Last spring, Andrew T. Starr '91-93 saw the obstreperous face of Bart Simpson in a place it didn't belong.

And he decided to do something about it.

After the Dunster House committee chose a design for T-shirt that sported the popular cartoon character, Starr wrote to Twentieth Century Fox reporting the possible copyright infringement.

For Starr, the letter was just one of many attempts he has made during his Harvard career to uphold the law and do what he could to make a difference in the world around him.

In the case of Dunster House, Starr did make a difference--but not one widely appreciated by his house mates.

Fox wrote to the house committee, telling it to stop selling the contraband Bart-wear, and the house was left with 130 unsellable shirts and a $900 loss.

"At the time, it really was a big deal," says David S. Strait '91, co-chair of the Dunster House Committee. "We got very serious calls telling us to stop selling the shirts."

All the uproar in Dunster caught Starr by surprise. He heard the reaction in dilute form, since he had taken leave from school and was working for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Starr says that he felt burnt out, and decided to take time off to regain his academic concentration. He is currently living with his family in Amherst.

His sophomore-year roommate, Jeffrey C. Olkin '90, says that Starr reported the Dunster violations casually, without considering the possible effects, and that he felt remorseful afterwards.

"He told me that he did it without thinking--he caught someone doing something wrong, and so he told on them, like a game," says Olkin. "Then when it had the repercussions it did, he felt very bad--he said he just hadn't been thinking."

Starr and his friends say that he has written to companies for years: protesting red-dyed M&Ms out of health concerns, challenging the itemization of his phone bills, sending away for free merchandise. And no one had ever gotten angry before.

He had also written to McDonald's telling the firm that two Harvard Dining Services breakfast entrees--the MacEgg and the Bagel Mac--closely mirrored the names of McDonald's creations. This fall, the University was forced to change the names, but the student reaction was minimal. (C)  (C)  (C)

Starr had led a placid, quiet life at Harvard. He worked on statistics assignments--he is the Statistics Department's only undergraduate concentrator--and hung out with his friends.

"At Harvard, I've got close friends, but in terms of extracurriculars, I didn't do much," he says. Starr says he had time on his hands, and felt that corresponding with corporations was a way to become involved in issues important to him.