Under a sign which reads "Rob Rhew's corner," one corner of the Winthrop F-11 common room is set aside for a collection of cans and bottles to be recycled. But there are no nature posters hanging in the common room. Rob Rhew is still working on his roommates.

"We used to have the biggest fight," Misra says. "I used to keep the tap on while brushing my teeth, and he used to keep walking in and turning it off."

"It's quite a job to get my room to recycle," Rhew says.

But Misra admits that Rhew's convictions have altered his attitude. "He's changed a lot of me," Misra says. "I used to think there were more pressing problems in the world than environmental problems."

In his high school, Rhew helped institute an environmental action club, and his environmental work at Harvard began soon after he arrived on campus. As a first-year student, Rhew helped orchestrate his entryway's participation in a bottle recycling project.

"He got us to join several environmental groups," Leitch says. "I got magazines and what-not from environmental groups for several years after he left."

Rhew remained active in environmental affairs after leaving the Yard. Rhew is currently a member of the Phillips Brooks House Association's Environmental Action Committee, where his projects include teaching elementary school students about ecology and helping to organize a recycling campaign in Winthrop House.

Rhew does not hide his disdain for cities. The Earth and Planetary Sciences concentrator almost didn't make it to Harvard's urban campus.

"He wanted to go to Stanford," Kathy Rhew says. "He thought he was more of a Stanford kind of guy. He really doesn't like the city. He didn't want to come to Cambridge--it's a dirty, smoggy, polluted city."

Rhew admits that it was a difficult decision to pack his bags for an urban campus, but, he says, "I knew I'd be happy at any college that I went to. College is college, and I do what I want to do."

Still, Rhew says the most fun he has had at Harvard occurred far away from the city, on the First-Year Outdoor Program (FOP).

And one of the best experiences of his life, Rhew says, likewise took place far away from the bustle of cars and subways. The summer before his sophomore year in high school, Rhew made a seven-hour climb atop a mountain in Yellowstone Park, where he camped alone for a night.

"I finally felt alive," Rhew recalls. "Staying in Cambridge dulls my senses, makes me confused sometimes. Back there, everything was so clear, so gorgeous, so real."

Rhew says he plans to turn his interest in the environment into a career, possibly by being a professor of atmospheric sciences. "I guess this is kind of unusual. Being the UC chair, I could go on to politics or to law school or business school or something like that," Rhew says.

Rhew's roommates believe that such an ambition on Rhew's part is sincere.