Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 does not like to talk about Harvard's alcohol policy.

But he will write about it--he has authored several statements presenting his case for the College's strong stance on student drinking.

"The main thing we don't want," he has said repeatedly, "is for anyone to die."

Up to this point in Lewis's five and a half year tenure, no one at Harvard has died of alcohol poisoning, although in the fall of 1998, Scott Krueger, a first-year student at MIT, drank himself to death at a fraternity party.

Krueger's death shook the nation's college campuses to the core, and the ramifications of a similar incident at Harvard, Lewis says, would be monumental.

College officials say the possibility is a real one, both in the Yard and in the Houses.

"The first thing that happens when I bust a party is I look around and see if everybody looks okay," says Noah S. Selsby '95, a proctor in Thayer Hall.

"If a student is sick in some way and needs medical attention, that's the first thing to deal with," says John O'Keefe, Allston Burr senior tutor in Dunster House.