a 12-month period and maybe more than that, and we've had it in 60 days," said Walter M Cabot '54, president of Harvard Management Company, which manages most of the University's portfolio.

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Demonstrating a wide breadth of trivia knowledge and quick reactions, a North House team Thursday night won the Harvard version of the popular game show "Family Feud."

The team--composed of W. Colleen Ogle '83, Greg Williams '85, George Weiner '83, Joni Hiramoto '83 and Mathew McEvoy '84--did not lose one question during the competition until the finals. Then Eliot, before falling, won the query: What's the most popular video game at Harvard? (Pac Man topped the list.)

Ogle said the $200 party awarded to the winning team will be held at North House the Friday of Yale weekend. She attributed the team's success to luck and hard work, adding that the first-round, single eliminations were somewhat haphazard, but that their time spent reviewing survey questions paid off.

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John P. Reardon, director of athletics, decided this week he will sit down and chat with his coaches and minority athletes to discuss minority dissatisfaction with Harvard athletics.

Reardon's decision came, just days after S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation, said that his group would begin an investigation this term of many student complaints he has heard about minorities and athletics. Reardon says he intends to try to set up a "constructive program" to deal with minority athletes' dissatisfaction "rather than operate on complaints."

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It took five separate votes for a candidate with majority support to emerge, but the new Undergraduate Council finally elected its chairman last Sunday: Michael G. Colantuono '83, a student government veteran who has gained campus-wide recognition as a gay rights activist.

Colantuono narrowly defeated Rosemarie A. Sabatino '84 in a second run-off between the two, following an initial tie.

Following his election, Colantuono supervised the selection of the council's other three officers. Jose A. Rodriguez '85 gained the vice chairmanship, while Peter N. Smith '83 and Caroline Lipson '84 became treasurer and secretary, respectively.,

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The controversy over gynecologic care at University Health Services (UHS) continued this week as it became public that the chairman of the Medical Area's women's committee that is pursuing a formal grievance against UHS Dr. Paul I. Winig '62 had herself filed a personal grievance against the same doctor several years ago. Neither the chairman, Judith Herzfeld, nor Winig commented on whether such an incident occurred.

But members of the women's committee said this week the committee's action against Winig is entirely independent of Herzfeld's complaint, and that the committee has heard from numerous women with much more serious medical grievances against Winig than Herzfeld's.

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Dan Schlesinger may only have run in two marathons before entering the New York City Marathon last weekend, but that didn't keep the first-year Law School student from finishing third, only two minutes and 26 seconds behind winner Alberto Salazar.

The Yale graduate and former Marshall scholar finished the 25-mile, 385-yard run through the city's five boroughs in a blistering 2:11.55, beating almost 16,000 other runners.

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Harvard could be in touch with intelligent life forms elsewhere in the universe within the next few months, if the dreams of one ambitious University astronomer come true.

Paul Horowitz, professor of Physics, will launch Harvard's first interstellar communication project early next year, using the University's 84-foot radio telescope, located in Harvard, Mass.

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Derek Walcott, the former Harvard visiting professor who was reprimanded last spring for sexually harassing a female freshman could lose his prestigious lecturing post at the University of Connecticut as a result of the Harvard incident.

An official at the university said a UConn committee will meet by the end of next week to decide whether to rescind its invitation to Walcott to be the university's Wallace Stevens lecturer next spring.

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The chairman of the History Department said last week the department will try to recommend a tenured specialist in Middle Eastern studies this semester, a position it has not filled for nearly 20 years.

Harvard is the only American university with a major program in Middle Eastern studies but no tenured historian in the area, specialists said.

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The College has decided to significantly accelerate the renovation schedule for the aging Houses in an effort to halt deterioration more quickly and less expensively.

Under the new plan, detailed by College officials last week, all upperclass Houses will undergo extensive renovations within the next four years, instead of eight to 10 years as planned a year ago.

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The Fogg Art Museum's Dutch art specialist last week defended the authenticity of two Rembrandt portraits in the museum, which a team of scholars earlier this month said were probably not painted by the Dutch masters.

The group of Dutch researchers, who scientifically analyzed the paintings' pigment, said Rembrandt's self-portrait and "Portrait of Man" may be among 44 paintings incorrectly attributed to Rembrandt.

But Seymour Slive, Gleason Professor of Fine Art and one of the nation's preeminent Rembrandt scholars, said he had "no reason to doubt that the materials with which the two paintings were made went available to a 17th-century artist."

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