According to Kerrigan, a Fairfax County court dismissed the case. "I did not even get a ticket for that accident," she says.

Although she refused to comment on a civil suit relating to the accident, Kerrigan says the accident constituted a major turning point in her life and was a major force in shaping many of her political ideas.

"I'm a rugged individualist. I don't believe in handouts. I don't believe in favors. I don't believe in the politics of victimization," she says. "When you take something like [the accident] and come back from it, you don't have much sympathy for people with minor complaints."

Besides shaping her politics, Kerrigan says, the accident also "brought back religion as a particular force in my life."

At Virginia

Because of the accident, Kerrigan enrolled at Virginia a semester late, and spent three semesters there before deciding to head north to Harvard in the fall of 1989.

"I had mixed feelings leaving Virginia. It offered me a lot," Kerrigan says.

At Virginia, she says, she spent much of her time going to parties on "Rugby Row," a hotspot for fraternities on the Virginia campus. Rather than write articles about politics, she says, she chronicled the school's polo matches.

Kerrigan, now a government concentrator at Harvard, never declared a major at Virginia, according to an official at the school's registrar's office. She says she wrote a thesis on anti-federalism while at Virginia.

Henry J. Abraham, Hart professor of government and foreign affairs at Virginia, says that in the constitutional law class he taught, "she was an excellent student," adding that she was "very articulate and very principled."

He describes her as "an exemplary student, always in class, always prepared." Abraham says he believes Kerrigan transferred to Harvard for the academic opportunities available here.

Kerrigan says she applied to Harvard on a whim, and later chose to come here--against the advice of some professors who suggested that Harvard would be too liberal for her--because of the prospect of going to a place that once would have excluded her based on her gender and ethnicity.

"When I got into Harvard, it was an opportunity to go someplace that at one point excluded Irish, at one point excluded Catholics, at one point excluded women, and I'm all three. And I figured, what an opportunity," Kerrigan says.

Now, as a graduating senior, Kerrigan has about two months left at Harvard. She maintains that the flag will stay at Harvard as long as she does--until both head home to Virginia after Commencement.