For many new student publications at Harvard, publish, then perish is the rule. Faced with rising costs and diminishing sources of income, most campus journals appear only a few times before bankruptcy sweeps them into the dustbin of history--or, in this case, into coffins tucked away in the Harvard Archives.

Five years ago, a publication called Perspective began down this path. Started by students who wanted a liberal counterpart to the Salient, the campus conservative monthly, Perspective attracted a small core of members, published a few well-written issues, raised some eyebrows by including free condoms in one edition--and then ran out of funds.

Perspective's finances were in such bad shape that in 1987 the group bounced a check to the University for the cost of a mailing to incoming students. It seemed as if Perspective was about to go the way of so many other upstarts.

But there were a few diehards at the publication who just were not ready to see Perspective disappear. So Adam R. Cohen '90, the paper's production manager, and a few staffers decided to stay in Cambridge for the summer to sell enough advertising to bring Perspective out of the red. And although Cohen had never done sales before, he single-handedly brought in the thousands of dollars needed to keep the magazine in business.

Cohen was elected president that fall and was re-elected to the post the following year. When he left office last December, Perspective had a new office in Memorial Hall, modern production equipment, more staff members than ever (almost 40) and a firm financial base, And, Perspective editors say, the liberal monthly had become a model of self-sufficiency and an inspiration to similar groups at campuses across the country.

How instrumental was Cohen in bringing about this growth? "It would be no exaggeration to say that Perspective would not exist today if it were not for him," says contributing editor Andrew Sabl '90.

Cohen offers a visitor to his Lowell House room the seat of honor, alias the "thesis chair." It seems the chair has collapsed on occasion, most notably two days before his thesis was due. But this minor setback did not have an adverse effect on his thesis, which helped him garner a summa cum laude degree recommendation from the History and Science Department.

Cohen's honors essay compared the development of academic computing programs at Harvard, Stanford and MIT. It received two summa cum laude readings and also won the Siff Prize for the top undergraduate thesis in History and Science.

Sound impressive? It would be for any other rooming group but Cohen's. The Perspective president and his five roommates--who have lived together since sophomore year--are at the top of the class in academic achievement.

Five of the six inhabitants of Lowell I-42 are members of the Alpha chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society. Four will likely graduate summa.

But the roommates insist that, academic achievements aside, they are no different from any other rooming group. "Believe me," Cohen says, "We don't have the most intellectual conversations."

Nor, apparently, the most political. Despite a public life dominated by ideological debates, with his roommates, "Adam was surprisingly uninterested in politics," says David N. Greenwald '90. "For someone who was president of a liberal newspaper, he rarely spoke of politics."

Cohen seems much more comfortable with his public image than with his private one. But this interview is about him, not about his issues, and he has some difficulty in getting settled. he has no trouble speaking about his experiences with Perspective or his political views, but he is protective of his privacy.

But some bits and pieces of the private Adam Cohen emerge in conversations with him and with his roommates. For instance, Cohen is a classical music afficianado, enjoying what Greenwald calls "awful Baroque music"--particularly "a truly horrible piece of music" by Rameau called "The Chicken."

Not only that, his roommates say, he instists on playing the same music over and over again. "He's the only person I've ever met who can wear out a CD," Greenwald says.