While this year's main Commencement speaker, Vice President Al Gore '69, seems unlikely to spark any real controversy, Class Day speaker Lani C. Guinier '71 is quite another matter.

After last year's barrage of pink balloons and publicity for main Commencement speaker Gen. Colin L. Powell, the University this year picked someone who seems to have offended no one but a few allegedly superfluous government officials.

But the senior class, which last year went for the apple-pie-and parenthood choice of Children Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, this year picked a woman who has lately rarely escaped the spotlight of controversy.

Did the University deliberately go for the inoffensive Gore after last year's choice of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chief Powell offended many gay faculty and student groups?

No, says one member of the Board of Overseers, which must okay all Commencement speaker choices. Gore himself is a former Overseer.

"I don't think that was the rationale for choosing, but I can't say much more than that," said Alma H. Young.

The Powell speech sparked a symbolic Faculty vote on Harvard's ROTC policy, as well as the balloons and some prominently placed pink triangles on Commencement day.

The choice of Guinier, however, has raised the ire of quite a different constituency: campus conservatives.

While conservative students aren't over-joyed with Gore, either, Guinier is offensive to many.

Derided by conservatives as a "quota queen" who wished to create a prejudicial race-linked voting system, Guinier was President Clinton's first nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

Clinton withdrew the nomination after Guinier's views on the legal rights of minorities generated controversy.

"With Al Gore and Guinier, I'm worried that the rest of the world will think that Harvard has too many morons," says G. Brent McGuire '95, a council member and spokesperson for the conservative campus magazine Peninsula.

"It is hard to believe that Guinier is being allowed to use the credibility of the Harvard name as a forum for her extreme judicial views," Republican Club President Bradford P. Campbell '95 says.

Guinier is not distinguished, just notorious, conservative students say.

"I don't see why they should have chosen a person who is a law professor at [the University of Pennsylvania], otherwise relatively undistinguished, who was not even allowed a place by Clinton, and is only known for her radical views," says Michael P. Cole '94, a staff member at the moderate conservative publication The Salient.