ANOTHER SOPHOMORE YEAR experience that Allen talks of with great pride is her work with Contact, a peer counseling group that specializes in issues surrounding sex, sexuality and sexual orientation. She became a counselor in the fall and co-directed the organization during the spring and the following fall.

"I learned so much about leadership," she says. "You need a very different style of leadership when running a small group of people who need to rely on each other in not just a professional way. I had to pay attention to group dynamics in a way I never had to before."

Allen says that working the phone lines taught her a lot about the differences of people and the importance of there being someone to listen. "I think the peer counselling groups at Harvard are one of its best kept secrets," she says.

DESPITE HER EARLY DECISION to concentrate in Women's Studies, it wasn't until her junior year that Allen says she really began focusing on academics. She credits a Women's Studies seminar she took the previous year as being "a real eye-opener." She says that it prompted her to start looking more closely at relationships and representation. And it was during a graduate seminar with Professor of English and Comparative Literature Barbara E. Johnson in her junior year that Allen says she "actually started thinking."

"I'd always read books," Allen says, earlier referring to herself as "the kid who always read through recess." "But I never paid much attention to the textual aspects. [During the seminar] I started looking at books in an analytic way."

Johnson, who was also Allen's academic advisor both her junior and senior year says that Allen has more intellectual independence than many students.

"[She has] a strong investment in real world politics and analytical strategies even when the two things are not easily reconciled," Johnson says.

Johnson also credits Allen with influencing her to become more of an activist. In December of 1991, Johnson was one of the faculty members who spoke at a rally protesting a controversial Peninsula issue on homosexuality. She agrees with Allen that she probably would not have spoken had not Allen asked her personally.

"I think I became more of an activist under her influence, and she became more a deconstructor under mine," says Johnson.

The rally protesting the Peninsula issue was one of the last BGLSA events Allen was involved in planning.

"They didn't seem to know anyone who was gay," recalls Allen of the Peninsula writers. "They didn't quote a single gay person who was happy and it's not like we're hard to find," she says.

"We decided we wanted to get grown-ups to speak," remembers Allen. "We didn't think that the magazine was just hurting undergraduates. We wanted professors who might come out or at least be supportive."

She hastens to add that when they invited Johnson and the Rev. Peter J. Gomes "we asked them to speak, we didn't say 'please come out.'" Both did, however, and Gomes' announcement in particular shocked many.

Allen is pleased by the number of faculty who have come out since then, and contrasts this year's protests over Gen. Colin L. Powell's commencement address with the protests two years ago.

"By the time of the 'lift the ban' rally there were enough gay and lesbian faculty that were out that having one more person come out wasn't so much of a phenomena," says Allen.