To the editors:

Alas, it appears that The Crimson's editorial board has reverted to the popular summer activity of reading John Grisham-like conspiracy novels. Or so its Class Day staff editorial would imply ("The Challenge of Our Generation," June 3, 1998).

Inherent within this idea of a "new, cold conservatism" masquerading as apathy is the idea that conservatives on campus conspired to so mask it. You give us too much credit, dear Crimson. Republicans at Harvard exist only on virtual e-mail lists. We don't even have enough people at meetings to share a pizza. We are not organized. We don't sit around plotting ways to take over the campus and secretly infiltrate a socially-conscious Harvard with the seeds of selfishness and greed.

And even were we organized, those would not be our goals I assure you. I have never asserted that my election indicated any sort of great political or social paradigm shift as you seem to believe. I think it meant only one thing: Harvard students believe that at least one person on campus ought to be concerned with those elements of student life which daily affect them. I think it is fantastic for the editorial board, the Progressive Student Labor Movement, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Club to lobby for whatever external social issues concern them. And I don't think our society can ever have enough of that type of lobbying.

But at least one person ought to concern herself only with student needs. If that person is not the president of the student government, who is it? BETH A. STEWART '99   June 3, 1998

The writer is the president of the Undergraduate Council.