After paying more than $26,000 to attend Harvard for a year, students are apparently frugal when it comes to buying alcohol.

That means Bud and Miller Lite, not Heineken or Corona.

"For Harvard, it's just basically the cheap stuff," says Rick S. Sarvas, a clerk at Mt. Auburn Street's Little Peach.

"Probably the most popular alcohol bought by Harvard students is beer... cheap beer," adds a clerk at the Mt. Auburn Street liquor store Harvard Provision Co., who spoke on condition of anonymity.

And at Marty's Liquors, which specializes in kegs, the most popular kegs are filled with Coors or Rolling Rock.

Even when Harvard students feel like hard liquor, their tastes run to the cheap.

At Harvard Provision Co., the clerk--a recent Harvard graduate who refused to reveal his name--says: "As for liquor, we sell a lot of Jim Beam, Cuervo Extra Gold Tequila, Smirnoff's, Gordon's, Bacardi... cheap, high-proof."

The guiding principle, says David M. Moura of the University Wine Shop, is that Harvard students will buy "whatever is on special."

Mather House resident Joseph C. Craigen '97 confirms that impression.

"The most popular liquor is beer," he says. "Free beer."

Getting Fancy

Once in a while, however, students tend towards more exotic alcohol. For example, the "booze luge," the specialty of Acme Ice Company on 100 Kirkland St., has a small but devoted following.

The "luge" is a one-by-four foot block of ice with crisscrossed lines on both sides of the ice that improve the block's looks. A curvy track--which resembles an Olympic track--runs down the center of the block.

The keg sits on the top of the ice and the beer runs down the track into the drinker's mouth at the bottom.

"It's awesome," says Mark E. Savenor, Acme's owner.

Last night, Savenor drilled two luges--one for a party at the Business School, the other for a final club.

Savenor, a former liquor store owner, says vodks is also popular among students, but something called Goldschlager is gaining notoriety.

What's Goldschlager? "I don't know what the hell it is," Savenor says. Some research reveals that Goldschlager is made of cinnamon schnapps with little pieces of a gold-colored substance floating in the mixture.

In addition, students say the scorpion bowls served at the Hong Kong Bar and Restaurant and at Chef Chow's remain undergraduate staples.

A scorpion bowl has "ten shots of different types of alcohol mixed with juice," according to Msureen Williams, a bartender at the Kong.

But the scorpion bowl is just for nights out. Eng Tan '95, a Mather House resident who says he does some bartending, says most students always stick to the basics.

"It's mostly cheep beer," he says