Harvard Leads National Rhodes Tally With Nine Scholars Bound for Oxford

Nine Harvard students have won the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships, the most for the University since an equal number were awarded in 1965.

Eight Americans--one of them a Law School student--and one Canadian travel to England this fall for two to three years of tuition-free study at Oxford University. The Americans make up one-quarter of the country's 32 scholars.

The University's performance continues its dominance of the glamorous academic sweepstakes. Harvard has won 217 of the awards since English diamond miner Cecil Rhodes established the program in 1904.

Yale University is second with 165.

The Harvard winners are: Brian R. Greene '84, of Winthrop House and New York, N.Y.; Michael E. Hasseimo '84, of Dunster House and Golden Valley, Minn.; Craig G. Kennedy '83-4, of Adams House and Clearwater, Fla.; John MacLeod '83-4, of Lowell House and North Sutton, N.H.; Christopher J. Murray '84, of Currier House and Golden Valley, Minn.; Andres T. Reyes '84, of Lowell House and Quebec, Canada; Sarah B. Sewall '83-4, of Lowell House and Breman, Maine; John G. Simon '84, of Quincy House and Chestnut Hill, Mass.; and John C. Vlahoplus, a first-year law student.

Articulate and Witty

"Going through the process takes a year or two off the end of your life," Greene said yesterday, racalling how he survived the rigorous election process.

He added that he relied on "an articulate and witty manner" in answering the questions that were put to him in the short yet intensive interviews conducted in his hometown.

Greene, a physics concentrator, said he spends most of his free time doing research. Last spring, he was one of the first recipients of a $1500 Hoopes Prize for a paper on setting the limits on free quarks in the sun.

Hasselmo said he plans on getting a Masters degree in experimental psychology at Oxford, and also hopes to devote time to writing. He has already authored three plays and three novels.

Lowry M. Pei '67, a preceptor in Expository Writing who taught Hasselmo as a freshman, called him "the most interesting guy that I've taught in a long time."

In one Expos assignment, Pei said, Hasselmo took an "impossible" short story and wrote two essays about it, incorporating a different style in each paper.

Kennedy, a Slavic Languages and Literature concentrator, began studying Russian in his freshman year, "as a back door into the Government Department," he said, adding that he quickly became interested in Slavic Literature, and "all of a sudden enamored of Russian history."

A three-year staff member of the International Review, Kennedy said that although his "primary calling is academic," he can "help contribute to the formation of contemporary political policy."

MacLeod divides his time between his work as a Social Studios concentrator and as the coordinator of the Cambridge Youth Enrichment program. Which Machined started with another student in his sophomore year.

This year's president of Philips Brooks House, MacLeod says he lives in a tenement building next to Roosevelt Park, one of the three low-income housing projects that are part of the program.

His involvement with the project helps MacLeod to balance "what I found to be the cloistered and insular experience at Harvard," he said.

MacLeod spent his junior year in Nepal living with a Tibetan family, in a Buddhist monastery, and teaching English in Southern India in a Tibetan resettlement organization.

Social Studies concentrator Sewall spent her junior year and summer working in Washington, first as an intern on Capitol Hill and then at the Institute of Policy Studies.

She spent this past summer at the Center for Defense Information, where she helped organize a space arms control group that lobbied Congress for an end to the development of space weapons technology.

Sewall said it is important not to "let the space-based anti-ballistic missile defense genie out of the bottle."

Although Sewall said she is excited about her scholarship, she added, "I'm ambivalent about going away for two years because there is a lot of work to be done."

A varsity lacrosse player, Sewall is also confounder of a group that counsels women with eating disorders.

The rest of the scholars were not available for comment yesterday