WASHINGTON -- Add one more item to the "In/Out" list that has emerged from this month's ground-shifting election:
OUT: Congress' freshman orientation at Harvard.
IN: A legislative crash course at the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore Hotel.
Breaking with a 22-year tradition, the Republican-heavy freshman class of the 104th Congress will be forgoing the usual six-day orientation at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Instead, most new members will be attending a 2 1/2 -day orientation conference in Baltimore next month sponsored by two conservative think tanks, the Heritage Foundation and Empower America.
"The newly elected members don't want to do things the way they have always been done," said Kate Walsh O'Beirne, vice president for government relations at the Heritage Foundation, which deliberately scheduled its conference for Dec. 8-10, the first three days of Harvard's planned gathering.
Harvard officials, along with congressional planners, decided soon thereafter to cancel the conference it has conducted since 1972, said Steve Singer, a spokesman for Harvard's Kennedy School.
"Most of the Republican members were planning to attend the conservative orientation," he said, adding that the Kennedy School hopes to reschedule its bipartisan conference after the 1995 session begins. "We've become a victim of the growing partisanship in Washington."
So far, 50 of the 73 newly elected Republicans (and none of the 13 freshmen Democrats) have signed up for the conservatives' conference, which was first held in 1992 with an audience of about 30 members (none of them Democrats) and their spouses. This year, Ms. O'Beirne expects 140 members and spouses to attend.
The Kennedy School conference of seminars, speeches and panels has always been attended by, and led by, Democrats and Republicans. Past panels have featured Democrats such as Children's Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman and Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich as well as renowned Republicans such as former Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, former U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills and conservative economist Martin Feldstein.
"We've always taken great care to make it bipartisan," Mr. Singer said of the conference, which has been sponsored mostly by private foundations. "We don't teach that there's a single right answer."
The new conference, however, is strictly conservative in ideology. This year's speakers include such right-leaning icons as Jack F. Kemp, William J. Bennett and, as the final dinner speaker, talk show superstar Rush Limbaugh.
"Harvard would have been far harder to compete with if it had put more conservatives on the program," said Ms. O'Beirne.
One source, who asked not to be identified, said plans for this year's Ivy League orientation collapsed when the Democratic House leadership refused to capitulate to Republicans' demands for a "day of ideology" at the Harvard conference.
But it is not just conservative ideology that appeals to the incoming class, said Ms. O'Beirne. While Harvard's conference -- which focused on such issues as the national economy, health care, cities and the Middle East -- featured well-known thinkers, authors, academics and policy officials, the conservatives' gathering is heavier on practical, quick advice, she said.
"We don't step way back," she said. "These members want to hit the ground running. They ran on promises to shake things up, and they want real ideas and practical policy recommendations to help them do that."
This year's conference, which includes sessions on family tax relief, health care and free trade, had originally been planned for Loews Annapolis Hotel in Annapolis, where the conservative think tank held its conference in 1992.
But the Republican explosion forced the sponsors to look for a hotel that could accommodate a larger crowd.