Basketball and Life

Name: Tamara E. Butler

Name everyone knows:Tammy Butler

Why they know it: she is the leading scorer and rebounder in the history of Harvard women's basketball. She is also a Class of '95 Marshal.

What she likes about basketball: The teamwork, even during more than four hours a day of practice and weight training.

What else she does: Sorts mail for 15 hours a week and tutors a 12-year-old tomboy through Mather House HAND.

Concentration:Economics

Best class she took at Harvard: "Fiction by American Women of Color" because "it was the first time I had really been a minority" in a class. During a discussion of Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," in which a young Black girl tears up a blond, blue-eyed doll, Butler was asked for her own reaction. "For the first time, I realized only two or three of us in the class were blond and blue eyed...It made me a lot more aware of stuff [that] you often take for granted...It made me open my eyes a little big."

Family background: Close-knit Irish-American clan. Her parents, Maureen and George, live in Longmeadow, Mass. (pop. 15,200) and make it to nearly all of her games, away and at home. They even came to watch the team in Ireland. One brother, Todd, graduated from West Point. Her family is devoutly Catholic, and she still goes to church every week.

What kind of child she was: She when young but always busy: piano, violin, dancing, acting, tennis, soccer. But "it's the baton-twirling that pretty much shows I was doing everything."

Her politics: "On the conservative side."

What Harvard is like for a pro-life student: "I've been attacked for it...I've had some teammates who can't believe I'm pro-life. I think you've got to respect people's opinions. If someone has an opinion and can justify it to me, that makes sense...That is one issue that people are intolerant [about]. People say they are liberal, but they're not. I'm conservative, but I don't judge people."

Thoughts on O.J.: "I really don't care that much but I Would probably go with I think he is guilty. You're so sick of it at this point, though. It's turned into a circus. It's making a mockery of the system.

Harvard's effect on her: "Coming to Harvard has made me more steadfast in some of my beliefs...even being exposed to different types of people, even homosexuals I've been exposed to. Before I would never have considered myself prejudiced, but now I would be more sensitive. If someone was making a derogatory comment, I'd be more likely to step up to it. If I heard someone making a gay-bashing comment, now I actually have a friend who is that...I don't think I have really changed, it's just that it's become more personal to me."

What she's doing next: Possibly a year of professional basketball in Europe. Definitely consulting for the Parthenon Group in Boston. Eventually business and law school and a family as well. Interview by Anna D. Wilde