SWARTHMORE College Bulletin March 1999 The College acquires an impressionist collection. S W A R T H M COLLEGE BULLETIN MARCH 1999 6 Features A Gift of Art 10 The College acquires an impressionist collection. By Cathleen McCarthy Nurturing the Teacher-Scholar 14 The College’s leave policy pays off in the classroom. By Jeffrey Lott Swarthmore’s Crisis of 1969 20 How Life magazine saw Swarthmore’s most troubling time. By Paul Good 14 On the cover: This portrait by Mildred Miller is among 300 of her works recently donated to the College. Photograph by Karen Mauch. 20 O R E 30 4 Alumni Profiles Note worthy Departments Letters 3 Your views on our pages. Collection 4 News of Swarthmore today. Alumni Digest 26 Your College events connection. Class Notes 28 The lives of Swarthmoreans. Deaths 35 30 George Gershwin courted Rosamond Walling Tirana ’31. By Audree Penner A bridge to grow on 51 Valerie Prescott Bradford ’78 runs Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge. By Jeffrey Lott Life and limbs 59 59 Relief in Africa can be as simple as a $10 prosthesis. By Terri-Jean Pyer ’77 Swarthmore remembers. In My Life 44 The word that changed everything. By Philip Cooper ’57 Books & Authors 54 An expanded look at alumni books. Our Back Pages 64 Barbara Lange Godfrey’s Swarthmore. 10 Parlor Talk M y father died in 1969—suddenly, unexpectedly, just turned 49. I was 22, and it wasn’t a good time for him to go. (Is there ever one?) The two of us were estranged: he the conservative businessman and I the longhaired college dropout, rejecting all he stood for. There existed a great gulf of misunderstanding between us, a divide of dashed expectations, worry, contempt, and fear. Our last few years as father and son had been tension filled, and I regret that he never got to see the fruits of what he had given me: an honest upbringing, self-confidence, a love of language, and, eventually, my education (which I didn’t complete for another five years). I, in turn, never got to thank him for being the stoic and loving wall against which I could throw my rather lengthy adolescent rebellion. Swarthmore’s father died that year too—suddenly, unexCourtney Smith was the pectedly, just turned 52. (See last Swarthmore president page 20.) The loss of Courtney to stand before the Smith was felt by all of his children, including, perhaps espeCollege in the same manner cially, those who were that my father presided over estranged from him at the our family dinner table. time. He, too, had given them many gifts, not the least of which was the power to question. Two years before his death in the midst of the College’s greatest crisis, he had led the most comprehensive self-examination in Swarthmore’s history. He even suspended classes so that students could contribute to the critique. As a good father does, President Smith encouraged his Swarthmore children to ask hard questions; as a good father must, he exposed himself and this institution to the resulting challenges. Students were questioning all of society’s institutions, including their College, and by 1969 they were asking about larger, more difficult issues than merely revising the Honors program. It became Smith’s turn to see his sons and his daughters go beyond his command. Courtney Smith was arguably the last of Swarthmore’s presidents who could stand in front of his students in the same manner that my father presided over our family dinner table—with a sense of authority that was almost beyond question. Almost. It may not have been their choice, but Smith and other university presidents of the era (including Clark Kerr ’32 in California and the late Jim Perkins ’34 at Cornell) rang down the curtain on in loco parentis, the now-quaint idea that colleges and universities should take on the role of surrogate parents, with the authority to set curfews, enforce dress codes, and the like. Some may lament the loss of these “standards,” yet their demise made possible the freedom, openness, and diversity that characterizes the best of higher education today. If my father were alive, he’d be delighted to see what has happened to me, to read this magazine, to see his fine grandchildren. Yes, I still like to question authority, and sometimes it gets me into trouble, but that might also please him. And what of Courtney Smith? He’d be delighted, too, I think—at the rich lives of his former students and the promise of those who have followed at Swarthmore. Like a proud grandfather, he would see the College’s current vibrancy and solid reputation as one more legacy of the hard questions that he wasn’t given time to answer in 1969. —J.L. 2 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Editor: Jeffrey Lott Managing Editor: Nancy Lehman ’87 Class Notes Editor: Andrea Hammer Collection Editor: Cathleen McCarthy Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner Designer: Bob Wood Intern: Jim Harker ’99 Editor Emerita: Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 Associate Vice President for External Affairs: Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59 Changes of Address: Send address label along with new address to: Alumni Records Office Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue Swarthmore PA 19081-1397 Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail: alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu. Contacting Swarthmore College: College Operator: (610) 328-8000 www.swarthmore.edu Admissions: (610) 328-8300 admissions@swarthmore.edu Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402 alumni@swarthmore.edu Publications: (610) 328-8568 bulletin@swarthmore.edu Registrar: (610) 328-8297 registrar@swarthmore.edu The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 08882126), of which this is volume XCVI, number 4, is published in August, September, December, March, and June by Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397. Periodicals postage paid at Swarthmore PA and additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620. Postmaster: Send address changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397. ©1999 Swarthmore College Printed in U.S.A. on recycled paper Letters FOOTBALL AND DIVERSITY To the Editor: Outstanding. Absolutely outstanding. “Swarthmore on the Line of Scrimmage” (December 1998) was the first Bulletin article that I have read slowly (and twice) in years. The true meaning of “diversity” is so often lost at Swarthmore. Football—no, make that football players— add a dimension to the College community that should be valued, not derided. President Bloom, coach Peter Alvanos, and all of the members of the Garnet football team certainly have my wholehearted support. DAVID THOENEN ’69 Raleigh, N.C. GIVE ATHLETES A CHANCE TO WIN To the Editor: As a member of three Swarthmore championship football teams (you remember those halcyon days when we won games, received some national press, and then ran the most successful coach in Division III off campus), I was buoyed by some of the comments of administrators and faculty. John Caskey’s question asking if we “want Swarthmore to be all tree-hugging liberals” and Jennie Keith’s comment warning of “a disdain for things not intellectual” were positive signs. In the end, talk is cheap. Football proponents such as Professor Tom Blackburn and Board member Neil Austrian ’61 have been around for years, and we’re still having the same ridiculous debate about football at Swarthmore. What has never changed is the attitude espoused by our athletic director and president in this article: “a successful team need not be defined by a winning season.” This is a dangerous state of mind for a studentMARCH 1999 We played athlete playhard that ing a gruelyear, with ing collision abandon. sport. If the Our last score of a game was football against game is Haverinconseford—the quential, last football then why do game the students get Fords grades in played. I the classhave never room? felt anySimply Editor’s Note: The large volume thing more fielding a of letters concerning our Decemintensely team is not ber cover story has made it than the enough. Givnecessary to edit most letters for desire to ing these space. Thanks for writing. win that student-athgame. We letes every lost that game and every othchance to win each week is er one that season, starting a the least the College can do. losing streak that didn’t end With athletic facilities that until 1975. haven’t seen a decent Why does football still upgrade since the 1950s, can arouse such passion in me? we really say that we sup• Football invokes the port any of our sports as well desire for initiation. Good as the other top liberal arts coaches and good teamschools U.S. News & World mates provide the mentoring Report measures Swarthand bonding that young men more against each year? The need to grow up. Though inianswer is no. TONY CIANCI ’86 tiation is a more spiritual Malvern, Pa. than physical experience, football and other sports can ARCHETYPAL WARRIORS play a part. To the Editor: • Football invokes I arrived at Swarthmore in archetypal warrior energy. 1968, and knowing no other True warrior energy, which way, I played football. is way out of fashion in our In 1969, another way feminized society, is neither began to dawn on me. Maybe savage nor brutal, but disciit was Woodstock, maybe plined, skilled, passionate, falling in love. In any case, at and loyal. We could use football camp that summer I more of this energy (chanfound I didn’t like hitting neled, of course, by the intelpeople anymore, which crelectual skills Swarthmore ates a certain liability for a hones so well) in tackling the linebacker. So I quit, took problems our planet faces. modern dance, learned to Under good coaching and meditate, and marched with the proper perspective, against the war. football is a crucible in which Yet two years later, I important energies are wrote to Coach [Lew] Elverforged into disciplined son, asking to rejoin the action—an intensification of team. Despite all that had life that is hard to find elseopened up for me in other where. It can be deeply satisdimensions, I had left somefying, not only from winning thing important on the field. but from finding qualities in yourself you doubted. BILL PRINDLE ’72 Silver Spring, Md. NOTHING WRONG WITH SUCCESS To the Editor: Two of our children were students at Swarthmore in the 1980s when the College fielded “good teams.” Our recollections of Swarthmore at that time don’t jibe with Associate Provost Barry Schwartz’s reference to “subrosa warfare between the football team and the rest of the campus.” What’s wrong with being successful in a host of endeavors? John Caskey and Tom Blackburn express faculty views that we as alumni share: Don’t lower standards, but do attract the academically qualified studentathletes who frequently matriculate at Amherst, Williams, Hamilton, or Middlebury. We applaud Al Bloom’s decision to rebuild the football program. TOM JONES JR. ’53 VERA LUNDY JONES ’58 Bay Head, N.J. THE JOY OF BEING TAUGHT AND CHANGED One evening in my first semester at Swarthmore, I was swimming in formation as one of the hunters in a water ballet performance of “Peter and the Wolf.” Just as we reached the end of the pool, I looked up and gasped to see President Courtney Smith smiling down at me. Unlike football, water ballet will probably never embody any of the quintessential questions for Swarthmore. Yet this tiny poolside event was an illumination for me. I thought: “This is the kind of place where the president doesn’t rule out the Please turn to page 62 3 Collection THE COLLEGE TODAY New student rep sends wake-up call O The telescope’s on a mountain in Chile, but the astronomer’s in Swarthmore J DENG-JENG LEE ohn Gaustad, the Edward Hicks Magill Professor of Astronomy, has joined a team of astronomers across the nation to map the southern sky using a new robotic telescope installed at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Without losing a wink of sleep, Gaustad and his fellow mappers will study the night sky by analyzing the data gathered by the telescope. One goal of the two-year project, which began in November 1997, is to map the intricate structure of the interstellar medium—the gas and dust between stars. So far, the team has mapped about 86 percent of the southern sky. The new telescope allows Gaustad and other astronomers to see up to 50 times more than previous instruments allowed. “There is a lot in our galaxy that we haven’t known about before. It was either too far away to detect or intrinsically less bright. So we may discover new remnants of supernovas or other kinds of structures. Even where the robotic camera sees nothing, the data are still of great scientific value,” Gaustad says. “Other astronomers can now be certain that their observations are not contaminated by radiation coming from interstellar gas in our own galaxy.” Another goal is to analyze that gas. “Our survey will show that in parts of the sky, the gas from our own galaxy is so sparse that it doesn’t interfere with studies of the cosmic background, which is important in learning about the formation of galaxies,” he says. And how does the electronically transmitted Chilean sky compare with gazing up at the real thing? “Just being in an observatory with the dark sky is thrilling compared with living here in Philadelphia, with so many bright lights you can hardly see anything,” he says. “But as far as the scientific data are concerned, the images are viewed on a computer anyway, no matter where they come from. So you may as well be home where it’s warm and dry.” 4 nce upon a time, Swarthmore was a hotbed of student activism. These days, students don’t even know how decisions at this college are made, decisions that impact their everyday lives.... That needs to change.” So opened the December election bid by Jenny Yang ’00, the new student representative on Swarthmore’s College Planning Committee (CPC), a group of Board members, faculty, staff, and students conducting a two-year study of the College’s priorities. After missing the deadline for submitting platforms, Yang had to run as a write-in candidate. Despite that formidable handicap, she won by a wide margin, helped, in part, by spirited campaign promises published in The Phoenix. Those familiar with the outspoken, charismatic student were amused but not surprised by her offbeat campaign. A political science/public policy major, Yang plays on the volleyball team and works as an admissions tour guide. She has also served as president of the Swarthmore Asian Organization, played clarinet in the wind ensemble, and had a WSRN radio show. She plans to enter public service and, eventually, teach government in public high school. “As members of the student body, we shape Swarthmore’s identity just as it has shaped ours,” she wrote in The Phoenix before the CPC election. “Think about it—we contribute financially more to the College than the average alumnus/a. It’s time to wield that ‘consumer power.’” Among other things, Yang promised to meet “every single student—really, I’m not kidding,” to report on every CPC meeting in the student newspapers, and to publicize and personally run public forums “with food provided, of course.” She also pledged to hold weekly “office hours” in Parrish Parlors. (“Yes! Your very own talk-to-yourCPC-rep booth!”) “Make your opinions known,” she urges fellow students. “I’m going to talk at every single CPC meeting. And I mean talk.” Top left: This image of a huge hydrogen gas cloud in the constellation Orion was taken with a robotic telescope in Chile by Swarthmore astronomer John Gaustad. Left: New College Planning Committee member Jenny Yang ’00. SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN MY FORMAL VALENTINE G runge may rule on campus, but students still love to get decked out, especially on Valentine’s Day. And nobody throws a party—or a formal dance—like the International Club (IC), as this detailed plan by IC member Jane Ng ’01 demonstrates. The drawing was pinned to a Parrish Hall bulletin board, and someone added graffiti under the lone figure: “Girl not asked by a boy, mind you,” referring to the club’s stipulation that males could not ask females to the dance. Couples had no trouble forming, we’re told. MARCH 1999 5 Collection Peggy Seiden became College librarian in September, coming to Swarthmore from Skidmore College. She brought expertise not only in traditional libraries but in the new field of “information services,” which encompasses everything from books to bytes, from incunabula to the Internet. Seiden spoke with Collection editor Cathleen McCarthy about the future of college libraries. Which interest came first, computers or books? A love of books. At the University of Toronto, I was in medieval studies, which involves old-language scripts. I’ve always liked being in libraries. How did you get from medieval studies to a specialization in electronic media? I tend to hop to opposite extremes. When I left my graduate studies to go to library school in the late ’70s, I had to choose between Columbia, which had a wonderful rare books program, and Rutgers, which was up-and-coming in the use of computers. I chose Rutgers. I was tired of feeling stuck in ninth-century England. I wanted to know more about the world. A visit to the library of the future with new College librarian Peggy Seiden library and why, and how they do their research. Before this year, Swarthmore didn’t have a huge amount of materials in full text online, so there wasn’t a great deal students could do from their dorms, but we have at least doubled— if not tripled—what we provide. Now students can access library information at 3 a.m. from their dorm rooms. What kind of impact has electronic information had on research? We did a study at Skidmore, and it revealed that students look for the most convenient way to access information—and computers provide that. What we found is that when somebody does [an electronic] search, they tend to go with the first piece that strikes them. An article that’s cited in an electronic index will be used more often than one that’s not. And that’s going to redefine what is viewed as seminal or core information on a particular topic. Do you think bound books will exist in the distant future? Oh, definitely. The monograph was a great little invention, and it’s going to remain an important component of undergraduate research. Everybody agrees that nobody wants to read a book online. But I think books will get published in a different way. Right now, presses can’t afford to keep large inventories of material, so they do a short run and then another, and that’s it. I think publishers will eventually maintain presses just for online inventory. Then anybody can request anything at any time. Universities have been doing that for years with theses, maintaining them on microfilm and printing out copies as needed. I think we’ll see that with digital archiving. Any plans to do a study like this at Swarthmore? I plan to go right into the dorms this spring and set up focus groups in the lounges during study breaks. We’ll provide coffee and popcorn and get the students talking about who goes to the Are libraries moving away from their original role as warehouses? Warehousing will certainly continue to be an important function of the library. Libraries have to fulfill the need for archives because nobody else will. But the perception of libraries has changed 6 considerably from warehouses of knowledge to places where people come to learn. Still, libraries need to be more inviting. If you look at the architecture of McCabe Library, there’s no room for interaction. That’s something I really want to change. Can studying and socializing happen in the same space? The success of Borders and Barnes & Noble proves they can. There is a huge amount of browsing that goes on there, and a lot of socializing. Yet I read a study recently that shows students are going to those bookstores to study. Libraries need to take a lesson from them. What hints of Borders might we expect in a renovation of McCabe? I’d like to see lounges. Let’s take the newspaper lounge upstairs and make it a coffee bar. If somebody spills coffee on the current issue of Time, it’s no big deal. We have it online and on microfilm. I think that’s the way people study. The advantage of coming to the library is that if you need help, there is a staff here to help you. Do students depend on staff for computer expertise? Computer research requires a different SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Victorious debating duo the Board of Managers from 1995 to 1997. Sophomore John Dolan and senior Damon Taaffe teamed up to take first place at the Bucknell Invitational Debate Tournament in December, defeating teams from Columbia, Yale, and the University of Virginia. As a result of this victory and a November second-place finish at the University of Pennsylvania, the pair is ranked fourth in the nation in a league of about 500 two-person teams. • Young Alumni Manager Michael J. Kuh ’94 is director of field operations for the Children’s Scholarship Fund, which manages a $2 million fund for disadvantaged public school children. He was an Ivy Award recipient and Honors history student. kind of librarian. If you’re providing access to online information, library staffers need to know the ins and outs of databases and how to fix the printer when it breaks down. Since the circulation staff members are the first ones students turn to, they’re being trained by the Computing Center. And what about the faculty—what changes can they expect? For a library to remain vital, it has to be more heavily integrated into the curriculum. I’d like much closer ties to the academic departments. I want to provide the faculty with more instruction about information resources. Right now, when academic departments want to use computing in their curriculum, they’re being supported mainly by the Computing Center. If a professor is constructing a Web page with information resources for his students, I’d like him to be able to come to a divisional librarian who specializes in that field. Will it be expensive to bring McCabe into the electronic age? Our libraries are incredibly well funded, but most of our budget is tied up in periodical subscriptions. We’ve canceled 200 periodical subscriptions, and we’re down to about 2,300. Of our budget, we’re spending at least 70 percent, some $630,000, on periodicals. That allows no flexibility to explore new areas of curriculum like online resources. I’ve asked for a 50 percent increase—$50,000 more for online resources next year. What do you think of the near-exclusive use of Macintosh computers at Swarthmore? I’m very strongly against it. Our students are going out into a Windows environment, both in grad school and in the business world. No matter what the popularity of the Mac, it will only be a market segment. We try to create a cozy and safe environment for students and faculty, but maybe we need to make it riskier. The world is risky. MARCH 1999 New Board members Six new members were elected to the Board of Managers in December. • Term Manager Paul Corddry ’58 retired in 1992 as senior vice president of European operations for H.J. Heinz. Corddry majored in economics at Swarthmore and endowed the economics wing of Kohlberg Hall, which was named for Corddry and his wife, Charlotte, in 1996. • Term Manager Carley Cunniff ’72 is vice president and portfolio manager for Ruane, Cunniff & Co. and assists in managing the $3 billion Sequoia Fund, a top-performing value investment fund. She was an art history major who went on to receive an M.B.A. from Harvard. • Alumni Manager Catherine Good Abbott ’72 is chief executive officer of two interstate pipeline subsidiaries of Columbia Gas System that transport most of the natural gas used in the Washington, D.C., area. She received a B.A. in religion and sociology/anthropology from Swarthmore and, from Harvard, a master’s in public policy. • Alumni Manager Elizabeth Scheuer ’75 is a medieval studies scholar who became an attorney. With an M.A. from University College, London, and a J.D. from Columbia University, she works for the Community Outreach Law Program of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. • Alumni Manager Alan Symonette ’76 became a self-employed labor arbitrator/mediator in Philadelphia after earning a B.A. in political science and a law degree from Villanova University. He served as president of the Alumni Association and member of And a new VP After a yearlong search, Dan West was named vice president for development, alumni, and public relations at Swarthmore. He began his new job in mid-January. The position has been vacant since the October 1997 death of Harry Gotwals. A veteran fund-raiser and administrator, West spent the last six years as vice president for college relations at Union College, where he directed a capital campaign that raised more than $150 million and doubled annual giving. He also served as president of Carroll College in Wisconsin and Lyon College in Arkansas and coauthored two books on higher education management. A Presbyterian minister with a New VP Dan West D.Div. in systematic theology from Vanderbilt University (and an Ed.D. in higher education administration from Harvard), West says one thing that attracted him to Swarthmore was the College’s ethos. “I identify with the residue of Quaker values that still pervades the place, the commitment to diversity, academic rigor, social justice, and the search for truth.” The new VP, a devoted horticulturist, has already found his favorite spot on campus. If he’s not at his desk, look for him in the rose garden. ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS PEOPLE 7 Collection The geometry of change An emotional education takes place in the midst of the academic enterprise. mation-gathering attitude that makes them such excellent students falters in the face of self-study, which is more often hat are college professors for anyway?” honorary characterized by a judgmental, foreclosed attitude. “I’m here degree recipient Ulric Neisser M’53 playfully asked to learn of things I haven’t yet imagined” becomes “I really the audience at Commencement last June. A domishould know better, and I should be able to figure this out nant figure in cognitive psychology, Neisser joked that the myself.” The latter fosters neither curiosity nor understandfaculty is potentially obsolete, what with the College’s exceling and can become a major source of stress. At this lent library, loads of information available on the World impasse, the triangle of shared attention can prove indisWide Web, and the fact that our students are so bright. pensable. Neisser then answered his own question. Professors, he Learning your subject, in this case, is not simply a matter asserted, are an essential part of a triangle. Human learning of getting answers to questions but of learning how to reis distinguished by the uniquely human ability of two people flect on oneself. As counselors, we try to get students to to focus simultaneously on an abstract object of interest, study themselves just as they might study a text or another thus creating a triangle of learning. culture. Our job is to help them find the most effective ways In his words, I recognized the enterprise in my little corto become nonjudgmental observers of themselves. We ner of the campus. At Psychological Services, the triangle offer talking as a form of stress relief. consists of the counselor, the student, and the shared object People do many things to relieve stress, but the simple of interest—the student’s inner world. In this sense, the role act of talking can be a most profound release—if it’s done of counselor mirrors the role of the professor. The goal in the right way. That’s why students often feel relieved after both cases is to help the student come to know his or her meeting with a professor whose course they’re struggling subject. This involves essentially the same process: knowing with. Although people assume that professors create the what questions to ask, what assignments to suggest, when bulk of students’ stress, they also de-stress them because to push, and when to wait. they’re there to talk to. So are we, and unlike some instituLately, the stress of college life has been receiving a lot of tions, Swarthmore does not limit the amount of counseling media attention. It’s not just the intensity of the academic some students may receive. Someone is available 24 hours a process that generates that stress, it’s the potent combinaday at the Worth Health Center to become part of the triantion of applied intellectual effort with unexpected, often puzgle of learning. zling revelations of emotional expeAt graduation, as students proudly rience. claim their diplomas, we have the As I sat on stage looking at the most tangible evidence of intellectual Commencement audience, I recogtransformation wrought by the colnized many faces. More than a third lege experience. But another, less tanof these 328 graduating seniors had gible transformation has also visited Psychological Services at occurred. Ideally, it includes the some time in their college careers. maturing ability to understand and Most of these graduates chose accept one’s inconsistencies, tolerate Swarthmore College in order to ambiguity, and build an enduring become full participants in “the life sense of self-worth independent of of the mind.” The discovery that one’s immediate ability to have all such a life includes much more than the right answers. Achieving this has the school’s renowned academic meant coming to terms with the loss rigor takes many students by surof some illusions—including the posprise. What unfolds during their sibility of perfection. It has meant years here inevitably includes creating new possibilities consistent experiments in self-definition, a with one’s genuine interests and reworking of relationships with skills, discovering new abilities, and peers as well as authority figures settling some unfinished business. (including parents), and the develWithout necessarily saying so opment or reconsideration of one’s explicitly, graduates know that someprimary mission in life. An emotionthing quite profound has occurred al education takes place in the during their years at Swarthmore. David Ramirez, director of psychological services, Part of the special quality of that midst of the academic enterprise. sees his work as another aspect of the learning Yet the keen analytic eye students experience derives from finding process. By the time they graduate, more than turn on the world around them often someone to work with, someone a third of students will take advantage of the coun- whose curiosity matched—or kinfalters when applied to themselves. seling services offered by his office. The objective, nonjudgmental, infordled—their own. By David Ramirez, Director of Psychological Services ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS W 8 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN High-scoring Schofield would “rather win” F rom the moment Tim Schofield ’99 entered Swarthmore as a freshman, it was obvious he was just what the men’s basketball team needed. A starting player from his first year, he soon became the leading scorer, averaging about 19 points per game. As his final season wound to a close in late January, Schofield made a three-point baseline shot against Messiah College and became the 14th man in Swarthmore history to score 1,000 points. With seven games left in the season, he had set a new school record for three-pointers (177) and become the fifth highest scorer. Perhaps more significantly for a small liberal arts school, Schofield has proved himself to be a team player. With 208 assists to his credit, he’s seventh on the all-time assists list. “He’s always been a good scorer,” says head coach Lee Wimberly of his star player. “But what many people don’t realize is that Tim is a selfless player. If someone has a better shot, he’ll give the ball up.” After a rewarding first two years, ending with a win over Johns Hopkins that took the team to the conference champi- College ranks high with black educators B TERPRISE © BLACK EN MAGAZINE lack Enterprise magazine recently listed Swarthmore among the nation’s most highly recommended schools for African American students. The college guide in the magazine’s January issue ranked Swarthmore 13th overall and fourth behind Stanford, Georgetown, and Oberlin. Atlanta’s Spelman College and other historically black institutions topped the list. More than 1,000 black professionals in higher education rated schools with a minimum of 1.5 percent African American students, based on factors such as graduation rates, academic MARCH 1999 strength, and social environment. Reacting to the ranking, President Alfred H. Bloom points out that the percentage of students of color has risen from 16 to 34 percent during his tenure, with black students now accounting for 9 percent of the student body. Diversifying Swarthmore has been one of his major goals, Bloom says. A high percentage of students of color is “vital for minority students to keep from feeling marginalized, or treated as tokens,” he told the Student Council recently. As an African American who attended the College when that percentage was much lower, Vice President Maurice Eldridge ’61 agrees: “It’s that critical mass that makes people feel comfortable.” onship in 1997, things began to go downhill. Despite Schofield’s consistent performance, two disappointing seasons followed. As co-captain during this period, Schofield was doing his best to motivate himself and his teammates but admits it isn’t always easy. “Personal achievement is nice,” he says, “but when you’ve lost as much as we have, there’s really no feeling like coming home with a win. When it finally happens, you appreciate it that much more.” An economics and political science major and member of the golf team, Schofield has already lined up a job after graduation as analyst for Andersen Consulting. Basketball, he says, has made him “mentally tougher” and a pro at self-motivation. STEVEN GO LDBLATT ʼ67 As the season wound down, Schofield had a shot at becoming third highest scorer in College history. “It would be nice,” he admitted. “But I’d rather get a win.” He got it all: a third place with 1,284 career points, Regional Academic All-American honors— and four wins. Winter sports standouts Heather Kile ’02 of Marlton, N.J., became the first Swarthmore player to be named to the All-Centennial Conference (CC) Women’s Basketball first team. Kile set the CC record for points scored by a freshman (478) and the school record for rebounds in a season (355). Aliki Bonarou ’02 of Athens, Greece, won Outstanding Swimmer honors at the Centennial Conference Swimming Championships, where Swarthmore finished second for the fifth year in a row. Bonarou won the 200 individual medley (IM) and the 400 IM and placed second in the 200. During the season, she also set College records in the 200 and 400 IM. At the Centennial Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships, Desiree Peterkin ’00 of Staten Island, N.Y., won the triple jump for the second consecutive season and the long jump for the first time. Peterkin has qualified for the NCAA Division III Championships in the triple jump for the third straight season. On the men’s side, Steve Dawson ’00 captured his second straight Centennial high jump title. Winter records Overall Women’s Basketball..............................12-12 Men’s Basketball......................................4-20 Badminton ..................................................6-2 Men’s Swimming........................................9-4 Women’s Swimming................................10-4 Men’s Indoor Track & Field ....................7-1 Women’s Indoor Track & Field ..............8-1 Wrestling ....................................................5-6 Centennial Conference ......................7-8 ....................2-11 ......................5-1 ......................6-1 ......................1-5 9 By Cathleen McCarthy AGift ofArt A Swarthmore exhibit revives interest in the work of Mildred Miller, a onceprominent Pennsylvania impressionist. S trolling through the College’s List Gallery, Virginia Stern Brown ’49 and her husband, Kenneth Brown ’47, smile with satisfaction as they look at the paintings they recently donated to their alma mater. It’s not unusual for Swarthmore to receive donations in the form of art, china, or antiques, but it’s rare indeed to receive much of the life’s work of an individual artist—in this case, Virginia’s aunt, Mildred Bunting Miller. “We had more paintings than we could use,” Virginia says. “And we wanted her work to be seen.” More than 300 of Miller’s paintings and hundreds of other works, valued at about $350,000, are now in the hands of the College, where Miller applied for admission 90 years ago and was accepted. But Swarthmore lacked an art program then, and Miller ended up at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. There she trained from 1910 to 1915 under painting legends like Daniel Garber and Cecilia Beaux, and eventually she became one of the few prominent women among the Pennsylvania impressionists. List Gallery Director Andrea Packard ’85 points to examples from the College’s permanent collection of paintings, hung near the Miller exhibit. “These make an interesting backdrop [for the Miller works] because they’re the American painters she would have studied at the academy, including Peale and Eakins. She must have looked at works like these,” Packard says, pointing to impressionist landscapes by Garber and Childe Hassam, “and they must have seemed so lively and of-the-time then. This was what students were aspiring to.” The donation has led to the first serious exposure of Miller’s work since her death in 1964. Miller’s art supported her for most of her life, earning several prestigious awards and exhibits in prominent museums. But after her death, few paintings appeared on the market, and her name virtually disappeared from the art world. Now her paintings are being warmly received by local art 10 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Opposite: A small oil sketch on a panel shows Miller’s impressionist influence and skill with the figure. Top: Miller studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she experimented with different styles. Many French and American artists were fascinated by Japanese themes. Right: Brush strokes at the bottom of this unframed gouache show Miller’s search for the precise color and tone. PAINTINGS PHOTOGRAPHED BY KAREN MAUCH MARCH 1999 11 AGift ofArt Top: This detail of a study shows Miller’s deliberate placement of strokes of pure color to create form. Bottom: Pastoral landscapes were an important subject for Pennsylvania regional artists. This scene is typical of the area near Chester Springs, Pa., where Miller co-directed an art school. PAINTINGS PHOTOGRAPHED BY KAREN MAUCH 12 critics and have attracted several dealers, one of whom bought 27 works on the spot. The College plans to sell most of the collection over the next few years, using the proceeds to endow the directorship of the List Gallery. Miller’s work, which will go on display again in June during Alumni Weekend, depicts the rural landscapes around Philadelphia, where the artist spent half a century, and southern California, where she lived in prolific isolation for her last 18 years. Virginia Brown pauses before an elegant gouache. “This is one of my favorites. That’s Painter’s Farm,” she says, pointing to a cream-colored farmhouse in the painting, part of the Pennsylvania Academy’s country school in Chester Springs, Pa., which Miller co-directed from 1916 to 1934. “I knew many of these places as a very small child.” Kenneth Brown met Mildred Miller on the Browns’ honeymoon, when they spent three weeks at the artist’s California desert oasis. While Miller painted Ginny’s portrait, Kenneth painted the artist’s studio, and the three became fast friends. Though scientists themselves, the Browns ended up living the artist life vicariously through Miller. “Art is such a tenuous thing. The standards for gauging ‘important art’ are not like the standards applied to science. Artists must live with a lot of uncertainty,” Kenneth says. “But she was a strong-minded woman with a lot of ideas that were way ahead of her time.” When the time came to place the collection, the Browns met with art experts and consulted gallery owners. Offers were made to buy the collection outright, Virginia says, “but the gallery owners we spoke to had priorities that were very different from ours.” In the end, the Quaker couple took a Quakerly approach to the problem. “We agreed to ponder the situation for three days without discussing our thoughts,” Virginia says. At the end of that time, they sat down, and she announced her desire to donate the collection to Swarthmore. “He smiled,” she recalls, “and he said, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do.’” And how would Aunt Mildred feel about their decision? “Oh, she would be so pleased,” Kenneth says without hesitation. “This is the beginning of a period where she will become known again—perhaps better known than she was in her own lifetime.” ■ SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Top: The contrast between youth and age is reinforced by Miller’s boldly designed interplay of vertical trees and blue shadows on the horizontal surface of a building. Left: A similar tension is found in this landscape. Horses were a common theme in Miller’s work. MARCH 1999 13 S Nurturing the TEACHER Scholar warthmore College is distinguished by the depth of its commitment to intellectual growth and scholarship among its faculty,” said Provost Jennie Keith in a campus talk last fall. “One of the defining aspects of the College,” said Keith, “is our belief that active involvement in scholarship allows our faculty members to teach with an authenticity that they could not have if they were not actively involved in being members who will do this year in and learners themselves. It’s something that’s taken extremely seriously here.” year out requires the College to commit not only to supporting them as Teaching is the central mission of they teach but as they pursue their Swarthmore. But the College views own scholarly work. teaching from a somewhat difKeith has a special ferent perspective from many interest in intellectual other educational institutions, and personal growth. said Keith: “We don’t see our As a leading researcher students as passive acceptors on the subject of old of knowledge; we want them to age in various cultures, learn more at Swarthmore than she is an author (with how to answer questions—or six collaborators) of even how to look for the anthe 1994 book The swers. We feel that a SwarthAging Experience: more education should equip Diversity and Commonour graduates to analyze a KEITH ality Across Cultures. problem and then to pose new The book was the culquestions that advance undermination of a 10-year study of the wellstanding or knowledge.” being, perceptions, material resources, These skills of scholarship are cenhealth, and functionality of the elderly tral to everything the College does. in a range of cultural settings around According to Keith, they are not only useful for students who plan to pursue the world. academic careers but also have value in business, government, and public nowledge is a moving target, and service. “We hear again and again it’s not always easy to stay current from the people who employ our grad- in fast-changing fields like anthropolouates that this is what sets Swarthgy—or even English literature. Speakmoreans apart—their ability in very ing to the Board of Managers last complicated situations to put together spring, Philip Weinstein, the Alexana framework that helps define the der Griswold Cummins Professor of questions and their desire to find a English Literature, described the life way to work through those questions of a faculty member in these terms: to make something happen.” “We arrive here, fresh from the graduBecause the College’s goal is to ate academy, with something close to teach students to frame such quesa state-of-the-art knowledge of the curtions, it is important that its teachers model this intellectual activity. To By Jeffrey Lott ensure that Swarthmore has faculty rent ways our discipline is practiced. From that point forward, our active scholarly life consists of our keeping that knowledge up to date, fresh, and vital. Reading others’ research, attending conferences, networking with peers at other institutions, and producing our own scholarship—marginally during the summers and more centrally during sabbatical leaves—is how we stay young in our disciplines.” Weinstein’s own work is one of the best examples of a distinguished Swarthmore career, both as teacher and scholar. An acclaimed Faulkner scholar, he has taught at the College for 27 years and has five books to his credit, including the 1996 study What Else but Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison. When the College hires a new faculty member, it is with the hope—and expectation—that he or she will stay at the College for a long time, in some cases as long as 35 years. “We don’t know how long a faculty member’s graduate school experience will remain current in a given discipline,” explained Keith, “but it certainly isn’t 35 years. In some disciplines, it’s a small fraction of that.” She believes that unless a professor is involved in continuing to create knowledge—in being an active scholar—at a certain point he or she is going to start transmitting “canned information.” “At this point, our students would no longer be taught by someone who is part of the intellectual ferment, who is still wrestling to define a discipline’s questions and to figure out new ways to answer them. We help our faculty avoid that fate by supporting their scholarly pursuits,” said Keith. Nurturing the teacher-scholar provides faculty members with the constant reinvigoration that comes from having a chance to be immersed in active scholarship. Engagement in the world of ideas—and the consequent ability to inspire students to achieve SAM ERICKSON ʼ88 Swarthmore’s leave policy pays off in the classroom. K 14 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN H Teaching at a liberal arts college is an intense, time-consuming activity, said Keith. It requires a personal commitment to students that is not found in large research universities—a relationship that ranges from the classroom to office hours to informal contacts that often extend into the faculty member’s home. O ne further effect of Swarthmore’s leave policy, said Keith, is that it enhances the College’s ability to recruit the best facul- ELEFT HERIO S KOS TANS ELEFT HERIO S KOS TANS ow does Swarthmore nurture its teacherscholars? At RER SWEA present, the College proThe skills of vides one semester of paid scholarship are central leave every fourth to everything year for all tenured or tenure-track faculty the College does. members. It also provides up to eight College-funded second-semester leaves each year, allowing some teacher-scholars a full year away from the classroom to do research, ty. “This is not always complete a book, an easy sell. The teachor work in parter-scholars we compete nership with othfor have lots of choices ers in both when they come out of academia and graduate school. They are industry. In prepared to be professionaddition, a sigally active at extremely nificant numhigh levels, and because ber of other they are coming from Ph.D. MAGE faculty memprograms in the best univerNHEIM bers—particusities, their advisers frelarly those in the natural quently tell them that they’d sciences—receive foundation, corpobe crazy to go to a liberal arts rate, or government funding for seccollege. In fact, some of the ruder ond-semester leaves. advisers tell young scholars to wait “This is a generous leave policy,” until they are a little bit worn out, and admits Keith. “We maintain it—and then they can go to pasture at a liberal ultimately would like to expand it to arts college.” include even more full-year leaves— Of course, that’s not what Keith has because we know that it’s very diffiin mind for Swarthmore. Fortunately, cult to sustain first-rate professional some candidates have attended a libscholarship while teaching a full load eral arts college, so “they’ve had some at Swarthmore.” MARCH 1999 inoculation against the message they are getting from the university.” Others tell Keith that they are unhappy with the way they have just been taught in graduate school or describe a negative experience as teaching assistants for professors who rarely see an undergraduate. “They find themselves interviewing at Swarthmore because they care about their students and want to teach.” Yet at the same time, young scholars don’t want to give up the work that “they’re absolutely passionate about,” says Keith. “What candidates ask is, ‘Can I really do both here?’” Her answer is yes, and she supports this assertion by telling them about the College’s faculty leave policy. “At Swarthmore, that’s how we put our money where our mouth is. That’s where we say, ‘Not only do we want you to continue to be a scholar, not BROWN only do we think it’s crucial for the kind of teaching we want, but by giving you a leave every fourth year, we will make it possible for you to continue to grow in your field.’” From Keith’s viewpoint, this is the most important support that Swarthmore provides for its teacher-scholars. As Philip Weinstein told the Board of Managers last spring, “Intense faculty engagement in both teaching and scholarship helps make Swarthmore Swarthmore. Though we’re sometimes only intermittently aware of it, all of us are on a larger stage than ‘just Swarthmore.’ Our scholarship is not some private thing we do on the side; it is, in fact, the largest public declaration of our value—and often of our values. In doing it, we simultaneously represent, both for our students and for the larger world, our selves, our discipline, and our institution.” ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS that same sort of engagement—helps faculty members go beyond the role of teacher and mentor. The lifelong intellectual curiosity of the outstanding teacher-scholar adds value to relationships that develop in the classroom, and it helps avoid provincialism, which, said Keith, “is in many ways the greatest danger for our brand of college.” 15 Swarthmore’s A lifetime of scholarship and innovative teaching. D onald Swearer, the Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Religion, has been teaching at Swarthmore for a generation, and he remains one of the College’s ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS TSEcAhCoHlaErRs DON SWEARER 16 most popular professors and prolific scholars. During his 33-year career as a college teacher, he has published 16 books and more than 80 articles, many of which have been translated into languages such as German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Tagalog. Arriving at Swarthmore in 1970 after five years at Oberlin College, Swearer was granted his first sabbatical in 1972, and he has been able to take time off from teaching every fourth year since then. He’s had the good fortune to extend almost all of his College-sponsored one-semester leaves into full-year sabbaticals with the help of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Ford, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller foundations. “Most of my sabbaticals have been spent in Asia,” says Swearer, who is on leave during the current academic year, working on a study of sacred mountain traditions in Southeast Asia. Many of his books and articles have explored Buddhist religion and society in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, where he has spent a total of more than six years since his first research trip there in 1967. In January, he returned to Thailand for another three-month stay based at Chang Mai University. At Swarthmore, in addition to teaching in the Department of Religion (and chairing it for more than eight years), Swearer has become a strong proponent of interdisciplinary study. He participates in the Asian Studies and Environmental Studies programs and has co-taught courses with faculty members from history, classics, biology, physics, and sociology/ anthropology. Drawing most recently on his interest in the influence of spirituality on the environmental movement, in October he participated in a national conference on religion and ecology, speaking on a panel of experts on Asian religions moderated by Bill Moyers. “The rhythm of my professional life as a scholar and a teacher,” says Swearer, “moves in terms of three seasons: the academic year, the sumSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS MICHAEL BROWN mers, and sabbatical leaves. This rhythm is not always as harmonious as I would like it to be, and there are certainly conflicts among the various competing demands on my time. But there is no question that my ability to sustain an active research and writing program while teaching at a liberal arts college has depended on Swarthmore’s leave program.” Swearer says that his scholarly work has oriented his teaching to the living traditions of Buddhism, something that helps his students go beyond mere textual analysis. “I’ve tried to be an innovative teacher,” he says. “I use lots of slides and field trips. One year I brought one of Thailand’s most respected scholar-monks to Swarthmore and co-taught a course with him.” He sees this authentic, original approach in the teaching of many Swarthmore faculty members. “Rather than rely on the work that other people have done, we are able to base a lot of what we teach on our own original research,” he says. “If you don’t have this opportunity, you can be forced into a borrowed voice.” MARCH 1999 Cutting-edge physics with undergraduates. W hen Cameron Geddes ’97 won last year’s American Physical Society award for the top undergraduate physics thesis in the country, he hadn’t won it alone. Physics research is a team effort, and when Geddes was a junior, he joined the team of Michael Brown, assistant professor of physics. Geddes is now a research assistant at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in California, and Brown, in his fifth year at the College, has won his own award. As last year’s recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy’s [DOE] Junior Investigator Award, Michael Brown is the rare teacher at a liberal arts college who has gained national attention for groundbreaking scientific research, which Peter Collings, Department of Physics chairman, describes as “some of the most significant science ever done at the College.” In a basement laboratory of the DuPont Science Building, Brown and his students aim to provide the first up-close look at solar flares and the Michael Brown with students Amy Reighard ’01 and Walter Luh ’99 and the Swarthmore spheromak experiment. process behind the heating of the sun’s corona. They use a “spheromak,” a custom-built tungsten-lined chamber in which they re-create conditions found on the surface of the sun, including temperatures approaching one million degrees. Brown’s Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX) has been supported by the DOE and the National Science Foundation, partly because it is fundamental research but also for its implications for nuclear fusion, the elusive technology that could provide a clean and limitless power source. “In solar flares and the corona, we have two very old physics problems that haven’t been solved,” says Brown, who spent seven years as a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology before joining the Swarthmore faculty in 1994. Scientists have puzzled for years over the “dynamo problem”—how solar flares, some of which would dwarf the Earth, are formed—and over the extremely high temperatures 17 18 ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS found in the corona. To explore the dynamo problem, Brown and his students create and analyze a sphere of liquid sodium, looking at the conversion of spinning kinetic energy to magnetic energy. To study the corona heating problem, they merge two magnetized rings of plasma—hot, ionized gases that simulate solar flares—and track the conversion of magnetic energy into X-rays and heat. “I realized that these problems could be addressed with undergraduates at Swarthmore in a way that would both advance science and the training of the next generation of scientists,” says Brown. Each summer, Brown has had three to five students in his lab, including a handful from local high schools, who are sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. They help design experiments, build instruments, analyze data—and then co-author the resulting papers. “The flares we create, which last only a few hundred-millionths of a second, have the same twisting shape and the same temperature, material, density, and magnetic field as those on the sun,” Brown says. Undergraduates are at his side every step of the way. When he fires up the spheromak, he and his students crowd into a shielded, grounded box that looks like a small screened porch. Working with microbursts of electricity at 10,000 volts and 100,000 amperes—“artificial lightning” says Brown—they and their computers need some protection. When on leave, as he was in 1997–98, Brown doesn’t have to go to a research lab at a big university. Collaboration with colleagues in his field is easy on the Internet, and his lab— and undergraduate assistants—are right at Swarthmore. “As sophisticated as all this looks,” he says, “it’s physics that’s understandable by undergraduates. And Swarthmore students are really remarkable. The physics majors here are as talented as those at any university. “Science in America can’t survive unless we continually feed students from the bottom up. If we focus primarily on grad students, we run the risk of spoiling the whole enterprise of physics. The future is in these outstanding young people.” ELLEN MAGENHEIM The illogical economy of child care. T he logic of the marketplace seems simple enough: Products are created in response to demand, competition leads to efficiency and lower prices, and quality is determined largely by the willingness of consumers to pay for it. Not true with child care, says Ellen Magenheim, associate professor of economics, who studies how the child care market functions differently from that for most other products or services. Take the question of quality. “Experts have a pretty clear idea of what they believe good quality child care looks like,” says Magenheim, “but there’s still a lot of child care out there that doesn’t approach these standards, and the market isn’t necessarily taking care of this. Is it because of some imperfection in the market, or is it because parents have a definition of quality that is different from that of the experts?” These are among the questions she is studying during her sabbatical this year—research that will not only enhance her teaching but may lead to better public policy in the industry. Magenheim, who coordinates the College’s Public Policy concentration and teaches Public Policy and the American Family, argues that child care is an important economic and policy issue not only because of the increased demand but because of growing knowledge of how it may affect labor force participation, child development, and even the success or failure of welfare reform. “Despite growing consumer SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN demand, there are persistent shortages of certain types of child care,” says Magenheim. “Also, many parents see child care not as just another consumer good to be purchased but as a ‘merit good’ to which all are entitled, regardless of ability to pay. There’s another big public policy question in child care, says Magenheim: “Why is it acceptable for the government to make education available once children are 5 years old but not before that?” In a proposal to the Smith Richardson Foundation, which is funding the second semester of her sabbatical, she wrote: “There is growing consensus that school readiness is a goal toward which quality child care can readily contribute. The policy puzzle is that, with exceptions such as Head Start, care for children from birth to age 5 is a private responsibility.” In the past, much child care policy has focused on how child care affects parental decisions about work. More recently, attention has also focused on how child care quality and early I Swar thmore’s TSEcAhColHaErRs students then see the theoretical alongside the practical. Theory and practice come together in Magenheim’s personal life as well. With husband William Turpin, professor of classics, she is raising a daughter, 10, and a son, 3. Her work on the child care industry started when her daughter was a newborn. “I was drawn to it because the industry poses very interesting industrial organization questions,” she says, “but having children has certainly added another dimension to my research. It’s taught me something every parent understands—how hard it is to know what’s going on when you’re not there.” ■ Who takes over when professors go on leave? t really depends on the needs of the department and the students,” says Provost Jennie Keith. “We’re very concerned about the students, and we try to bring in leave replacements who can offer stability in the curriculum and maintain the quality of the courses. Sometimes they actually enhance a department’s offerings.” There are several approaches to hiring leave replacements. Some departments, especially in the performing arts, find that part-time instructors fit the bill. Departments with more sequential curricula, such as mathematics and statistics or chemistry, hire one-year leave replacements who can teach a range of courses, MARCH 1999 education experiences affect children. Some parents, as well as state policy makers, have come to recognize that formal educational experience before age 5 may be good for children. Magenheim, who also teaches Industrial Organization and Health Economics, draws a comparison between child care and health care, wondering why child care “coverage” is not tied to employment in the same way that health insurance has been. “Child care, like health care, is more than a pure market good—it’s a social good. It’s in our collective interest to have our children be well taken care of when they are young.” During a leave in 1993–94, Magenheim spent time at Child Trends Inc., a Washington, D.C., research firm that looks at the sociology and demography of children and families. She says one of her courses, Public Policy and the American Family, depended on this research; in addition to its focus on economics, it uses concepts from sociology and demography to frame issues in a larger social context. Her especially at the introductory level. Disciplines such as sociology and anthropology use “rotating” leave replacements—faculty members who are generally hired for one to three years, filling in for several professors in sequence. These professors often add areas of study that complement the work of the permanent faculty. Some larger departments, such as economics and philosophy, are actually “staffed for leave,” which means there are enough tenured or tenure-track professors to allow for the departure of one or two colleagues for any given semester. The frequency of Swarthmore sabbaticals forces students to plan carefully, sometimes tak- ing a certain course or seminar a year before or after they might have otherwise. The College gives sophomores information about which courses will be offered as they plan their studies for the final two years. The cost to the College of sabbaticals in any given year depends on who is on leave and in what departments. Last year, about a quarter of the faculty was on sabbatical, and leave replacements constituted 8 percent of the total faculty salary budget of $13 million. Another “cost” comes from the time spent hiring leave replacements. In several departments, there are near-constant searches because of the size of the faculty and the frequency of leaves. “We take these seriously,” says Keith, who as provost authorizes national searches for the best possible temporary faculty members. “We don’t just call up grad schools and ask them to send us someone.” Keith wants to add to the stability and productivity of the faculty by having fewer one- or two-year appointments and using more “rotating” leave replacements, who, though not in line for tenure, often stay at the College for several years. A few seem especially right for Swarthmore and become candidates for a tenure-track opening—like anthropologist Keith, who first arrived as a leave replacement in the spring of 1969. —J.L. 19 SWARTHMORE’S CRISIS OF1969 A LOOK BACK I t’s been 30 years since that terrible winter of 1969, when Swarthmore went through a paroxysm of protest and suffered the loss of President Courtney Smith, who had led the College since 1953. In most minds, the two events are inextricable—the occupation of the Admissions Office by black students intent on pushing Swarthmore to admit more African Americans, and the sudden, shocking death of a popular leader. The wounds of January 1969 were so raw that this magazine scarcely mentioned that tumultuous time for more than two decades. Always the deep, unspoken question has been: Did the protesters “kill” President Smith? Paul Good attempted to answer this question in his May 9, 1969, Life magazine article, “Requiem for Courtney Smith.” At the request of the Bulletin, historians Darwin Stapleton ’69 and Donna Stapleton have edited Good’s powerful article for republication here. (On page 25, they point out some of the article’s strengths and flaws.) We are reprinting “Requiem” not to open old wounds but to do something that is particularly Swarthmorean—to look inside and examine ourselves. To see where we were and where we are. To reflect on change. Gilmore Stott, Smith’s friend and assistant (who was at his side when he died), has had three decades to reflect on those days. In a talk to the Alumni Council last June, he said, “My personal thought is that differences in perspective on those events, and on Courtney’s sudden and tragic death, 20 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN will never be utterly resolved.” Then Stott gave his own perspective: “I remember the night before the sit-in, and student leaders I knew well came down to the Stott house to talk. In substance, I said, ‘Courtney wants the changes you want.’ When they finally left, quiet and orderly, they said to me, ‘We know that, but we think direct action will be productive.’ What was productive and by whom I won’t argue, [but] notice something about this…. Whereas in some institutions so-called negotiation took place between administrators and armed student activists, nothing of this kind happened at Swarthmore…. When escalation threatened, Courtney and his staff reached a bold accommodation … and our president knew he could carry the Board and faculty. When that last morning he bent over his desk, he had already succeeded. It was not his spirit but his body, long devoted around the clock to Swarthmore affairs, that bowed under the strain.” Swarthmore, along with all of higher education, has worked hard to meet the challenges presented to it in the 1960s. In the fall of 1968, just eight blacks entered the College, a number that led directly to the protest. In the fall of 1998, that number was 43, roughly 12 percent of the entering class. African Americans make up 9 percent of the student body today, yet black is only one of the colors of Swarthmore’s—and America’s—rainbow. The “bold accommodation” reached with the protestors of 1969 began a process that has resulted in a stuSION ERMIS dent population that WITH P D E T REPRIN E INC. is one-third minority—black, E, © TIM IN Z A G A LIFE M Asian, Latino/a, or Native American. As he closed his talk last June, Gil Stott spoke of contemporary struggles for recognition and rights, specifically his concerns over women’s and gay rights. “The progress of both is finding its place here,” he said. “And great as these issues are, their dominant feature is easy to express—and that feature is simply a specifically moral one, a matter of human rights, and increasing recognition that everyone counts.” —Jeffrey Lott MARCH 1999 21 REQUIEM FOR COURTNEY SMITH By Paul Good Excerpted from Life, May 9, 1969 O n the morning of Thursday, Jan. 16, this year [1969], Dr. [Courtney] Smith walked up the paths from his home to Parrish Hall, a tall, free-striding figure quietly well-clad in Ivy League tweeds. There was a crisis on campus. Black students had been occupying the Admissions office in Parrish for eight days, demanding increased black enrollment and a black “presence” in the administration. It was by now a familiar national story. But the Quaker college outside Philadelphia had never been so shaken in its 105-year existence. Courtney Smith’s health had always been excellent, but before he reached Parrish, where black paper hung by demonstrators covered some Admissions windows, he felt a spasm in his chest. By the time he climbed a flight of stairs to his office, he was dying of a heart attack. The college physician was called and began counting Dr. Smith’s pulse, and as the count was about to reach 20, the Swarthmore president died. Five hours after the death, the members of the Swarthmore AfroAmerican Students Society (SASS) abandoned the Admissions office but not their protest. They had cleaned up the litter from eight days of occupation and the office was undamaged, the files untouched. But there was wreckage—a rubble of broken illusions and shattered trust. “We sincerely believe,” said the SASS statement, “that the death of any human being, whether he be the good president of a college, or a black person trapped in our country’s ghettos, is a tragedy.” 22 A New York Times editorialist handed down his pronouncement: “The death of Dr. Courtney C. Smith ... in the face of disruptive action by a small group clamoring for more black power, appallingly underscores the price extorted by these policies of excess.” The Times’s assumption of a causeeffect relationship between SASS and the death was repeated in many newspapers. But the Times did not see fit to print as news the statement of the Swarthmore Student Council: “The entire college community deeply mourns the death of our President, Courtney Smith. There is no question in our minds of blame or guilt; there is room only for sorrow, not for bitterness.” The Student Council had rejected a simplistic, vindictive response to the death of Courtney Smith. He would have been proud of that reaction, a practice of his preachments. And he would have favored an effort to comprehend the essence of his tragedy, since it goes beyond the death of a man to the life of a nation and its institutions. The tragedy of Courtney Smith is a peculiarly American tragedy, devoid of villains, full of good intentions, ultimately disastrous. Perhaps it is the American tragedy. Two days before Christmas, 1968, Courtney Smith had the first intimations that his well-ordered world might be coming apart. He received a letter from SASS which began: “Merry Christmas! Enclosed are the ‘clarified’ SASS demands you requested some time ago. If you fail to issue a clear, unequivocal public acceptance of these non-negotiable demands by noon, Tuesday, January 7, 1969, the black students and SASS will be forced to do whatever is necessary to obtain acceptance of same.” The demands called for a markedly increased black enrollment which would include so-called “risk” students who were to be provided with support programs. SASS also wanted a black assistant dean of admissions and a black counselor appointed— subject to its review—who would enhance “black perspective” on campus. The tone of the letter and its mocking greeting seemed out of place on a campus accustomed to the genteel Quaker practice of governance by consensus, and Prof. J. Roland Pennock, chairman of the Swarthmore political science department for more than twenty-five years, has this to say of President Smith’s reaction: “He was confronted with non-negotiable demands and rhetoric that did great offense to him.... This hurt him bitterly. But he never let himself be moved to anger despite the affront to his standards of civility.” A reasonable man tries to understand the grievance behind a hurt done to him, and understanding the present necessarily involves the past; to overlook the history of men and nations is to try to comprehend a tragedy without viewing its first act. Courtney Smith’s sense of continuity and of debt to the past was strong. Swarthmore College was founded the year before the Civil War ended.... The college prospered and in 1921 began its Great Leap into academic elitism under President Frank Aydelotte, who said he did not care if Swarthmore were 20 years behind the times socially so long as it was 20 years ahead intellectually. A system of seminars was developed that demanded the very best young scholars; only one out of five applicants was accepted and high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen. I t was only in the ’40s that a few hand-picked Negroes were admitted; and when Courtney Smith became president in 1953, the campus reflected the tokenism that white America tacitly accepted as the nation’s Way of Life. The country was on the eve of the Supreme Court schools’ decision, and wellsprings of social unrest were everywhere being tapped. Yet in his inaugural address President Smith plainly articulated his beliefs concerning the role of a college in relation to society at large. It was a belief he held as long as he lived and it is central to an understanding of his tragedy. “I personally find it more helpful,” he said, “in thinking of what ‘education’ should be, to focus on the individual student rather than on the society in which he is to live, though the society must appear somewhere in the background of the picture.” Swarthmore’s new president carSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN ried among his credenand felt their survival in tials a special experience doubt. They sought that established his dedirespite from the cation to a liberal per[wrongs] of 350 years in spective, an experience America, a chance to unexpected in a man overcome humiliation raised in the small Iowa and [show] their own town of Winterset and excellence. They had thereafter insulated in observed that the opinwhite academia. As a ions of good white men Navy lieutenant (j.g.) did little to change black during World War II, Dr. realities: they had come Smith had been assigned to discover that black to represent the interests action—civil disobediof Negro sailors at the ence, carrying a placard, Pensacola, Fla., training even muttering or shoutstation and he had ing “Off with their fought successfully to get heads”—sometimes prothem a gymnasium and duced results. their own beach facilities. His widow, Betty, hilosophies were in conflict, and by the mother of their son last spring the first and two daughters, tremors of racial unrest recalls: “For two and a had rattled the Swarthhalf years, he lived their more campus. Blacks— life. He felt every insult, Don Mizell ’71 reads a SASS statement during the 1969 occupation of the like blacks on campuses every hurt to his poor Admissions Office. An unidentified reporter holds the microphone. and in ghettos the counlads.” try over—were challengDuring the first 10 ing President Smith’s years of Dr. Smith’s presintegrationist ethic and embracing the idency, only 20 Negroes were doubtless right in our present time,” oneness of blackness. Hair was growenrolled. But society was edging up he wrote. “But not all the people who ing out naturally, interracial dating— from the “background of the picture.” sustain segregation are evil. They are which only a few years before had In the 1964 Centennial year, the colignorant (which should be a concern been the campus groove—was lege received a $275,000 grant from of social justice) or frightened (which frowned on. Swarthmore’s Afro-Amerithe Rockefeller Foundation to spur should be a concern of social justice) can Students Society was displeased black enrollment. It would appear that or complacent (which should be a the mind of Courtney Smith, so sensiconcern of social justice), but they are about many things. There were few tive to injustice in the abstract, was seldom evil. And they have minds and black courses and only one full-time black professor, Asmarom Legesse, untroubled by Swarthmore’s sense of hearts that can be reached if we are who came from Ethiopia. (A black lecpriority: the college would raise $1.3 willing to do something more than turer from the University of Rochester million for a dining hall, but would carry a placard or mutter, ‘Off with wait for foundation money before their heads.’... a college’s job, drawing visited Swarthmore one day a week to intensifying black enrollment. History on the contribution of men of intellect teach a course in economics.) Blacks—5% of the student body—felt had conditioned his attitudes, perand integrity and conscience and physically swamped and psychologihaps, even as it had conditioned the good will, is to determine what is cally dubious about the motives of attitudes of lesser administrators the social justice, and to help students President Smith in having them on country over: Swarthmore (or X Coldevelop the capacity to determine in campus at all. A black spokesman lege) had, after all, done as much for subsequent years what is social juswould write in the student newspaper, Negroes as most—and racism, after tice.” The Phoenix: all, was a campus problem but not the So here was Courtney Smith’s dec“SASS sees the ‘integrationist ethic’ problem, as Northern unrest and laration of faith in what his college as Swarthmore saying, ‘We want black demonstrations throughout the South should be: a citadel of wisdom on the made clear. But President Smith was darkling plain of society, sending wise, students so that we can see how the other half lives. The college hopes equally clear—in the immediate wake brave and true men and women out that social contact with blacks will of Birmingham, St. Augustine and through the sally ports each graduaabate the racism and prejudice of Selma—on what the college role in tion to do battle against ignorance whites.’ By contrast, Swarthmore relation to society should be. For the and evil. should place top priority on giving talDecember 1965 Alumni Bulletin, he But out on the alarm-swept plain ented young blacks both the compeexpanded his 1953 inaugural theme. of society, black people had been tence and the race pride with which “Something of the activist spirit is encountering frightening realities P MARCH 1999 23 to fill the service and leadership vacuum in their own black communities.” When Admissions Dean Fred Hargadon reported that only eight blacks would be entering Swarthmore in the fall of 1968, down from a high of 19 four years earlier, President Smith ordered the dean to make a study for the faculty’s Admissions Policy Committee. For the first time, Smith singled out race for attention in his annual report, conceding the appearance of black separatism. “There were moments of edginess on these matters during the year,” he wrote, “reminding us that our only immunity at Swarthmore adheres in the lively continuance of our community’s reasonableness.” Before he went to bed that Thursday night, Courtney Smith learned that his students had voted to endorse all the SASS demands.... Easy indictments of others and comforting self-analysis were not Courtney Smith’s way; trying to sleep that night, he must have faced his dilemma. Whatever his thoughts that night, when President Smith settled in at his desk the next morning he was preoccupied with a worry beyond race. The previous night’s vote had signified not only approval of SASS but an assertion of Student Power. Made restive by a general frusPresident Smith welcomes the incoming class in September 1968. He had trating inability to conalready announced his intention to resign at the end of the academic year. trol their destinies, students had been inspiring campus protest over tradition of the Quaker dialogue to issues trivial and significant from San which he was devoted. Francisco State to Notre Dame to n Thursday, Jan. 9 ... the While President Smith awaited stuHoward. It was true that Swarthmore Swarthmore immunity ran dent reaction to the occupation of the students, strung out on intellect, were out. Shortly after noon, SASS Admissions office that Thursday, one more docile than most.... Only two chairman Clinton Etheridge led a student in particular filled his years before, students had even been group of black students into the thoughts: Clinton Etheridge, the 20encouraged to participate in a masAdmissions office, charging that their year-old chairman of SASS. Etheridge, sive, self-searching critique of their Christmas demands had not been who came from New York City, was school. met. There was no violence. White serious, soft-spoken and, like virtually administrators left on request and the everybody at Swarthmore, relentlessut the critique was not an issue doors were padlocked behind them. now. What was the issue was ly articulate. Confrontation had come to a campus summed up in another report The fact that Etheridge also of consensus and President Smith had admired the president only makes inside President Smith’s briefcase, a one more week of life. document that was the catalyst in the more ironic their inability to find a Students and faculty plunged into a common wavelength. “The condition Swarthmore crisis presently concenseries of meetings that continued day trated in the Admissions office on the of black student life in a college like and night, a loquacious demonstrafloor beneath him. It was the report this is something white liberals can’t tion of Swarthmore’s innate capacity on Negro enrollment he had requestgrasp,” Etheridge says. “They autofor verbalizing its concern. But in the ed from Admissions Dean Hargadon. matically think they understand the exciting swirl of debate, the comings Racially, things had gone downhill racial scene, but they don’t. White and goings of would-be negotiators, since the report’s release in mid-Octomen like Courtney—a very good President Smith was strangely isolatber, and President Smith was still bafguy—are molding your mind from ed. He had always kept aloof from the above, making all decisions from a life fled, even annoyed, by student reacfaculty to guard against suspicion of tion to it and to the dean. It seemed to style that isn’t yours. We need the him a very proper report and Dean favoritism, he had always kept stuprotection of numbers that AdmisHargadon was obviously an excellent dents at a firm arm’s length. Now, in sions can provide if we’re going to man. The rangy, athletic son of a bluea vulnerable moment, the president keep our black entity intact. When found himself alone with his idealism. government studies tell you that we’re collar worker in suburban Philadelphia, Hargadon had grown up in a biHaving made the initial decision that moving toward two societies, what’s racial neighborhood and squeezed police would not be called onto the the point in adopting the integracampus, he waited for the faculty and tionist ethic? The world outside is and through college on the GI Bill. President Smith felt him uniquely qualified students to assert themselves in the always has been segregated.” O B 24 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN to treat the Negro question and Dean Hargadon agreed. Dean Hargadon’s report had offered a logical presentation of the difficulties of Negro enrollment. But the dean’s first statistical table focused on family structure, on how many Swarthmore blacks came from one-parent homes (he offered no tables comparing black broken homes to white), and he compared his findings with those of the Moynihan report on The Negro Family, a document resented by militant and moderate Negroes alike, and noted the coinciding figures. Because of the small number of blacks on campus, other tables made it possible to pinpoint—and embarrass—individuals, and the report departed from pure fact-finding to make critical references to SASS. Though he worried whether Swarthmore could preserve its “integrity and genius” by accepting risk students, Dean Hargadon had the wit and good grace to recall novelist Peter de Vries’ comment on elite schools: “Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take.” Courtney Smith could smile at that. And he could embrace the white logic of the report. But the ensuing discord was repugnant to him. SASS denounced the report, and the Student Council voted overwhelmingly to back SASS. Dean Hargadon accused the council of making “grandiose and grandstand declarations,” and in language not usual on a campus given to nice-Nellyisms, declared publicly: “So you have been had.” President Smith stood squarely behind his dean. He wrote to Hargadon: “I want to underline my dismay at the inappropriateness and lack of justification in SASS’s remarks that concerned you and your work in admissions, including Negro admissions. I count on your knowing that I regard your work at Swarthmore as one of the great strengths of the college.” On the weekend of Jan. 11 and 12, the third and fourth days of the Admissions office occupation, efforts to resolve the crisis were nothing less than feverish. The faculty had begun Occupation Week with a simple resolution condemning failure to use rational procedures. Now it was shooting out resolutions calling for an Ad Hoc Black Admissions Committee, amMARCH 1999 nesty for demonstrators, revamping of admissions procedures, and appointment of black administrators. Dean of Men Robert Barr [’56], while condemning the occupation tactics, said it was “absolutely correct” that SASS had made the faculty stir itself. On Monday, Jan. 13, President Smith appeared before the entire student body for the last time to speak in support of the faculty recommendations. He appealed to SASS for a spirit of mutual trust, also warning that direct action would not be tolerated in any future campus dispute. And then the mask of the presidency slipped and for a moment he was just another man disillusioned with the way life had turned out. “We have lost something precious at Swarthmore,” he said, “the feeling that force and disruptiveness are just not our way.” The days began to run together now. The president was working late, too late, and at six or seven in the evening his secretary, Mrs. Pierre Decrouez, would say: Do you need anything more? And he would answer: “REQUIEM”: A COMMENTARY After eight years of research, Darwin H. Stapleton ’69 and Donna Stapleton are now completing a full-length biography of Courtney Smith. The foregoing Life article, they say,“provides a poignant retrospective on a troubled time, but not everything in the story is accurate.” Their commentary follows: P aul Good effectively highlights Courtney Smith’s values. He was indeed a president with clearly “liberal ethics” who strove to maintain the genteel practice of governance by consensus. Certainly his “standards of civility,” which were more conservative than his political standards, were deeply contested and challenged during the crisis and did not allow him to condone or respond to coercion. President Smith was committed to academic excellence and to social justice, yet he believed that both excellence and justice took time and effort to develop fully. Good’s conjectural remarks, however, fail to capture the deeper context of the crisis for Smith and Swarthmore. Courtney Smith and Swarthmore College were long dedicated to education primarily as a tool to enlighten society and transform the socalled real world. Smith was not a proponent of the status quo as Good suggests; instead, throughout his presidency he monitored trends and social issues to anticipate needed changes. He was willing to break with tradition when he felt that change could be made peacefully and respectfully. Good is simply wrong in asserting that President Smith was “isolated” from faculty and students. The fact is that he led all faculty meetings and had frequent informal discussions with faculty members and staff. He opened his office doors to students and regularly read the student newspaper—even when he was appalled by it. He applauded student participation in desegregation movements in Chester, Pa., and Cambridge, Md., even while he deplored confrontational tactics there or anywhere in the nation. Moreover, the article does not acknowledge that many of the factors that led to the crisis were out of Swarthmore’s and Smith’s control. Black unity was, at the time, a rapidly developing and increasingly self-conscious phenomenon. There was a nationwide groundswell of skepticism regarding authority in any form, and few institutions and leaders escaped dynamic confrontations such as that at Swarthmore without serious difficulty. Still, in this probing piece, Paul Good did get the essence of the situation correct: Time had run out for “understanding.” No white person could then (or even now) fully understand the feelings, desires, concerns, and needs of black persons, and Courtney Smith and the College were caught in the inexorable pressures of the times. —Darwin H. Stapleton ’69 Donna Stapleton 25 Alumni Digest Where did you come from? And where did you go? VT ..........162/19 NH..........160/10 MA ......1,254/93 Geographic Distribution of Swarthmore Alumni/Students RI ..............92/3 CT ..........503/51 NJ ........905/107 DE ..........182/25 MD ........893/84 DC..........382/19 375/33 42/2 1/1 162/20 148/21 200/18 15/4 21/2 136/13 5/1 14/3 23/5 36/5 36/2 1,837/131 113/10 2,359/175 46/5 110/9 279/36 414/22 239/15 140/7 2,136/246 254/26 19/4 107/8 49/4 617/40 61/9 80/11 344/26 78/3 13/2 39/3 23/1 162/21 261/28 46/0 42/4 441/39 13/3 48/7 International Distribution Alumni/Students APO/FPO ......................18/2 Argentina ..........................4/0 Armenia ............................1/0 Australia ........................19/1 Austria ..............................5/1 Bahrain ............................0/1 Bangladesh ......................3/1 Belgium ............................2/0 Benin ................................1/0 Bermuda ..........................3/0 Bolivia ..............................2/0 Botswana ..........................1/1 Brazil ..............................13/5 Cameroon ........................1/0 Canada..........................156/7 Chile ..................................3/0 China ..............................10/4 China–Hong Kong only 23/2 Colombia ..........................5/4 Croatia ..............................3/0 Cyprus................................4/0 Czech Republic ................2/0 Denmark ..........................6/0 26 Ecuador ............................3/0 Egypt..................................3/1 England ........................134/0 Finland ..............................2/0 Fr. Polynesia ....................1/0 France ............................49/2 Germany ........................36/5 Ghana................................2/6 Greece ............................22/1 Guam ................................2/0 Honduras ..........................1/1 Hungary ............................3/0 Iceland ..............................1/0 India ..................................4/4 Indonesia ..........................5/1 Ireland ..............................9/0 Israel................................16/0 Italy ..................................19/1 Ivory Coast........................1/0 Jamaica ............................5/2 Japan ..............................39/4 Jordan................................1/0 Kenya ................................3/0 Laos ..................................1/0 Lebanon ............................1/0 Lesotho..............................2/0 Malaysia............................6/1 Mauritius ..........................0/1 Mariana Islands ..............1/0 Mexico ............................18/2 Nepal ................................0/2 Netherlands ....................19/1 New Zealand ..................11/0 Nigeria ..............................6/1 Norway..............................4/0 Pakistan ............................3/5 Palestine............................1/0 Panama ............................5/0 Paraguay ..........................3/0 Peru....................................2/0 Philippines........................2/2 Portugal ............................2/0 Russia................................2/0 Saudi Arabia ....................2/3 Scotland ............................8/0 Singapore........................12/2 Slovakia ............................2/0 South Africa ......................7/1 Spain ..............................11/1 Sri Lanka ..........................2/0 St. Lucia ............................1/0 Swaziland ........................1/0 Sweden..............................6/0 Switzerland ....................24/0 Taiwan ..............................7/2 Thailand............................8/1 Togo ..................................1/0 Trinidad ............................0/1 Trinidad & Tobago ..........1/3 Turkey ..............................7/7 Turks Island ......................1/0 Venezuela ........................2/4 Vietnam ............................1/0 Virgin Islands....................9/3 Zambia..............................1/0 Zimbabwe ........................4/0 SOURCE: ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE DATA ACCURATE AS OF DECEMBER 1998 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN SWAR THMORE CONNECTIONS Upcoming Events Recent Events Chicago: Connection chair Marilee Roberg ’73 will lead a group of alumni to a performance of the “Blue Man Group” on Wednesday, April 21. Boston: Connection families visited the New England Aquarium, and others enjoyed an evening at the Improv Asylum, where Leah Gotcsik ’97 performed. Metro DC/Baltimore: Ralph Tryon ’71 will lead the Connection’s fourth annual “Christmas in April” service project on Saturday, April 24. Philadelphia: Jane Golden H’98, artistic director of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, will lead the Connection on a tour of the city’s murals on Saturday, April 17. The group will enjoy breakfast and lunch at Opus 251. UPCOMING CAMPUS EVENTS Parents Weekend April 16–18 Alumni Weekend June 4–6 Alumni College Abroad: Prague to Berlin June 13–24 Homecoming September 25 IN BRIEF Go for a swim The Class of 1999 invites all swim team alumni back to Ware Pool for an alumni swim meet and informal banquet to be held on the weekend of April 24. Contact Leisha Shaffer ’83 at (610) 543-2377. We look forward to seeing you at this once-in-a-decade event. Nominate a president MEGHAN KRIEGEL ʼ97 This issue of the Bulletin includes nomination forms for class presidents in the copies sent to members of this year’s reunion classes (class years ending in 4 or 9) and the Class of 1968. If you are in one of those classes and a tear-out form is not included in MARCH 1999 your magazine, please contact the Alumni Relations Office. Organize an event Regional Swarthmore events are run by volunteers. If you would like to organize an event in your area, please contact Katie Bowman ’94 at kbowman1@swarthmore.edu or (610) 3288404. Make a gift toll free It’s now possible to make a gift to Swarthmore by calling the College’s new credit card hotline: (800) 6609714. Gifts to the Annual Fund and all restricted funds may be phoned in on this line. Externship ... During winter break, John Gallup ’85 (right) hosted Kwabena Adu ’01 at the Harvard Institute for International Development. Adu, an international student from Ghana, took advantage of the College’s growing externship network to study the future of information technology in Rwanda. Metro NYC: David Wright ’69 and Don Fujihira ’69 hosted the 13th annual wine symposium, “The Foods and Wines of Greece,” or “The Alpha and Omega of Wine.” Two separate events had to be scheduled to accommodate the demand. Philadelphia: Ken Schaphorst ’82 and his 18-piece big band played to a full house at Lang Concert Hall on campus and afterward met the audience at a reception hosted by the Connection. Navasky to speak at Alumni Collection V ictor Navasky ’54, one of the country’s most admired journalists, will be the Collection speaker on Saturday, June 5, during Alumni Weekend. Editor of The Nation magazine Victor Navasky ’54 since 1978, Navasky became its publisher and editorial director four years ago. He also is director of the George T. Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University and does a monthly commentary on public radio. Navasky graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore, with high honors in the social sciences, and earned a law degree at Yale in 1959. Before joining The Nation, he was an editor at The New York Times Magazine and wrote a column about publishing for the Times Book Review. He is the author of Kennedy Justice and Naming Names and co-author with Christopher Cerf of The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Misinformation. 27 CLASS NOTES ARTHUR ZITO JR. ʼ81 Alumni Profile Note worthy Rosamond Walling Tirana ’31 was courted by George Gershwin. Y our letters have a way of making me happy, and, for a long time after receiving them the feeling persists. For example, the other morning, I awoke, not feeling too “hot” and was handed a stack of mail. One after another I opened the letters with the mechanical precision and expression of a robot. Then your letter loomed up and then—a smile—a sitting up in bed—a slight quickening of the pulse—a careful read of your sweet letter and the day was made for me.... Love, George This excerpt of a letter from George Gershwin to Rosamond Walling ’31 dated October 10, 1929, is just one of dozens of letters Rosamond received from the renowned composer while she was a student here. Their voluminous correspondence spans a five-year period that ended shortly after Rosamond’s marriage to Rifat Tirana in 1932, with whom she had three sons. Some letters are flirtatious; others are filled with witty sarcasm about friends or events. Most, however, chronicle activities in their respective lives and plans for their next get-together. The entire collection of mostly handwritten letters was given to the Library of Congress last year. Rosamond’s life first became intertwined with Gershwin’s when she was 9, and they met at the 1919 wedding of her cousin Emily Strunsky to Lou Paley. Gershwin, then 21 years old, was in attendance because his brother, Ira, was married to Emily’s sister, Leonore. Their worlds continued to touch, and the relationship changed from friendship to a more romantic one. They often met at family gatherings, or Rosamond would be Gershwin’s guest at a musical he had written—as was the case when she attended shows that opened in Philadelphia while she attended Swarthmore. In an interview from her New York home, Rosamond’s younger sister, Anna Walling Hamburger ’33, who attended Swarthmore for two years, remembered being a “chaperone” on one of those dates: “It was great to go to play openings such as Girl Crazy in Philadelphia or even out to lunch with them.” 30 Rosamond Walling (above, around 1931) and George Gershwin (right) corresponded and had a “very real friendship.” Anna says Rosamond and Gershwin “had a very CORBIS/BETTMANN real friendship.” She continues: “You have to understand the times in which they lived. There was no physical contact except maybe a kiss goodnight on the cheek—a peck—at the door,” she recalled with a quiet laugh. Rosamond was not only the recipient of Gershwin’s affection but also of his gifts. While at Swarthmore, Rosamond received from Gershwin one of the first portable radios. “Anna came down to my room,” said Rosamond in a recent interview at her Georgetown home in Washington, D.C. “She saw that I had the windows wide open, and my roommate and I had our coats on. She asked, ‘Why do you have the windows open?’ I said, ‘We can’t close the windows because we have to let in the airwaves.’” With a degree in history, Rosamond went to England to do graduate work at the London School of Economics but found fulfillment in painting, primarily landscapes. It was an avocation in her years with Gershwin that later became a vocation, and her work has been ex- hibited in galleries across the country. Although family members say Rosamond would never have married George Gershwin, she was one of only a few women with whom Gershwin had seriously discussed marriage and children. “Gershwin asked me to marry him several times. When I asked him why, he would always say, ‘because if you do, it would be good for my health and digestion,’” Rosamond recalled. He hadn’t said she would be good for his heart, a romantic sentiment she thought was missing and wanted to hear. Anna agrees that Gershwin loved Rosamond, but she was not in love with him. Rosamond once wrote that she believed George wanted what has now become known as a “trophy wife,” which she knew was not a strong basis for a marriage. When George Gershwin died at the age of 38 in 1937, he had never married. Today, at age 89, Rosamond can no longer easily hear the strains of Gershwin’s compositions because of a profound hearing loss, and she spends much of her day reading books. But her apartment walls are covered with fond memories. Among her own colorful paintings and those of Edward Corbett, her late second husband, are two 8 x 10 photographs of Gershwin. One shows George sitting at his piano, with the handwritten inscription: “For Rosamond with admiration and affection, George—November 29, 1928 (Thanksgiving).” Next to the words is a hand-drawn musical staff with the opening bar to “Rhapsody in Blue.” Rosamond gave the original of this photo and three other Gershwin photos to the National Photo Gallery. As the first photographs the gallery has ever had of Gershwin, Rosamond’s cherished memories are now documented for a nation. —Audree Penner SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN In My Life The word that changed everything By Philip Cooper ’57 M ost of us take words for granted. They are simply language, our vocabulary. It wasn’t until college, when I began to work crossword puzzles and had to write papers, that words, in and of themselves, began to fascinate me. I learned that each word has a very specific meaning, all its own, and could be used to communicate more exactly. A part of the quality of a word was its precision. As a boy, I had, of course, learned that “the pen is mightier than the 44 sword,” but I never fully realized the power of words until much later, after I began my business career, when it was often necessary to use words—either written or spoken—to get something accomplished. Then, when I started some serious creative writing, I discovered that words, and combinations of words, like notes or colors, could be used to create written music—or written paintings. Words were beautiful too. Now, many words have special meaning for me: love, forgiveness, God, to name a few. But there is one word that has recently changed my life. That word is “cancer.” As for most of us, this word was a part of my vocabulary, used to describe a disease that others had or a condition that needed to be cured. I had even suggested in my consulting business that some companies had “cancers,” characteristics that could be expunged only by executive surgery. It was a dramatic and effective metaphor. But no other word has had so draSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN matic or effective an impact on me as the word “cancer,” as used by my doctor when he came to greet me in the recovery room. He had performed a biopsy on my rectum, a place that had been uncomfortable for some months, and although he and some other doctors had used the word “cancer” as a possibility, each had encouraged me to believe that this spot was a fissure—not a pleasant condition but certainly repairable. I was lulled into a false sense of ease, even as I went into the operating room. I was still recovering from the anesthesia when my doctor said, without platitude or prelude, “It is cancer.” Perhaps it is just as well that I was still somewhat numb. Since then, the word “cancer” has taken on a new significance for me. It now has the power to affect me—not only on the sympathetic and understanding me that I present to others but also the visceral me, the me that lives inside me. I am no longer on the outside, looking in at cancer—an abstraction I might use in my business—but on the inside, looking out at those who are still free of what Webster’s calls, among other things, “a malignant evil that corrodes slowly and fatally.” It’s a little like the difference in the sound of a train whistle when it’s approaching and when it’s retreating. Now I feel as though “cancer” is a kind of magic password that initiated me to some special fraternity with strenuous rituals and a mystic aura, where people exchange looks like secret handshakes. I did not apply for this lifetime membership but was somehow randomly selected. The word “cancer” has also become magnetic. It glows from its previous place in the darkness of my consciousness to a brightly lit awareness where it seems to be all around me. It blinks at ILLUSTRATION BY JANE OʼCONOR Editor’s Note In My Life is a new department of the Bulletin that features first-person essays. Readers interested in submitting an essay for publication should first write for editorial guidelines. Address: Editor, Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397, or send e-mail to bulletin@swarthmore.edu. MARCH 1999 “Cancer” is a kind of magic password that initiated me to a special fraternity with strenuous rituals and a mystic aura. I did not apply for this lifetime membership but was somehow randomly selected. me from articles in newspapers and magazines, from stories I would never have read before but now devour in my hunger for information. It has drawn my friends, my family, even my neighbors to me, and me to all of them, in a new— or at least renewed—intimacy that I’m sorry we don’t exhibit on a more regular, noncrisis basis. Although I have not yet had this experience personally, I’ve learned that for some patients, cancer means the invasion of the body by an alien force. They are encouraged to visualize the marshaling of internal armies to repel this marauder. Perhaps this sensation will yet come to me, and I will practice the mental imagery of directing intense blue and healing light to the ulcerous mass two by four centimeters just inside me, on the wall of my rectum. At 63, I have habitually walked three miles a day and worked out three times a week at a gym. I still have some of my hair, not too much of a gut, and have taken a certain pride in looking and feeling somewhat younger than I am. But last week, still hobbled by my surgery, I had trouble hurrying to cross the street before the oncoming traffic. I’ve become hyperaware of the ages (many younger than mine) and causes of death (so many from cancer) in my daily scan of the obituaries. “Cancer,” glaring at me like some neon sign, has made me begin to feel old. Oddly enough, the one feeling the word “cancer” has not yet evoked in me is fear. In what I think of as a demonstration of grim optimism, my doctor told me that if I had to have cancer, this was the kind to have. It involves radiation and chemotherapy, with all the discomfort and unpleasantness that both of these therapies imply: loss of hair, sterility, impotence, incontinence. But the chances of recovery are “better than 80 percent,” he said. And as the lyrics of a popular Annie Lenox song go, “Dying is easy; it’s living that scares me today.” Ghoulish as this may sound to some, I have decided to keep a journal of this whole experience, putting into words the events and my feelings, my reflections on what happens. Somehow I find the process of articulation of the words to be cathartic. By writing all of this down, I can get this experience out where I can see it within some context. Words have now become my comfort. I’m sure that to some there are other words that may have meaning of equal or greater import—“heart attack,” “Alzheimer’s,” “stroke,” or “AIDS.” But for me, that one simple word, “cancer,” with all of its nuance and various meanings, has a newly precise and vigorous power in my life. I feel confident that I face my coming therapy with a positivism that will be effective and that I will emerge from this among the 80 percent. At that point, the word “cancer” may take on a still different connotation. But one thing is certain. Because of that word, I can never be the same again. ■ Phil Cooper lives in Baltimore. Following radiation and chemotherapy, he learned in October that he is cancer free. 45 Alumni Profile A bridge to grow on Engineer Valerie Prescott Bradford ’78 runs Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge. JEFFREY LOTT n Sept. 29, 1998, Valerie Prescott Bradford ’78 was walking in her Willingboro, N.J., neighborhood—without her pager. It was her first free afternoon away from her office since taking a new job in April 1998, and she meant to take advantage of it. While she walked, her husband, Reginald, was driving around, frantically looking for her. Their teenage son was at home, glued to the 5 p.m. news, watching live pictures of a fire high on a cable of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. “Mom, mom, the bridge is on fire,” he yelled as she came in the door. Workers 377 feet above the Delaware River had accidentally ignited materials on their work platform. Traffic was halted while firefighters put out the blaze. And Valerie Bradford, bridge manager since April, was headed back to work and stayed well into the night. On a frigid January day four months later, she pointed out the spot on the 30-inch cable where the fire had occurred—and where she had climbed the next day to inspect the damage. “There were plenty of experts up there,” she said, “but it was something I wanted to do. I’m an engineer.” She’s the first engineer, in fact, to hold the top management position at the 72-year-old span. And the first woman. And the first minority. Though she’s a pioneer of sorts, Bradford takes a pragmatic approach to advancement. “I’ve never felt hindered in my career. In every job I’ve held, I’ve had to start producing very quickly, and I’ve been judged by my performance. That’s the way the system should go.” Bradford also attributes her success to a “deep, active faith in God, who has blessed me with vigor and opportunities.” She is involved in Bible studies at her church and is a regular with the Swarthmore Alumni Gospel Choir. After nine months on the job, Bradford is clearly enjoying the new challenge. On a tour of the 7,870-foot bridge, she clambers up stairs and down ladders in a silk pantsuit and worn leather work boots. Seven lanes MARCH 1999 Back in her sunny corner office overlooking the Camden toll plaza, the energetic Bradford says that being an engineer is an asset in this job but having a liberal arts background has really made it possible for her to oversee the bridge’s $6.5 million operating budget, deal with revenue and public safety issues, and supervise a staff of 100. “It’s one thing to be able to crunch the numbers and solve the engineering problems,” she says, “but in a business setting, being able to communicate and to step back and look at the big picture is very valuable.” She’s clearly found work that combines the two passions that she says originally drew her to engineering—a desire to work with people and an interest in problem solving. The 72-year-old bridge presents plenty of problems. (Engineers call them “projects”; “I’m very project oriented,” says Bradford.) The 30-inch bundles of wire that hold up the deck have never before been unwrapped, inspected, and repaired. When that’s done, the span will need another paint job, this time blasting down to bare metal to remove eight layers of leadbased paint. Then there’s ongoing deck maintenance, electrical system upkeep, running new fiber-optic lines, rebuilding the toll plaza, and installing the new EZ-Pass electronic toll system. Bradford says her new job has “been an adjustment from being in the engineering division—the kind of challenge that makes for growth.” Near her desk is a wood plaque bearing two sturdy leather gloves and two hanks of frayed, slightly charred nylon rope. It’s handmade, but she treasures it because it commemorates her Sept. 29 cable climb. “The bridge maintenance guys gave it to me the very next day,” she explains with a smile. “It was kind of the old-boy network’s way of saying, ‘welcome to the club.’ Little things like that make this job very rewarding to me.” —Jeffrey Lott PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU O Running Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge takes more than collecting the tolls and keeping the traffic moving. It takes a Swarthmoretrained engineer. of traffic, two commuter rail lines, and a spectacular pedestrian walkway cross the river on a steel deck suspended from twin 350-foot towers. The main suspension cables are anchored in massive piers at either end, splaying out to giant eye-bolts embedded in tons of concrete. From atop the towers, says Bradford, you can see the roadway suspended on hinges that allow the whole dynamic structure to move as it shrinks from the cold and sways in the wind. We won’t go up there today, but she says the view is “breathtaking.” There’s history here too. Nestled inside the east tower is a never-used rail station, complete with a decaying tiled concourse and ticket booths. Another station was planned for the Benjamin Franklin Plaza on the Philadelphia side, where Bradford’s construction and maintenance supervisor swings open massive steel doors to reveal a three-story-deep cavern beneath the lightning-bolt sculpture that commemorates Franklin’s famous experiment. Lying awkwardly on their backs in the gloom are three 10-foot seminude bronze angels. At one time, says Bradford, they—and a fourth already crated for storage—graced fluted pedestals at the bridge entrances. 51 Books & Authors Renewing citizenship Michael Schudson ’69, The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life, The Free Press, 1998. T his is a terrific book—and I’m not saying this out of Swarthmore loyalty. It addresses a big and interesting issue, namely, the current crisis of civic disengagement. Think here of the rapid increase in nonvoting since 1960, the general indifference to politics, and the rise of “bowling alone,” to use another Swarthmore graduate’s apt term for Americans’ massive switch in how they use their leisure time. As Robert Putnam ’63, the coiner of that phrase, has found, Americans now spend a lot more of their time in front of the television, on the Internet, and at museums and sports stadiums. As a result, they no longer volunteer nor join other networks of trusting interconnectedness, such as bowling leagues and book clubs. Schudson explores the current “crisis” by examining how civic connectedness evolved before we got to our current discontent. About 95 percent of The Good Citizen is about the past, an expert tour of political practices and their underlying assumptions from the colonial period to the present. Schudson believes that we will never understand our current crisis unless we place it in historical perspective. He asks a question that is hardly obvious but is nonetheless right: What is today’s crisis a case of? If that question is properly answered, Schudson suggests, we can avoid a falsely alarmist inference that our country has turned its back on the wisdom of a lost, golden age. Our current discontent, he asserts, is actually the latest iteration of a cycle of discontent over democracy’s functioning that stretches back to the Revolution. The issues have hardly been the same, of course, from one turn of the cycle to the next; our society is too dynamic for that. But think about George Washington’s farewell address, in which he complains about the protoparties that, to him, meant a falling away from the civitas and virtue of the Foundation. Or remember the mugwumps of 54 the 1880s and 1890s, who decried their era’s political parades, vote buying, fisticuffs and brawls on election day—a day that should instead be a moment of thoughtful reflection on issues. Yet The Good Citizen offers considerably more than tales of democracy’s discontents. Most of its analysis focuses on our national accomplishments in constructing and constantly revising a public sphere—including our shifting ideas about what constitutes good citizenship. In a sense, Schudson is having a dialogue with Aristotle. Among the oldest and best political insights are Aristotle’s famous distinction between the good person and the good citizen, and his idea that citizenship varies in relation to its physical, moral, and social circumstances. Schudson shows, as Aristotle might have, that Americans have periodically re-created the circumstances of citizenship, building, for instance, a party system in one period that reached deep into daily life, then taming and reforming these same parties in the next. In periodically revising our earlier public sphere, we have not lost virtue, or what it meant to be a good person, but we have simply refashioned the context for and assumptions of citizenship. Here we get to Schudson’s most striking and daring claim: What looks like a recent flight from political involvement is actually a new kind of political involvement. We may not vote as much as we once did, but we are nonetheless being citizens when we monitor our workplaces for invidious gender or racial discrimination or when we monitor debates about Social Security and other social rights. When we push for and use such rights, we implement and animate the new citizenship. Now, if you want to be a good citizen—and gain a better understanding of what that means—read this subtle, wise, and lucid book. It will recast how you think about the political world around you and make it possible for you to find the current state of American politics a cause for both concern and satisfaction. —Rick Valelly ’75 Associate Professor of Political Science Untangled Dementia Muriel R. Gillick ’72, Tangled Minds: Understanding Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, Dutton, 1998. H ere’s the good news: If you are old enough to be reading this piece, the odds favor your living to be at least 85. And here’s the bad news: If you make it to 85, there is a 50-50 chance that you will develop Alzheimer’s disease or one of the other types of dementia that make you completely dependent on others. And you will have plenty of company. If you turn 85 in 2030, you will be one of nine million; if you turn 85 in 2050, you will be one of 19 million. Muriel Garfunkel Gillick, M.D., ’72 has written a wonderful book about Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. She is a professor at the Harvard Medical School, where she directs the Geriatric Fellowship Program and spends much of her time treating elderly people. The book takes us through the course of Alzheimer’s disease—from initial diagnosis to death—in Sylvia, an imaginary patient who is actually a composite of several people Gillick has cared for. We watch through Gillick’s eyes as vibrant Sylvia goes through the process of decomposition. We see what it does to Sylvia and what it does to her devoted family. We see in detail the difficult decisions that a family faces at almost every step of their mother’s deterioration. But we see much more than Sylvia and her kin. Chapters about Sylvia alternate with chapters that lay out the science, history, politics, economics, and sociology of dementia in particular and aging in general. We learn of much recent scientific progress on several fronts but that no clear answer is yet in sight. We tackle the question of whether dementia is really a “disease” or just “normal aging,” and we see how that question affects the politics of research support. We see how the reimbursement policies of insurance companies and the economic interests of the “medico-industrial complex” can get in the way of the most effective care of demented people. We even get a glimpse of the social construction of “aging” and see how especially painful Alzheimer’s disease is in a culture that SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN prizes individualism and independence above all else. But after each of these general discussions, we get brought back to the particular as we encounter another chapter in the end of Sylvia’s life. I have a few minor quibbles with the book. First, I don’t think the book’s title and controlling metaphor—“tangled” minds—serves well. Things that are “tangled” can get untangled and corrected. It is quite unlikely that the deterioration that characterizes dementia is reversible. Further, the cognitive nature of that deterioration suggests vacancy rather than confusion. Yes, initially there is confusion. But before too long, there is little left that can get confused. I think “hollowed” minds would be a more accurate description. Second, we see the effects of dementia on a family that seems to have all the time and money it needs to do what is necessary at every step of the process. Those effects are devastating. But one can only imagine how much more devastating it would be for a family that had neither the time nor the money to respond quickly and appropriately to every emergency. But these quibbles really are minor. Whether we are aging parents or their nervous children, this book will help us prepare ourselves and our loved ones for what may grow to be inevitable as other branches of medicine get better at keeping us alive indefinitely. —Barry Schwartz Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action Other recent books Byron Brown ’74, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself From the Judge Within, Shambhala, 1999. Brown argues we are our own worst enemies, sabotaging attempts to flourish, and suggests ways to escape self-judgment. Stephen M. Davidson ’61 and Stephen A. Somers (eds.), Remaking Medicaid, MARCH 1999 Jossey-Bass, 1998. Health care leaders identify challenges facing policy makers, with guidance on Medicaid changes. Economics, 1998. This study discusses currency changes in countries in Asia, the United States, and Europe. Joachim K. Krauss, Robert Grossman ’53, and Joseph Jankovic (eds.), Pallidal Surgery for the Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders, Lippincott-Raven, 1998. This clinically oriented book reviews the current knowledge on pallidal surgery and basal ganglia function. Edward and Andrea Packard ’85, Mayday! Bantam Books, 1998. Part of the Choose Your Own Adventure series for young readers, this story with alternative endings features an emergency landing in remote areas of Alaska. Pieter M. Judson ’78, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848-1914, University of Michigan Press, 1996. Judson follows the German liberal and nationalist political culture in Austria from the revolutions of 1848 to the outbreak of World War I. Pieter M. Judson, Wien Brennt! Die Revolution von 1848 und ihr liberales Erbe, Böhlau Verlag, 1998. This book discusses the history of Vienna and the Revolution of 1848. Dale G. Larrimore ’72, Pennsylvania Rules of the Road, West Group, 1998. A book detailing state motor vehicle code that is designed to help lawyers prepare for accident cases. Richard Martin ’67, Cubism and Fashion, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harry N. Abrams, 1998. This work shows evidence of cubist art influencing fashion designers from 1908 to the present. Ann P. McNeal ’64 and Charlene D’Avanzo (eds.), Student-Active Science: Models of Innovation in College Science Teaching, Saunders College Publishing, 1997. Articles by college science faculty and administrators present strategies for hands-on learning in the classroom. Vicki Mechner ’63 (ed.), Healing Journeys: The Power of Rubenfeld Synergy, OmniQuest Press, 1998. These personal stories illustrate ways to access the body’s wisdom and healing potential. Marcus Noland ’81 (ed.), Economic Integration of the Korean Peninsula, Institute for International Economics, 1998. Contributors examine the Korean peninsula, including economic conditions and policies, the food crisis, and refugee flows. Marcus Noland, Li-Gang Liu, Sherman Robinson, and Zhi Wang, Global Economic Effects of the Asian Currency Devaluations, Institute for International Robert H. Parks ’49, Unlocking the Secrets of Wall Street: A Noted Expert Guides You Through Today’s Financial Markets, Prometheus Books, 1998. Parks, a Wall Street economist, translates insider jargon and explains investing, speculation, and regulatory policy. Sara J. Shettleworth (Mrosovsky) ’65, Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior, Oxford University Press, 1998. This resource for students and researchers in psychology, zoology, and behavioral neuroscience describes how animals process, retain, and use information. Mary McDermott Shideler ’38, Visions and Nightmares, Ends and Beginnings: A Woman’s Lifelong Journey, Scribendi Press, 1998. The third book, exploring identity and function, in an autobiographical series describes the author’s experiences in her late 30s to middle 50s. Simon St. Laurent ’92, Sharing Bandwidth, IDG Books Worldwide, 1998. St. Laurent, a Web developer and network specialist, offers innovative ways to improve network connections. Barbara Starfield ’54, Primary Care: Balancing Health Needs, Services, and Technology, Oxford University Press, 1998. Starfield examines equity in health services and the overlap between clinical medicine and public health. ■ Attention authors The Bulletin welcomes review copies of books, compact disks, and other works by alumni. (No magazine or journal articles, please.) The editors choose featured books for review, and others receive capsule reviews. All works are then donated to the Swarthmoreana section of McCabe Library. Send your work to Books & Authors, Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1397. 55 Alumni Profile Life and limbs Relief in Africa can be as simple as a $10 prosthesis. T he 7,200 miles separating Baltimore from Kampala is only one measure of how far Ted Silver ’94 has traveled for his job with the World Rehabilitation Fund (WRF)— and probably the least significant measure at that. “Provoked,” as he says, by theorists he encountered in classes with Professor Steven Piker and inspired by the Quaker ethic so prevalent at Swarthmore, Silver knew that he had to choose a future that included traveling, interacting with people from other cultures, and making a difference in the world. By all accounts, he’s been wildly successful. After college, Silver volunteered in Zaire with the United Methodist Committee on Relief, teaching English to refugees and translating for physical therapy sessions. He developed a close friendship with a refugee named Jean-Paul, who had lost a leg to a land mine while trying to flee the genocide in Rwanda. When Silver’s volunteer stint was finished, he returned to the United States determined to send his new friend a limb. He contacted hospitals that had unwanted prosthetic limbs and arranged for them to be An artificial limb “allows kids to play with other kids, makes them healthier, sent back to the refugee camp. To and gives them hope,” says Ted Silver his delight, Jean-Paul received a ’94 (right), who directs a prosthetic limb and was able to come to America and resume his education. technology project in Uganda. “That experience—knowing him especially valuable, and Silver credits and being involved with prosthetics in his ongoing support and expertise for that way—was very inspiring to me to the success of the Uganda work. continue this work,” explains Silver. Silver is now project director of “I like to see things tangibly. I like to WRF’s Uganda Project, a grassrootstaste things so that I can understand international partnership that is bringthem. My work in the camps made me ing prosthetic technology to Ugandans. realize that I wasn’t interested in the Silver sings the praises of the “Jaipur relief effort as a massive logistical enterprise. But helping a person walk was Foot” that the project uses. “It is by far the best appropriate technology. The something I could really do.” So Silver foot itself costs about $10, is incredibly trained in the South Bronx for a year to strong and durable, is good for barebe a prosthetic orthotic technician and foot walking and farming, is watercontacted everyone he knew in Africa, proof, looks like a real foot, and is dark trying to find a way to do this work skinned. “People like it, and it works.” over there. He hooked up with Rotary WRF’s main partners are Bhagwan International, volunteering with its Mahaveer Vikland Sahayata Samiti, an limb-making project in Kigali, Rwanda. Indian organization that innovated the There he pledged to do similar work in Jaipur Foot, and Rotary International, Uganda. One contact he made, a Ugandan physician named Wanume, proved through the Rotary Jaipur Limb Pro- MARCH 1999 ject. These groups were brought together in Uganda largely by the dogged determination of Silver himself. “Giving someone a limb does more than just giving them a limb. It allows adults to support their families, it allows kids to play with other kids, makes them healthier, and gives them hope.” After nearly a year of frustrating bureaucratic delays, the project got under way in May 1998 with the training of seven local prosthetic technologists to make and fit limbs and train amputees in their use at Kumi Hospital. Within months of opening the doors to the Kumi project in eastern Uganda, 200 people were fit with artificial limbs. Another project is under way in the north, where the needs are even greater. “The choice of a local facility is really key to the sustainability of this project,” explains Silver. “We need to find an established site that has its own means of support and a good record of offering services at low or no cost, which could add prosthetics to their repertoire. “Creating this project from nothing in a developing country has taught me to be patient and learn what’s really happening, which is not always easy when you are operating in another culture.” With approximately 17,000 amputees in Uganda alone, about half of whom are victims of land mines and most of whom are extremely poor, there is a lot of work yet to be done. But Silver will continue for as long as he can: “When you sacrifice yourself to a project, you have to say, ‘whatever happens, I’m in.’” —Terri-Jean Pyer ’77 For more information on the Uganda Project, contact WRF at (212) 725-7875. 59 Letters CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 very idea of spectating at a water ballet.” So I took great pleasure in Garret Keizer’s “Swarthmore on the Line of Scrimmage.” I love the fact that President Alfred Bloom is “delighted by that entire process” of being unguardedly engaged by a perspective outside his background. This is what sets Swarthmore apart—that Al Bloom knows the joy of being taught and changed. Now I, too (who attended maybe one football game in four years), could get passionate about football at Swarthmore. I, too, “want these guys to win.” JEAN WARREN KEPPEL ’68 Tucson, Ariz. A BAD FIRST DAY To the Editor: Your article on values, Swarthmore, and football brought the following experience to mind: One of the attractions of choosing a small college was that I would be able to play football. I was not large or fast enough to consider a “big” football school, but I had played football in high school and loved it. The Swarthmore football program had fallen on hard times, and a rebuilding effort was under way. On my first day as a freshman, showing up a week early for football, the trainer took me in his office. He told me that I had not been recruited, and that though I might practice for four years, I would never get into a game. Why didn’t I try another sport, like soccer? Maybe he honestly felt I wasn’t good enough, and this was an attempt to politely dissuade me from trying. Yet in high school I had come back from having cancer to play football, and so I was ready to try to defy expectations. That evening, I went to my 62 first team meeting. My only memory is the coach telling the players that if they get in trouble with the authorities, come to him first. He said that there had been an incident the previous year, and that he couldn’t do anything to fix the problem if the administration heard about it first. That was the clincher for me. I remain friends with some people who played on those teams, and they recall a much more upbeat and supportive atmosphere. Maybe it was just a bad first day at college, but this was not the environment that I had wanted when I chose Swarthmore. Oh, the rebuilding effort was a success. Several years later, the team played for the Division III championship. GREG DAVIDSON ’83 Redondo Beach, Calif. WORKING-CLASS KID To the Editor: It disturbs me when I hear that football is incompatible with an “academic” or “intellectual” environment. Amherst and Williams colleges are surely the academic and intellectual equals of Swarthmore, and year after year they have good football programs. Larger universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford also stand out in both academics and athletics. In the late 1930s, when Swarthmore was developing its present academic reputation, the College suffered through some losing sports seasons. Some concerned alumni, including the late Thomas McCabe ’15, decided to do something about it. They organized alumni to recruit “scholar-athletes,” established scholarships, and hired some outsanding coaches, including Lew Elverson. I was offered such a scholarship. I was impressed by the alumni who encouraged me to go to Swarthmore, and many of my Swarthmore cohorts had similar experiences. Over the years, we have been active alumni. I have always been supportive of Swarthmore’s emphasis on diversity. Working-class kids (I guess I was one) represent diversity too, and I learned more about its real meaning from my sports teammates than I ever could have learned in the classroom. I am greatly encouraged by the article and its implications, and I urge likeminded alumni to get behind the programs described. JACK DUGAN JR. ’43 New Vernon, N.J. Editor’s Note: Though the College actively recruits scholarathletes (just as it seeks other qualified students with special talents), members of Division III of the National Collegiate Athletic Association are prohibited from offering athletic scholarships. Swarthmore’s financial aid is need based. ILLUMINATING TERRA INCOGNITA To the Editor: As a tree-hugging liberal egghead, vintage 1949, I had no interest in football. I still am, and I still don’t—except for its impact on stadiumbuilding cities like mine. To me, all athletics was—and still is—terra incognita. Imagine my surprise and pleasure, therefore, in finding Garret Keizer’s article to be absolutely brilliant. In the course of his writing, some of the Swarthmore “thing” has obviously rubbed off on this non-Swarthmorean. He touched so many bases so concisely and told me so many things I didn’t know. TED BROMWELL ’49 Pittsburgh REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT To the Editor: It’s both comforting and disquieting to note that some things never change—such as the football debate at Swarthmore. The answer 40 years ago was the same as it is today and will be far into the future: Swarthmore College needs football and team sports like it to keep itself attached to the earth. Without them, like a helium balloon, it would float higher and higher until it exploded of its own expanding gaseousness. Intense, physically demanding team sports bring an immediate rewardpunishment schema that balances out the heady thinking fostered by pure academia. The rounded person needs a synthesis of both perspectives. It’s really not a question of values; it’s a question of relevance. WILLIAM BOEHMLER ’60 Reading, Pa. UNIVERSAL TRUTH To the Edtor: I hope Michael Marissen’s essay (“Is religious faith incompatible with academic life?” December 1998) turns out to be the first shot in a much-needed philosophical battle at Swarthmore. Marissen poses big questions that were practically taboo during my time at the College and presumably remain so today: “Is it so difficult to imagine that intelligent, psychologically stable people might ... be inspired by genuine religious beliefs?” Then, “are our students really free” to believe and develop intellectually? Many intellectually honest, faithful students and professors answered “no” to Marissen’s second question during my time at Swarthmore. Perhaps I can shed SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN some light on why. At Swarthmore and in mass youth society, tentative agnosticism and mystic spiritualism are in; “organized” religion is out. Individual truth is in and so is “group truth.” Universal truth, upon which most religious faiths rely, is considered socially and intellectually imperialist. But Swarthmore should be interested in universal truth. Not only does it exist; it can liberate. I recall one friendly debate in 1995: “How can you believe that Christianity is true and other religions are wrong?” my agnosticatheistic companion exclaimed. “That’s totalitarian!” But by my friend’s own standard—“no single truth can prevail”—atheism (which is nothing more or less than a universal viewpoint) is just as totalitarian. Fellow students also reminded me that organized religion has a nasty, violent history based on claims of universal justice. It is threatening, they said, so it must be a bad thing. I sympathize with that perspective but only historically, not philosophically. Universal truth has been abused as justification for massacres, hatreds, and tyranny—but this only WRITE TO US The Bulletin welcomes letters concerning the contents of the magazine or issues relating to the College. All letters must be signed and may be edited for clarity and space. Address your letters to: Editor, Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397, or send by e-mail to bulletin@swarthmore.edu. MARCH 1999 proves that human beings can be deceitful and nasty. It says nothing about truth. Marissen’s essay points out that German academics say Geisteswissenschaften (spiritual/ intellectual knowledge) while Americans say “humanities.” If Swarthmore could somehow get past these prejudices and break out of the “humanities” trap, the College could be positioned to lead philosophical thought in academia and society. Can anyone observing the lame stalemate of the current culture war doubt that this is necessary? ERIC JANSSON ’96 Racine, Wis. VINTAGE NELSON To the Editor: Trust Ted Nelson to create legends about his undergraduate years. He has not lost the impishness that characterized him then. After a series of acts of vandalism in Wharton, I asked students not to protect those who were causing discomfort and inconvenience to all. If Ted really distributed the “confession” forms that he describes, no word of it reached Parrish Hall. Certainly no one returned them—much less “a couple of hundred.” This is vintage Nelson! WILLIAM C.H. PRENTICE ’37 Westport, Mass. ROMANTIC INDIVIDUALS WRITE LOUSY SOFTWARE To the Editor: Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project (“Searching for Xanadu,” December 1998) failed for reasons that are implicit in its name. In the 1990 edition of his manifesto, Literary Machines, Nelson rather disingenuously says he chose “Xanadu” for “its connotations in literary circles” as Coleridge’s symbol for a “magic place of literary mem- ory.” But most readers of “Kubla Khan” remember the poem’s pleasure dome instead as one of our culture’s preeminent metaphors for the transfiguring power of the individual imagination. Overweening romantic individualism makes for great poetry but lousy software; Nelson never invented the World Wide Web because he never really learned to collaborate. The world’s most popular Web server software (Apache) and the operating system it is most often run under (Linux) were developed the way so much of the Internet was, as collaborative projects with freely available protocols and source code modified in response to the input and needs of a multitude of users and developers. Ted Nelson will always deserve honor for helping prod the computer world to invent workable hypertext. His single-vision approach to design is somewhat less Quakerly than the vast meetinghouse of software designers out of whose consensus has emerged one the greatest triumphs of pragmatic tinkering in the history of technology. DAVID SEWELL ’76 Tucson, Ariz. REMEDY REDUX To the Editor: As readers of Bill Kent’s excellent article, “Dr. Brown’s Remedy” (February 1996) may recall, Thomas McPherson Brown ’29 was a controversial but highly successful Washington, D.C., rheumatologist who believed that arthritis, lupus, scleroderma, and similar disorders all derived from some kind of systemic infection. In a 50-year career, Dr. Brown treated about 10,000 patients, about 90 percent of whom experienced improvement or remission with his therapy, which consisted principally of oral tetracyclines (usually minocycline and doxycycline). Brown’s success in treating pernicious connective-tissue diseases was rewarded by fierce loyalty among his patients, despite his being disparaged as a heretic in the field of rheumatology. Several significant developments have occurred since the publication of the Bulletin story. There have now been seven major studies of minocycline in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), each more promising than the last, and the drug is now certified by the USP as a standard therapy for RA. Positive results have also been reported for osteoarthritis, and now the British medical journal The Lancet has reported a study at Harvard Medical School of this same therapy for the usually fatal disease of systemic scleroderma, with 82 percent of the patients substantially improved and two-thirds of those who completed the study in remission after 48 weeks. The Harvard study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and The Road Back Foundation, which takes its name from Tom Brown’s book The Road Back, which we co-authored in the last year of his life. I can hear Tom’s familiar chuckle even now—warm, gentle, and, yes, infectious. HENRY SCAMMELL Orleans, Mass. Editor’s Note: Henry Scammell is author of The New Arthritis Breakthrough, which incorporates information from The Road Back. He is also the author of Scleroderma. Both books are published by M. Evans. 63 Our Back Pages By Jeffrey Lott From “fussing hour” to coed dorms— Barbara Godfrey’s Swarthmore century H ow many readers of this magazine can say that they were born on the Swarthmore campus? Barbara Pearson came into the world in the Benjamin West House on July 5, 1910, the daughter of Paul M. Pearson, professor of public speaking. Who remembers playing on the College’s gates as a child? She grew up only two blocks from the campus and loved to watch the world go by from atop the stone orbs on Elm Avenue. How many have been lifelong members of the Swarthmore Friends Meeting? Barbara’s parents left Methodism to join the Friends, and the religion became her birthright. Who studied under such legendary professors as Philip Hicks and Frederick Manning—and called some of them “uncle?” Barbara Pearson entered Swarthmore in 1927 with a White Open Scholarship, yet she stayed only two years at the College and, in fact, never received a college degree. Barbara Pearson Lange Godfrey ’31—professor’s daughter, Swarthmore student, later director of dramatics for 14 years and dean of women in the turbulent ’60s—has observed Swarthmore College from its Quaker roots to the threshold of the new century. For most of that time, it has never been far from her thoughts. Today Barbara (let’s just call her by her first name—as she encouraged her drama students to do) lives just eight miles from campus, and I stopped by the other day to talk about ... what else? Just listen: On her two years as a Swarthmore student, before she left to study at the Yale Drama School: “My favorite course was history with Freddy Manning. The rule was that if the professor was more than 10 minutes late, we could leave, but we always waited for Professor Manning. He challenged us to know things. I was so impressed with him that I read the whole of Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. He turned everybody on.” On performing with Swarthmore Chautauqua, the traveling summer 64 theater company and cultural series founded by her father: “We performed the same play every night in a different town.... It was a worthless little play—boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.... But my father’s idea was that you gave the audience what they wanted—that was the bread of the sandwich—and the meat was the things he wanted them to have, like Shakespeare and the Renaissance plays.” On the “Pet,” a Victorian couch that sat for generations outside the doors to the Parrish Hall dining room: “It was a real hazard for women. If you wanted to go from one end of Parrish to the other you had to go past it— and all the whistles and remarks from the men. Often we would cross over on the second floor in order to avoid going in front of the Pet.” On “fussing hour,” the hour after dinner when men and women were allowed to spend time with each other: “We weren’t really supposed to be with the opposite sex except in that hour. We got together in a classroom or outdoors if the weather was nice. At the end of the hour, the bell on Trotter would ring, and we’d go off to our rooms to study.” I always wondered what that bell was for. It’s still there in its little brick cupola, but the College is so different now. Coed dorms. No curfews. Condoms at the health center, no ques- I became the enemy. It was terrible. So difficult. I just couldn’t get used to that after so many years of having a different kind of relationship with students.” tions asked. A lot of these changes began to unfold right before Barbara’s bright blue eyes. On her watch, you might say. On dormitory “open houses” (the “fussing” of the ’60s?): “Pete Thompson [professor of chemistry] and I were on a committee to discuss dormitory open house hours—when boys and girls could be in each other’s rooms. The students were plugging for four hours on Sunday afternoons, but [Dean] Susan Cobbs said two was enough. One student said to her, ‘Miss Cobbs, what can I do in four hours that I couldn’t do in two?’ And she said in her Southern drawl, ‘You could do it twice.’” It’s not apocryphal, Barbara says with a smile: “I was there. Susan had a great sense of humor.” On President Courtney Smith: “I was in awe of him. I thought he was the greatest man. But there was something I didn’t realize until one time he and I were sitting on the facing bench at the meetinghouse, getting ready to talk to the new class during freshman orientation. I said something to him and put my hand on his arm and realized how tense he was. The calm that he evinced was not real—it was just control.” On becoming dean of women in 1960: “I was asked to be dean because I was so friendly with the students. I think [Courtney] had seen my relationship with the students and thought maybe I could get something out of them that nobody else had gotten. Well, that was not true. As long as the students who had known me as director of dramatics were at the College, it was all right. But once they all graduated, I became the enemy. It was terrible. So difficult. There were young women I met in the hallway who didn’t speak to me. I just couldn’t get used to that after so many years of having a different kind of relationship with students. That’s why I gave up. I wrote to Courtney and told him the job was no longer a joy to me ... but he died before he had a chance to find a replacement.” Being the enemy was “heartbreaking,” Barbara says, shaking her head. I feel a silent pang of guilt; I was one of those ’60s kids who saw my college deans in that light. Could I have been breaking their hearts? But Barbara SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN GEORGE WIDMAN Though many remember her as dean of women in the ’60s, Barbara Pearson Lange Godfrey ’31 says she’s most proud of her 14 years as Swarthmore’s director of dramatics. She’s seated here on the stage of the Pearson-Hall Theatre in the Lang Performing Arts Center, named in honor of Barbara and her father, Paul M. Pearson, by Julie Lange Hall and J. Parker Hall III, both ’55. remembers helping them as well: “I always knew what was happening when a girl would walk into my office after a vacation and tell me she had to get a job in order to stay at the College. I knew that her parents had found out she was having sex or living with a man and had threatened to not give her any more money. The one thing I did as dean of women that I’m proud about is that I was able to keep some of these families together. One family called me from New York and said they wanted to meet me but didn’t want to come on campus. So I suggested we meet at the airport, and they told what they had found out. They were so shocked by what they had learned about their daughter, but I said don’t disinherit her because then she’s gone, and you might lose her forever. I asked them to talk with her and find out what she was doing and why. They did, and they thanked me afterward.” She smiles again, this time a satisfied smile. She still hears from some of her “girls.” Funny, the term’s not in use anymore. College students think of themselves as women and men now—and perhaps they are. That’s another one of the changes, I guess. Barbara on the best of times—her years as director of dramatics: “I’m prouder of that job than I am of being dean of women. I didn’t do anything creative as dean, but I really did as director of dramatics. I helped the students choose plays from different periods of theatrical history, different forms of plays, and I just thought it was part of their college experience to know what theater was like—and to be responsible for a performance. There was no credit for it, but the students did it all—sewing constumes, building sets, lighting, performing.” One more story, on the fun of it all: “In the mid-1950s, the Book & Key Club was trying to improve its image, and they sponsored a one-act play contest. Prizes were given by vote of the audience for the best play, the best actor—the best everything. And while the votes were tallied, the actors came to my house, where I served burgundy punch. It was very mild, but in the excitement, it sometimes got some of the people a little drunk, and the parties started to get out of hand.” This on a “dry” campus in a “dry” town, mind you. To get things back under control, Barbara decided that instead of an audience vote, an outsider should judge the plays, leaving a little less time for imbibing before awarding Barbara’s the prizes. So she suggested Judy Burgundy Kazan’s [’58] parPunch ents, Molly and 2 QTS. RED BURGUNDY Elia Kazan, and 1 PT. PORT they agreed to 1 CUP CHERRY BRANDY come. 2 CUPS ORANGE JUICE It was the best 1/2 CUP LEMON JUICE party: “Ted Nel1 CUP SUGAR son [’59], who 2 QTS. CLUB SODA had written one of the plays, came to me and asked if his mother could come to the party. I said, ‘Who’s your mother?’ and he said, ‘Celeste Holm.’ So we had Molly Kazan, the playwright, Elia Kazan, the director, and Celeste Holm, the actress. The students all sat on the floor at their feet, and that was the best party I have ever given in my house.” Did she serve the famous punch? “Oh yes,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “but I don’t think anyone got drunk.” ■ GEORGE WIDMAN O ur generation went through Swarthmore in the War Years. We were very idealistic, and Swarthmore gave our lives direction—the ability to evaluate, to put first things first. I give to the College in the hope that these ideals will continue in a new generation.” Mary Jane Felix Smedley ’43 Life Income Gift Donor M.J. Smedley’s gifts to Swarthmore pay her an income during her lifetime and will provide future support for the endowment, including the Class of 1943 Scholarship. Contact the Planned Giving Office for a financial proposal tailored to your circumstances. Call Margaret Nikelly, director of planned giving: (610) 328-8334; or Anne Bonner, associate director of planned giving: (610) 328-8629.