sun moon new different swarthmore swarthmore college bulletin | january 2009 campus view The first snowfall of the season brings students to the Scott Amphitheater for some frozen fun. Look out below! parlor talk Sun, Moon, New, Different— A Way of Expressing Change Associate Editor Carol Brévart-Demm had learned about Haichao’s talent in the Sept. 22 Daily Gazette, the student online news source. Just a few weeks into his first semester at Swarthmore—and his first month in America—the gregarious student had started a campus club to study and teach Chinese calligraphy. He told the Gazette reporter that he’d practiced the ancient art from age seven and had won national awards in youth competitions. He even wrote his college admission essay about his love for calligraphy. “If you learn to write calligraphy, you can get much more insights on culture,” he said. Haichao’s spoken English is rapidly improving, but he told us that that writing college papers in English is a laborious process. “And so many papers at Swarthmore!” he exclaimed. In China, most of his schooling had consisted of listening, memorization, and rote, with little of the analysis, swarthmore college bulletin editor Jeffrey Lott associate editor Carol Brévart-Demm class notes editor Susan Cousins Breen art director Suzanne DeMott Gaadt, Gaadt Perspectives llc ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS THERE’S NO QUESTION THAT WE ARE IN THE midst of significant political, economic, and social changes. This issue of the Bulletin looks at change in another era and another country—China. Moying Li M’82 and Linnea Searle ’84 describe their experiences with the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and the Beijing Spring of 1989. Li’s memoir (p. 24) and Searle’s journal (p. 30) show that change is not just what happens around us as events unfold, but also what happens to us. And thus our cover, a Chinese proverb that contains four characters—“sun, moon, new, different”—and means “Every day, something different.” The cover is the work of Haichao Wu ’12, a first-year student from Ningbo, China. Barely an hour after we first met in November, I was driving Haichao to South Philadelphia in search of art paper. There seemed no time like that moment to get started on our project, and Haichao didn’t seem like the sort of person who wastes a second. synthesis, and writing that is required here. So Swarthmore has been something of a shock to him—a significant change in how he learns. We told Haichao that we wanted our cover to be a broad message of change—not just “progress” or “improvement,” but fundamental change in the way people look at life: growth, maturation, insight, transformation. We circled around the concept, talking across culture and language. Exploring further, Haichao spoke with some of his fellow Chinese students (this year, the student body includes 17 from the People’s Republic) and consulted with his adviser, Haili Kong, professor of Chinese. A few days later, he brought brushes and ink to the conference room in our office. He explained how this proverb is the sort of thing you might say upon meeting a friend whom you hadn’t seen in a while. You say, “How are things going?” And she says, “Sun, moon, new, different.” Then, as we watched*, he drew the characters eight different times on several sheets of paper, studying each effort and improving their balance and symmetry. The last one became our cover. —Jeffrey Lott *You too can watch Haichao Wu as he creates the Bulletin cover. Look for a short video with this editor’s note on our Web site: media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin. staff photographer Eleftherios Kostans desktop publishing Audree Penner administrative assistant Janice Merrill-Rossi editor emerita Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 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 world wide web www.swarthmore.edu changes of address Send address label along with new address to: Alumni Records Office Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 Phone: (610) 328-8435 Or e-mail: alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu. The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume CVI, number 3, is published in August, October, January, April, and July by Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. 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 19081-1390. ©2008 Swarthmore College. Printed in U.S.A. ON THE COVER: Haichao Wu ’12 created this calligraphic cover art, which was photographed by Eleftherios Kostans. The four characters read “sun” and “moon”(at top and bottom, representing the passage of time) and “new” and “different” (at left and right, representing change—usually positive change). Taken together, they are a Chinese proverb which means “every day, something different.” 2 swarthmore college bulletin in this issue features 20 30 20: A Mind on the Right In a strident sea of liberal opinion, conservative academic Robert George ’77 found a happy home. By Paul Wachter ’97 24 24: A Song of Memories A nostalgic journey through childhood during China’s Cultural Revolution By Moying Li M’82 36 38 36: Entomylogical “Ant”ics For Carl Rettenmeyer ’53, a childhood interest evolved into a fascinating career. By Carol Brévart-Demm 38: The Neutrino Hunter In hot pursuit of the elusive neutrino, physicist Janet Conrad ’85 seeks clues to some of life’s deepest mysteries. By Dana Mackenzie ’79 34 january 2009 30: Tian’an men Diary With a bicycle, a notebook, and a little courage, Linnea Searle documented the Democracy Movement in Tian’an men Square—20 years ago. By Linnea Searle ’84 42: Dropping Out and Dropping In Three science and engineering strategies for women By Dana Mackenzie ’79 3 in this issue departments profiles 5: LETTERS Readers voice their opinions. 66: Plants Make Us Better, More Civil People Virginia Lohr ’73 has a simple message about the wide-ranging benefits of indoor plants. By Susan Cousins Breen 76 7: COLLECTION Swarthmore excels in sports, scholarship, and service. 18: FACULTY EXPERT Election Odyssey Concerns about Kazakhstan’s elections struck close to home for a Swarthmore political scientist. By Carol Nackenoff 18 45: CONNECTIONS The Alumni College Abroad is on the move again—south of the Equator and east of the Greenwich Meridian. 51: IN MEMORIAM Farewell to cherished friends and classmates 70: City View An open-minded perspective guides Kairos Shen ’87 in planning Boston’s architectural future. By Audree Penner 58: BOOKS + ARTS The Twisted Logic of War By Peter Andreas ’87 Reviewed by Kenneth Sharpe 74: When Calamity Strikes ... Engineer Nicholas Lehmann ’97 spends much of his life at disaster scenes. By David McKay Wilson 47: CLASS NOTES Alumni share their doings. 76: IN MY LIFE “Yippee!”—the reaction of Obama supporters around the world when the election results came in By Benjamin Bradlow ’08 80: Q + A It’s All About Volleyball: Harleigh Leach Chwastyk By Susan Cousins Breen on the web 70 contributors Sounds of Swarthmore: Students in M. Jade Zee's Animal Communications seminar share their observations about some of the many sounds they heard on campus this semester. swarthmore.edu/news/sounds Quasimodo in the Outback: Watch dancer and choreographer Kim Arrow in an excerpt from a work that will be featured at a dance film festival in Bangalore in February. media.swarthmore.edu/video/?p=135 Talking Sustainability: Listen to Mark Alan Hughes '81 discuss how his efforts as Philadelphia's first sustainability director can serve as a model for developing Swarthmore's green profile. media.swarthmore.edu/featured_events/?p=58 4 M oyi ng L i M ’ 84 is vice president and senior analyst with a Boston-based investment management firm. She is the author of Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of a Neighborhood, for which she received the Julia Ward Howe Award from the Boston Authors Club. In August, The New York Times Book Review named Snow Falling in Spring the Editor’s Choice, and in December, The Bloomsbury Review selected it as one of the Editor’s Favorites for 2008. LIN SHAW Also on the College Web site, you will find: PAUL MARCUS Swar thmo re Col le ge Bu lle t in on the Web: This issue and more than 10 years of archives are at media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin. L i nne a Se a r l e ’8 4 has an M.B.A. from Berkeley. In addition to her travels in China, she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon and maintains an interest in international development. She has worked in both the corporate and not-for-profit worlds and is currently consulting on a project involving mobile phones in Africa. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two sons. D ana M ack e nzi e ’ 79 always wanted to be a writer when he was a child. But he loved mathematics, too, so he took a 20-year detour: majoring in math at Swarthmore, getting a Ph.D. at Princeton, and teaching at Duke University and Kenyon College. Since 1997, he has been a freelance writer, specializing in math and science. His first book, The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be, was published in 2003. swarthmore college bulletin letters IMPATIENT FOR OBAMA “It was very, um, Swarthmore-like.” She scowled at me for a moment. I said, “No, I mean in the good way.” SWARTHMORE IN THE GOOD WAY Thank you for the excellent article on Ken Guilmartin and Music Together (“Making Music Together Again,” Oct. Bulletin). We are now putting a second child through the program and have been delighted with it in so many ways. When I first took my elder son, Duncan, to the local Music Together class a few years ago, we were unaware that it had been cofounded by a fellow Swarthmore alumnus. When my wife (Mika Hoffman ’86) got home that evening, she asked me what the program was like. I thought for a moment, trying to find the right adjective to describe the general aura of the experience of making silly, wonderful, oddly sophisticated music with other parents and 18-month-olds. I told her, “It was very, um, Swarthmore-like.” She scowled at me for a moment. I said, “No, I mean in the good way, Swarthmore-like.” So it was utterly unsurprising when we found out that Music Together founder Guilmartin was a fellow Swattie. Matt Wall ’86 Seaside, Calif. january 2009 I am not a patient person. Therefore, when Barack Obama achieved his historic victory, I wept with all those other veterans of the ’60s civil rights movement; but I couldn’t agree that I didn’t think I’d see it in my lifetime. I expected to see it way sooner! I spent the lethal summer of 1964 in the Deep South, as an activist/journalist, traveling with SNCC to all the hotspots. And everywhere we went, somebody(s) died. SNCC stood for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but don’t let that fool you. SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael and his buddies slept with rifles under their beds and drove everywhere at 80 miles an hour to avoid the locals’ favorite trick—two cars, one ahead of your car, one behind, forcing your vehicle to a stop. That’s how they got Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, whose bodies were finally found underwater in a putrid creek. But their killings were one of the few that made the news. We started in Mississippi, marching with a bunch of (incredibly brave) children, protesting their being made to go to the back of the local chicken-shack instead of the front. They raised their fists and sang “We shall overcome” as they were carried off to jail in a pickup truck, along with the three local organizers, two young men, one woman. That night, having been refused bail, the three adults were put out the door of the jail after dark, and a truckful of goons with guns drove past and cut them down. Like the rest, I did what had to be done. But you were under an unsubtle threat every moment—the sheriff ’s deputies following you with their shotguns, scowling at you in the diner, even if none at your table was black. In fact, there was a hierarchy to their hatred. Local blacks were, in fact, the least resented. More so were whites from the North. And most of all were journalists with cameras. And how did they know where we’d be and what we would be doing? The ever-loving FBI, who sat in their cars outside of wherever we were meeting, taking their pictures and using their radios to report to the Don’t think for a moment that race was the reason I worked for nearly two years to get the man elected. I never saw Obama as “the black candidate” any more than he did. local constabulary. I was grateful to be a movie reviewer at the time that that travesty Mississippi Burning was released. I could at least set the record straight for my readers. It didn’t take me long at Swarthmore to understand that we were being educated to be scholars and scientists. I was even offered two Woodrow Wilson fellowships upon graduation. I refused both, saying I knew they were meant for people who planned to teach, and I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t. Teaching demands all of a person’s energies, and my greater priority was writing. And activism. I got an M.F.A. and have published two novels, poetry, and had a play performed in Edward Albee’s workshop at the Circle in the Square Theater in New York. All of these things have been tools in the pursuit of peace and justice. Body and soul, as it were. So in some small way, I do feel I did what I could to pave Barack’s path to the White House. And it’s high time! But don’t think for a moment that race was the reason I worked for nearly two years to get the man elected. I never saw Obama as “the black candidate” any more than he did. I think we— and the world—are luckier than we deserve that a man of his intellect and political acumen has come along now, at this last minute, to rescue us from our greed. The task may be impossible, but thank you, thank you, Barack Obama, for trying. Patricia Brooks ’60 Coupeville, Wash. SUSAN COBB QUOTATIONS I’ve heard two stories from my mom, Maxine Singer ’52, about Dean Susan Cobb. I wonder whether readers of the Bulletin remember them this way? 1. When called to Dean Cobb’s office the 5 letters I’ve heard two stories from my mom, Maxine Singer ’52, about Dean Susan Cobb. I wonder whether readers of the Bulletin remember them this way? day after cooking in the Bond kitchen and serving an Italian dinner for friends, the women in question were asked: “Does spaghetti really taste better with wine?” This, because alcohol was forbidden on campus. As I heard it, the story was always repeated with a soft southern drawl, apparently Dean Cobb’s natural voice. 2. In reference to the rules about visiting hours for men in women’s dorm rooms—I think that they were not allowed after 9 p.m., or something similar—when the question was put to Dean Cobb about what might be done after 9 p.m. that could not be done before 9 p.m. Her answer was, “Nothin’, but you can do it twice.” I’d like to confirm these stories with members of proximate classes, since I am only repeating what was told to me. Amy Singer ’82 Tel Aviv, Israel The editors of the Bulletin would also like to know how alumni remember these—and perhaps other—of Dean Cobb’s witticisms. Write to us at bulletin@swarthmore.edu, or post a comment at our new interactive Web site: media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin. Mail with a stamp on it is welcome too. COMMANDING THE LIGHT BRIGADE I am appalled that anyone at Swarthmore would consider his ideal job to be commander of the Charge of the Light Brigade (“Q+A” with Ed Fuller, Oct. Bulletin). I do not oppose just wars conducted by able leaders— after all, I was at George School and Swarthmore during the debacle of Adolf Hitler. But I was in Balaklava in mid-October for geological and historical field work, and I can assure readers that the famous charge was the result of an incompetent general giving an unintelligible order that was carried out stupidly. The result was incredible loss of life 6 and the loss of field artillery the charge was intended to protect. The only commendable outcome was that for the remainder of the Crimean War, Russian cavalry refused to attack British cavalry. Your librarian should read something more reliable than Tennyson. William Halliday ’46 Nashville, Tenn. RACISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES I was consulted by a friend who was working on an intercollegiate curriculum committee reviewing social science requirements. The question was, “What needs to be added?” During my years at Swarthmore (1961–1965), the curricular battle cry was “Sociology Now”—today a moot issue, but then quite radical. My outcry now is for “The Politics of Equality,” an experiential examination of the conflicting demands of minority and identity groups as they challenge oppression. Racism and its variants (sexism, heterosexism, ageism, et. al.) require special treatment in a social science curriculum because they represent the socio-political aspect of two inescapable human paradoxes: I/Other and Us/Them. These distinctions present paradoxes in that they are both at the root of a child’s developing psychological agency and physical safety—and also, as primary examples of the ability for differentiation, they are at the very base of logic and abstract thought. Yet they are set against the central ethical tenet of philosophy and religion: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. This paradox is manifest in the term “discrimination,” which generically means the power to discern and differentiate but which historically has been implicated in injustice and oppression. In the American experience, it was prominently imbedded in the Constitution’s eloquent assertion that “all men are created equal … with inalienable rights” at the same time that genocide and slavery, religious persecution, women’s inferior status, and class disenfranchisement were accepted in the social and legal mores of the time. Because the working of these paradoxes is built into every individual’s personal and social development, sociopolitical discrimi- nation and liberation movements are not simply historical material that can be “covered.” They must be experientially understood as an aspect of human evolution that each one of us wrestles with. Students need to see how it operates in themselves and each other, how it poses difficult problems of universal principles versus ingrained beliefs, of personal knowledge and loyalty versus engagement with the personal reality of others. My outcry now is for “The Politics of Equality,” an experiential examination of the conflicting demands of minority and identity groups as they challenge oppression. The “study” of this essential material is challenging emotionally as well as intellectually. It demands intense engagement, opportunities for interpersonal exchange among both class members and instructors, and time for the development of synthesized values and perceptions that are not just to be reiterated on exams. Understanding the unavoidable confusions between personal identities and the categorical imperatives of human rights requires time, space, and focus; and it needs to be legitimated as a core activity of a liberal education such as Swarthmore purports to provide. Richard Stone ’65 Fresno, Calif. LETTERS TO THE BULLETIN We welcome your letters regarding the contents of the magazine or issues relating to the College. Please address them to Editor, Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 or e-mail bulletin@swarthmore.edu. All letters must be signed. The suggested length for letters is 300 words or less. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and space. swarthmore college bulletin collection ! k c i K a t Wha JIM GRAHAM Morgan Langley ’10 (above) and the surging men’s soccer team took Swarthmore sports excitement to the national level in 2008, winning the Centennial Conference championship and making the program’s first NCAA Division III Tournament appearance in 17 seasons. The team, (17-3-2) advanced to the third round of the NCAA tournament, defeating Rutgers–Camden and Dickinson College before falling to Amherst College by 1–0 in the quarterfinal round of 16. Swarthmore hosted the tournament at Clothier Field, where hundreds of spectators, including many local children who have attended Garnet-sponsored soccer clinics, turned out in all kinds of weather to cheer the team on. Swarthmore’s women’s soccer team also had a strong season (10-4-6), advancing to the Centennial playoffs for the third straight year and winning its second consecutive Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) january 2009 South Region championship. The previous men’s season had ended with their own ECAC South Region championship, but 2008 was to be different. Eight returning seniors, contributors to nearly 40 victories the previous three seasons, welcomed nine new players. After securing a fifth consecutive Garnet Alumni Classic pre-season title with a win over Skidmore and a draw against Richard Stockton, the national soccer establishment took notice, ranking Swarthmore in the NSCAA/Adidas top-25 poll. Swarthmore hosted the Centennial championships for the first time, welcoming large crowds. The Garnet advanced past Dickinson in the semifinals—4-2 in a penalty-kick shootout—and ended Johns Hopkins’ twoyear championship run with a 1-0 victory in the final match. As Centennial winners, Swarthmore received an automatic bid to the NCAA tour- nament—the fourth in program history (1974, 1990, 1991). In first-round action on Nov. 15, the Garnet topped Rutgers–Camden 2–0 in a driving rainstorm and then faced Dickinson for the third time this season. Dylan Langley ’10 headed in a free kick from freshman Fabian Castro in the 30th minute, enough for a 1–0 victory and a date in the sectional round. National powers Trinity (TX) University, Ohio Wesleyan, and Amherst came to Clothier Field—again selected as the site of NCAA play. Swarthmore put its 13match unbeaten streak on the line against Amherst, champs from the New England Small College Athletic Conference. The Lord Jeffs scored the lone goal of the match just before halftime, holding on for a 1–0 win over the Garnet. —Kyle Leach For more about soccer and other fall sports, please turn to p. 16. 7 collection Facing the Financial Crisis PRUDENT ENDOWMENT MANAGEMENT HAS GIVEN THE COLLEGE MORE FLEXIBILITY—AND THE BENEFIT OF TIME— BUT CONTINGENCY PLANS ARE BEING MADE FOR SIGNIFICANT CUTS IF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS DON’T IMPROVE. On Dec. 10, President Alfred H. Bloom sent an e-mail to alumni outlining “a sequence of measured courses of action” that will be undertaken by the College in the face of the decline in financial markets. He wrote that despite the College’s good record of investment success, Swarthmore “has not been immune from the effects of this decline,” having experienced an almost 30 percent drop in the endowment from its June 30, 2008, value of $1.4 billion. Bloom said that in order to “to conserve for the future the resources that past generations have so carefully conserved for us,” the College would take the following steps: • Effective immediately, the College will pull back from all nonessential construction work, refrain from initiating any new programs, and stringently evaluate any faculty or staff hiring. • In developing the annual budget for 2009–2010, to be submitted to the Board of Managers in February, we will shape recommendations on enrollment, tuition and fees, and compensation in ways sensitive to the financial environment and set guidelines on spending across departments that ensure tighter management of our resources. • Over the coming semester, we will develop a contingency plan for more significant reductions in the budget, which the College will begin to implement if by this time next year the College’s financial situation has not improved. Bloom also stated that “the College will adhere fully to its current financial aid policies for all students presently enrolled as well as for those admitted to the Class of 2013.” He concluded by expressing his confidence that “by acting together and by maintaining educational quality and regard for the people who make up this remarkable community as our priorities, we will weather this environ- 8 ment with the distinctive excellence of this college undiminished. (Bloom’s e-mail to alumni was printed in the winter issue of The Garnet Letter and may be found online at swarthmore.edu/x21728.xml. Similar messages were sent to parents of current students and to members of the faculty and staff.) Following the release of President Bloom’s message, Bulletin Editor Jeffrey Lott sat down with Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Suzanne Welsh to further clarify the College’s financial position and the impact of the world financial crisis on Swarthmore’s endowment, budget, and program. Q&A with Suzanne Welsh, vice president for finance and treasurer Bulletin: How has Swarthmore’s endowment been affected by the financial crisis? Welsh: We’ve seen the largest downturn in financial markets since World War II, so the impact on Swarthmore’s investments, like those of every one of our peers, has been significant. On June 30, 2008—the end of our last fiscal year—our endowment had a market value of $1.4 billion. Although the value fluctuates daily, we estimate the overall decline from June to December will be around 30 percent, or about $400 million. This estimate takes into account an allowance for write-downs of some of our private investments. We will not know the exact value of these write-downs until early 2009. Has the value of Swarthmore’s endowment followed market indices such as the S&P 500? In downturns, we typically perform better than the indices, and this market decline has been no exception. Although our equity investments have declined, our 15 percent allocation to U.S. Treasury bonds has preserved value in the endowment. Was Swarthmore prepared for such a decline? No one was prepared for the magnitude of recent losses, but Swarthmore entered this crisis—which really began in summer 2007—in a relatively strong, risk-controlled position. The bond allocation provides stable income during a downturn. We also converted our variable-rate debt to fixed-rate notes before the credit crisis became severe. Our equity positions were well diversified and the majority of assets in the endowment are readily sold, so that there is ample liquidity. All of this has given us flexibility and the benefit of time. How much does Swarthmore depend on its endowment? In recent years, more than half of the College’s annual budget has been derived from the endowment. Our long-term strategy is to preserve these assets and protect them from inflation while providing a constant, predictable stream of income to the budget, including to financial aid. We’ve pursued a prudent spending strategy in good times so that we can increase our spending rate in down markets. Based on current endowment values, the Board anticipates for next year the highest spending rate in the College’s history—six percent. The previous high was 5.4 percent. Will this translate into additional dollars? Not really, because the overall size of the swarthmore college bulletin Caitlin Mullarkey Wins a Rhodes Caitlin Mullarkey ’09, an honors biology major from Wilmington, Del., has won a Rhodes Scholarship for 2009—one of 32 United States citizens named in November. She is the sixth Swarthmore student since 2000 to receive this honor, which provides $50,000 a year to study at Oxford University in England. Thirty Swarthmoreans have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships since the inception of the program. Mullarkey is a McCabe Scholar and captain of the women's soccer team, which won the 2008 ECAC South Region Championship last fall. She also holds the school 5,000-meter steeplechase record in women’s track-and-field. Under the direction of her advisers, Professor of Biology Amy Cheng Vollmer and Professor Alex Theos of Georgetown University Medical School (where she spent summer 2008), Mullarkey has conducted research on a novel protein implicated in pigmentary glaucoma and glioblastomas—a form of malignant brain tumor. At Oxford, she will be at the Dunn School of Pathology—famous for the development of penicillin—working toward a graduate degree in microbiology with a special emphasis on virology. She’s already january 2009 Tell us what you can about creating the contingency plan. We’ve committed to the Board that by April, we will go back to them with a set of plans for the 2010–2011 fiscal year that will reduce spending to levels that will be sustainable long-term and protect the endowment for the future. In developing this plan, we will welcome suggestions from faculty, staff, and students—and we always welcome ideas from alumni. We will be looking for savings large and small. Whether we have to put these plans into effect will depend on the global financial situation at the end of 2009, but we want to be ready. been in contact with Dr. William James, who runs an HIV lab there, to discuss potential projects. “Although my independent research has been focused in the sphere of cell biology, I started to become interested in virology and its implications to public health after taking Amy Vollmer’s microbiology class last spring,” Mullarky wrote in an e-mail shortly after receiving news of the Rhodes: “One of the most pressing issues in global medicine, as I see it, is a renewed focus on the molecular mechanism of HIV infection. Dr. James’ lab is asking some crucial questions regarding the infection of immune cells by the HIV virus. A better understanding of how the virus invades the immune system has outstanding implications for vaccine development.” —Jeffrey Lott S Why not increase the spending rate further to meet the College’s needs? We can’t sustain a higher rate of spending without eroding the underlying value of the endowment for future generations. I call it “intergenerational equity.” Generations of philanthropy and historically rising equity markets have provided today’s Swarthmore students with significant advantages. Excluding financial aid, we spent more than Are there other pressures on the budget? It’s hard to predict what will happen, but on the income side, we may experience a decline in philanthropic support both from individuals and institutions. Many nonprofits are seeing this, although we think that Swarthmore’s supporters will do everything they can to keep this college strong. As President Bloom indicated in his message, it’s especially important to keep up our Annual Fund, because those dollars go directly to the operating budget. On the spending side, we expect to see an increase in financial need among our families. The Board has committed to maintain our current financial aid policies—including the recently instituted loan-free financial aid awards—for current students and the next entering class. Thus, we will likely need more funds to meet the demonstrated need of all our students. IOS KOSTAN Will the endowment continue to provide the same level of support? We have some flexibility for the next year, but the magnitude of the decline is beyond what our policies will enable us to tolerate over the long term. With a prudent approach to spending, including a construction moratorium and close evaluation of hiring to fill vacant positions, we can weather the current fiscal year. The following year, 2009–2010, the budget will also be very lean, but because of our stronger position going into the crisis, we can put off more significant measures until we see what develops a year from now. $80,000 per student during the 2007–2008 fiscal year—an expenditure that provides for a low student-faculty ratio, outstanding facilities and services, and first-rate academic and laboratory resources. In addition, half of our students currently receive loan-free financial aid awards that meet all of their demonstrated need. If we were to dip further into the endowment during these difficult times, we might be able to sustain the current level of expenditures for a few years—but not for what we must think of as the infinite life of this institution. This generation would have taken more than its fair share of our resources, leaving future generations with a diminished College. ELEFTHER endowment has declined so much. The spending rate is actually a little misleading because, in actual dollars, endowment support of the budget will not change much from this year—and may be lower. 9 collection 10 OUT OF THE CLASSROOM AND INTO THE WOODS— AND BACK ELIZABETH HAEGELE How many of us know that when you touch the seeds of a jewelweed plant (also known as touch-me-not), they’ll explode with a “pouf!” under your fingers? Allison Jordan ’09 didn’t either, until she came upon the plant and its interesting property while walking in the Crum one day, doing research for an assignment in Professor of English Literature Elizabeth “Betsy” Bolton’s course Writing Nature. Jordan, a four-year Garnet swimmer, says: “I’m really passionate about swimming, and when I saw the plant explode, it reminded me of swimmers diving off the starting block.” She went on to write a paper comparing the swimming strokes freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, and breaststroke with four parts of the plant. “It was one of my favorite papers to write, because, in doing it, I actually got to share something I really care about with the other course participants,” Jordan says. This semester, Bolton is teaching the popular course for the fourth time since 1998, when, as a member of the Environmental Studies (ES) Planning Committee, she first offered it in response to a need for more humanities-based courses in the ES program. It also helped fill a need in the English Department for “half-workshops,” where coursework is divided between literary analysis and creative writing. “I’d wanted to teach a pair of classes—an introductory course called Reading Nature—and then the halfworkshop Writing Nature, but the reading course just never happened,” Bolton says. So, using The Norton Book of Nature Writing by John Elder and Robert Finch, class members read and analyze literary samples demonstrating journal writing, nonfiction prose, poetry, and experimental fiction. “You can’t write if you don’t read,” Bolton says. “Those two things are always combined. If you want to write about Nature, you have to have a sense of the literary models as well as a sense of natural history—and, of course, you have to have some writing background,” Bolton says. The students also hike in the Crum. Then, having collected impressions and observations from their field walks, they create their own versions of various nature-writing styles. Bolton has appreciated the field assistance of Scott Arboretum staff, particularly Educational Coordinator Elizabeth Haegele, who has guided the students through the Crum Woods to see and reflect on Nature in action. Haegele was delighted to assist in the course, profiting from the opportunity to engage with the students as well as with Bolton. “Working at the Arboretum, it’s easy to feel disconnected from the student body and the academic work, so when the chance arose for me to actively participate in a course and get to know the students and work with Betsy , I jumped on it,” she says. “We split the Crum into different sections and introduced the students to new plants, animals, and concepts within each area. We taught them about wetlands in Skunk Cabbage Hollow and geologic history at Alligator Rock. Being part of this class has been one of the best things I’ve done since coming to Swarthmore,” Haegele says. Filling in for Haegele one session, Horticultural Coordinator Jeff Jabco revealed to the students that the dividing line between the Piedmont plateau and the Atlantic Coastal Plain runs through campus, stretching in front of Parrish Hall and along past Class participant Gage Newman ’11 says, “The most rewarding part of Writing Nature has been gaining a sense of place here in Pennsylvania, understanding how this area came to be the way it is and how we can manage it.” Wharton Hall. “The College is situated in a very interesting place, so there’s a lot of richness for the course,” Bolton says. Because the course offers such diversity of content as well as being suitable for both English and Environmental Studies requirements, students choose it for a variety of reasons ranging from a desire to focus seriously on writing; to a love of the Crum and wish for “more in-depth Nature study than dissecting owl pellets in fourth grade”; to exploration of the ways people write about science and natural phenomena; to classmates’ recommendations of Bolton’s teaching style. Jordan says: “I’d never been in a writing seminar before, and I’ve enjoyed that we edit each others’ work. I had fun on the hikes and getting to know people in my class. It’s really connected me to the College. It’s one of the best classes I’ve taken.” —Carol Brévart-Demm swarthmore college bulletin KELLY WILCO X yeah! it’s a parlor party! Felicitaciónes! In a ceremony on Aug. 20, Swarthmore Centennial Professor of Sociology Braulio Muñoz was named Profesor Honorario at the Ricardo Palma University in Lima, Peru. In acknowledgement of this honor, as part of the ceremony Muñoz gave a lecture titled Lo concreto y lo universal: el caso de la communidad académica, which will be published in the university magazine. As an honorary professor at the university, which boasts an enrollment of 20 thousand students, he will be permitted to attend sessions of the Consejo Universitario (university council) to participate in institutional planning and have privileged access to all events as well as to university libraries and laboratories. Moreover, the university press will translate and publish many of his sociological and literary works. —Carol Brévart-Demm january 2009 During a time when binge drinking on college campuses nationwide is more-or-less a given, a refreshing new program is gaining momentum at Swarthmore, as many students reject tipsy, trashed, or toxic in favor of fed, fun-filled, and safely friendly. Assistant Director of Student Life Kelly Wilcox ’97 had been seeking to accommodate the needs of a number of students who were feeling uncomfortable at social events where alcohol is served. Last spring, after attending a conference on the role of alcohol on college campuses, Wilcox formed the Social Scene Advisory Committee, consisting of students representing campus social, religious, and athletic groups who were interested in organizing events that did not involve alcohol. Supported by an anonymous gift, Wilcox and other staff members from the Office of Student Life initiated a program of social events last spring that, rather than using alcohol as a social ice-breaker, focuses on nonalcoholic activities while furthering relaxed interaction among students. Students are encouraged to host themed events—often food-related—in Parrish Parlors. The “Parlor Parties” have revolved around chocolate (including a chocolate fountain), sushi-making, cookie-decorating, Mexican food, Korean ramen, and a pie-eating contest–the last of which drew a crowd of about 150 pie lovers and spectators. Other events have included Election Night and an Athletic Jersey-Wearing Night. The only stipulation, Wilcox says, is that themes must remain lighthearted—“no heavy issues.” “Various groups can use this venue as a way to expose what they do in a low-key atmosphere,” she says. “It’s supposed to be fun. I really think that people come just to relax or even just to grab a bite to eat, so it’s great that many of the cultural groups are starting to serve their own food. The food is definitely a draw.” Wilcox stresses that the goal of the program is not to detract from any of the other student-run social events on campus. “It’s more a case of increasing the options,” she says, adding that all kinds of students attend the Parlor Parties. “Some may be finally finding here the social group they’ve always longed for, i.e., nondrinkers; for others, this may be a kind of balancing-out of their social lives.” Initially occurring on Friday evenings, the gatherings have been taking place twice a week—on Thursdays and Saturdays—since the fall, in response to increasing demand and in consideration of students’ religious or cultural obligations. With every Thursday and Saturday booked up through the spring semester 2009 and an average attendance of 75 to 150, the Parlor Parties are fast becoming a fixture of campus life. “There’s definitely more going on socially here than just drinking,” says Wilcox. —Carol Brévart-Demm 11 COURTESY OF ANNA BAETH collection receive a donated bike each, on which, guided by instructors, they learn and practice repair, reconstruction, and maintenance. Upon completion of 20 hours of (7/30/20088/5/2008), in all, classroom and cycling 120 bikes and cash time, they are donations totaling allowed to $1,000 were keep the “If we could get more people on bikes, the planet collected. bikes along would be healthier,” says Kelly Wilcox, Baeth’s former Once catahockey coach. “This program brings people together for with a bike logued a common cause, and that’s what Anna does on the lock, a helaccording to field, too—she brings people together.” met, and a type, wheel water bottle. size, make, “The nice part model, and serial about this project,” Baeth number, the bikes were says, “is that it has many rewards for transported to the Chester YWCA, the headboth volunteers and members of the Chester quarters of CNBW. community. A few of my biggest hopes are Among the volunteers helping Baeth were that it first empowers students by giving her parents and sister from Maryland; Assisthem the useful skill of bike repair as well as tant Director of Student Life and former a safe—not to mention fun—physical activiHead Women’s Field-hockey Coach Kelly ty. I also hope that it brings people from Wilcox ’97, who coached Baeth; Professor of the different communities—Chester, English Literature and cycling enthusiast Swarthmore, cyclists, activists, and so on— Peter Schmidt; and several fellow students. together.” An Earn-a-Bike program for 10- to 17—Carol Brévart-Demm year-olds, running twice a week for six Based on John A. Wright’s “Conservation and weeks, trains groups of six students at a time Safety Promoted by New Bike Program,” in the benefits of exercise, a healthy diet, and Chester Spirit, 7/30/2008–8/5/2008 bike safety and maintenance. Students The Wheels of the Bike Go ’Round and ’Round One Saturday last July, the parking lot of the 320 Market and Café on South Chester Road was full—not with cars, though. People from the Swarthmore borough and surrounding area flocked to the lot to deposit bicycles they no longer needed, many of which had seen better days—some even missing parts. The bikes were donations to Chester Neighborhood Bike Works (CNBW), an organization founded and directed by Anna Baeth ’09 and supported by a Swarthmore Foundation grant from the Lang Center of Civic and Social Responsibility. Using the bikes as incentives, Baeth aims to foster enthusiasm for healthy recreation among the young people of Chester by teaching CNBW participants how to rebuild, repair, and maintain the bikes that they are then allowed to keep. She decided to start CNBW after interning last summer with Neighborhood Bike Works in Philadelphia, whose goal is to encourage cycling as a means to conserve energy as well as offering instruction in cycling safety and repair. According to an article by John A. Wright in the Chester Spirit weekly newspaper 12 swarthmore college bulletin On Thursday, Sept. 18, Professor of English Literature Melinda Finberg’s first-year seminar Battling Against Voldemort was filmed by MTV as part of a segment on the phenomenon of Harry Potter books appearing in College curricula. The class, which studies J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series in addition to a number of other related texts such as J.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings and Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy, attempts to “understand why we are so driven to invent stories about battling inhuman powers to learn what it means to be human,” according to the course description. It was filmed as an example of the use of Harry Potter in an English literature class. At other schools, MTV filmed the books being used in other academic disciplines such as religion and history. Only one cameraperson stayed in the room with the students while they discussed the fifth book of the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “The filming was as smooth as could be,” Finberg said. Although most students agreed that being filmed during class was strange at first, they didn’t feel that it was a complete disruption. “It was kind of awkward to begin with, but once we really started our discussion, it was good—very intense,” Owen Masters ’12 said. Battling Against Voldemort, which Finberg taught last year as well, is very popular and is consistently over-enrolled. Finberg says that she has “always been fascinated by myths and why we feel the need to tell stories over and over again.” She explains that the first semester she taught the course, she had been “very ambitious” and used a wide variety of related texts but that the course now focuses primarily on 20th- and 21st-century myths, enabling the class to think more easily about the socio-historic context of the Potter books. The English Department is not the only one to profit from J.K. Rowling’s popular series. William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science Kenneth Sharpe says he uses it regularly in his Reason, Power, and Happiness course as well as the Practical Wisdom seminar Bush Leaguers During the fall election campaign, McCabe Library played host to Bush Leaguers: Editorial Cartoons Take on the White House, a traveling exhibit of nearly 100 original cartoons by members of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists. Curated by Rob Rogers, cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the show kicked off in October with a panel discussion featuring Rogers and Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonists january 2009 he teaches with Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action Barry Schwartz. “We use it to get at why rules are not sufficient for ethical action because what is missing is practical wisdom; and we look at how Harry, Ron, and Hermione learn practical wisdom through the experiences of making mistakes and the guidance of mentors like Dumbledore,” Sharpe says. —Adapted from “MTV films and showcases new Harry Potter seminar,” by Alexander Rolle ’12 , The Phoenix, Sept. 25, 2008 JEFF STAHLER/THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION WHEN HARRY POTTER IS IN THE CLASSROOM, CAMERAS ROLL Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News, and Tony Auth of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Taking on everything from the Iraq War to the role of Vice President Dick Cheney, the cartoons were almost uniformly negative regarding the outgoing administration. College Librarian Peggy Seiden reported a few complaints alleging political partisanship, especially because the display coincided with the presidential campaign, but she explained that Bush Leaguers was the latest in a long series of exhibits and programming sponsored by the library in an effort to highlight the importance of free speech. “Cartoonists have a long tradition of lampooning the incumbent in the White House,” Seiden said. “We’re recognizing the role that political cartooning plays in public debate about the choices our leaders make.” —Jeffrey Lott 13 collection This fall, in response to growing interest in interfaith text study, a new Scriptural Reasoning (SR) group became a permanent and regular fixture on campus, meeting at least three times each semester. The practice of friendly dialogue about scriptural texts among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was first demonstrated at the College during A Week of Religion on Campus in February 2007 (see June 2007 Bulletin), when members of the campus community filled Kohlberg Hall’s Scheuer Room to hear three faculty members discuss renderings and interpretations of creation texts from the three traditions. The popular session led to subsequent occasional informal gatherings and a wish to form an official group. In September, to help train the nascent group in the practice of SR, Arabic Language Instructor Yamine Mermer brought to campus Professor of Religious Studies Peter Ochs, a University of Virginia faculty member and leader in the SR movement under whom she had previously studied. Swarthmore faculty and staff members Mermer; the Rev. Joyce Tompkins, campus interfaith coordinator and Protestant adviser; Professor of Religion Mark Wallace; Part-time Visiting Instructor of Religion Rabbi Helen Plotkin ’77; Jewish Adviser Jake Rubin; Assistant Professor of Religion Tariq al-Jamil; Lecturer of Arabic Sawsan Abbadi; and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion Elliot Ratzman as well as four students from each tradition assembled in Bond Hall for a seven-hour discussion that focused on Eve and the Garden of Eden. “It was a long session because we were also being trained in SR, not just doing it,” Tompkins says. Since then, the group, which plans to meet three times each semester, has discussed the story of Noah and the Flood and was anticipating a November session on Jonah and the Whale. Wallace sums up the group as “a spirited gathering of students and scholars identified with the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who meet to discuss stories common to their three 14 sacred texts—Bible, new testament, and Qur’an—in an open and nonsectarian setting. Our different scriptures exhibit parallel interests in key themes and personalities shared by all three traditions. What’s interesting to us is how the narratives are told and retold according to the different theological concerns.” Since September, the group has grown to 22 members, and enthusiasm among participants is running high. “It’s a very intimate activity, and the intimacy transforms people who were strangers STUART WATSON Not Consensus But Friendship —and texts that seemed strange—into friends,” Plotkin says. Mermer agrees. “SR is about “not consensus but friendship,” she says. “Participants respect the differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and they don’t avoid disagreement as long it is friendly.” Students from the three religious traditions perceive the sessions as a way of gaining further insight into their own traditions by learning more about the others. “The perspectives of other faiths have led me to new and diverse interpretations of texts I have previously taken for granted, and these enrich my Christian beliefs,” says Anson Stewart ’10. Muslim student Ailya Vajid ’09 also values what she perceives as a unique opportunity to listen to the scriptural interpretations of members of other faiths. “Learning about the way someone from a different faith interprets a text from that faith sheds light both on that particular text and on the overarching themes present in each faith tradition.” And Jewish student Jessa Deutsch ’10 is enjoying her first exposure to the Christian Bible and the Qur’an: “One of the really cool things about the discussions is that we really The Rev. Joyce Tompkins values the existence of the SR group as a positive sign in a time when religion is seen so widely as a force for division and violence in the world. aren’t bound to the texts. We interpret them and act as if they were in conversation with each other, keep ing in mind especially the chronological order of when they were ‘published.’” Tompkins values the existence of the group as a positive sign in a time when religion is seen so widely as a force for division and violence in the world. “This is such a clear example of Swarthmore at its best and religion at its best, and those are not two things that people often put in one sentence,” she says. “It’s a very happy union of the two.” —Carol Brévart-Demm swarthmore college bulletin YOUNGIN CHUNG ’11 The observance of Ramadan, which occurs during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar—this year from Sept. 1 to 30—requires Muslims to spend time in reflection, prayer, and daily fasting from sunrise to sunset. Typically, they rise before dawn to eat and then wait until the sun has gone down for their next meal. On a campus where food is abundant and academically demanding classes require concentration, Swarthmore’s Muslim students exert self-control to remain alert despite being hungry. To enable them to eat when sunset occurs after the Dining Hall has closed for the night, Dining Services provides bagged meals or the students dine in Essie Mae’s snack bar. The end of the fasting period is marked by Eid al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the Fast, hosted on campus by the Muslim Student Association in Upper Tarble (see photo) . This year, for the first time, the 2009 Swarthmore College Calendar will indicate the beginning of Ramadan. According to a 2007 Pew Research Center survey, the American people are almost evenly divided over the construction of a 700mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border by the Department of Homeland Security. Professor of Anthropology Miguel Díaz-Barriga and fellow anthropologist Margaret Dorsey spent last fall in South Texas, documenting the construction of the border wall and its impacts on the culture, the environment, and immigration policy. The title of their blog “A Nation Divided” refers not only to the division within U.S. society over the border fence but also to the ways that Mexican-American residents of South Texas articulate pride in Mexican culture while also fully identifying with and belonging to the United States. “For many residents of South Texas, the most pertinent divide is that with national policymakers who do not appear to understand border culture and the Lower Rio Grande Valley itself,” they write from their field site in Hidalgo County, where they report that local “mayors, public officials, and residents express strong opposition” to the fence. They also report that the election january 2009 GETTY IMAGES/DIANE COOK AND LEN JENSHEL A Nation Divided There’s a saying in the borderlands that if you build a 50-foot wall, someone will get a 51-foot ladder. This ladder was placed by ranchers to enable the illegal crossing of Mexican workers near Nuevo Laredo. of Barack Obama, widely hailed among Mexican Americans in South Texas, does not necessarily mean an end to the construction: “There is much speculation in the Rio Grande Valley about what position president-elect Obama will take on the wall and the best means for influencing his administration,” they reported after the election. You can read more of “A Nation Divided” at blogs.swarthmore.edu/borderwall. —Jeffrey Lott 15 RAY SCOTT sports Women’s soccer (104-6, 5-1-4 CC) The Garnet women won a second consecutive Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) South Region championship, appeared in the CC playoffs for the third straight season, and beat the top-ranked team in Division III, winning 4-3 at the College of New Jersey in a nonconference game —the Lion’s second home loss in 10 years. Four Swarthmore women made All-Centennial: with seniors Cait Mullarkey and Lauren Walker named to the first team, and sophomores Megan Colombo (team-high 17 points) and Laura Bolger to second team and honorable mention, respectively. Mullarkey was the first back—and fifth player in CC history—to earn first-team All-Centennial honors four times. Mullarkey, Bolger, and Walker anchored a defense that ranked in the top 30 nationally in goals-against average (0.56), goals-allowed (12), and shutouts (13). Mullarkey became the 17th Swarthmore athlete to win a Rhodes Scholarship (see p. 9), was named ESPN the Magazine Academic All-America and selected to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area team for the second time. Walker closed out her stellar career among the elite goalkeepers in the nation, 16 making All-CC first team for the second consecutive season and being named ECAC South Region Tournament Most Valuable Player. She ranked in the top 30 in goalsagainst average (0.55) and save percentage (.883) for 2008 and concluded her career with 28 shutouts, second-most in CC history. Men’s soccer (17-3-2, 8-1 CC) Swarthmore concluded one of the best seasons in program history, setting school records for wins, CC wins (eight), and shutouts (13) and scoring the most goals (44) in 15 years. The Garnet completed a clean sweep in October, allowing just three goals in seven matches on the way to securing the top-seed and right to host the 2008 Centennial Championships. (See p. 7 for more.) The season was peppered with outstanding performances and accolades. Freshman goalkeeper David D’Annunzio tied a school record with nine shutouts (accomplished twice by Andrew Cavenagh ’92), and senior forward Evan Nesterak concluded his career ninth all-time at Swarthmore in points (46) and goals (22). Emergency goalkeeper Jason Thrope ’09, stepping in later for the injured D’Annunzio, and classmate Yoi Tibbetts (who had two gamewinning goals in one week) received Conference Player of the Week honors after a 3-0 win against Gettysburg. JIM GRAHAM Stellar Seasons for Soccer More Conference honors showered on the Garnet men at the conclusion of the regular season. Wagner was named Centennial Coach of the Year by his fellow head coaches, and four players were selected All-Conference: Nesterak and defender Jeff Kushner ’09 swarthmore college bulletin AURORA IMAGING JACOB MROZEWSKI ’11 LUCY B. FOERSTER JACOB MROZEWSKI Clockwise from top left: Garnet women’s soccer players (l to r) Alexa Bensimhon ’09, Caitlin Mullarkey ’09, Lauren Walker ’09, and Melinda Petre ’09 celebrate winning the ECAC South Region Championship. Volleyball captain Jen Wang ’09 ranked in the top 25 in digs per set this season. Dan Hodson led the Garnet men’s cross-country squad to a fifth-place finish at the DeSales Invitational. Field-hockey captain and midfielder Ashley Gunter ’09 was selected to the All-Centennial Second Team. Bess Ritter ’09 and Nyika Corbett ’10 share space with an alumna (center) at the 2008 Alumni/ Alumnae Cross-country Meet. Men’s soccer teammates Micah Rose ’12, Ladule Lako LoSarah ’12, and David Sterngold ’12 enjoy one of many moments of success during one of the Garnet’s best soccer seasons ever. january 2009 made first-team, and brothers Dylan Langley ’10 (second team) and Morgan Langley ’11 (honorable mention) were the first male siblings to make the same All-Centennial squad. Also excelling off the field, the Garnet men put three players on the Conference Academic Honor Roll. Nesterak and Thrope were also selected to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area team, by the Philadelphia-Area Sports Information Directors Association . Volleyball (6-19, 2-8 CC) Garnet senior captains Erin Heaney and Jen Wang completed their four-year careers in record-setting fashion. Wang, an outside hitter, was named AllCentennial for the second time, earning second-team status after ranking in the top 40 in Division III in kills per set (3.75), setting new school records for kills in a season (360) and career kills (1,171). Wang played a large part in a Garnet defense that ranked in the top 25 in the country with 19.32 digs per set, ranking 12th with 3.44 digs per set. She completed her career with 1,362 digs in 105 career matches, earning a spot in the top25 all-time in the CC. Heaney, the team libero, finished her career by breaking the school record for career digs (1,560), ranking 14th all-time in the Centennial Conference. The two-time captain is a three-time Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll selection and the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic Performer of the Year for 2008. Freshman outside hitter Genny Pezzola led the Centennial in service aces (0.65 per set) and finished in the top 10 in kills (3.17 per set) and digs (team-high 4.19 per set). Men’s cross-country (seventh at CC Championships) Erik Saka ’09 placed in the top 25 at the competitive Conference championship meet, posting a season-best time of 26:53.85 and then hit the top 50 as Swarthmore placed 19th at the NCAA Mid-East Regional. Classmate Dan Hodson led the Garnet men to a fifth-place finish at the DeSales Invitational early in the season, crossing the line fifth out of 180 competitors. Women’s cross country (fourth at CC Championships) The Garnet women brought home the championship trophy at the 2008 Seven Sisters meet hosted by Smith College—for the second time in program history. Junior Nyika Corbett finished second out of 72 runners, followed by freshman Melissa Frick (third) and senior Bess Ritter (seventh); all three women were named All-Tournament. Frick also earned All-Centennial status with an eighth-place finish (23:03.17) at the Conference Championship meet. Corbett led Swarthmore to a seventh-place finish at the Mid-East Regional in Waynesburg, Pa., earning All-Region status for the third consecutive year. Senior Emma Stanley was named to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area cross-country team. Field hockey (5-13, 1-9 CC) Captain and midfielder Ashley Gunter ’09 was selected to the All-Centennial Second Team. A key starter in the Garnet midfield for the past three years,. the senior led Swarthmore with eight assists this season, tied for sixth in the conference. Gunter finished with 12 points, third-best on the Garnet. Senior forward Natalie Stone earned her second consecutive selection to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area field hockey squad. —Kyle Leach 17 faculty expert Election Odyssey SOME CONCERNS ABOUT KAZAKHSTAN’S ELECTIONS STRUCK AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENTIST. By Carol Nackenoff, professor of political science ON OCTOBER 9, I LEFT THE UNITED STATES on a remarkable journey. Just three weeks earlier, Natasha Franceschi ’96 had e-mailed Swarthmore’s Political Science Department, asking if we had a faculty member who could speak about the upcoming United States presidential election—in Kazakhstan. Natasha, who had taken my American Politics class in fall 1992 (the first semester at Swarthmore for both of us), is cultural affairs officer in the U.S. Embassy in Astana. Associate Professor of Political Science Keith Reeves ’88 and I were co-teaching the American Elections class, but I was the one who could get away during fall break. The expedition confounded any preconceived notions I may have had about this huge Central Asian country. I returned profoundly impressed by the people I met and the future I believe they have as a nation. Kazakhstan, the ninth largest country in the world (about the size of all Western Europe) is a peaceful nation noted for religious tolerance. About half the population is Muslim and half Russian Orthodox. I visited four cities, flew over miles of flat, agricultural land, and saw varied and rich produce in colorful markets. Almaty, the former capital—once known as Alma-Ata or 18 AFP/GETTY IMAGES CLOSE TO HOME FOR THIS “father of apples”—was my first stop. Situated close to the border with Kyrgyzstan, Almaty has a mild climate compared to more northerly cities and is European in character. Astana, my second stop, is the glittering new capital city, selected for its more central location. It has been transformed from a sleepy mid-sized city to a rather fanciful seat of government. (The presidential palace might be described as the White House on steroids, with a blue dome on top.) Astana is expected to become the home of more than a million people, but construction cranes are, sadly, motionless, brought to a standstill by the global financial crisis. From Astana, I traveled southeast over good roads to Karaganda, a coal mining area that was home to gulags under Stalin. Labor camps provided workers for the mines and for building much of the city, but I was told about another aspect of the region’s camps. Dissident writers, artists, and musicians were sent to camps in this region, and many stayed in the area, giving Karaganda a rich cultural life. I also flew to Costanai, a charming northern city not far from the Russian border, where I was treated to a performance of music and dance before my first talk. Kazakhstan was the last breakaway repub- lic to declare its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, becoming the Republic of Kazakhstan in 1991. It was interesting to see how deeply invested young people are in the independent states of the former Soviet Union, including Georgia and Ukraine, but also in Russia itself. They asked many questions about the U.S. presidential candidates’ stances on the Russia-Georgia conflict. Their information generally came from Russian media and their sympathies tended in Moscow’s direction. Although Kazakhs may have been the last to leave the Soviet fold, they were among the first to stage a mass protest against Russia. In 1986, 30,000 Kazakhs took to the streets to protest Russia’s appointment of an outsider as the Communist Party leader. The Soviets reacted with force and Kazakhs claim there were a number of deaths and many injuries. Nursultan Nazarbaev became first secretary of the party in 1989 and has ruled ever since, now as the elected president. Nazarbaev remains a largely popular leader. I would not be surprised if Astana—which simply means “capital”—were renamed after Nazarbaev at some point in the future, since it was his project and vision. Kazakhstan is friendly toward the United swarthmore college bulletin States and continues to rotate troops into Iraq as part of the coalition force. Kazakhstan is also of great interest to both the United States and Russia because of its vast oil reserves in the western region, near the Caspian Sea. The country is expected to produce 2.5 to 3.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2015. Chevron and Mobil are among the American oil companies that have invested heavily in developing the country’s energy resources. Piping oil out of Kazakhstan—and to uine democracy. Kazakhstan is slated to take over the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE] during 2010. Criticism of Kazakhstan’s elections by the OSCE Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights—and by the United States—has centered on transparency and accountability, but a Kazakh working group to reform electoral legislation has produced no concrete results. One OSCE goal is to end electronic voting because it does not provide sufficient trans- COURTESY OF CAROL NACKENOFF Kazakhstan was the last breakaway republic to declare its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, but among the first to stage a mass protest against Russia. Nackenoff (center, with glasses) and some of the students she discussed the American elections with during her State Department–sponsored lecture tour in Kazakhstan whom—are major international political issues. Kazakhstan also has large reserves of natural gas and is beginning to become a net exporter. Many Kazakh students studying English aspire to “go west” as translators in the booming oil and natural gas industries. Before arriving, I read a recent Freedom House “Progress Report” on Kazakhstan’s efforts to respond to international criticisms concerning free and fair elections. I wanted some idea of what might be on the minds of students, journalists, and others as we thought about comparative perspectives on American and Kazakh elections. Many middle-class Kazakhs appreciate their nation’s strong economic growth but want more genjanuary 2009 parency and accountability. Foreign observers—and many Kazakhs—believe that recent election returns in Kazakhstan have been manipulated. Another measure of transparency demanded is access to voter lists so that they can be verified. International criticism has also focused on protocols for vote counting. The OSCE wants Kazakh electoral processes to be monitored by international observers and a new electoral commission in which all political forces can participate. The OSCE is also concerned about freedom of the media to report and criticize and about barriers placed in the way of opposition parties seeking to organize and participate in elections. Some of the concerns about Kazakhstan’s elections struck close to home for this political scientist. Transparency and accountability of new voting technologies, proprietary rights to source codes for voting machines, and similar issues are concerns for Americans, especially in the aftermath of the presidential election in 2000. I had placed on reserve for both of my fall classes (American Politics and American Elections) the documentary film Hacking Democracy, a look at how easy it was for someone to alter the output of voting machines without the knowledge of poll workers so that a vote for one candidate would actually be recorded as a vote for a different candidate. Students of American politics are also aware that registration rules, practices for voting roll purges, and maintenance of voting lists are so decentralized in the United States that eligible citizens are often turned away from the polls. Although some Kazakhs thought American elections were ideal, I felt obliged to point out a few of these issues we struggle with. One question I got from a student in Costanai concerned what international observers say about American elections. I did not know at the time that, in 2004, OSCE observers in Florida had said that they had less access to the polls than in Kazakhstan. I gave two or three talks a day, speaking with graduate and undergraduate students studying law, international relations, foreign languages, and journalism. I was impressed with the number of fine schools I visited and their inquisitive, smart students. I also gave a talk and had a lively discussion with seasoned print journalists in Almaty. (We used a translator for all but a few audiences.) One of the most memorable sessions was the first, held in a basement that served as headquarters for Sunday afternoon meetings of a society of young professional leaders of NGOs. These young men and women, some of whom had staged a protest and gone to jail for greater freedom to organize opposition political parties, knew a good deal about American politics and wanted to hear about the role of our political parties. The embassy in Astana had taped the third U.S. presidential debate and brought some of the best English-speaking students to watch and discuss this debate with me. On another evening, we watched and discussed the film The Candidate. Some Kazakh students wanted to talk about the media’s role in American elections. Others believed that the financial crisis was engineered for electoral effect—a position against which I argued vigorously. I fielded many interesting questions and explained the Electoral College system to those who were not already familiar with it. I think some students were intrigued that the State Department could bring in a speaker who was willing and able to voice disagreement with the current administration on a variety of issues. Almost all of them favored Barack Obama but believed he could not be elected because of America’s history of racism. I hope they will think somewhat differently about us as a result of what happened on November 4. ! 19 a Monind the Right IN A STRIDENT SEA OF LIBERAL OPINION, CONSERVATIVE ACADEMIC ROBERT GEORGE HAS FOUND A HAPPY HOME. By Paul Wachter ’97 Photograph by Andrew Pinkham R obert George ’77, a leading conservative public intellectual, remembers the precise moment that he was set on the path to becoming an academic: It was when he first encountered Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in Kenneth Sharpe’s political theory seminar. “Before reading that dialogue, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought of pursuing an academic career,” George says. Like many students, he had perceived a college education as a traditional step to professional success and not as something valuable in and of itself, as a means “to understand more deeply the truth about oneself and the world.” In the passage of Plato’s dialogue that struck George, Socrates questions Gorgias, a well-respected sophist, about the nature of his craft—persuasion. “The conclusion that Socrates takes us to … is that you’d be better off losing an argument when you’re wrong than winning it,” George told me during my recent visit to Princeton University, where he is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence. “Boy, that really made me look at myself in a way I never had before … and I began a personal journey that led me eventually to be an academic, to become a professor, to live my life in the realm of ideas and arguments and intellectual discourse.” Today, George is best known for his conservative views, particularly those on hot-button moral issues. He opposes abortion, homosexuality, embryonic stem cell research, and human cloning, and he 20 advances these arguments in both the academic press and popular conservative outlets such as the National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. In the run-up to the presidential election, for instance, George wrote an article for Public Discourse, an online outlet of the conservative Witherspoon Institute where he serves on the board, making the case that Barack Obama is “the most extreme proabortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress.” George’s profile has been raised further by his positions on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (serving under Clinton but appointed by George H.W. Bush at the end of his presidency) and on President George W. Bush’s Council of Bioethics. George also serves as the director of a conservative-leaning Princeton think tank, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, which he founded in 2000. He was recently appointed as the U.S. member of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, an 18member advisory council to UNESCO. It goes without saying that George’s views are largely unpopular at the elite college and university campuses where he has spent most of his life, either as a student or teacher. And yet at Swarthmore, George was elected student-body president. And at Princeton, his classes are invariably over-enrolled and students give him rave reviews. Improbably, in a sea of strident liberal opinion, George has made a happy home. George, who is known as “ROBBY” to his friends, grew up in Morgantown, W.Va., the oldest of five brothers. His parents, Joseph and Catherine, were New Deal Democrats. “We didn’t know any Republicans,” George recalls. “We thought of the Republicans as the owners of the mines, and the rest of us were from families who had fathers or grandfathers in the mines.” As a teenager, George was active in Democratic politics, volunteering for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign and serving as twoterm governor of the West Virginia Democratic Youth Conference. “Not many students from my high school went away to college, and a fair number didn’t go to college at all,” George says. “But I knew I wanted to go away for college, so I got out the Barron’s guide and Swarthmore just seemed terrific—very intellectually intense and vibrant.” He visited the campus and came away impressed. The conversations he overheard amongst the students “were different than the ones I had heard at other colleges and universities I visited,” he says. “They weren’t about sports and relationships, they were about ideas.” George’s arrival at Swarthmore in 1973 coincided with the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion and alienated many socially conservative Democrats. “During my time at Swarthmore, I still considered myself a Democrat, and there was still a question in which direction the Democratic Party would go,” George says. “It’s hard to think ourselves back to this, but it’s important to do so. Planned Parenthood in the 1960s and early 1970s was not a liberal swarthmore college bulletin The intellectual foundation upon which George’s views rest is natural law theory; its antagonist is secular humanism. His criticism of secular liberal views is “not that they are contrary to faith; it is that they fail the test of reason.” Robert George recently co-taught a course at Princeton with Cornel West. “The students said they learned from hearing two different perspectives, and that’s the way it should be,” George says. january 2009 21 22 political correctness,” George says. “It existed then, but we didn’t have a name for it. The fact that there were these people who were ‘enlightened’—not because of some compelling argument but because of some trend in thought— it really turned him off.” In George, Kurth saw a febrile mind AP PHOTO/TED S. WARREN organization. George. H. W. Bush’s wife, Barbara, is pro-choice to this day, and she’s a reminder of that old Republican view. On the other side, there were plenty of pro-life Democrats, including Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, and Richard Gephardt. It wasn’t at all clear which was the conservative position, and which was the liberal tradition.” A devout Catholic, George was appalled by the court’s decision. “In my opinion, the abortion issue is what started him down the path toward identifying himself as a conservative,” says John Devlin ’76, George’s friend and former roommate. Increasingly, George found himself on the conservative side of issues that had been pushed into the foreground in the 1960s: feminism, sexual revolution, and drug use. “I came to conclusions that were quite different from the conclusions of most of my peers and of most members of the faculty,” George says, “conclusions that were in opposition to the ethos that was prevalent at Swarthmore and across the academic world and the elite sector of the culture, especially the intellectual culture. So, I had to resign myself to being a dissenter, a kind of intellectual Protestant.” It was a lonely position, but he was encouraged by two Swarthmore professors— Linwood Urban and James Kurth. Urban, the Charles and Harriet Cox MacDonnell Professor Emeritus of Religion and an Episcopal clergyman, introduced George to the writings of medieval philosophers, which sparked his interest in the field of natural law—the notion that moral norms can be grasped through reasoning and are not matters of revealed truth. (Father Thomas Halloran, who served Catholic students at Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford, was another major influence. During summers, George and Devlin accompanied Father Thomas to Boston College to attend a philosophy workshop.) Kurth, the Claude C. Smith Professor Emeritus of Political Science, was perhaps an even greater influence. “Jim Kurth was really instrumental in providing support when I needed it,” George said. Politically, they had their differences—Kurth was a self-described borderline Marxist. (It was not until 1980 that he became an evangelical Protestant.) But he encouraged his students to challenge political orthodoxies. “Jim was deeply antithetical to the phenomenon we now call Following Barack Obama’s accepted even if you were a pretty strenuous dissenter.” landslide and rampant After Swarthmore, George studied theology and law at Harvard and then went to Oxford for doctoral studies in legal philosophy, working under John Finnis, the world’s most prominent natural law theorist. Even before he finished his dissertation, George landed a teaching position in Princeton’s political science department. “I applied for the job thinking I wouldn’t get it but figured it would be a good learning experience,” George recalls. “But then they offered me the job, and to my embarrassment I had to explain that I still had a lot of work to do on my dissertation.” Princeton was willing to wait, allowing George another year at Oxford and to complete his dissertation during his first year of teaching duties. George received tenure in 1993. “It was a remarkable thing for him to get tenure when he had done nothing to disguise his views,” Hadley Arkes, an Amherst philosopher and fellow conservative, has said of his friend’s appointment. While George believes academia too often penalizes conservative thinkers in hiring decisions, he acknowledges that he personally has not suffered. “I was not a stealth candidate, and my views were well known from the moment I came to Princeton,” he says. “The only way I was given tenure was because honorable liberals supported me based on what they perceived as the quality of my work, despite their disagreements with me.” The intellectual foundation upon which George’s views rest is natural law theory (or, more specifically, “new natural law theory”). With roots in Greek philosophy but owing its greatest debt to the medieval Catholic philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, natural law theory holds that there are intrinsic goods—moral truths—that are ascertainable by reason alone. Natural law’s antagonist is infighting within Republican ranks, the future of conservatism is uncertain. But George maintains that the election was not “ideologically transformative.” and fellow outsider at the College. “We were both from the periphery—Robby is from West Virginia, and I was raised in a small town in Oregon,” Kurth says. And yet George had no trouble fitting in at Swarthmore. He was an accomplished musician and performed in several campus bands. “He could play anything with strings on it,” Devlin says. It was at Swarthmore, too, that he met his future wife, Cindy Schrom ’77, who is currently managing editor at Mathematica Policy Research Inc. in Princeton. “She was my college sweetheart,” George says. “We met as sophomores, in Willets. I walked into the lounge, and there was this beautiful woman playing classical guitar; she was it.” In his senior year, George was elected student body president. “You didn’t run on your views of abortion, you ran on reforms in the cafeteria,” he says. “But it speaks well for Swarthmore—and I hope it remains the case today—that you could be popular and swarthmore college bulletin secular humanism, whose founder and namesake David Hume famously wrote: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” But for George and other contemporary natural law theorists, reason should serve as humanity’s moral guide and be reinforced by just laws. “Law is nothing other than an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by him who has the care of the community,” Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologiae. It just so happens that these moral truths are closely aligned with the long tradition of Judeo-Christian thought. But while he is a devout Catholic, George defends his views without recourse to divine fiat. “I want to show that Christians and other believers are right to defend their positions on key moral issues as rationally superior to the alternatives proposed by secular liberals and those within the religious denominations who have abandoned traditional moral principles in favor of secularist morality,” he writes in the preface of The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis. “My criticism of secular liberal views is not that they are contrary to faith; it is that they fail the test of reason.” The most sacrosanct of these intrinsic goods is human life, which is why George is so outspoken in the public debate concerning abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and capital punishment. It’s impossible to give these issues and George’s views a fair hearing in such limited space, but suffice it to say that for George, the right of life applies to humans in any stage of development, be they zygotes or, in the case of Terry Schiavo, adults in a persistent vegetative state. (George, it should also be said, is very comfortable navigating the scientific intricacies that underlie these debates.) Liberal sexual ideology is another bugaboo of George’s. “I think that sex, when it is humanly valuable, is intrinsically, and not merely instrumentally, valuable,” he writes. Like Finnis, George believes marriage is a basic human good and that sex within marriage (even an infertile marriage) realizes ‘the intrinsic good of marriage itself as a two-inone communion of persons,” uniting husband and wife biologically. In this view, oral and anal intercourse, even between married couples, is immoral since these acts do not produce such a biological union. And sex january 2009 between unmarried heterosexuals or between homosexuals also is immoral. “Masturbatory, sodomitical, or other sexual acts that are not reproductive in type cannot unite persons organically: that is, as a single reproductive principle,” George writes. Sex for pleasure outside of what George brands the “one-flesh union of marriage” instrumentalizes the bodies of the participants, rendering the acts “self-alienating and dis-integrating.” Thus, George argues for preserving the traditional legal definition of marriage, a union between one man and one woman. For the past decade, beginning with Republican Congressional victories of the Clinton era through the eight years of the Bush administration, it appeared that such cultural conservatism was on the ascent. George moves easily in Republican circles, a prominent figure in the bourgeoning Catholic-Evangelical alliance. “When I was growing up in Morgantown, relations between Evangelicals and Catholics were awful, but I liked my Evangelical friends and neighbors a lot—even some of them who weren’t prepared to grant that as a Catholic I was a Christian.” He also had many Evangelical friends at Swarthmore. “In the 1990s, my work started drawing the attention of Evangelical pastors and leaders,” he says. “I think a lot of Evangelicals became interested in natural law, because they came to see it wasn’t enough to cite purely religious authority for a moral view, especially one with relevance to public policy.” Now, however, following Barack Obama’s landslide and rampant infighting within the Republican ranks, the future of conservatism in this country is uncertain. “Obviously, I am delighted that our country has shown that it can elect an AfricanAmerican president,” George wrote me in an e-mail following the Nov. 4 election. Nonetheless, he had supported John McCain “because Obama is so far to the left, especially on social issues.” But George maintains that the election was not “ideologically transformative.” Citing the success of three state ballot initiatives prohibiting same-sex marriage, George added, “As things stand, we’re still (as far as I can see) a center-right country.” Kurth agrees, adding that what doomed McCain was his neo-conservative foreign policy leanings—“he’s like George W. Bush on steroids!”—and incoherence on economic matters. Moving forward, he suggests, the Republican Party would do well to maintain its cultural conservatism, while re-embracing a more conservative, i.e. realist, foreign policy and adopting a less hands-off approach to the turbulent free-market economy. “These are positions that Robby should feel very comfortable with since they are in fact the positions promulgated in the Papal Encyclicals and by the U.S. Council of Bishops,” Kurth says. “In terms of rethinking the future of the Republican Party, Robby has the perfect theological grounding to do so.” MEANWHILE, AT PRINCETON AND OTHER campuses, the culture war grinds on. George is on leave this year but is looking forward to returning to the classroom. He recently cotaught a class with Cornel West, a popular Professor of Religion and African American Studies, who is as liberal as George is conservative. “We went back and forth and engaged each other, and we engaged the students,” George says. “The students said they learned from hearing two very different perspectives, and that’s the way it should be.” George hopes such efforts will make it easier for more conservative voices to find their way into academia. “I think conservatives are mistaken that the prejudice that is there has to do with the nature of liberalism,” he says. “Liberalism is not the problem, the problem is the nature of human beings, and if the shoe was on the other foot, conservatives would be the same. “We find it hard to imagine that people who reach what we perceive to be the wrong conclusions can be good thinkers and good scholars,” George continues. “But if you came into my classes without knowing anything about me, you wouldn’t be able to tell my views from the way I teach. “I press my students hard, and if they’re trying to make a liberal argument and not doing it well, then I’ll make the strongest liberal argument,” he says. “My job is not to tell students what to think, it’s to teach them to think critically.” ! Paul Wachter lives in New York and writes for The New York Times Magazine and The Nation. He is a frequent contributor to the Bulletin. 23 During the day, the garden b a place where the women sewed and w 24 swarthmore college bulletin A NOSTALGIC JOURNEY THROUGH CHILDHOOD DURING CHINA’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION a song of By Moying Li M’82 Photographs courtesy of Moyling Li Illustrations by Suzanne Gaadt Calligraphy by Haichao Wu ’12 memories became the center of our family activities, washed, while the men chatted. In her memoir Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), Moying Li, now vice president and senior analyst at a Boston-based investment management company, offers a vivid and moving portrayal of her life from summer 1958 up to the day she left her homeland on the journey that brought her to Swarthmore College. She was one of the first students to leave China since 1949. This is where her story began: PROLOGUE It took me over 20 years to return to my grandma Lao Lao’s old courtyard in Beijing, where I spent much of my short childhood. I was shocked to find it gone. Bulldozed. Wiped from the face of the earth. It was like discovering that a dear friend had died and realizing I had been robbed of the last chance to say goodbye. I sat on a pile of shattered gray bricks— the only remnants of my grandpa Lao Ye’s labor—watching the brisk November wind lift the withered leaves from the dusty ground, up and up and away from me. Then I closed my eyes—to remember. january 2009 25 Fascinated but scared, I stared at the burning furnace, hugging my favorite rabbit for comfort. 26 swarthmore college bulletin THE GREAT LEAP It was a hot summer, and the words on every grownup’s lips were great leap forward. “In fifteen years,” someone said, bubbling with excitement, “China will overtake Britain!” Then, Baba (Father) spun the wooden globe next to his desk and pointed out to me where Britain was. Touching the spot with my fingertip, I murmured, “But it’s so small.” I could not understand why Baba and his friends were eager for China, a large splash of green on Baba’s globe, to surpass another country that was only a gray speck—smaller than some Chinese provinces. But the glow of hope on their faces and the confidence in their voices told me that this Great Leap Forward would be a big accomplishment—something to be truly proud of. I trusted grownups in those days with all my heart. This was the summer of 1958, and I was 4 years old. My family lived in Beijing with my maternal grandmother, Lao Lao, and maternal grandfather, Lao Ye, in a traditional siheyuan—a large square yard surrounded by one-story houses with sloping roofs on each side. Sharing our siheyuan were my aunts and uncles and a few tenants—the families of a tailor, an electrician, and a clerk. Decades before I was born, it was Lao Ye who carefully lined our roofs with smooth gray tiles and installed large windows along the brick walls. Above the glass windows were wooden zhichuang (shutters), which could be propped up by thin sticks to let in fresh air. When thunder and lightning raged outside, I would huddle with Lao Lao and watch it through the windowpanes as she pampered me with sweet tea and cookies. Inside, I felt safe and cozy. The garden in our courtyard was my favorite place, with flowers taking turns to blossom even into late fall. Our golden daffodils—or water fairies, as Lao Lao called them—proudly announced the coming of spring. In the summer, pale jasmine opened up at night, filling our siheyuan with its fragrance. Lao Lao encouraged the jasmine’s nimble vines to climb freely up and around our bamboo fence, forming a blooming wall that separated the garden from the rest of the yard. Hardy chrysanthemums—in pink, yellow, and white— flowered from season to season. It was in this garden, I was told, that I took my first steps, surrounded by aunts and uncles, their arms reaching out to catch me if I fell. Next to the jasmine wall was a tall huaishu (scholar tree). During the summer months, the sweet scent from its delicate flowers filled our yard, while the droning songs of cicadas, sheltered among its abundant leaves, lulled me to sleep. Under the huaishu’s cooling shade, Lao Lao set up a permanent place for two of my favorite things—a little red wooden table and a small red armchair—gifts from my future uncle-in-law, who had lavished his craftsman’s talent on me in a skillful pursuit of my doting aunt. During the day, the garden became the center of our family activities, a place where the women sewed and washed, while the men chatted. For my brother, Di Di, and me, the large open yard next to the garden was both playground and battlefield. There, we shared our new tricycle with our neighbors’ children, taking turns racing from one end of the yard to the other. Even though Di Di was a year younger than I, he was faster on the tricycle. With our friend Ming, the tailor’s youngest son, hanging on to the rear rack, Di Di would pedal past every door in our courtyard, january 2009 waving to anyone who cared to look. Sometimes, the two of them would charge straight at me and the other girls until we screamed and scattered. In this big yard, grownups watched us from every window, but we felt totally free. After a family dinner spread on a large square table, spiced by my uncles’ jokes and my aunties’ laughter, each family unit would retreat to its separate rooms. For me, however, there were no boundaries as I happily darted in and out of my parents’ and grandparents’ houses. Family was just family, I believed, without doors or walls. And as the first grandchild, I felt entitled to all of their hearts as well as their space. Our farm animals were almost as free, housed in a shed under a giant elm in a corner of the courtyard. To me, the shed was like a small zoo. Two white rabbits with big red eyes lived there, as well as a rooster with glistening golden feathers, and four chickens—two white and two brown. Lao Lao had handpicked each animal from street vendors. The rabbits were my favorites, so warm and soft to the touch. Sometimes I even lured them into my bedroom with a carrot so that I could cuddle them. Early that summer when I was 4, Baba took Di Di and me to visit his youngest sister, who lived by the sea. When we returned in the fall, I could hardly believe my eyes—our courtyard was strewn with bricks, holes, and scrap metal! An ugly brick furnace, almost as tall as Baba, stood right in the center. I was in shock. “This is to make iron and steel for the Great Leap Forward,” Baba said, “Our country needs strong construction materials.” That Great Leap again, I thought, remembering Baba’s globe with its colorful dots and splashes. I stepped gingerly around my shattered yard, dodging the busy grownups who, shovels in hand, were too preoccupied to pay me the usual attention. Even Lao Lao joined their efforts. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She beamed, holding me up in her arms. “We are helping our country.” “Yes, I know. We are going to catch up with that small dot before I grow up,” I grumbled. Looking at what this Great Leap had done to my playground, I found it hard to share their excitement. Soon my freedom, together with that of our rabbits and rooster, was restricted. Under Lao Lao’s order, we were to stay in the garden behind the bamboo fence. Outside the fence, the world was pouring into our yard, day and night. Excited neighbors, scores of them, brought in firewood by the cartload and piled it up next to the furnace, ample fuel for the fire that crackled and roared. Some of the wood had been freshly split from old benches and chairs, with peeling paint and pointy nails still sticking out. The furnace, my enemy number one, was built with layers and layers of red bricks. On top of them sat a shiny metal hat with spurts of smoke, sometimes even red sparks, bursting out from under it. Fascinated but scared, I stared at the burning furnace, hugging my favorite rabbit for comfort. None of this seemed to bother the grownups. They filed into our courtyard with their metal pots and pans—anything they could find 27 and everything they could spare—to be melted into steel. People did not have much in those days, but the odds and ends soon looked like a small mountain next to the woodpile. As I watched, the tailor’s wife stepped out of her house with a frying pan. She hesitated, flipping the pan in her hands and wiping it again and again with her handkerchief. She seemed to be saying goodbye to an old friend. Slowly, she walked up to the metal pile and gently laid her frying pan, now gleaming in the sun, on top of the little mountain. She stared at it for a few moments, then suddenly turned and walked away, never looking back. Da Jiu (oldest maternal uncle), a math professor home on sick leave, was in charge of quality control. Stooping down from his slender height, he inspected the pile, separating the usable pieces from the junk. Picking up a wok cover, he examined it, tapped on it lightly, and then tossed it onto a smaller pile of rejects. He nodded at the mountain of metal that was growing larger by the hour. My favorite neighbor, Uncle Liu, the electrician, tall and broadshouldered, stood by the furnace like a warrior, shoveling logs and broken chairs into its mouth. Gripping a long steel pole with both hands, he used its tip to hook open the hinges of the furnace door. He prodded the burning wood and then slapped the door shut when the wood started to crackle. It looked to me as if he was feeding a roaring dragon. The clerk, short and dark but equally solemn, used a large iron ladle to channel the red burning liquid into a mold, while our third neighbor, his face glowing from the heat of the flames, inspected the fruit of their labors with a tailor’s precision. Standing at a safe distance, I became transfixed by the scene in front of me and forgot about my fear and my destroyed playground. Then, an idea hit me. I bolted into Lao Lao’s kitchen, threw open her large cabinet doors, and crawled on hands and knees in search of family treasure. I spotted a big water ladle at one corner of the cabinet and some spoons in a drawer, and threw them all into a bamboo basket next to the stove. I grabbed a large kettle and dropped it into the basket as well. Before darting outside, I surveyed the kitchen one last time and then threw Lao Lao’s heavy cleaver on top of my prizes. Dragging the basket behind me, I hurried as fast as my feet and the load would allow and dumped everything, basket and all, onto the mound of metal carefully selected by Da Jiu. Thank goodness I had been watching closely and knew which pile was the chosen one! I crept back behind the bamboo fence and slumped down in my little red chair, tired but satisfied. Throughout the day I sat there, spellbound. I shared every sign of triumph—the electrician patting the clerk’s shoulder, the clerk shaking the tailor’s hand, and then all of them giving a thumbs-up to Da Jiu. As the sun slowly set, leaving a trail of purple clouds in the crisp autumn sky, Da Jiu pushed his black-rimmed eyeglasses up and beamed. Suddenly I heard Lao Lao’s voice. She had just returned home, ready to tackle dinner. “‘Where is my kettle” she asked, walking over to where I was sitting. “Have you seen my cleaver?” “Yes, I helped our country with it,” I replied proudly, without removing my eyes from the furnace. “Maybe they are burning it now.” Lao Lao rushed over to Da Jiu and his metal pile. Together, they found the kettle and some spoons, but not the big cleaver. The knife 28 had joined its comrades in the burning fire, doing its share for China. My escapade circulated around the dinner table that night. Choking from chewing and laughing at the same time, Baba turned to me and said, “It’s good that you want to help, but next time it would be good to check with Lao Lao first.” Our roaring furnace popped and burned day and night for months. Every morning at dawn, our courtyard came alive with clatter and chattering. Then one morning I woke up to silence. Something was different. I ran outside to see. In our courtyard, Da Jiu and our neighbors sat on the woodpile, their heads bowed like those of defeated soldiers. The fire in the furnace had died, leaving a lingering smell of burnt wood. “What happened, Da Jiu?” “The iron and steel we made was not good enough.” He sighed. I stared at him in disbelief. “We simply did not know enough to make it right,” he added. Now I was sad, too. Climbing up the woodpile to sit next to him, I leaned my head against his shoulder, as crestfallen as he and our neighbors. “But we tried so hard.” “Yes,” he said, “We did.” For days, we all avoided the courtyard. The abandoned red furnace stood in the center, alone and silent, along with a few scattered metal pieces and some half-burnt wood. We all tiptoed around it as if we were visiting a patient in the hospital. From time to time, I would find myself resting my chin against the bamboo fence and staring at my soundless enemy turned old friend, silently wishing him to roar for me one more time. But he only stared back. For weeks, Lao Lao refused to replace her cleaver and used a small knife instead. It was not the money for a new cleaver that stopped her, even though nobody had much to spare. It was the principle. Our big knife had sacrificed itself for a cause and so should be honored. At least that was my interpretation. The roaring furnace, too, had done his best, even though his best was not good enough. Finally, the furnace disappeared, and so did the scattered wood and metal. The men filled the holes in the yard with fresh dirt, and Lao Lao swept the courtyard clean. I was free once again to race my tricycle with Di Di and my friends, and spend quiet moments smelling the flowers and petting my rabbits. In our garden, the women resumed their sewing and washing, and the men their chatting. Life seemed to have gone back to what it was before. But, then, why did I feel as if something had changed? ! “Prologue” and “The Great Leap” from Snow Falling in Spring by Moying Li. Text © 2008 by Moying Li. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, www.fsgkidsbooks.com. swarthmore college bulletin The tailor’s wife hesitated, flipping the pan in her hands and wiping it again and again with her handkerchief. She seemed to be saying goodbye to an old friend. january 2009 29 The air simply crackled at the moment that the students marched into the square, holding banners high with a look of confidence and triumph in their eyes. 30 swarthmore college bulletin WITH A BICYCLE, A NOTEBOOK, AND A LITTLE COURAGE, LINNEA SEARLE DOCUMENTED THE DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT IN TIAN`AN MEN SQUARE—20 YEARS AGO. By Karen Linnea Searle ’84 Illustrations by Suzanne Gaadt Tian`an men Diary democracy movement that is now known as Beijing Spring. The names of her Chinese friends have been changed, but Editor’s Note: Following are events are recorded as she expe- edited excerpts from a journal rienced them during that tumul- written by Linnea Searle (known tuous spring. The name of the in college as Karen) while she photographer must be withheld was a university student and to this day. teacher of English in Beijing from January to May 1989. As a young speaker of Chinese, she could closely observe the BEIJING Sat., April 22, 1989 Today was the funeral of Hu Yaobang. I made plans to go down to Tian`an men Square this morning to watch. Getting to Tian`an men was not easy; there were various roadblocks. But when the square was opened, I ended up smack in the middle of things—not where I intended to be. It was pretty scary there. People would start running. I had visions of stampedes. There were so many people! I asked people what was going on and had various responses. In truth, nobody could really see. There were hundreds of policemen outside the Great Hall of the People and many students standing outside and shouting—probably asking the government to resign. I decided that the periphery was a far better place to be, so I wandered toward the Memorial to the Revolutionary Martyrs. Hu Yaobang died last Saturday. He left office two years ago, but he was the symbol of political change for many intellectuals and students. So the students have taken advantage of the situation to criticize the government—and call for more democracy. january 2009 ©2009 by Karen Linnea Searle Wed., April 26 The students called an indefinite boycott of classes on Monday—to be ended when the government gives in to their demands. All along the street there were clusters of people trying to listen to the words of students who were relating the events that had occurred outside the Great Hall of the People. They were explaining it because the newspapers had not. Apparently, the students have organized a citywide council of the student leaders—all of this leading up to May 4 [a significant commemoration of the nationalist May Fourth Movement]. Thurs., May 4 Today, there were tens of thousands of students in Tian`an men. It was extremely well organized—and, yes, very exciting. The air simply crackled at the moment that the students marched into the square, holding banners high with a look of confidence and triumph in their eyes. Onlookers cheered the students on, which made them walk even taller, shout even louder. I was also amazed at the government’s response to the demonstra31 tion. They made a feeble attempt (according to other students here) at blocking off some roads, but when the students pushed through lines of policemen, the crowds roared approval and the police simply backed off. The government did the best conceivable thing, which was to let the students freely enter the square. 9 p.m. Joining the students marching back [to the university] was by far the most interesting thing I did all day. The side of the road was lined with people watching, clapping as the students went by. In every passing bus there were people leaning out the windows, clapping for the students, cheering them on, supporting them. Mon., May 15 Yesterday, I went down to Tian`an men with Lisha and Hong Feng to see what was going on. The students are on to something new now—a mass hunger strike. By the time we got there, they’d been fasting for 26 hours. I don’t envy them; the direct sun was awfully hot. And for Chinese to fast! In a culture that lives for its food, it’s fairly serious. The scene at Tian`an men was very different from before. There were far fewer people than during either of the previous demonstrations. The mayor of Beijing came to the square at around 2 a.m. to try to convince the students to leave. The students, it seems, are past listening to anyone, so they stayed in the square surrounded by the glare of the television cameras. The students are fortunate in their timing of all of this—it really is quite incredible. First, Hu Yaobang dies just two weeks before May 4, so there is a reason to continue to protest that long. And now, just 11 days after May 4, here comes Mikhail Gorbachev [for the Sino-Soviet summit]. China is in the world’s eye as never before. I read an article in the Far Eastern Wall Street Journal. As early as April 24, Deng Xiao Ping was ready to violently suppress the student protests. His plans went so far as to warn local hospitals to expect many casualties on the 27th, the day of the protests. Many students, including my friend Xiao Mei, wrote out their wills the night before, out of fear of what might happen. But it seems that Deng was overruled by other high-ranking cadres. Thank God for that. Beijing—no, China—would be a very different place right now, had the uprisings been violently suppressed. Tues., May 16 11:45 a.m. There are people everywhere. The students march past in long groups, the boys dressed in light windbreakers, blue pants, black pants, and the girls, some of them in skirts, brightly colored, carrying bags of water, salt, sugar, fortifications for Thursday. The square is jammed with people. The focus is the large circle surrounding the student hunger strikers. Lines of people surround 32 the circle, trying to peer in. In the circle, very quiet, subdued students sit in the blazing heat of the sun, water bottles next to them. Some lean over to talk with friends, but most sit quietly—on their faces is a mixture of boredom and defiance. Noon Now, I am directly in front of the Great Hall of the People. The students have formed a path for the ambulances transporting those who have fainted. A few run back and forth ordering people to move; in my case, though, they ask politely. An old man walks by with a long beard, holding signs. The students applaud him as he passes. I asked Xiao Mei yesterday, “What does the government have to do to get the students to eat, to break the hunger strike?” They have to say the students are right, and they have to initiate a dialogue with the students on equal footing. “But how?” The first is a concrete task, but the second is so subjective. The government has been holding talks with student representatives for two days; from all accounts the students are not convinced that it is on equal footing. How can it be? swarthmore college bulletin I climb on one of the carts to see the whole scene. A sea of heads, flags, banners in every direction. I see every kind of person. Young, old, in suits, in jeans, in jogging outfits. And children. So many children! Babies! Obviously, people aren’t afraid. 12:40 p.m. All of a sudden, a banner appears. My companions look at me; excitedly tell me that it’s workers! Probably the first ones. Everyone runs forward. Seeing workers striking adds a new element. It’s spread, it’s not just students, it is academics, perhaps some workers, even if only a few, but the significance far overshadows the numbers. A worker stops to talk to me. He asks me if I support the students. I ask him the same. He says, “It’s not just me, it’s all of us—it’s something in our hearts that we cannot say.” He was quiet, looked up at me and said, “Forty years.” 9:15 p.m. I climb on one of the carts to see the whole scene. It’s amazing. There are people everywhere. A sea of heads, flags, banners in every direction as far as I can see. Every direction I look, I see every kind of person. Young, old, in suits, in jeans, in jogging outfits. And children. So many children! Babies! Obviously, people aren’t afraid. Fri., May 19 10:05 a.m. I’m getting scared now. Everything is on the verge of chaos. Even the student leaders are beginning to think that the public demonstrations are getting out of hand. All it will take is the death of one of the hunger strikers and that’s it. All will fall apart, and the minute that happens no doubt the tanks will begin to roll. There are ominous signs. I went to LiQui’s dorm last night as I have done practically every three days for months. The entrance was locked, so I went to the next entrance and there were two men sitting outside who asked me to register. They wanted to know the name of the person I was visiting so they could see if she was there. Deeply disturbed, I left. I don’t want to cause her any trouble. I guess this isn’t the time to be flaunting Sino-American friendships. A fever is the only way to describe it. 12:10 p.m. Demonstrators throw bottles out of trucks. Deng Xiao Ping—a play on ping, which also means bottle–smashing bottles to symbolize the smashing of Deng Xiao Ping. I saw an old woman, perfectly white hair, creased face, raising her hand to give the victory sign to passing protesters. Is she really sup- Wed., May 17 Workers, middle school students, reporters, doctors, teachers, everyone is here, clapping, shouting, urging the demonstrators on. And the signs! LiQiu would read them and exclaim “ay ya!” Still no sign of police anywhere. Today’s marchers included Security Bureau workers—in uniform! Young Pioneers—youth Party members! It’s as if everything that had been inside these people for 50 years has come bursting forth in one breath! A breath that grows stronger and bolder with every minute that passes. 7 p.m. The sun is almost down behind a cloud on the horizon. The sky is a dusty blue. Mao’s mausoleum is clearly outlined. So static, unmovable, almost in total contrast to the movement and color on every side. It almost appears to be standing in defiance—watching the scene, frowning, isolated. A group of demonstrators on motorcycles drive past. Everyone around me gets up and runs to the road. The spectacle over, they now move up the square. It’s amazing how crowds form and dissipate. It makes the whole square appear elastic. Shapes form, change, move. 11:15 p.m. Back at the dorm. Trying to calm myself down. Late night musings while listening to Simon & Garfunkle. My sunburn hurts, blistering under the heat. But far too excited to sleep. Hoping that writing will bring me back to myself, I try to make sense of what has happened in the past few weeks. january 2009 33 porting them? What must she have seen in the last 70 years? Does she think it’s just the same—or is this something different? 11:45 p.m. I’m at Moira and Michael’s house, listening to the BBC on shortwave. It’s happening, right now: 1,000 trucks full of troops are moving towards Tian`an men. According to the BBC, a million people are at Tian `an men. The goal of the students is simply to provide so many bodies that the government cannot come through. Sat., May 20 12:40 a.m. Part of me is tired and just wants to go to sleep. That’s the body part. But my mind is on! What I really want to do is get on the bike and ride down to Tian`an men to see what’s going on. Did I mention that the hunger strike has been called off? At least temporarily. Earlier, the students were unsure, but almost an hour ago the BBC reported that there was an announcement at the square. 12:45 a.m. Martial law has been declared. The first troops were blocked from coming into the square by the students, who let the air out of their tires and stopped the convoy by holding hands and standing in front of the trucks. Earlier today another convoy turned around and left. Soldiers shook hands with the students, left with smiles on their faces, declaring that they are the people’s army. But, according to the last BBC report, armed troops are massing southwest of the city. The people—students—are still packed into the square. It’s going from bad to worse. Armed guards have met students at the Luili Bridge. The students are pleading with the soldiers not to continue—to turn back, but as of yet, they haven’t. The students are also climbing on top of the vans and reading out a petition in support of Zhao Zi Yang—who apparently has resigned. CNN has been forced to stop its live broadcast. A general curfew will go into effect tonight at 10. Sun., May 21 2:20 p.m. It’s a very different Beijing than the one I’ve been away from for two days. The mood is now subdued, serious. The city is under the control of the students now. Every corner is manned by students stopping cars, examining drivers, convincing those with no business in the city to return home. The leaders may have attempted to impose martial law, but thus far those attempts have been in vain. The question now revolves around the patriotism of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—the 18- and perhaps 16-year-olds who will be sent in to suppress the uprising of their own people. If the students and the people of Beijing can convince them to turn around, then they have won. 3:35 p.m. On the square itself, the mood is subdued, a combination of the afternoon heat, the tension of previous nights, and wondering what is to come. The flags and banners are still waving. One man, a worker, possibly from the countryside, dark-complexioned and quiet, shyly 34 Soldiers shook hands with the students, left with smiles on their faces, declaring that they are the people’s army. But armed troops are massing southwest of the city. walks to the students and hands one young woman a bag of bread. He turns and walks away, quietly listening to the thanks as he strolls away. 10:30 p.m. It’s coming; this time it’s really coming. I see the pictures on TV, and it’s ripping me apart. I see Tian`an men—it feels as if I’m looking at my home, a place that is so familiar to me, but that may be over soon. The government has given the students—the people—until dawn, and the general feeling is that tonight will be the night. I’m scared—not for myself, but more for the loss of what was this week. So much enthusiasm, joy in the people at being able to express themselves. It may all go—oh! What can I do? I want to go outside to be a part of it, but it’s not my country, not my place to be out there. Mon., May 22 12:15 a.m. I’m holed up in Mom’s hotel room, waiting. [The author’s mother, Barbara Wolff Searle ’52, was visiting China during the last weeks of her daughter’s term there.] According to CNN, one million people have gathered in Tian`an men. One of the student leaders has said that if the government wishes to remove the students from the square, it should do it through a dialogue with the students, in a democratic fashion. However, if the authorities decide to use force, they cannot and will not resist. The latest news report says that there are still major decisions with the top party members about what to do about this situation. That was good news. Perhaps there are reformers voting for more restraint. But still . . . a million people in Chang An and Tian`an men is too many. There’s no room to move, and nowhere to go. 6:55 a.m. Nothing happened! Nothing! 10:30 a.m. Down at Tian`an men again. I’m sitting next to the fence that separates the square from the Great Hall of the People. Gone is the tension that enveloped the city yesterday. Rather than students, some intersections are now manned by PLA and city policemen—not as a military presence, but simply as if they are doing their normal jobs on a Monday morning. The streets are alive with everyday vehicles. The barricades are gone. Cars are no longer being stopped. Along the route however, there are many students, looking tired and dirty but relaxed and calm. Even Tian`an men, although not quiet, seems fairly relaxed. The appearance of the square brings home the length of this ordeal. The banners are not flying as high; signs are drooping. But the speeches continue, the applause grows louder and more frequent. I catch a few words such as “freedom” and “democracy.” Across from swarthmore college bulletin me, a student writes in a journal like mine while his companion sleeps. The students secured a victory with last night’s continued stalemate. With every hour—particularly every night that the government remains incapable of moving—its credibility erodes. Troops are massed on all sides of Tian`an men, but the government is not acting. There must be intense struggles in the higher echelons of the Communist Party. 3:05 p.m. There are moments when, all of a sudden, you realize that your lips have formed themselves into a huge smile. Your heart longs to sing out. That’s what this moment is to me right now. The march has begun again to the heart of the square. The New World Symphony is being played over the loudpeaker system. Students are lined up on top of the buses filling the square, waving their banners. Everywhere is the sound of cheering, clapping. Euphoria—downright euphoria! I think about how I can sit in one place for hours just watching. Not talking to anyone, just drinking in the atmosphere. Perhaps if I stay here long enough, all this will become part of me. A real part of me that I will never forget, that won’t fade away, that won’t vanish. As night falls, there is uncertainty. The barriers are erected; the streets brim with people, students in the road, onlookers gathering around the sides. Trash cans, roadblocks, all moved into place. january 2009 Tues., May 23 12:45 a.m. Back home. Again it seems that the crisis is over, that the tide seems to have turned. For another night there was nothing—some clashes between students and troops, but nothing major. Yesterday, more than 100 top military officers submitted a letter to Li Peng saying that they would not order their troops to fight against the Chinese people. The crisis, it seems, is over. But is it? Or has it—in a very fundamental sense—just begun? ! Neither the military officers who opposed moving against their own people nor the thousands of demonstrators were able to prevent the Chinese government from retaking Tian`an men Square and crushing the student movement on June 4, 1989. Linnea Searle remained in Beijing until May 31, when she was scheduled to leave at the end of her university term. Part Two of her edited journal and a pdf of the entire unedited manuscript can be found on the Bulletin Web site: media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin, where you will also find a map of Beijing in 1989, showing the streets and landmarks mentioned in this article. 35 entomological “ant”ics FOR CARL RETTENMEYER ’53, AN There are about 155 species of army ants in EARLY INTEREST IN INSECTS EVOLVED the Western Hemisphere and a possible 100 more in Asia and Africa. Rettenmeyer is parINTO A FASCINATING CAREER. By Carol Brévart-Demm Photographs courtesy of Carl Rettenmeyer During his life, Carl Rettenmeyer has made the acquaintance of various large and dangerous beasts. He’s faced off with a ferde-lance pit viper and stared down a puma in Panama, gone toe-to-toe with a tapir and nose-to-nose with an ocelot in Ecuador. Yet, although he shivers with a certain exquisite terror mingled with delighted awe in the presence of large animals or deadly reptiles, these encounters were never planned. All occurred in the rain forests of Central and South America during his five-decade–long pursuit of a creature actually no more than a half-inch long—the army ant. Despite their reputation as ferocious killers—largely the result of science-fiction, says Rettenmeyer—army ants are beneficial to the environment and to human beings. “Well, they do bite but cause no serious damage,” he adds. 36 ticularly well-informed about the species Eciton burchellii, found in Central and Southern America. Rettenmeyer’s office contains thousands of glass vials and jars filled with ant specimens. Their labels indicate that many have been hand counted and contain hundreds of thousands of specimens. As he looks around his own, very real “Empire of the Ants,” a mischievous smile breaks through his thick, white beard, and he says: “I love army ants. I could talk about them for days.” Rettenmeyer explains that the army-ant caste system consists of one queen, winged males, and workers. The ants, which are blind and depend on chemical trails for direction, are migratory, moving in columns—about 100 feet long—of up to one million ants. He’s calculated the size of migrating colonies by carefully timing and filming their movement between two points, then watching the film in slow motion and counting the ants. As they migrate, the ants transport larvae, cocoons, and food for the colony. The queen remains in the middle of the column, protected by workers swarming on top of and around her. The colony moves by night from one nest—or bivouac—to the next, distances of up to 100 yards at a speed of about 20 yards per hour. Army ant migrations occur every night over two-week periods, according to a schedule that is related to the queen’s reproductive cycle. After a queen lays eggs—sometimes more than 200,000 in 10 days—the colony stays put until larvae emerge, followed by a further series of migrations until the larvae mature and spin cocoons. A typical colony travels about nine miles annually, building its bivouacs among tree roots or inside hollow trunks. With the ability to support 100 times their own weight, the ants often form living bridges from nest to ground, linking their bodies by means of hooks on their legs. The workers hunt for food in swarms, usually starting at dawn, Rettenmeyer says. During more than five decades, entomologist Carl Rettenmeyer (below left) made more than 20 expeditions to the rain forests of Central and South America to study the behavior of army ants. An army ant major rears up in alarm (above). With the ability to support 100 times their own weight, the ants often form living bridges from nest to ground, linking their bodies by means of hooks on their legs (right) . “A swarm raid can be about 50 yards wide. It’s quite an intimidating sight. Once you see it, you never forget it.” Ant prey includes cockroaches, wasps, katydids, crickets, scorpions, other ant species, and, on rare occasions, a small vertebrate such as a lizard. The ants dismember larger prey and transport it back to the bivouac. Their mandibles are so strong, he says, that native peoples have been known to use them as natural sutures, pinching off the ant’s thorax and abdomen, leaving the head and jaws to hold a wound closed. Swarm raids are accompanied by flocks of ant birds that hover near the swarm not to attack the ants but rather to devour the arthropods they flush out during their marauding. “Forty-six species of ant birds depend on Eciton burchellii alone for food,” Rettenmeyer says. “Army ants are the most important predators in a tropical forest,” he adds, “because a single colony can consume half a million animals a week. They’re a kind of biological pest control.” He knows of army ant raids that have passed through houses without stopping, and when they leave, the building is emptied of household pests. Now 77 years old, Rettenmeyer says he has had a serious interest in “bugs” since childhood, but his fascination with army ants really began when he was at Swarthmore. During his junior year, he found himself in a biology course with a group of students who swarthmore college bulletin were all premed except for him. “I was the weirdo from day one. The other biology majors joked about me wanting to study bugs,” he says. Later that year, Rettenmeyer was contacted by the late Theodore Schneirla, an animal psychologist in the Department of Animal Behavior at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, who studied the behavior of army ants. Schneirla, an acquaintance of Rettenmeyer’s biology professor Robert Enders, needed a field assistant to accompany him to Barro Colorado Island in Panama. “It took Bob Enders about half a second to think of me,” Rettenmeyer says. “Nobody else wanted to study insects.” Soon, Rettenmeyer was off to Panama for six months. “I think Schneirla picked me because I was a member of the varsity crosscountry team and he thought if I could run six miles, I’d be able to do the work in Panama,” Rettenmeyer jokes. Graduating with a B.A. in biology in 1953, Rettenmeyer embarked on a Ph.D. in entomology at the University of Kansas. However, when he received a call from Life magazine, inviting him to return to Panama for nine weeks with a photographer who was shooting a feature on army ants, Rettenmeyer couldn’t refuse. Life paid for the trip and provided a small stipend. “That was my lucky break,” Rettenmeyer says. “We collected thousands of specimens,” including 147 species of mites that live on various parts of the ants’ bodies. He explains that hundreds of thousands of insects— including species of microscopic flies, beejanuary 2009 tles, and silverfish—live among the army ant colonies. Hidden in the swarm, they enjoy a degree of protection because their natural predators are themselves likely to fall prey to the aggressive ants. When Rettenmeyer returned to Kansas, faculty members were impressed. They urged him to apply for a grant to return to the rain forest and continue his research. “The problem was,” he says, “there was no funding for graduate students back then. The National Science Foundation (NSF) had barely started and was only giving grant money to faculty members, so they said, ‘Write up the proposal, and we’ll sign it.’” Rettenmeyer received grants for three further trips to Panama—now with his new bride of a few months, Marian Wolf Rettenmeyer, an Ohio Wesleyan graduate he’d met while taking summer courses at the University of New Hampshire in 1951. “Marian had liked insects as a little girl and was actually interested in ants, so I knew she was a woman I had to keep track of,” he laughs. She became his lifelong partner and assistant. “You can’t imagine how wonderful it is,” Rettenmeyer says. “She’s been so helpful, and she’s discovered a number of new species.” It’s also comforting to have a partner close by when you’re being jostled by a 200-pound tapir that—lured by your lunch bag—is going berserk because the ants you’re following are biting the soft skin between its toes. With grants from the NSF and, later, the University of Connecticut Research Foundation, he and Marian made more than 20 expeditions to Panama, Costa Rica, and Ecuador as well as field trips to Kansas and Texas, collecting specimens and studying the behavior of army ants. His early research is carefully recorded, neatly handwritten, on 3by 5-inch index cards, which he keeps in his university laboratory along with the 600page dissertation that resulted in his receiving a Ph.D. 1962. Rettenmeyer’s research led him to an assistant professorship at Kansas State University, visiting associate professorships at the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica, and, in 1971, a professorship in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut– Storrs. He retired in 1996 and now holds emeritus status. Founding director of the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, he is the author of many scholarly articles, monologues, and book chapters. His photographs have appeared in publications of wildlife organizations including National Geographic, the Audubon Encyclopedia of Wildlife, National Wildlife Federation, and Smithsonian magazine. In 1996, Rettenmeyer was diagnosed with Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, a form of lymphoma. “I was supposed to die in 1997 or 1998,” he says, but a new drug developed around the time of his diagnosis has kept his disease in remission and allowed him to continue to work. “It was really a miracle.” He often uses a wheelchair to get around these days, yet, despite his frailty, he still visits his office several days each week to continue identifying the tens of thousands of insects he has stored in bottles and jars in a temperature-controlled section of the university’s Biology Department. Also housed there is the Rettenmeyer Collection, which contains hundreds of thousands of already identified specimens, preserved in layer upon layer of neatly ordered trays. In 2006, Rettenmeyer published a DVD titled Astonishing Army Ants, a spectacular testament to the breadth of his research and the fascinating behavior of his subjects. He is currently working on a second film called The World’s Largest Animal Association, highlighting the 300-plus species that are completely dependent on army ant colonies for survival. And for those who watch them, those corny science-fiction movies will pale by comparison. ! 37 PETER GINTER/INTERACTIONS.ORG If particles had personalities, what a family they would be! Quarks are so cliquish that they travel only in groups of three and are never seen alone. Flashy photons, all style and no substance, travel everywhere at the speed of light. Businesslike electrons bind atoms to one another and power all our electronic gadgets. One kind of particle wanders through the middle of the hubbub yet somehow remains detached from it all. These particles are everywhere, and yet they are nearly undetectable. They cannot be contained or steered—and they pass through walls as if they weren’t there. They’re called neutrinos, and they may be the most important particle in the universe. Every time a photon of light is created, a neutrino is created as well. It’s 38 safe to say that if the universe had no neutrinos, we wouldn’t be here either. And yet they are the least understood subatomic particle around. “That’s the reason I got interested in neutrinos,” says Janet Conrad ’85, a professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not only are they next to impossible to catch, but they also have a chameleon-like ability to change identities—an ability that physicists were not even aware of until about 10 years ago. Conrad has recently discovered evidence for the fourth and most exotic of the neutrino’s multiple personalities, the “sterile neutrino.” If it is real, it could be a clue to some of the deepest mysteries in physics, such as the nature of dark matter and whether extra dimensions exist. WONDER AND JOY Of course, particles don’t really have personalities. But people do. And Conrad is almost the opposite of the neutrino, the “little neutral one.” She is full of enthusiasm and loves to tell the public about her work. In her last few years at Columbia University, where she was on the faculty for 13 years before moving to MIT in 2008, she regularly taught the proverbial “physics for poets” course and drew upwards of 100 students to her classes. “Physicists have made physics seem so esoteric, because it makes them look smart,” Conrad says. “The irony of my work is that you can learn everything you need to understand neutrino oscillations by the end of your sophomore year at Swarthmore.” Appropriately, Conrad’s office looks more swarthmore college bulletin A SERVICES FERMILAB VISUAL MEDI The neutrino hunter IN HOT PURSUIT OF THE ELUSIVE NEUTRINO, PHYSICIST JANET CONRAD ’85 SEEKS CLUES TO SOME OF SCIENCE’S DEEPEST MYSTERIES. By Dana Mackenzie ’79 Left: Jasmine Ma, a summer student working on the MiniBooNE experiment, inspects photo tubes that detect light from neutrino interactions. Above: The ring of light, registered by some of the more than 1,000 detectors in the experiment, indicates the collision of a muon neutrino with an atomic nuclei. like a toy shop than an academic office. In various corners you can find prisms, Slinkies, water rockets, tuning forks, and a set of mirrors that create the image of a shell floating in the air above her desk. She has a collection of hand-blown Crookes radiometers—a little lightbulb-shaped device with a vane inside that spins when light strikes it. “When I It’s safe to say that if the universe had no neutrinos, we wouldn’t be here either. january 2009 walk in the office and turn on the light, they immediately start turning,” she says. “It’s amusingly welcoming.” The toys are there partly for fun and partly because they demonstrate physical principles—the same basic principles about wave motion and conservation of energy that underlie her seemingly more esoteric research on neutrinos. “To me, physics is about really wonderful and joyful things, like toys. And very accessible things like blue skies and waves,” she says. “That’s why I find it so sad when people say my field is inaccessible. It really isn’t at all.” IN SEARCH OF THE WILD NEUTRINO To detect a neutrino, you need two things: a prolific neutrino source and a detector. Sources are easy to come by. Any nuclear reactor will do, because neutrinos are emitted in the process of radioactive decay. A particle accelerator will also work, or even the sun—the great neutrino factory in the sky. The hard part to arrange is the detector. Because they are so small and have no electric charge, neutrinos almost never interact with matter. But if you direct a few billion neutrinos at a sufficiently massive target, a few of them will happen to hit a proton head-on and release a flash of light. So the typical neutrino detector is an enormous tank of liquid, surrounded by light detectors. They are usually placed underground, so that the earth’s crust can filter out other particles, such as cosmic rays, that might be mistaken for neutrinos. The first successful neutrino 39 FERMILAB VISUAL MEDIA SERVICES WHAT LARRY SUMMERS SAID—AND DIDN’T SAY On Jan. 14, 2005, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers unwittingly brought the simmering debate about women’s representation in science careers to a full boil. In a keynote speech at a conference on diversity, Summers hypothesized that the shortage of women in certain disciplines could be explained by innate differences in mathematical ability. “There is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means—which can be debated—there is a difference in the standard deviation and variability of a male and female population,” he said. Thus, even if the average abilities of men and women were the same, there would be more men than women at the elite levels of mathematical ability—and also, though Summers didn’t say this, at the lowest levels as well. The mass media—and, surprisingly, many academics—completely missed Summers’ point about variability. For example, in the Los Angeles Times, David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale and occasional conservative commentator, wrote: “[Summers] suggested that, on average, maybe women are less good than men at science….” Well, no, he didn’t. But in the public debate, that is how his statement was interpreted. A study published in July of this year by Janet Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, partially vindicated Summer. Hyde and her colleagues compared the scores of girls and boys in grades two through 11 on the state mathematics tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). They found no meaningful differences in the average performance of boys and girls. But the variability of boys’ scores was 11 to 21 percent greater at all grade levels. Consequently, boys were indeed overrepresented in the top percentile, by a 2:1 ratio over girls. Does this mean that Summers was right after all? There are many reasons not to jump to this conclusion. First, though the difference in variability is real (on this test), it is not necessarily innate. In Minnesota, for instance, the 2:1 ratio of boys to girls in the top percentile held only for white students. For Asian American students, the proportion was 0.9 to 1. That is, girls outnumbered boys in the top percentile. It is difficult to imagine an innate difference in math ability that would be present in whites but not in Asian Americans. Second, even this apparently positive finding fails to explain the paucity of women in some disciplines. “If a particular specialty required mathematical skills at the 99th percentile,” writes Hyde, “we would expect 67 percent men in the occupation and 33 percent women. Yet today, for example, Ph.D. programs in engineering average only about 15 percent women.” Third, it is doubtful that the NCLB tests measure skills that are actually required to succeed at science. Many studies have shown that standardized tests perform poorly as predictors of accomplishment in college and graduate school, let alone later in life. Hyde’s paper sharply criticizes the NCLB tests for concentrating on simpler “recall questions” and completely avoiding “strategic thinking” and “extended thinking” questions. “Complex problem-solving is crucial for advanced work in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] careers,” she writes. Finally, do so-called differences in mathematical ability matter at all? “The national debate on the issue … has so far missed the central point: scientists are made, not born,” wrote economists Michael Cox and Richard Alm in The New York Times, at the height of the Summers brouhaha. At every level of the scientific enterprise, from grade school through grad school and beyond, our society is failing to make as many women scientists as it could—perhaps because we are too mesmerized by the idea that scientists have to be born. —D.M. 40 swarthmore college bulletin VASSILI PAPAVASSILIOU detector, in 1956, was a 200-liter tank of mineral water that caught a whopping three neutrinos per hour. The largest neutrino detector, in Japan, contains 50,000 tons of water. At the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Laboratory in Battavia, Ill., Conrad’s experiment MiniBooNE—short for Booster Neutrino Experiment—uses a comparatively modest 800 tons (or 30 tankloads) of mineral oil. Nowadays, physicists don’t just want to detect neutrinos—they want to understand their amazing mutability. Neutrinos come in at least three “flavors,” called electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. But these flavors do not stay fixed. An experiment in 2001 at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), located deep in a Canadian nickel mine, measured neutrinos coming all the way from the Sun. It found only one third as many electron neutrinos as expected. There were two possibilities: either the Sun was not making as many neutrinos as we thought—or the other two thirds of the neutrinos were there, but they had changed into muon or tau neutrinos (which the SNO was not equipped to detect). It was as if you went out to the store and bought a box of chocolate ice cream, and by the time you got home it had turned into Neapolitan. This might seem like a crazy idea, but theorists knew already that it was a possibility, provided that neutrinos had mass. The reason, Conrad says, is a well-known phenomenon called wave interference. You can see wave interference any time you look at a prism or an iridescent material, such as an oil slick. White light consists of waves of many colors or frequencies, which usually move at the same velocity. But a prism causes different colors of light to travel at different rates. The waves are no longer synchronized, and they “interfere” with each other, so that from one direction the refracted light looks red, while from another it looks blue or green. The changing flavors of the neutrino are exactly like the changing colors of light. In theory, each neutrino is actually a trio of matter waves, which travel at different rates because they have different masses. Like the light reflected off an oil slick that looks alterAlthough fewer than 20 percent of U.S. physics doctorates go to women, Janet Conrad’s (left) research teams have been half men and half women. january 2009 nately red, green, and blue, the neutrino will “look” in some places like an electron neutrino, in other places like a muon neutrino, and so on. To return to the ice cream metaphor, the chocolate ice cream doesn’t just change to Neapolitan. It changes to vanilla, and strawberry, and every possible combination (including Neapolitan), many times every second. The flavor you happen to measure with your detector depends on when you catch it. This “neutrino oscillation” was a surprising discovery, but only because physicists had never before found any evidence that neutrinos have mass. The SNO experiment could be explained with only a slight modification to existing theory (making the neutrino’s mass nonzero); it did not require a complete rethinking of neutrino physics. MiniBooNE complicated this picture. It was intended to test an anomalous result that had been found at the Los Alamos National Laboratory by Conrad’s collaborator, Bill Lewis, which seemed to show that the trio must actually be a quartet. The fourth member (the “sterile neutrino”) would have to be the most introverted neutrino yet. It would be an excellent candidate for what cosmologists call “dark matter,” a mysterious form of matter that seems to make up about a quarter of our universe, but which we know about only through its gravitational effects. The results from MiniBooNE did not confirm the Los Alamos experiment— “Being a woman in physics is like being an expatriate,” Conrad says. but they did detect an excess of low-energy neutrinos (369 instead of the expected 273 over a six-year period). The excess may have to do with sterile neutrinos or some other physics beyond the “Standard Model.” Or it could be an experimental artifact. A stray photon can sometimes be mistaken for the flash of light produced by a neutrino. “One of them is a little fuzzier than the other, but in the end fuzz is fuzz—it’s hard to tell the difference,” Conrad says. One of Conrad’s former students, Bonnie Fleming of Yale University, is currently developing a new experiment, called MicroBooNE, which should resolve the ambiguity. For the first time it would detect actual neutrino tracks, rather than single flashes of light. It will also have pinpoint accuracy compared to MiniBooNE. To tell the difference between a fuzzy flash and a sharp flash, it helps to have a sharp pair of glasses. MENTOR AND ROLE MODEL Conrad was upset when the then-president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, suggested in 2005 that the low proportion of women in some sciences might have something to do with their innate abilities (see sidebar). In fact, a look at Conrad’s research groups shows that neutrinos don’t care about gender. At MiniBooNE, about a third of the experimenters are women. It’s easy to see why students of any gender would gravitate toward Conrad. “She’s a really dedicated adviser,” Fleming says. “She teaches you how to be a good scientist.” According to Boris Kayser, a neutrino physicist at Fermilab, “Apart from [teaching] techniques and skills, she looks after the careers of her protégés and teaches them what they need to do to succeed.” In part, she leads by example. It is very unusual for a junior professor, as Conrad was in 2001 when MiniBooNE got started, to organize a major experiment at a national lab. Fleming got to see firsthand how it is done, from hiring people to managing them and finding the right roles for them. Now Fleming is taking on the same role for MicroBooNE. “It’s really exciting to go from a mentoring relationship with Bonnie to working with her as a colleague,” says Conrad. Conrad believes that women in physics do undergo more scrutiny than men. “Being a woman in physics is like being an expatriate,” she says. She spent a year in England after graduating from Swarthmore, and she says that she was “held responsible for everything America did, such as Reagan bombing Libya.” But, she adds, “An expatriate chooses to be an expatriate for a reason: They love the opportunities. I love being in physics, and the opportunities it gives me.” ! 41 ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS Statistics show that the number of women choosing careers in science and engineering has grown steadily since 1972, when Title IX of the Civil Rights Act was passed. However, in some areas of science— particularly the physical sciences and engineering—they are a long way from achieving parity with men. Three alumnae have been studying why women leave science and engineering majors and how to make it easier for them to stay. 1. FIXING THE “LEAKY PIPELINE” Ruth Haas ’82 If you read very much literature about women in science, you will soon encounter the metaphor of the “leaky pipeline.” At every key career transition—from high school to college, college to grad school, grad school to junior faculty, and junior to senior faculty—women seem to drop out in greater numbers than men. But the pipeline imagery fails to reflect the possibility that students can drop into science as well as drop out. “If you think about your typical image of a math nerd, you see a guy who has known that he’s into math since he was a teenager,” says Ruth Haas, professor of mathematics and statistics at Smith College. “I was like 42 that. Our grad school model is based on that. But there are plenty of people who are good at math who aren’t like that. This seems to be especially true of women, who don’t settle down to doing math until it’s pretty late.” Haas has started a unique postbaccalaureate program at Smith that is designed to replace one of the so-called “leaks” with an intake valve. The program accepts seven women per year who want to attend graduate school in a mathematical science but don’t have a strong enough background. They are the drop-ins. “Some of them had prior lives, or they may have been math education majors or math majors who weren’t very serious,” says Haas. One student was a theater major; another was a lawyer. Five of the first year’s seven students are now in mathematics graduate school. “If we can get five more American women into graduate school, that’s a huge accomplishment,” Haas says. That claim may seem like an exaggeration, but it’s not. On the surface, mathematics appears to be doing better than physics or engineering at attracting women. In 2007, 32 percent of the math Ph.D.s awarded went to women, an all-time high. But the figure is skewed by the presence of foreign students. American women represented only 12.5 percent of the 145 doctorates granted that year. As a mathematics professor at a single-sex college, Haas has a different perspective on the academic environment for women. “People who come and give talks here feel how unusual it is,” she says. Even women matheswarthmore college bulletin 3. dropping out— and dropping in THREE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING RETENTION STRATEGIES FOR WOMEN By Dana Mackenzie ’79 maticians are not accustomed to talking to a roomful of female students who are excited and knowledgeable about math. Some of Haas’s other initiatives are aimed at bringing the Smith experience to more students. The department now has a program that brings women math students from other colleges to Smith for a semester or for their entire junior year. “They find out that there are plenty of women who are serious about math and good at it,” says Haas. “Our women go on in math at a much higher rate than women at co-ed schools.” This fall, Haas also organized the first Women in Mathematics in New England (WiMiN) conference, intended primarily for undergraduates. “It was amazing,” she says. “We had more than 100 people; we had not january 2009 anticipated nearly that number. I think the best thing that happened was the networking. Undergraduates had the chance to talk with graduate students and faculty. That was a very popular thing with the undergrads— they like to see people at various levels who look like them. The more you can hear about how people manage their lives through their career paths, the better.” 2. FINDING SUPPORT Donna Crystal Llewellyn ’80 When Donna Crystal Llewellyn was an undergraduate, she found moral support from an unlikely source. As the only female math major in her class, she didn’t have a student peer group. (One fellow student— the author of this article—gave her an espe- cially hard time. “You were mean!” she says today.) The faculty, though very supportive, were all male. “What saved the environment for me was Joyce, the department secretary,” she says. “She watched out for me, because she knew I was the only woman. Also, the librarians were my support group.” Of course, her experience in honors wasn’t all bad. “Those seminars, even with the jibes and the teasing, were the best preparation for graduate school,” she says. “The main thing is that it was fair. The message was never sent that you shouldn’t be competing because you’re a woman, or that you don’t belong here.” At the first graduate school she attended, she feels that the faculty projected a very different attitude: Women did not belong. Llewellyn is now the director for the Cen43 3. LEARNING HOW TO STUDY Lynne Molter ’79 For Professor of Engineering Lynne Molter, who got her engineering degree at Swarthmore and has now taught at the College for 21 years, one incident crystallized her interest in student retention. It happened more than 10 years ago. “One of my students came into my office and said that she was going to transfer out of engineering,” Molter says. “She told me that she was working so hard that she wasn’t able to get enough sleep, and yet her grades were mediocre.” “I asked her, ‘Tell me how you study for an exam.’ She said, ‘I read the book.’ Then I 44 “If a man is too busy full-time staff position held by an alumna of the department, Ann Tran Ruether ’94, to provide individualized help for each student for whom it could be useful, especially those in their first year. Reuther to advise students, he is seen as productive. But students will give lower ratings to a woman who is too busy.” just happened to ask her, ‘How many times?’ And she said ‘Seven times.’” Molter’s jaw dropped. “‘What about the examples?’ I asked. She said, ‘Oh no, I skipped them.’” After that, Molter started asking other first-year students how they studied. And it turned out that many others were studying in a way that was inappropriate for an engineering course. In engineering, working examples and studying concepts (rather than re-reading the textbook or memorizing facts) is the most effective way to learn. “They didn’t know how to approach the material, and it was breaking my heart,” says Molter. Juniors and seniors didn’t seem to have the same problems—but was it because the way they were studying was optimal, or had the system simply driven out the students who didn’t study in that way? Molter may soon find out some answers. Together with K. Ann Renninger of the Department of Educational Studies, she is collecting information from students, at the time they declare their majors, about their goals and the choices they have made. They are also surveying engineering majors retrospectively about the same questions. Molter and Renninger are also collaborating with Robert Koff of Washington University at St. Louis, on a project in which they are collecting and coordinating retention data at several highly selective colleges and universities. “We’re up to our elbows in data—tens of thousands of student records,” she says. Both of these projects are funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Although neither project focuses exclusively on women, they are likely to reveal some of the ways in which female students’ choices or learning styles affect retention. Meanwhile, Molter and her colleagues in the department of engineering have worked to improve their support system for all students. For instance, the department has a “I asked her, ‘Tell me how you study for an exam.’ She said, ‘I read the book.’ Then I just happened to ask her, ‘How many times?’ And she said ‘Seven times.’” proactively monitors students’ progress in all of their math, science, and engineering courses, through collaboration and cooperation with faculty in those departments, and runs a help program five evenings a week. ! ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS ter for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Georgia Tech, a position she took after several years as a professor of operations research. At CETL, she works with faculty on their teaching skills, and she sees first-hand the problems that women face during their junior faculty years. “It’s very intense for women, in that they have a higher default advising load,” Llewellyn says. “Students tend to seek them out more for experience and advice—just as I did with the women librarians at Swarthmore. If a man is too busy to advise students, he is seen as productive. But students will give lower ratings to a woman who is too busy.” “Then there’s the issue of the biological clock and the tenure clock, which overlap for most women,” Llewellyn continues. On that issue, there has been progress at Georgia Tech since she arrived. “We have procedures to stop the tenure clock, and we have leave options. When I got here, there was only sick leave and no maternity leave. Now there is a better attitude on campus, and some men even take paternity leave.” On a national level, Llewellyn founded (and named) an interest group called Women in Operations Research and Management Science (WORMS), within the national society for operations research (INFORMS). Its membership has taken off over the last 10 years. “Back then, there were only a handful of women. Now we fill a ballroom at the annual meeting,” she says. Clearly, her days of being the only woman are over. swarthmore college bulletin connections COURTESY OF TRAVEL STUDY SERVICES OFF WE GO AGAIN! Swarthmore’s Alumni College Abroad is offering two exciting new adventures: ¡Hola Argentina! A Feast for All Senses Experience Argentina—a land of astounding beauty, open spaces, and world-class cuisine—with faculty study leader Hansjakob Werlen, professor of German, and alumni host Raymond Hopkins, Richter Professor Emeritus of Political Science, from March 5 to 14. A member of Slow Food’s International Council on Biodiversity, otherwise known as the Ark of Taste, Werlen has traveled widely in South America with a special focus on Argentina, and his insights and recommendations have been incorporated into our itinerary to make this a truly unique travel experience. ¡Hola Argentina! is a delicious three-part tour. The “main course”: eight days in Buenos Aires and Mendoza. Travelers may also choose an “appetizer” trip to Iguazu Falls, the world’s largest waterfall (above) or “dessert” travel to Bariloche Lakes and Patagonia. Turkey: Timeless Treasure From May 5 to 17, Professor of Art History Michael Cothren will be our faculty study leader as we experience Turkey—a fascinating study in contrasts where extraordinary Byzantine, Roman, and Ottoman historical sites are scattered along sunny sparkling seacoasts and in the middle of bustling enthralling cities. Relish the legendary cuisine, the tapestry of cultures, the breathtaking landscapes, and the overwhelming diversity of this magical land. SASS 40TH ANNIVERSARY Mar. 20–21: A student and alumni planning committee, chaired by Charmaine Giles ’10, has organized a campus weekend to bring together the Swarthmore black community—students and alumni alike—to take part in Sankofa (Swahili for “taking the good from the past and continually moving forward”). Speakers, panels, and breakout sessions will explore ways we can develop as strong black leaders and how to use the strength of the black community in its ongoing effort to enhance the life of the College. Participants will enjoy a formal dinner and a concert by the Alumni Gospel Choir on Saturday evening. For more information and to RSVP, please visit swarthmore.edu/alumni/sass. For more information, please call (800) 789-9738, or e-mail alumni_travel@swarthmore.edu. january 2009 45 connections lifelong learning COURSES FOR SPRING Consider taking a Lifelong Learning course this spring. Courses are taught seminar style by Swarthmore faculty, but without grades or credit—just learning for learning’s sake. Spring 2009 courses begin in February and run for eight weeks. Tuition is $430 for courses taught at Swarthmore and $560 for those taught in New York City. Visit swarthmore.edu/lifelonglearning.xml for more information. Offered at Swarthmore Making Trouble: The Modernist Revolution Philip Weinstein Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Literature Monday evenings The U.S. Presidency Richard Valelly Professor of Political Science Tuesday evenings AMAZING UPCOMING ALUMNI EVENTS Feb. 8, On Campus See Sherlock Holmes live again as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia comes alive in a libretto by Professor of English Literature Nathalie Anderson set to music by Associate Professor of Music Tom Whitman ’82. Preceding the performance, there will be a special alumni reception with an overview of the opera given by Professors Anderson and Whitman. Mar. 10, Austin, Tex. Faculty talk by Ken Sharpe, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science (topic TBA) Mar. 29, On Campus Keynote speaker Richard Teerlink, former chairman and chief executive officer of HarleyDavidson Inc. will highlight the 10th Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship. Teerlink led Harley-Davidson’s fabled turnaround, creating an open, participatory culture of trust conducive to employees giving of their best. In these difficult times, he challenges entrepreneurial leaders to become engaged and reinvent their own organizations. The conference features alumni entrepreneurs and business leaders and offers alumni and students the opportunity to interact with and learn from them and from each other. Mar. 29, New York City Faculty talk by Ken Sharpe, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science (topic TBA) April 3–4, On Campus As the governing body of the Alumni Association, the Swarthmore Alumni Council participates in a range of activities that support students, alumni, and the College. This spring, the current council is inviting all former members to join them for an Alumni Council Reunion. Special activities have been planned for returning former members. April 19, Boston Professor of Biology Amy Cheng Vollmer will deliver a talk: “Dancing with the Bugs: Delicate Choreography for Humans and their Microbial Partners.” June 5–7, On Campus Alumni Weekend Three days of the most fun ever. Will you be here with your classmates? For more information, visit alumniweekend.swarthmore.edu. June 21–25, On Campus Mark your calendars now for this summer’s Alumni College: “Hope and Courage.” You are invited to campus for four days of intellectual challenge, lively discussion, and entertaining experiences—and no tests! Our faculty members are putting together an exciting program, which will be unveiled later this spring. Watch your mail, e-mail, and the April Swarthmore College Bulletin for more details. For the latest on events near you, go to swarthmore.edu/alumni_events.xml. Offered in New York City Support Center for Nonprofit Management, 305 Seventh Avenue Living Lightly on the Earth Carr Everbach Professor of Engineering Wednesday evenings The Russian Short Story Thompson Bradley Prof. Emeritus of Russian Thursday evenings 46 MATTHEW ARMISTEAD ’08 Mathematics in Nature and Human Experience Deborah Bergstrand Professor of Mathematics Thursday evenings Members of the Alumni Council gathered on campus from Nov. 7 to 9 for their fall meeting. If you are interested in serving on Council, or in nominating a fellow alumnus/a to serve, contact the Alumni Office at (610) 328-8402 or alumni@swarthmore.edu and we will forward the information to the Alumni Nominating Committee. swarthmore college bulletin NOMINATE A SELFLESS ALUMNI VOLUNTEER FOR THE ARABELLA CARTER AWARD class notes KAREN BERNIER Alumni in Paris gathered in September for a cooking class hosted by Anaïs Loizillon ’95 and Graham Richmond ’95. Chef-teacher Gabrielle Mondesire ’03 patiently led the group through the creation of delicious profiteroles. Left to right, top row: Loizillon, Richmond, Mondesire, and Jacques JoussotDubien ’49. Bottom: Jan Jacob Willem Boom-Wichers ’87 these services—living simply on family money. The annual Arabella Carter Award, established in 1997 by the Alumni Council, honors alumni who have made significant contributions as volunteers in their own community or on a regional or national level. The Council hopes to honor alumni whose volunteer service is relatively unknown. If you know such a person— especially if your class is having a reunion in 2009—please contact the Alumni Office at (610) 3288402 and request an award nomination form, or visit swarthmore.edu/alumni/arabella_form. htm to nominate a worthy candidate. COURTESY OF ANAIS LOIZILLON Do you know of a classmate or other Swarthmore alumna/us who goes above and beyond through their volunteer work? Honor them through a nomination for the College’s Arabella Carter Award. Arabella Carter was one of the great unsung heroes who worked for peace and social justice in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in the early 1900s. She never sought publicity or recognition for her work and is now all but forgotten by everyone except Friends Historical Library archivists, who see her hand in Quaker peace and social justice work over three decades. Arabella appears to have received no monetary compensation for all On Oct. 15, alumni gathered at the Union League Club of Chicago to get an update on the College from President Al Bloom. From left: Jackie Richardson ’80, Jeff Gordon ’81, and Christina Greulich ’78 january 2009 47 books + arts Peter Andreas ’87, Blue Helmets and Black Markets, The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo, Cornell University Press, 2008. The Twisted Logic of War RIKARD LARMA/ASSOCIATED PRESS additional refugees, especially to other parts of Europe. Ending the arms embargo might have broken the siege, risking a wider war and exacerbating the refugee sitPeter Andreas is a master at unuation. Thus, the Serbs could covering the secrets behind the enlist the U.N. forces as allies in official stories. Blue Helmets and preventing a legal re-arming of Black Markets: The Business of the Bosnian army in Sarajevo— Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo all while a black market in small looks beyond the popular tale of arms (that the U.N. also enabled) the siege—local heroism, strugallowed Bosnian forces to hold on. gles for freedom and survival, Andreas unravels the twisted and white knights of humanitarlogic of this war, weaving a story ian intervention—to reveal a that is as clear as it is fascinating. darker side of the battle to save Through sophisticated explanathe city from the Serb onslaught tion and analysis, he shows how between 1992 and 1995. short-term interests—economic Andreas could not have profit, increases in political United Nations troops unload humanitarian supplies at Sarajevo Airport in picked a more important event. power, day-to-day survival, and December 1994. The airlift to the besieged city was frequently interrupted The Bosnian fighting was the protecting the humanitarian by threats of Serbian missile attack. Peter Andreas’s book uncovers the complifirst outbreak of war in Europe mission—created a systemic concated—and sometimes criminal—relationships among the Serbs, Bosnians, international agencies, and foreign governments. since World War II. Symbolizing sequence that no individual actor the bloody ethnic conflicts and wanted: prolonging the siege. “ethnic cleansing” that have come to dominate our news and shape In fact, it even helped delay direct military intervention by Western foreign policy in the last two decades, it became a test case for interforces because the Western powers could deflect popular pressure for national humanitarian intervention under United Nations (U.N.) intervention by promising more aid. auspices—the “Blue Helmets.” Without massive intervention, SarajeBlue Helmets is enriched by a talent not many academics share: vo would have fallen. The U.N. presence bought the city three years, Andreas joins compelling, well-written stories with sophisticated facilitating the internationally monitored settlement that still holds insights about the hidden structures that make things work. He today. But behind the scenes, is a story of crime and corruption in shows how seemingly scattered pieces are connected by unintended which all the actors participated—the Serb besiegers, the criminal consequences. For example, to get the Serbs to stop firing on the elements who became soldiers and mafioso on the front lines of the Sarajevo airport, U.N. forces agree to patrol the airport grounds preBosnian defenders, the city’s political elite, the U.N. Blue Helmets, venting the residents they are protecting from crossing the airport to and even international aid workers and reporters. escape the city or smuggling in goods. Andreas probes the logic behind the corruption and the purposes In response, the Bosnian forces dig a “secret” tunnel under the airit served. The people of Sarajevo could not have withstood the siege port to allow safe passage. When the tunnel is finished, the U.N. without arms, medicines, and food smuggled in through the black forces claim that the ground beneath the airport is not part of the market. But the corruption prolonged the siege by strengthening airport—and the deal with the Serbs. They refuse to close it, and both sides—the Serb besiegers and the Bosnian defenders. their presence near the tunnel entrance helps protect travelers and The book reveals a war system in which each of the parties had an smugglers from Serb artillery fire. interest in perpetuating the very conflict they wanted to win. For Blue Helmets recognizes that humanitarian intervention has beexample, the U.N. had to bargain with the Serbs in order to move come a major tool in conflict resolution, but that it almost inevitably supply convoys through Serb-held territory and protect the airport becomes enmeshed in criminal networks and black markets. Brief from Serb attack. But allowing humanitarian assistance to flow comparisons to other sieges and humanitarian interventions—Falluenabled Serbs to skim off 25 percent of the supplies. And because the jah in 2004 for example—underline Andreas’ point. The way these Serbs could cut the supply lines at any time, the mere threat of a cutinterventions are carried out, their trajectories, and even their possioff became a bargaining chip. The deal the Serbs made with the U.N. bilities for success, are shaped by symbiotic relationships that develop and aid agencies effectively lined up these international organizations between the interveners and the underworld. If, as Andreas implies, on the side of the Serbs in opposing efforts—in the U.S. Congress, for there is no way to avoid such problems, understanding their dynamexample—to lift the embargo on arms shipments to Sarajevo’s deics and thinking about how they might be managed will need to be a fenders, who badly wanted heavy weapons to break the siege. central part of any future humanitarian effort. This impasse makes sense only if you understand that one major —Kenneth Sharpe purpose of humanitarian aid was to prevent the displacement of William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science 58 swarthmore college bulletin doing so, proves to be more like a mountain lion than a rabbit. how literary culture and our perception of history are changing as the world grows smaller. Jeremy Day-O’Connell ’93, Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy, University of Rochester Press, 2007. This work offers the first comprehensive account of a widely recognized aspect of music history: the increasing use of pentatonic (“black-key scale”) techniques in 19th-century Western art-music. Em i l y A be l ’6 4 and Saskia Subramanian, After the Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors, New York University Press, 2008. Survivors tell their stories of life after chemotherapy and the complicated, often bittersweet realities of life after the cure. Ellen Argyros ’83, Feta in Brine, Publish America Press, 2008. This debut collection of poetry by a third-generation GreekAmerican includes lyrical, often elegiac narratives with titles such as “Nitroglycerine Tablet, Taken Under the Tongue,” “The Castle of Mytilenea,” and “Bratty Little Sister.” Helene Smith Ferranti ’54, Sailing to Antarctica, Back Channel Press, 2008. In 1995, the author and one other shipmate set sail from Maine on what became a six-year voyage that included two Atlantic crossings, ports of call in Europe, and a circumnavigation of South America. Covering a five-month segment of their journey—largely in Argentina—the author writes from the perspective of a traveler as well as a sailor, reflecting an interest in the region’s flora and fauna as well as its historical and cultural january 2009 Jul i e D i am on d ’ 6 5 , Welcome to the Aquarium: A Year in the Lives of Children, The New Press, 2008. Guiding the reader through the details of kindergarten life—such as organization, curriculum, and relationships that define the way a group of kindergartners becomes a class with a distinct personality and culture—veteran educator Diamond lays out the logic behind the routines and rituals children need to thrive. M ar c E gnal ’ 6 5 , Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War, Hill and Wang, 2009. Challenging the orthodoxy that the American Civil War began for moral reasons, the author contends that the conflict was due primarily to the evolution of the Northern and Southern economies. Marc Elihu Hofstadter ’67, Luck, Scarlet Tanager Books, 2008. According to author and reviewer Clive Matson, this poetry collection “delivers a whole life in snapshots taken at moments of bell-like clarity in late afternoon just before half-light descends…. These poems are flowers that bloom in my soul and reflect back utterly resonant pictures.” Continued next page background and thereby creating a work that comprises much more than simply a nautical adventure. Michele Ruth Gamburd ’87, Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka, Cornell University Press, 2008. In this work, whose title refers to a Sri Lankan drinker’s comparison between the warming power of the first shot of kasippu, the local moonshine, and the rekindled heat of a kitchen fire, the author explores the changing role of alcohol—despite Buddhist prohibitions—in areas of the world to which globalization has brought poverty. John Brooks ’48 D, No Fixed Address, John Irwin Books, 2008. The late journalist, Washington correspondent, and Georgetown professor depicts the America of his youth—from the Depression, through World War II, to the beginning of the nation’s postwar transformation in Chicago, Southern California, and New York City. Howard Clymer ’42, Conejito: Opening the West, Random NPC LLC, 2008. In this novel, a young teen loses his family in a violent attack on their wagon on the Oregon Trail. The young boy, nicknamed Conejito (little rabbit) as a child, is determined to continue along the trail, and, in Karen (Rosenberg) Hilsberg ’85 (editor and illustrator), Be Like a Tree: Zen Talks by Thích Phu’ó’c Tinh, Jasmine Roots Press, 2008. Available in English for the first time, the teachings of the Zen Master, rendered in direct speech and poetry, speak to the everyday dilemmas of being human in the 21st century. Stephen Henighan ’84, A Report on the Afterlife of Culture, Biblioasis, 2008. One of Canada’s most provocative writers ranges across continents, centuries, and linguistic traditions to examine L au ra L om a s ’ 8 9 , Translating Empire: José Martí, Migrant Latino Subjects and American Modernities, Duke University Press, 2008. The author reveals how late 19th-century Latino migrant workers developed a prescient critique of U.S. imperialism: a critique that prefigures many of the concerns —about empire, race, and postcolonial subjectivity—animating American studies today. 59 John Krinsky ’91, Free Labor: Workfare and the Contested Language of Neoliberalism, University of Chicago Press, 2008. The author analyzes the politics of workfare—the practice of making welfare recipients work as a condition of receiving their checks, thus compensating the public for the support they receive—in New York City in the 1990s under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Peter Latham ’62, Patricia Horan Latham ’63, and Myrna Mandlawitz, Special Education Law, Pearson Education, Inc., 2008. This work presents IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), other pertinent federal laws, and federal cases in a clear, well-organized manner to help educators understand and apply their knowledge in concrete situations. R obi n R idi ngton ’6 2 , The Poets Don’t Write Sonnets Anymore, Plume of Cockatoo Press, 2008. In this collection of sonnets and narratives, which were compiled over the past five decades and containing a section of work from the author’s Swarthmore years, prose passages contextualize the poetry but also stand as essays in their own right as well. 60 essays about stories—the hearing, sharing, recording of, and sometimes becoming characters in them—is the result of the Ridingtons’ decades of work with the Athapaskan-speaking Danezaa people of Canada’s Peace River area. N e i l R ap he l ’ 7 3, Janis Raye, and Adrienne Raphel, Business Success in Tough Times, Raphel Publishing, 2008. Illustrating nine characteristics of business success, this book tells the stories of businesspeople who faced tough times but survived and thrived. Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez ’46, (editor) 500 Years of Chicana Women’s History, Rutgers University Press, 2008. The author’s sixth book, whose second printing occurred after only four months, offers a vivid pictorial account of struggle and survival, resilience and achievement, discrimination and identity. It’s a powerful antidote to the deficit of Chicano and Chicana history in most history books. Darius Rejali ’81, Torture and Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2007. In recognition of its scholarship and capacity to influence policy or bring about change in human rights conventions, this book received the 2007 Human Rights Book of the Year Award from the American Political Science Association. Robin Ridington ’62 and Jillian Ridington, When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representations, University of Nebraska Press, 2006. This collection of Diana Wickes Roose ’70, Teach Us to Live: Stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Intentional Productions, 2007. These stories about the resilience of the human spirit, told by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aim to encourage readers to learn from them and help shape the world with new hope for peace and understanding. Robert Roper ’68, Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War, Walker Publishing Company Inc., 2008. Drawing upon letters exchanged between Walt Whitman and other family members during the Civil War as well as other documentation, this book chronicles Robert Rozema and A l l e n W e bb ’7 9 , Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies, Heinemann, 2008. Authored by two teachers, this book is a thoughtful, nuts-and-bolts guide for any English teacher looking for effective tools to boost readers’ engagement and improve their responses to literature. B re nda W e b st e r ’5 8 , Vienna Triangle, Wings Press, 2009. Born into the world of prominent New York Freudians in the middle of the last century, the author weaves a story of historical detection that penetrates the closed world of psychoanalysis. the experience of an archetypical American family enduring its own crisis alongside that of the nation. Daren Simkin and Daniel Simkin ’01 (illustrator), The Traveler, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Starbucks Entertainment, 2008. This fable for readers of all ages tells the story of a little boy who packs up all his time to go looking for something better to spend it on, only to realize, after traveling the world, that what he sought was to be found back at home. Elizabeth Varon ’85, Disunion: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859, The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. In this reinterpretation of the origins of the Civil War, the author blends political history with intellectual and cultural history to show how Americans, as far back as the earliest days of the republic, agonized and strategized over disunion. —Carol Brévart-Demm swarthmore college bulletin in my life “A Change Is Gonna Come” AN OBAMA CAMPAIGNER OF HIS CANDIDATE’S VICTORY. By Benjamin Bradlow ’08 ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS SHARES THE JUBILATION WHEN I FOUND MYSELF IN BARACK OBAMA’S campaign field office in South Philadelphia on Election Day—where I had worked for the past month—I couldn’t help feeling somewhat surprised to be there. For almost the entirety of my awareness of politics, I had been alienated from my government, estranged from my country, and unsure of my generation. That night, campaign workers cried, screamed, and high-fived their way through the office and into the dancing multitudes on Philadelphia’s Broad Street, a block away from our office. I felt the empowerment of my youth. I screamed, hugged, and danced in the streets of this struggling, emotional city, with friends and with strangers, black and white. This was my country, shorn of the shackles of our parents, of our teachers, of our former leaders. After years of feeling that the Bush administration was just one constant attempt to hoodwink the country and the world, I could begin to consider that maybe we had pulled the ultimate trump card in what had previously been just a high stakes game of political frivolity. Soon after I had started at the South Philadelphia office, in early October, reports emerged that John McCain would be making his last stand in Pennsylvania, hoping to chip 76 away at Obama’s support in heavily populated Philadelphia by targeting white, workingclass neighborhoods in Northeast and South Philadelphia. Obama visited four areas of the city during my first weekend working for the campaign. His last stop was at 52nd Street in West Philadelphia, long a key shopping avenue for the city’s historic African American community. The crowd overflowed at least two blocks beyond the designated area for the rally. Old ladies cried; crowds chanted, “Yes we can”; and street hawkers entertained by contorting the candidate’s name as they shouted into bullhorns, “Obamaobamaobamaobama!” It was both moving and fitting that his last stop in Philadelphia would be to this area of the city, which surely had never before been the focus of a presidential campaign. Still, this was all he would offer as help in our fight in the biggest battleground city of the election. We were left with our “bodies on the doors” strategy, to use the vaguely dehumanizing, gung-ho language of the campaign field staff. So I went to the doors in the wards where Hillary Clinton had rung up large margins—up to 50 percent—in her primary challenge to Obama earlier in the year. These wards were full of the white, working-class voters who, we had been told, would never swarthmore college bulletin vote for a black man. My pleas were sometimes met by aggressive, racist ripostes. “It’s been the White House for 200 years, and I don’t want it to become the Black House,” one man with a thick foreign accent told me, somehow laying claim to an imagined legacy that was clearly an adopted one for him. A father playing with his children at a playground in South Philadelphia’s Marconi Plaza predicted, “If he gets in, he’s going to bring Sharpton, Jackson, and Farrakhan with him.” But more often than not, and, it seemed, as the economic picture became increasingly bleak, I heard tales of lost jobs, financial insecurity, and a desire among Republicans and Democrats alike to vote for the person “who cares about me.” The stories fit right into the Obama pitches I had seen in TV ads and speeches, and I began to adopt some of his rhetoric in selling his candidacy when I spoke to voters: “John McCain wants to dou- When is somebody going to talk about the working poor?” All I could say to this woman, as I listened to the cries of her young children in the background, was, “You’re right.” A black woman was unsure of Obama despite his being black, and white people were doubtful because he was black. Some were hopeful despite their fears of being let down, while others were afraid to hope. And I was beginning to regain my own political inspiration — “to drink the Obama koolaid,” as my younger brother liked to joke — as I watched this inner battle playing out with voters across South Philadelphia. As the last days of the campaign piled up, I received an e-mail from my mother encouraging me to keep working hard so that we could all celebrate on Election Day. She signed off as “the original Obamamama.” I shook my head in wonder at her motherly idiosyncrasies. I thought of what this election Old ladies cried; crowds chanted, “Yes we can”; and street hawkers entertained by contorting the candidate’s name as they shouted into bullhorns: !” a m m a a a b b o o a o a m b a amaobam “Ob ble down on the failed Bush policies of the last eight years.” “Obama is working for you.” “We can’t afford John McCain.” More and more South Philadelphians seemed to agree as the weeks went by. But the campaign fight in the area was going to go down to the bitter end. One undecided old lady, skeptical of Obama’s experience, couldn’t help but note, “The young people really seem to like him.” “That’s why I’m here,” I almost replied. We had to convince the people who had heard all about how Barack Obama was not like them that he actually was. This occasionally became a tougher proposition than I had bargained for. In late October, I made a call to a woman in a predominantly African American area of South Philadelphia. I stuck to the script. “Can we count on your support for Barack Obama this Election Day?” “Yes, but I never hear him talking about us,” she said. “It’s always ‘the middle class.’ Well I’m definitely not the middle class. january 2009 meant to her and my father, white South Africans who emigrated in the late 1970s and were now planning on moving back to their home country. In my house, growing up, there was always one political hero: Nelson Mandela. By the time Mandela was actually on the ballot in South Africa, my parents had lived in the United States for more than 25 years, had become citizens, and had voted in many American elections. On Nov. 4, it struck me. They had left a country that, among its many injustices, denied the possibility of a black man for president in a majority black country. Today, they would cast their first vote for a black chief executive not in South Africa, but in the United States, a country with its own fraught history of racism. As I made my way through that day, I thought about when they would vote. Maybe they would see it as their election, just as much as I saw it as mine. The street celebrations of Obama’s victory seemed to belong to the young and racially diverse crowd that gathered that night. I felt one with this crowd and our victory. The next morning, I realized an even more profound truth. This election belonged to everyone. At Greater Mount Olive A.M.E. Church, where I had coordinated volunteer canvassers in the days leading up to Election Day, older members of the African American church laid their claim to the victory, drawing the lineage of King and Kennedy to Obama. White and black of all ages were smiling at each other on the public bus I took back to the campaign office to begin cleaning up. This was not just my election. This election belonged to my parents. It was the election of the tired old lady in South Philadelphia worried about her dwindling retirement money and skyrocketing pharmaceutical bills. It belonged to African Americans across the country waiting on Martin Luther King’s dream. I took it as my own as well. I ran into a friend in the streets near the campaign office that day, and all we could do was hug and talk about our hopes for the future. Barack Obama was our next president. We had inspired and become inspired along the way. Such optimism was out there in broad daylight for everyone to see and feel. I scoured the Internet throughout the day for reactions from around the world, waiting to see what Mandela, and my family’s number two hero, the Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work against apartheid, would say. The first time I cried during the entire election season was when I read of their public joy at this momentous occasion. A few days later, my parents forwarded me a private e-mail a family friend had received from Tutu. On Election Night, Barack Obama recalled the soul singer Sam Cooke’s powerful “A Change Is Gonna Come” when he told America and the world that “change has come.” And in his message, Tutu—that voice I had always admired that combined wisdom, justice, old age, and youthful exuberance all in one—articulated in his response what every single one of us was feeling at that moment: “Yippee!” ! Benjamin Bradlow is a writer and musician living in South Philadelphia. He blogs at ifilose.wordpress.com. 77 Plants Make Us Better, More Civil People VIRGINIA LOHR ’73 HAS A SIMPLE MESSAGE ABOUT THE WIDE-RANGING BENEFITS OF INDOOR PLANTS The lush leaves in hues of gold, green, and burgundy that fill Virginia Lohr’s [’73] office at Washington State University– Pullman (WSU) have not been gathered for aesthetic purposes. Lohr surrounds herself with 14 potted plants because she knows from her own research, and that of colleagues in the fields of horticulture, landscape architecture, and psychology, that the plants will refresh the air in her space and improve the quality of her life in intangible ways. Lohr’s work has a simple message: from better air quality and reduced stress to increased productivity, calmness, and tolerance to pain, indoor plants offer people wide-ranging benefits. A professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, she talks often about the wide-ranging benefits of plants at international professional meetings as well as in the locally WSU-produced video The Civilizing Nature of Plants. Her first study—conducted in a computer lab at WSU— looked at the physical effects plants have on air quality. The study addressed the concerns of WSU computer technologists who feared that dust generated by the plants would cause hard drives to crash. A productivity study was conducted simultaneously. Lohr’s research demonstrated not only that plants improve air quality but also that people were more productive and that their blood pressure was lower in a room filled with plants. Lohr’s interest in horticulture began while she was an undergraduate psychology major. By the time she had settled on the field following a leave of absence, it was too late to switch majors without extending her time at Swarthmore. Instead, she took as many botany courses as she could during that year. While earning a master’s in horticulture at New Mexico State University and a doctorate in plant and soil science at the University of Tennessee, Lohr realized she had brought psychology into her work after all with her interest in how plants affect humans. In a subsequent study, Lohr and colleague Caroline Pearson-Mims, a research technologist at Washington State, found that the presence of plants could also ease pain. Subjects—asked to leave their hands in ice water until it was uncomfortable—were able to do so longer when they were in a room with plants compared to when they were in a plantless room or a room with colorful non-plant objects. Concerned with increasing worldwide urbanization and reduced childhood contact with nature, Lohr and PearsonMims asked 2,004 adults in the 50 largest cities in mainland United States about their exposure to trees as children and what they thought of trees as adults. The survey yielded evidence that it is critical to have trees in cities so that kids have opportunities to interact with them. “People have innately positive responses when looking at trees—they feel happier and more relaxed in the environment,” Lohr explains, “and the response is magnified when the tree is green and has a spreading form.” “Other peoples’ studies have astounded me,” Lohr says. “They have proven that the cognitive function of elementary school kids increases when plants are present and that violence among impoverished kids is reduced when plants are around their homes.” In her landscape and environmental horticulture classes, Lohr incorporates details about the positive effects of plants on humans. “When it is exam time and my students are stressed out,” Lohr says, “I tell them to go hug a tree. On exam days, I bring a plant to class to ease their stress.” Last year, Lohr was selected to be a member of WSU’s President’s Teaching Academy—an initiative to advance scholarship about teaching and learning. According to Chuck Munson, chair of the academy, she was chosen for her outstanding work as a teacher and educational scholar. “The proudest moment of my career,” she says, “was when the students learned of my selection to the academy and applauded me.” Lohr was the Scott Arboretum’s first intern, and today, as a member of the WSU arboretum and wildlife center implementation committee, she is working to bring an arboretum to that university. “Plants humanize our surroundings,” Lohr says. “They make us better, more civil people.” —Susan Cousins Breen City View AN OPEN-MINDED PERSPECTIVE GUIDES KAIROS SHEN ’87 IN PLANNING BOSTON’S ARCHITECTURAL FUTURE. It’s dusk as Kairos Shen ’87 takes in a panoramic view of Boston’s harbor. “I can see the Custom House Tower, the airport, the new Rose Kennedy Greenway parks, the steeples of the North End, the Bunker Hill Monument, and the spires on the Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge. It’s a spectacular view,” he says. The view from the ninth and top floor of Boston’s City Hall comes gratis with his job as chief planner for the city. Shen was appointed to the position in January 2008 by Mayor Thomas Menino. Shen is also director of planning for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, where he has worked for 15 years and been director for seven. Shen, who obtained a master’s in architecture from MIT, says he doesn’t have a single vision for the city’s future buildings: “Any great city has to embody multiple visions in terms of architectural style and expression. That’s how you get richness. We’re lucky [in Boston] because of the way the land and districts were developed. Historically, there were predominant ways of building, with predominant use of materials and heights that give a consistent fabric. Brick provides a backdrop here with more contemporary materials offset against that backdrop. I don’t think you can say, ‘this is what buildings ought to look like,’ and apply them. A principle I abide by is to be open-minded,” says Shen, who was born in Hong Kong to parents of Chinese ancestry and received U.S. citizenship in 2003. Although always careful to ensure that his personal taste in architecture does not affect his job to approve, deny, or ask for changes to a proposal, he does let his preferences show in the office furniture. An avid chair collector, he brought in a Charles Eames chair and a Hans Wegner chair. “Our job in the planning office is to make sure a proposal for a building acknowledges and respects its place within the larger urban fabric and supports and contributes to the city’s urban life and character,” says Shen, sitting in his Aeron desk chair that was made by Herman Miller and designed by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf. “My colleagues and I have developed a set of principles that seem to work pretty well. A colleague of mine can start a design and development review process, and I can join in later and be following the same themes my colleagues pursued,” says Shen, who was a lead planner of the South Boston Waterfront, the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, the preservation and additions to Fenway Park, and Harvard’s new Boston campus. Shen says an average day’s work consists of a plethora of meetings inside City Hall with developers, planners, architects, and community activists; numerous phone conversations; and almost daily meetings with Mayor Menino in his fifth-floor office. About twice a week, Shen attends community meetings to listen to citizens’ comments on upcoming plans. He says he prefers these face-to-face interactions, waiting until around 6 p.m. to answer e-mails or review drawings. He tries to leave the office for home by 8 p.m. He shares that home with wife Christine Pilcavage, an international development and public health adviser. They married last June at the Saarinen Chapel on the MIT campus. “We planned the wedding together. I designed the wedding invitation, which included an abstract drawing I created of the Harry Bertoia sculpture behind the altar in the MIT chapel,” he says. To take a break from his job, Shen spends time working on a summer home in New Hampshire, which he and Christine share with Mike Miele ’87, Shen’s freshman roommate, and his family. Shen and Miele maintain a strong friendship. When Shen walks the streets of Boston, he reminds himself that each of the structures around him is an artifact. “You can learn something about the culture, the building process, the client, and the architect, even if you only encountered the building, and never saw the drawings or learned how it was built. Some buildings deliberately negate or reject their role in the city, others embrace it,” Shen says. “But to know that this artifact was constructed and built according to principles that were documented in drawings, makes architecture very objective. There are many objective criteria you can use to evaluate architecture as good or bad. “If people criticize a decision I make on behalf of the public, instead of hearing people say, ‘Mr. Shen is just exercising his opinions,’ I prefer to hear, ‘Mr. Shen is exercising his judgment that is based on a body of knowledge.’” —Audree Penner When Calamity Strikes... ENGINEER NICHOLAS LEHMANN ’97 SPENDS MUCH OF HIS LIFE AT DISASTER SCENES. Just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, Nicholas Lehmann was there to provide on-site engineering support as contractors began to move mountains of debris. Shortly after a steel cooling tower collapsed in Milford, Conn., he was on hand to figure out why it came crashing down, killing two workers. And when a parking garage wall collapsed in Philadelphia last fall, Lehmann was soon on the scene to determine what caused it to fail and how the wall should be rebuilt. “It’s never good if we are working on your building,” quips Lehmann, 33, “because it generally means that something bad has happened.” For Lehmann, diagnosing what causes a building to collapse or figuring out how to shore up a troubled structure lies at the heart of his engineering practice. These are the types of projects he has worked on since joining Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates (WJE) in 1998, after graduating from Cornell University with a master’s degree in structural engineering. Lehmann lives in Maple Shade, N.J., with his wife Erika Krick ’98, a veterinary oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and works from WJE’s office in Princeton, N.J. An enthusiastic weekend autocross racer, he says he enjoys the challenges his profession provides: “No two structural problems are the same. One day, I might be working on a suspended scaffold platform, investigating the travertine marble façade panels of the Solow Building in New York City; the next day, I could be looking at the condition of a concrete building after a fire, the next investigating decay in a wood building or looking at hurricane damage to a brick structure.” After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Lehmann flew to Louisiana to analyze the storm’s destruction, representing his firm, which had contracts both with insurance companies and property owners. For the insurance companies, Lehmann was charged with determining if the damage wrought by Katrina on certain buildings was caused by wind or flooding. Many policies covered only wind damage. For one property owner, Lehmann investigated whether the concrete foundation for a housing project had survived the onslaught. The concrete was sound, and the project moved forward. Joseph Khan ’97, one of Lehmann’s college friends, says that Lehmann’s work is a good fit for a guy who likes to solve problems. “He’s good at figuring out who messed up to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” says Khan, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Lehmann credits Swarthmore’s engineering program for providing a solid, broad-based look at the field during his undergraduate studies. He says that the program’s emphasis on lab work in each engineering course helped him develop a knack for technical writing, which is essential in his job. “Our primary work product is a written report,” says Lehmann. “Technical writing is not something you just pick up. You have to be taught.” Sometimes, Lehmann arrives on a job before a calamity strikes, such as last fall, when his firm was hired by a New Jersey municipality to analyze the structural condition of a 70year-old, 110-foot–high water tower. Town officials were worried about the rust, and one engineering firm, citing the deteriorating steel and concrete foundation, had recommended tearing it down and building a new one, at the cost of more than $1 million. Lehmann’s firm was hired to provide a second opinion. Bringing in a boom-lift, he was able to get up close to the tank so he could scrape away the rust to assess the damage. He used an ultrasonic thickness gauge to determine to what extent the steel had corroded and also analyzed the cracks in the concrete foundation. His findings pleased the town fathers. The tower was deemed structurally sound. Lehmann recommended a few repairs and regular maintenance, thereby saving taxpayers more than $700,000. “The corrosion looked bad from the ground but was actually minimal,” Lehmann says. “And it turned out that the foundation cracks were only superficial.” —David McKay Wilson Alumni Achievements Eugene Lang ’38 has been named Citizen of the Year by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) in honor of his lifelong commitment to civic participation. “Eugene Lang is a shining example of what an individual citizen can do to strengthen our country,” NCoC Chairman Michael Weiser said. “The son of immigrant parents who came of age during the Great Depression, he became an extraordinarily successful businessman—and he shared much of his success by ensuring that countless others were given an opportunity to succeed.” A philanthropist, industrialist, and generous supporter of higher education, Lang created the now nationwide I Have a Dream Program in 1981, which has guided many thousands of lower-income students through their K–12 years with an assured college opportunity after high school graduation. More recently, he founded Project Pericles, which encourages colleges and universities to teach social responsibility and participatory citizenship and in which Swarthmore and 19 other colleges play an active role. In 1996, Lang was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton and, in 1990, he was designated as one of President George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light.” Deborah Hacker Oakley ’58 was recognized by the University of Michigan (UM) with the establishment of the Deborah H. Oakley Professor of Nursing Chair for her work in women’s health research. Oakley, who retired as professor emerita in 2002, served as interim director of the Healthy Asian Americans Project and continues to lead research projects dealing with early detection of cancers. A UM faculty member for 25 years, Oakley was a major contributor to the improvement of the quality of undergraduate research at the university. She worked with colleagues to introduce more accurate measurement methods into the study of oral contraceptive use and the study of maternity care. She also made a persuasive case for more sophisticated analytic techniques in the field. Last year, Oakley made her ninth trip to China to complete a clinical trial of breast self-exam education, the only screening method currently feasible for women in China. Kenneth Turan ’67 recently received the 2008 Alumni Award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Turan is a film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide and served as the Times’ book review editor. Turan teaches film reviewing and nonfiction writing at the University of Southern California and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. The author’s most recent books are Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made and Never Coming to a Theater Near You. He is also the co-author of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. Turan’s latest book Free For All, an oral history of Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival, is scheduled to be published in September. William Ehrhart ’73, a former Marine and award-winning poet and memoirist whose work has been strongly influenced by his 13-month tour of duty during the Vietnam War, recently received the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) Excellence in the Arts Award. VVA President John Rowan first came across Ehrhart’s work in the 1972 anthology Winning Hearts and Minds. “Since then,” says Rowan, “he has edited two exceptional volumes of Vietnam veteran poetry, has produced three first-rate memoirs, and continues to write, much of which is derived from his experiences fighting in Vietnam.” Last summer, Ehrhart was the featured poet in River Poets Quarterly. His most recent books include Sleeping with the Dead; The Madness of It All: Essays on War, Literature, and American Life; and Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems. Since 2002, he has taught English and history at the Haverford School. Alumni Achievements Patricia Dilley ‘73 recently received the Rockefeller Foundation Innovation Award for her tireless work and innovative policy proposals to strengthen Social Security for vulnerable groups. “She has spent a lifetime—as a congressional staffer, a private practitioner, and an academic—immersed in Social Security and pensions,” Alicia Munnell, professor and chair in management science at Boston College says. “If anybody can design workable policy options to help vulnerable groups, she can.” A professor at the University of Florida’s Fredric G. Levin College of Law, Dilley has served on the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Social Security, the Committee on Ways and Means, and with the Social Security Administration. Her proposal “Restoring Old Age Income Security for Low Wage Workers” was recognized by the National Academy of Social Insur- ance as part of an initiative to generate social security options. She has also worked in private practice, taught tax law at the University of Washington School of Law, Leiden University in the Netherlands, and the Seattle University School of Law. Susan Perkins Weston ’81 received the Vision Award from the Kentucky Association of School Councils (KASC) last fall. Weston, who was executive director of KASC for 13 years, was honored for her years of service to education reform. An attorney and education policy expert, Weston’s analysis of test score data identified some of Kentucky’s earliest examples of high poverty, high-performance schools and has encouraged continuing attention to achievement gap issues. The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence has published three of her works as citizens’ guides to school-based decision-making, school budgets, and state assessment and accountability. Currently, she is an independent consultant working on Kentucky education issues, including achievement and school finances. Weston has also worked for the Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate and the United States Department of Education. Peter Vishton ’91 recently received a William and Mary College Alumni Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding young faculty members. An associate professor of psychology, Vishton does his research in an unusual laboratory—a former hospital, a block off campus, where he and his students perform magic tricks for infants. Using colorful, handmade boxes and cylinders, he explores how young children use information about the size, shape, and identity of objects as they plan and implement behaviors. His findings provide a better understanding of how perception and action control develop over the first years of life. Vishton also served as director of the National Science Foundation’s Developmental and Learning Sciences Program. Jeffrey Sugg ‘95 recently shared a 2008 Obie Award for set and projection design and a 2008 Louise Lortel Award for best scenic design for the critically acclaimed new musical The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island with collaborator Jim Findlay. A New York-based artist, designer, and technical adviser, Sugg also received a 2007 Bessie Award for co-design of Must Don’t Whip Um. An early collaborator with the Pig Iron Theater Company in Philadelphia, he designed sets and lighting for several of their early works. More recently, Sugg has collaborated with Findlay and Cynthia Hopkins (his wife and a renowned musician/performance artist in her own right) in their company ACCINOSCO. They have twice been in residence at the College through the Swarthmore Project in Theater and have recently returned from a European tour with Must Don’t Whip Um. He has also worked with Moisés Kaufman, Laurie Anderson, and the Wooster Group. In 2005, he taught the Theater Department’s first class in media and technology design. q+a HER PASSIONS ARE VOLLEYBALL AND TEACHING; her philosophy—to maximize all opportunities. Harleigh Leach Chwastyk was just 24 and completing graduate studies at Smith College when she was named head coach of Swarthmore’s women’s volleyball team in 2002. While earning a master’s degree in exercise and sports studies, she was also a teaching fellow and assistant coach at Smith. In 2005, Chwastyk, a regal six-feet tall, became director of Swarthmore’s physical education program. That year, she led the volleyball team to its first-ever Centennial Conference playoff victory. In the last seven years, she has coached 11 all-conference and 20 all-conference academic selections. From the sweltering final days of summer through late fall, Chwastyk coaches the Garnet players; in the spring—she recruits and coaches weekly youth camps and the nontraditional spring season. During the summer, she runs the NIKE Volleyball Camp at Swarthmore and is a head court coach for the Cape Cod Volleyball Camp. Chwastyk teaches physical education classes, including Introduction to Orienteering. Students learn to read a compass and map and by the end of the semester, they are tramping through Crum Woods, reading coordinates to find hidden markers. Chwastyk has supervised Kids Night Out, a program she started with Eric Wagner, the men’s soccer coach. It provides local parents with free time one Friday night a month— and raises extra funds for College teams. Chwastyk and her team also raise money for breast cancer research by “Digging for a Cure.” Chwastyk pitched the fundraiser to other Centennial Conference volleyball coaches three years ago. Players collect pledges and donations and each team selects one match in October in which to count their “digs”—when a player passes the ball that has been attacked by the opposition. In the off season, Coach Chwastyk is often on the court herself, playing competitive volleyball in the adult division of U.S.A. Volleyball. Despite her busy schedule, Chwastyk recognizes that “it’s important to find a balance in my life.” On May 24, she moved closer to that goal when she married David, a six-foot, six-inch former baseball player. The birth of their first child in April should bring a whole new kind of balance to her life. 80 It’s All About Volleyball HARLEIGH LEACH CHWASTYK By Susan Cousins Breen swarthmore college bulletin for two of my passions—playing volleyball and contributing to an important cause for all women. The day is special because women of all ages and walks of life, including some cancer survivors, participate—and I get to compete with my volleyball friends in a sport we love. We walk away knowing that we’ve contributed to a worthwhile cause—the Connecticut Breast Health Initiative—while competing at a high level. What is your guilty pleasure? Ice cream and chocolate—two indulgences that are great motivators to be active and fit and that are so much easier to excuse now that I’m regnant. Women’s volleyball coach Harleigh Chwastyk recently completed her seventh season as head coach at Swarthmore, where she also directs the physical education program. Chwastyk makes an annual trip to her high school in upstate New York to hone the skills of varsity and JV players. Describe yourself in three words. Organized. Passionate. Dedicated. LEFT AND ABOVE: ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS; TOP: AURORA IMAGING What’s your relationship with your players? As a young head coach, I knew it was important to establish the coach/player boundary, but I’m still there for my players. I emphasize pride in being a female athlete, and it is important to me to know my players not just as athletes but as people too. I’m part of their campus family— they trust me and know they can talk to me. january 2009 How did you become involved in fundraising for breast cancer research? During sophomore year, my college [Trinity College] coach asked our volleyball team to participate in a memorial volleyball tournament that she was hosting in honor of former teammate Cathy D’Apice. Cathy was a fierce competitor and was only 30 when she lost her battle with breast cancer. Since 1998, I’ve played in that tournament with different teams and also coached teams who were participating. I took the Swarthmore team in 2003. Why is this event so important to you? In a nutshell, the tournament provides an outlet What makes you laugh? My team and my family. This year’s eight players know how to have fun while working hard. Life is so much better when you’re smiling or laughing. Were you a tomboy growing up? Actually, I wasn’t. Although I was athletic— thanks to my mother who inspired my brother Kyle [Leach, Swarthmore’s director of sports information] and me to play sports—I liked being a girl. I was in high school when my mother remarked that I swaggered like a jock; I was shocked because I never thought of myself as an athlete. What would I be surprised to know about you? That I love the outdoors. I like camping, hiking, canoeing, and backpacking. My husband, Dave, was speechless the first time he saw me whip a tent into shape. Kyle always says, “If you ever want to get lost in the woods, take Harleigh with you.” How did you and your husband, Dave, meet? At the Irish Pub, a bar in Rittenhouse Square. That’s also where Dave proposed to me. It was the middle of Friday night happy hour and he got down on one knee, with the ring in a shot glass, and asked me to marry him. How do you fit Dave into your schedule? Dave is an athlete, too, and grew up with a dad who is also a coach, so he understands my commitment to volleyball and my players. He’s one of the team’s biggest fans and helps keep me grounded. ! Let Swarthmore Help You Sleep at Night MONROE BELL LOVES SWARTHMORE COLLEGE— AND HE’S NEVER BEEN THERE Monroe’s wife, Peggy Fraser Bell ’53, loved her alma mater. And for the love of Peggy, Monroe has funded no fewer than six Swarthmore charitable gift annuities. “It’s an easy way to increase your retirement income,” he says, “and best of all, you know what your guaranteed income will be for life.” In fact, Monroe thinks so highly of gift annuities that he’s become a self-confessed “fanatic” on the subject. “I promote them as much as I can,” he says. “If you believe in Swarthmore, if you want to benefit from your own resources and benefit the College, consider gift annuities. I did, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.” In today’s turbulent economic times, Swarthmore College can offer you peace of mind. Monroe Bell with his favorite photo of his wife, Peggy ’53. By establishing a Swarthmore Charitable Gift Annuity, you can support the important educational mission of the College and, at the same time, receive fixed-income payments for life. Best of all, you can rest easy knowing that your payments are secure, backed by the assets of the College. Back in 1943, retired President Frank Adyelotte established Swarthmore’s first gift annuity. Since then, generations of alumni have slept well at night, knowing that the College has never missed making an annuity payment. For more information about how to create a Swarthmore Charitable Gift Annuity, contact the Office of Gift Planning toll free at (866) 526-4438 or by e-mail at giftplanning@swarthmore.edu.