This year's seven Follows of the Institute of Politics (IOP)--including two journalists, a lawyer and several elected officials--compared beliefs and discussed their political roots at a panel in the ARCO Forum last night.

The Fellows, six of whom will lead study groups at the IOP this fall, gave timed summaries of their life stories before a packed crowd. Interrupted by buzzers at the five-minute mark, they found time for lively exchanges that revealed their political views--which covered the spectrum from liberal Democratic to conservative Republican.

In response to an audience question about why the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) failed in his home state, Illinois state senator Mark Q. Rhoads said that many people who professed to favor the ERA actually did not, including some members of the Democratic state party.

But Betty Friedan, a Fellow entering her second year at the IOP, shot back that "I think it is obscence that the politicians of Illinois did the things they did." Missouri state representative Karen McCarthy Benson, a self-proclaimed "eternal optimist," chipped in that ERA has been reintroduced and that the fight will continue.

Topics for study groups will range from "The Politics of Alternative Energy" to "Political Apprenticeship: How to Start Planning Your Next Ten Years."

In her study group on civil rights under Reagan, Elaine R. Jones, counsel and legislative director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People legal defense fund, said she hopes to get Harvard students to look at the questions, since Harvard is a "citadel" where change must start.

Feminist author Friedan, the only Fellow not leading a study group this year, will spend her time working on her third book. The Fountain of Age.

Most members described posts similar to that of Benson; who said she "grew up when the air was clean and sex was dirty." Many said they entered the political sphere indirectly, like Dennis C. Carey, secretary of labor for the state of Delaware.

The two journalists were the most self-critical. "We learn to be very quick and shallow experts," said Karen Elliott House, diplomatic correspondent for the Wall Street Journal Chuck Stone, senior editor of the Philadelphia daily News, agreed. "There is no such thing as objective journalism."

All seven expressed firm commitment to their work. "You need to be involved in politics if you're going to be human." Friedan said.