Her boyfriend of three years, Matt Anestis '95, who is also a former SAC chair, recalls Gardiner's first meeting at the IOP as a first-year.

"She raised her hand and she said, 'Why don't you do this?' We all looked at each other and said, 'I guess we should be doing that,'" Anestis says.

"She's a very striking, assertive, confident person. She wasn't afraid to get up and ask questions at the IOP from the moment she walked in," he says.

As chair of the SAC, Gardiner has been criticized by some IOP insiders for being too distant and allowing backbiting and infighting among the students. But no one was willing to go on the record with their comments.

Turner says the situation wasn't really any different from any other student organizations.

"She and I didn't always agree on everything, but I always found her to be very willing to try to work out differences in a reasonable way," Turner says. "She always maintains good spirits.... She'll always be able to rally the troops. She's often the force behind things that you may not even have known originated with her."

Gardiner says that one of her goals as SAC chair was to broaden the appeal of the IOP.

"I feel like I did have an important impact down there," she says. "Most importantly, we shifted direction a lot, away from focusing on political junkies who are already interested to sparking political interest in those who didn't think politics touched their lives."

In particular, she worked hard on the IOP's fall "political Lollapalooza," HYPE '96.

Not surprisingly, Gardiner's extracurricular focus has also formed the basis of her academic career.

An economics concentrator, Gardiner combined her major with her true passion to write a thesis on the economic determinants of voting behavior in presidential and gubernatorial elections from 1915 to the present.

She also authored a widely-cited study of women's leadership in extracurricular organizations. She says that sometimes that's all she's remembered for--a fact which may reflect the results of her study.

"Once you speak once on women's issues," Gardiner says, "The Crimson, when they need a quote from someone about women's issues, they call you."

Gardiner has been accepted at Harvard Law School, but she has deferred to work at McKinsey & Company in Washington, D.C., as a consultant.

"I think one ought not be trying to formulate public policy when one's only claim to fame is that she's graduated from college," Gardiner says. "If you've never really paid taxes..., if you've never paid rent on an apartment, if you've never bought a car,...I don't think you're qualified to be making public policy."