The group of protesters presented Mansfield with the "Heinrich Himmler Award For Faculty Excellence" and a massive bouquets of flowers. The protesters then held up signs reading "Keep Harvard Straight," "Keep Harvard White," "Keep Harvard Rich," "Keep Harvard Christian" and "Keep Harvard Male."

"The attack had nothing to do with Harvard," Oppenheimer says. "We used [our access to Mansfield] to stage a real-world counter-attack against things Mansfield did--also in the real world--to hurt our communities."

Oppenheimer was also a co-conspirator at the protest of a speech delivered by Ralph Reed at the Institute of Politics. There, Oppenheimer and several other students dressed themselves in nun's habits, and staged a kiss-in where men kissed men and women kissed women.

Oppenheimer and others were dragged out of the protest by police and now, six months after the incident, Oppenheimer says he issued a complaint with University officials immediately after the protest charging that they violated his rights. According to University policy, demonstrators are allowed to protest as long as they do not prevent the speaker from being seen or heard for an extended period of time.

"Free speech was used to silence us," he says, noting that the protesters stood at the back of the Reed speech and held up signs reading "No Free Speech for Faggots" in protest.

Oppenheimer says he never pursued his complaint with Harvard, as the film took up much of the time during this year.

But that doesn't mean Oppenheimer is satisfied with the state of activism on campus. He says the University breeds a culture of complacency that makes sustained activism unlikely.

"We are much less militant than we should be on every issue," he says. "As with all things we should be taking over University Hall.... It shouldn't be once every 25 years, but once every two months."

Oppenheimer takes credit for working with fellow activists to force College administrators to open a gay student center. In the same breath, he also blames the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) for avoiding the kind of flamboyant public image that he says is needed to foster an environment that fosters discussion about gay issues.

He says that as political chair, he made the then-Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Students' Alliance (BGLSA) one of the most often heard, if not influential, voices on campus. And yet, during his term as political chair, he received no fewer than 10 requests by "more conservative, assimilationist gay students... almost exclusively gay men" to tone down his protests and to organize a gay Republican political group.

He turned down the requests, declining to participate in anything that might help the right-wing movement.

"Being men at Harvard, unlike women, brings on a feeling of having made it," Oppenheimer says. "So it breeds an [attitude that] we don't want to be too out, or troublemakers."

Since stepping down as political chair at the beginning of the spring semester of 1996, Oppenheimer has virtually disappeared from the campus political scene.

He says his commitment to Harvard activism may have decreased as he has become more involved in his thesis, but his devotion to activism has not declined in the least.

"Campus activism, as opposed to activism in a broader community, is not my priority," he says, noting that last fall's Reed protest was for a national cause.