While writing a story a couple of years ago, I interviewed a student who thought he'd successfully evaded any questions. As a result, he thought, held managed to avoid being mentioned in the article.

In the next morning's paper, he was in the lead paragraph in the top story. Enraged, he told a mutual friend and Crimson editor that I should stay away from Lowell House, if I wanted to stay healthy.

Did I mention that this individual was a prominent member of the football team?

Nothing ever happened, of course. I survived to write more stories.

But had the person I interviewed understood a bit more about journalism, the situation never would have gotten that far. No threats were in order.

The Crimson follows standard journalistic policy in regard to when and whether to quote people.

Any conversation with a person who identifies him-or herself as a reporter is assumed to be on the record. That means it can be quoted (accurately, of course), and that the interviewee's name can be used.

In order for a conversation to be "off the record," (and thus not quotable) a person must inform the reporter of this at the beginning. Requests to take a conversation off the record at the end will usually not be agreed to.

And this was the football player's mistake.

So what can you do, if avoiding a reporter's question is your aim?

You can always refuse to answer it. But be prepared to see your name in the next morning's paper, along with the statement that you refused to comment.

And that's about it.

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The issue of when it was legitimate for the Crimson to quote someone got complicated last semester by the increased use of the Internet.

Crimson reporters who quoted from messages posted to Internet newsgroups caused a furor, and angry epistles were written in reply to the general Harvard newsgroup as well as the one meant for the Computer Science 161 course.