Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1978-04-01

Swarthmore College Bulletin

Volume LXXV, No. 5

APril 1978

Many of the knottier issues facing Swarthmore are
directed across the provost’s desk. In reviewing so m e of
them here, Mr. Pagliaro touches upon curricular
innovation, the H onors/Course programs, student-faculty
ratio, mandatory retirement, external evaluation,
and internal self-examination.

An interview with
Provost Harold E. Pagliaro

most people who see me as an ad­
ministrator recognize the teacher.

You have been provost at Swarthmore
for nearly four years now: Do you
think you will feel different about the
administration as a result of your ex­
perience when you return to teaching?
Not really. I have always felt that in­
stitutions like the College provide us
with opportunities for individual free­
dom. Outside these institutions there
are very few opportunities for such
freedom, so that from one point of
view I have always been tempera­
mentally an administrator, that is,
I’ve always felt the importance of pro­
tecting the College. I don’t want to
subvert individual freedom to that
need, of course. One calls upon a dif­
ferent set of assumptions in protecting
the institution and in conducting one’s
individual academic and private life.
I have a fierce sense of independence:
I simply distinguish between my pri­
vate undertakings and official under­
takings. I experience relatively little
tension as a result, but I do run short
of time, with the result that I spend
less on private matters than I like.
But I am willing to accept the re­
striction because I believe that with­
out institutions like the College, we
couldn’t be free. I’m teaching a semi­
nar right now, and students in my
seminar don’t, I think, recognize the
administrator in me, any more than

Isn’t part of the job of an adminis­
trator simply keeping the institution
going— a kind of maintenance job?
I agree with that to some extent, but
I don’t think you can keep it going
simply by feeding it—a minimum of
glucose, for example. I believe that
institutions are dynamic, so I don’t
like the caretaking metaphor, though
institutions don’t move quickly in the
direction of change. One of the re­
sponsibilities of an administrator is to
see that institutions don’t move only
accidentally in the direction of change.
There is a caretaking function in
the preservation of old parts of the
organism. At the same time, an ad­
ministrator who is pure caretaker pre­
sides over a dying organism. There
must be both: There must be enough
of the past so that the institution con­
tinues to recognize itself as itself, yet
there must be change enough, con­
trolled change, that the institution
isn’t just battered by accidents, par­
ticularly during periods of fiscal con­
straint like the present one.

APRIL, 1978

One area of College administration
which falls within your purview is
the curriculum. This seems to be an
area which is particularly susceptible
to pressures both for preservation and
for change. Last year, for example,

there was much discussion on campus
of the composition and future of the
Honors program. Student interest in
Honors seemed to be waning. Has
there been any resulting change in the
structure of the Honors program?
It isn’t so far very different from what
it was, nor did anybody anticipate
that it would be. Last year the CEP
[Council on Educational Policy] de­
liberated long and strenuously about
possible alternatives to the seminar
as a means of preparation for the ex­
ternal exam. This among many other
related topics. A crucial question
raised was how can the Honors pro­
gram be improved in those depart­
ments in which Honors is not very
active? Can we provide alternatives
to the seminar so that students who
want to prepare for external exams
can in fact prepare for them in depart­
ments where there isn’t a flourishing
seminar program? Simply put, the
answer we gave was this: If we could
encourage the selective use of attach­
ments to course work and other spe­
cial curricular options, we might pro­
vide the flexibility we need.
Can you be more specific about attach­
ments?
An attachment is an opportunity for a
student to do work in a particular
course over and above the work for­
mally presented in the classroom. He
or she works with an instructor, going
1

more deeply into the material of the
course than is ordinary.
Questions arose pretty quickly, of
course. What about the attachments
the College already offers? Would we
continue to offer them in departments
where they are presently offered?
What about crediting teachers who
offer a great many of these attach­
ments? Would they be given released
time, let’s say, after they had taught
so many attachments? Wouldn’t
course students be deprived of these
opportunities if those preparing for
external exams were to take them all
up? In small departments, if a con­
siderable number of attachments is
offered so that released time is given
to instructors, won’t the loss in in­
structors’ time to the regular curricu­
lum require the College to pay for
additional instruction?
The Curriculum Committee is now
considering this matter of attach­
ments. The early data suggest that
there has been a considerable increase
in the number of attachments students
have been calling for. This increase,
incidentally, is an increase that has
been taken advantage of by some stu­
dents preparing for the external ex­
amination, but for the most part, by
course students.
There’s been a good deal of consid­
eration given to whether course stu­
dents are being treated fairly in rela­
tion to those reading for Honors. I
don’t know what constitutes fair treat­
ment, but we offer about 625 courses
and seminars a year which, for a col­
lege of our size, is a very large offering
indeed. And the number of courses
in which there are nine students or
fewer amounts to about 140, with an
average population of 5.65. From my
point of view it’s important to stress
that course students have lots of op­
tions for studying in small classes.
It’s fair to observe that our rich
curriculum is to a great extent the re­
sult of the faculty’s willingness to

The Swarthmore College Bulletin, of
which this publication is Volume L X X V ,
No. 5, is published in September, Oc­
tober, November, January, April, and
July by Swarthmore College, Swarth­
more, P A 19081. Second-class postage
paid at Swarthmore, PA 19081.

2

carry a heavy teaching load. In most
colleges like ours, the teaching load
is five units a year in the humanities
and the social sciences. Here we ex­
pect people in those disciplines to
teach six units. Those in the sciences
have a comparably heavy teaching
load. We have a generous leave policy;
you might say that the faculty in a
sense pays for that by teaching the
extra unit. But one way or another
we have a very rich curriculum.

Presumably there are two ways of
going about this— decreasing the num­
ber of faculty or increasing the num­
ber of students.
Or a combination of the two. CEP
spent most of the first semester dis­
cussing ways in which it might expand
the size of the student body from the
present 1,250. These ways are gen­
erally acknowledged to be limited. We
change the nature of the College if
we expand the size of the student
body considerably; we also begin to
How does the faculty feel about the strain facilities— the dining hall, dor­
CEP recommendations?
mitory space, even including space
The faculty as a whole voted to ac­ that we intend to provide over the
cept most of CEP’s recommendations, next five years or so. There are dif­
with the result that they will be im­ ferences of opinion about how far up
plemented shortly. Individual faculty it is reasonable- to go. Some say a
members hold diverse views, of course. maximum of 1,250 to 1,300, others say
A few are even skeptical about the a maximum of 1,350.
special value of Honors work. Some
Quite apart from these considera­
hold that the only Honors work is tions of straining physical facilities
seminar work. Some departments are and of committing us to costs from
too small to offer seminars as well as which it might be hard to disengage,
regular courses; others believe their there is the factor of available students.
disciplines do not lend themselves to Demographers have concluded that by
seminar work. CEP found such a di­ 1990 in the northeastern United States,
versity of opinions that it had a hard from which we now draw 45 to 50
time coming up with principles of percent of our students, the number
educational philosophy to which more of eighteen-year olds will be twenty
than a few would subscribe, except percent lower than it is now. Our
for the very general principal that Admissions Office is working hard
Swarthmore should maintain or im­ and keeps the applications rolling in.
prove the quality of its academic work. As I have suggested some members of
But as I have said, the faculty voted CEP think we can go to 1,350 without
in favor of CEP’s report, and I be­ changing the quality or socio-eco­
lieve the renewed interest shown in nomic mix of the student body; others
reading for Honors by the present believe that 1,250 or 1,300 is the most
sophomore class— 37 percent of the we can reasonably aim for.
sophomore class has applied to read
Having looked at the numerator of
for Honors— will help the Curriculum this fraction, CEP looked at the de­
Committee as it works to implement nominator. The committee has worked
curricular alternatives to the seminar.
to identify those places in the curricu­
lum where consideration might be
Let me proceed to a difficult problem given to reduction. It has tried to do
which has been before the CEP this so on the basis of centrality—what is
year, that of altering our present stu­ “ central” to our curriculum? This
dent/faculty ratio. M y understanding principle can be neither adequately
is that the College’s goal is to change defined nor reasonably abandoned, I
the present ratio of 8.5 students to 1 believe. CEP has tried also to see
faculty member to 10 students to 1 where there might be curricular over­
faculty member.
lap that could be avoided. Are two
The charge the Board of Managers instructors offering substantially the
made to CEP is that it should study the same material? And it has looked at
curricular and other implications of numbers. Are the enrollments low?
a shift from 8.5/1 to an upper limit of And if so, is there a good argument
10/1, and that’s what CEP is doing. for keeping the subject anyhow?
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

people who will be resigning or retir­
ing, and there will be those who in
the ordinary course of events would
not be reappointed. But we can’t de­
cide in advance that the next vacancy
that appears is the one we want to
make permanent. Also, if we give
ourselves a number of years over
which to accomplish the reduction,
we least affect the lives of the persons
involved.

“O ne of the responsibilities of an administrator
is to see that institutions
don’t move accidentally in the direction of change”

We have been able to identify a cer­
tain number of elements in the curricu­
lum to which consideration might be
given for elimination. Having identi­
fied this master list, CEP went on to
formulate nine tentative models for re­
duction. Three of them resulted in a
reduction of the faculty by ten, three
of them reduction of the faculty by
six, and three of them reduction of
the faculty by three. It was in a way
arbitrary to say minus ten, minus six,
minus three.
But if we were to pay attention to
the Board’s charge, it seemed reason­
able to go from a regular faculty of
140 to 130 in our speculations at least,
because if we had 130 faculty mem­
bers and we did go as high as 1,300
students, then the ratio would, be
10/1. We have not exhausted all the
possibilities by any means. The final
report* will incorporate the options of
* As this issue went to press, the C om ­
mittee on Educational P olicy issued a
lengthy report on “ the means and pace
of achieving a change o f the student/
faculty ratio and the effects of such a
change on curriculum o f the C ollege.”
Alumni m ay write to the Office o f Alum ni
Relations for a cop y of this report.
APRIL, 1978

increasing the number of students and
of decreasing the size of the faculty;
and, as I have already said, a com­
bination of the two is possible. Ar­
rangements will be made by the Com­
mittee on Faculty Procedures for the
faculty as a whole to consider and
recommend changes in CEP’s report
before it goes to the Board of Man­
agers.
Some people might suggest that the
obvious solution would be to leave
vacant the slots left by the next ten
faculty members who retire or resign.
That’s not the way to do it, of course,
because you can’t control the curricu­
lum that way. If you follow that
principle, you might eliminate sub­
jects which are absolutely essential;
calculus, let’s say, or Shakespeare, or
modern European history. You’ve got
to plan in a more careful way and
allow yourself some time. It seems to
me that whatever plan CEP recom­
mends ought to include a timetable— a
span of years over which the reduc­
tion would be effected. It might be
possible to take advantage of certain
natural attrition; that is, there will be

In the midst of these deliberations
about reduction of faculty, 1 see that
the College has been advertising for a
faculty member to teach in the Cen­
ter for Social and Policy Studies.
Yes, we’ve received an award from
the Sloan Foundation, and included
among the terms of the award were
specifications for a senior person who
would be hired for three years, or
indeed for three people who would be
hired for one year each. The College
can’t afford to discontinue experi­
menting with the curriculum. The
Ford Venture Fund, for example, over
the past three years has made it pos­
sible for us to experiment with the
academic program in various ways, as
does this Sloan money.
The principle we accept in this ex­
perimentation is the following: Any­
thing by way of a curricular innova­
tion that seems good after a short
trial ought to be judged by CEP. If
it is good, it ought to displace or be
taught alternately with a part of the
curriculum presently offered. I think
that if the College were to decide it
would keep its curriculum static at the
same time it was having to effect a
reduction in faculty, it would be doing
itself and the academic community at
large a disservice. Things change.
Before we get too far from the subject
of faculty and retirements, I ’d like
to ask you about the question of
mandatory retirement. The Age Dis­
crimination Act now before Congress
includes a provision which exempts
tenured faculty in higher education
from the protections against compul­
sory retirement before age seventy.
How does the Swarthmore faculty feel
about that? What is the official Col­
lege position?
3

In fact, the status of proposed legis­
lation has undergone a series of im­
portant changes, I believe. But it is
the view of our chapter of AAUP, and
National AAUP as well, that the iso­
lated exemption of a single category
of personnel is inappropriate. Why
only faculty members? What about
college administrators, for example?
But there are other implications of
the law in-the-making. Let’s assume
it is passed so as to make it possible
for a faculty member who ordinarily
would retire at 65 to stay on until 70.
Some faculty members at 65 are in­
novative and highly energetic teach­
ers, but others are not. They may be
good solid professionals, but their
staying on past 65 might result in a
diminished flexibility in the curricu­
lum. Also, there is the drain on the
exchequer. It is a fact that one can
hire two assistant professors for the
price of one full professor in his 60’s.
It’s also true that for a period of five
years at least there would be discour­
agement to young people who, even
in these hard times, might otherwise
be willing to enter college teaching.
The academy is by nature conserva­
tive (and probably it should b e ), but
that conservatism should not make
it closed to innovation. There are
natural sources of innovation, and one
of these is the young, with their en­
ergy, new training, and new ideas.
I think tenure confers a special
status appropriate to the needs of a
life committed to dispassionate in­
quiry— the academic life at its best.
The status also carries heavy responsi­
bilities. If a new law of the sort pro­
posed were to be passed, the academy
would have to institute new ways of
reviewing the discharge of these re­
sponsibilities, and perhaps to do so
without reference to the tenured fac­
ulty member’s age would be best.
The Commission on Higher Educa­
tion of the Middle States Association
is due to visit Swarthmore next spring.
Part of the function of the visiting
committee is, I know, to reconfirm
the accreditation of the College. Just
what does this process involve for
Swarthmore?
The accreditation of an institution is
4

in part an affirmation that the insti­
tution has established conditions and
procedures ensuring that its purpose
and objectives can be realized, and
that it appears in fact to be accom­
plishing those purposes. We are now
engaged in an intensive self-evalua­
tion, a procedure which is required of
us by the Commission. Gil Stott, the
registrar and associate provost, is
heading a steering committee com­
posed of senior faculty, administra­
tors, and students. Their aim is to
produce a self-evaluation in draft by
next fall, and they plan to make the
draft available to the entire College
community for criticism and comment
before final copy is written. The end
result should be a kind of self-por­
trait of Swarthmore.
How often does this accreditation
process take place?
About once every ten years. The last
time we prepared for a Middle States
Association visitation, our self-evalu­
ation report was Critique of a College,
which is, as you know, a publication
rich in educational philosophy. Ac­
creditation involves the College in an
extended two-part process, the selfevaluation and an evaluation visit by
a team of experienced academic col­
leagues from other institutions. The
primary functions of the visiting com­
mittee are to study our stated educa­
tional purposes in relation to our prac­
tices as they see them and to give us
the views of competent outsiders on
the correlation. They provide a type
of informed and searching analysis
unobtainable otherwise. What we
hope, of course, is that their findings
will corroborate our own. It would be
a cause for concern if they detected
problems which were not identified by
our own evaluation.
I gather that this year the entire
senior class is being interviewed in­
dividually by members of the ad­
ministration.
Yes, Dean Blackburn and his staff
have organized a process by which
thirty-five or so administrators are
interviewing about ten seniors each,
in individual hour-long sessions. It’s
another form of self-evaluation.

Isn't there a danger these will turn
into nothing more than gripe sessions?
Some griping is inevitable. But in my
experience the criticism has been con­
structive. And it is important for us
to be aware of the students’ per­
spectives of the College. It was good
to talk to them. What some of the stu­
dents supposed about college admin­
istration was not always very close to
operative reality. A few said things,
probably symptomatic of their own
sense of young adult dislocation, but
they also were frank to say they might
be mistaken, and why. One or two
suggested they thought Swarthmore
a democracy in which matters should
be decided by vote. Expectations for
participation of students and teachers
alike in the affairs of the College are
legitimate, obviously, but Swarthmore
is also an institution with a hierarchi­
cal structure. The great job is to rec­
oncile the entirely justifiable expecta­
tions for democracy and the obvious
need for the structure to survive in its
hierarchical operations. Administra­
tion would be easy if it weren’t that
these two systems, work in some con­
siderable tension.
Some of us felt in the late sixties
that the movement toward democrati­
zation had its shortcomings for the
College. Remember, I think institu­
tions like Swarthmore provide a kind
of freedom not available elsewhere. I
don’t think we should repudiate the
forces of democracy as they operate
inside the institution, but I don’t
think we can so thoroughly democra­
tize as to lose sight of our hierarchical
structure. I think the two have to op­
erate side by side, probably without
ever being reconciled. The hard work
that results makes for fresh perspec­
tives.
Is it true that you plan to leave the
Provost’s office after next year?
Yes, it is. I agreed in the first place
to take on the job for five years, and
I have no reason to change my plans.
As I think I have made clear, I be­
lieve College administration to be
very important work. But there are
good people available for the job, and
I think one of them should be asked
to take it on beginning in 1979-80.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

No longer silent
in the
churches

A woman in the pulpit?
For som e it is an uncomfortable phenomenon,
but nevertheless this national movement seem s
irreversible. Thirteen Swarthmore
women who have chosen to pursue
careers in the ministry speak out on the issues.

St. Paul was Emphatic about it: “ Let
your women keep silence in the
churches: for it is not permitted un­
to them to speak; but they are com­
manded to“ be under obedience, as
also saith the law.” (I Cor. 14:34)
Women are taking their places be­
side men as professional equals in
medicine, the courts, the military,
commerce, and industry. But in one
profession, the ministry, equal par­
ticipation by women is still an emo­
tionally charged issue.
The current debate over the ordi­
nation of women has caused various
churches to reexamine the way they
organize their community life and
their specific understanding of what
ministry entails. Evaluating the fit­
ness of individual men and women
for the ministry or priesthood in­
vites a clarification of what those
roles mean, of whether they are
seen primarily in terms of special
gifts for preaching, pastoral care,
and prophecy, or in symbolic terms,
or both. There has been a shift in
the argument from an emphasis on
whether women can fill roles that
have been shaped by the experience
of men to how women can enrich
and in a sense complete such roles.
Some of the developments that
have taken place since World War
II in American church history con­
cerning the ordination of women
indicate the growing intensity and
scope of the discussion. The World
Council of Churches was formed in
1948 and in preparation for its first
assembly an ecumenical study was
UÎIL, 1978

undertaken of the life and work of
women in the church as a whole. At
that time in the United States, only
the Congregational churches and
those of the Disciples of Christ were
ordaining women. The next major
Protestant denomination to take
action was the Presbyterian Church
which, in 1955, after the approval of
a majority of its presbyteries, offici­
ally instituted the ordination of
women. This was largely an out­
growth of a study which had con­
cluded that there were no apparent
theological or biblical grounds for
the exclusion of women from the
ministry.
In 1956 the Methodist Church
extended full clergy rights to women,
following upon its previous granting
of limited license to women to
preach.
In 1968 the official report of the
Fourth Assembly of the World
Council of Churches recognized
anew the timeliness of the question
of the ordination of women in terms
both of the need for further theo­
logical reflection and of the need to
take into consideration the experi­
ences of churches in which women
had already been ordained.
The urgency of the question, how­
ever, suddenly claimed public atten­
tion six years later when, in July,
1974, eleven women Episcopal dea­
cons were ordained to the priesthood
in Philadelphia. This step was un­
constitutional because not yet ap­
proved by that denomination’s gov­
erning House of Bishops. The

women issued a statement at the
time which affirmed that although
they understood the ordinations to
be “ irregular,” they believed them
to be “ valid and right.” In 1976 the
General Convention officially ap­
proved the ordination of women
priests, although continuing opposi­
tion in the Episcopal Church led to
schism earlier this year.
Thus Protestant churches in the
U.S. have in the last twenty years
come to affirm with increasing con­
viction that the ordination of women
is right in principle, although the
number of women ministers is still
small and the exploration of the
Church’s understanding of ministry
continues unabated.
Swarthmore graduates who have
chosen to pursue careers in the min­
istry reflect the national trend.
There are eighty-three ordained min­
isters among living Swarthmore
alumni. Of that number, eight are
women. Of the eight, seven were
ordained after 1970. Nine recent
women graduates are currently en­
rolled in seminaries or divinity
schools (although not all of them
are seeking ordination), and a sur­
prising number of undergraduate
women have expressed strong inter­
est in the ministry.
In the following pages a cross sec­
tion of those women—ministers,
seminarians, and undergraduates—
describe some of their working ex­
periences and offer their views of
their role in the ministry.

Q
5

fl

THE MINISTERS

Janet
Kelly
Brown’6 4
“Being the only woman
at a clergy conference
can m ake one feel like
an intruder at the
Oxford Club, having
burst in just as the
brandy is being poured
and the cigars lighted.”
I went to college with no formal
church affiliation and many ques­
tions. What would be an appropriate
philosophical or religious framework
for my life? How did God fit into all
of this? With the help of some intel­
ligent, caring friends, I began to
understand what the Church is about
and took some first steps into a
relationship with God. I was con­
firmed the next year.
The possibility of a vocation in
the Church was first presented by
the priest of my home parish in
Vermont. At that time, 1964, the
Episcopal
Church
offered
two
choices: entering a convent or be­
coming a director of religious educa­
tion in a large parish. After con­
siderable prayer, neither seemed
right, and I let the matter rest, con­
tinuing with graduate school, enter­
ing into marriage and work, and
involving myself in the parish to
which my husband John and I had
moved.
In 1970, the General Convention
of the Episcopal Church voted to

6

allow women to be ordained deacons,
and, within a year, the priest of our
parish suggested the possibility of
my seeking ordination. I again
prayed about it, and decided that it
seemed right that I should begin the
process of study and evaluation. I
was ordained deacon in 1974. It was
not until the General Convention of
1976 that the laws of the Episcopal
Church were changed to open the
priesthood to women. In January,
1977, together with others all around
the country who had been waiting, I
was admitted to that order.
All of the women who have sought
ordination to the priesthood have
been directly involved in the painful
turmoil concerning this issue. My
friends in other Protestant denomi­
nations cannot understand what the
fuss is about, and say “ We’ve been
doing this for years.” That is true,
and encouraging, but does not cover
the entire issue; the root of the mat­
ter is the interpretation of the mean­
ing of priesthood, an order which is
not present among other Protestant
denominations. The crucial point is
that opponents of the ordination of
women hold that it is impossible for
women to be priests. Since Christ,
the great High Priest, was a man,
maleness is essential. While it is
helpful to know that other groups
have ordained women for many
years, it is discouraging to note that
women, for the most part, have
served as assistants in parishes or
have worked in small congregations.
Because the presence of ordained
women is so new in the Episcopal
Church, any woman priest is seen as
the symbol of an issue and it is easy
for people to fall back on precon­
ceived notions. Many people have

1
confided that, upon meeting me for
the first time, they had expected to
see a wild-eyed militant and that
they were surprised when I turned
out to be quite pleasant and rational.
Much of this kind of false expecta­
tion has subsided, but I think it will
be some time before people will be
entirely comfortable with women in
this role, and the women themselves
will need humor, balance, patience,
and faith in order to cope with
hostile responses.
My ministry of the past 3 y2 years
has been at St. James Church, Essex
Junction (Vt.) where, with two other
priests, I work in a team ministry
serving three smaller congregations
in addition to St. James. The minis­
try of our people is lively and growSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ap :

Diane
Kennedy
*73
“ People s e e m surprised
that a w om an’s voice
can be heard beyond
the first pew.”

The Reverend Brown administers the sacraments immediately following her ordination.

ing. M y major interests are counsel­
ing, teaching, and spiritual guidance,
but each of the clergy is involved in
all facets of parish life.
Does being a woman provide any
special strengths? I think it provides
particular insight into the concerns
of other women as they cope with
small children, try to work out crea­
tive ways to develop their own inter­
ests, and find their niche somewhere
along the spectrum between Fern Lib
and The Total Woman. Men, too,
often indicate that they find it help­
ful to see a woman counselor.
In one sense, being the only
woman at a clergy conference can
make one feel like an intruder at the
Oxford Club, having burst in just as
the brandy is being poured and the
N

APRIL, 1978

cigars lighted. I am sure those first
occasions were difficult for all con­
cerned. But I believe the strain on
all sides is part of the creative ten­
sion necessary to any process of
growth, and indeed to the process of
birth itself. In calling women to be
ordained, God is calling the Church
into a kind of wholeness it has not
yet experienced. There is something
joyful and wholesome and natural
about seeing women preside at the
Eucharist and serve as God’s agents
for the giving and blessing and abso­
lution. We need spiritual mothers as
well as fathers, and the presence of
both will help all of us to come to a
new awareness of the masculine and
feminine elements each of us pos­
sesses.

As I return from a Property and
Finance Committee meeting at
church, I realize how wide the range
of ministerial duties is. Divinity
school never prepared me to discuss
snow removal and grass-cutting
prices. M y senior minister sometimes
laughingly asks me why I didn’t take
courses in the important things.
The possibilities for a minister are
endless. One must choose how to
spend one’s time. The Property and
Finance meeting was back to back
with one on Christian Education.
There I had to choose between a
future day of in-depth curriculum
study and attending a twenty-fourhour Rock-a-Thon to raise money
for benevolence giving.
M y reasons for being a minister
have changed over the years. In my
early visions I saw myself at the
head of a socially conscious parish
striking out at the injustice of the
world. But the world has changed
little since I was in high school. Like
many of my generation, I wonder
what difference we really make. I’ve
lost some of my youthful idealism.
Sometimes, now, I wonder whether
I really want to be a minister. Am I
living up to my calling? Or would I
be better in a secular profession?
7

How did I get to where I am? A
great deal of encouragement came
from the pastor of my home church
in the 1960’s. Swarthmore in the
early ’70s left an indelible impres­
sion on me. It was then that I helped
organize a peace movement in area
churches, and my enthusiasm over­
flowed. M y conviction, that the
church should be a source of social
ferment, grew.
I found my way to Yale Divinity
School with the help and encourage­
ment of the religion faculty at
Swarthmore. Women were very
much a focal point at Yale. I joined
the worship committee and discov­
ered that sexist language was the
major topic of discussion. Many
women there were experimenting
with a variety of ministries. Some
went on to teaching, hospital chap­
laincy, or counseling, while others
became parish ministers.
I was humbled by all the people
who had taken an interest in me and
my goals throughout the years. I be­
came more oriented toward individ­
uals and less toward movements.
Ordination was a high point. Yet I
wavered at times in my dedication.
Even so, I never questioned
whether I, as a woman, was capable
of the task. M y family, training, and
schooling all asserted that I was.
Circumstances had been kinder to
me than to many women. When I
set about finding a church job in the
Presbytery of Lake Michigan, things

8

fell quickly into place. Members of
the leadership were anxious to have
women in the Presbytery, and they
did their utmost to aid me in my
job search; my first interview se­
cured me my present job— assistant
pastor of Pennfield Presbyterian
The church in which I serve is a
Church in Battle Creek, Michigan,
moderate-sized suburban church that
has been very welcoming to me.
There is a minimum of comment
about my sex, though every so often
someone is surprised and interested
to find that Pennfield has a woman
pastor. Everyone seems more per­
plexed by my new husband’s role of
minister’s spouse than by my role as
minister.
I believe that everyone is a unique
combination of personality, talents,
and skills. I bring to the ministry
first what Diane Kennedy has to
offer and, secondly, certain female
characteristics. I believe my facility
for counseling is matched by many
men, just as I think I shall learn to
preach as well as many men.
Preaching holds a certain fascina­
tion for me. The long process of
understanding the scriptures by
making them the living word for to­
day is intriguing and stimulating. I
am often disappointed when a ma­
jority of the comments from my con­
gregation are on the quality of my
voice rather than the meaning of my
sermon. People seem surprised that
a woman’s voice can be heard be­
yond the first pew. Yet, I persevere.
As I come to know the members of
my congregation better, I hope I
shall speak more to their needs.
M y other duties range widely. The
senior pastor is willing for me to try
everything. I take part in the service
weekly. I call at the hospitals, on
shut-ins, and on inactive members.
I have a special responsibility for the
junior high students which I’m en­
joying wholeheartedly. The energy
of the youngsters is catching. A pro­
gram of Koinonia Groups is begin­
ning in the church with my assist­
ance. We hope that the caring fellow­
ship which results will spread
throughout the church community.
I have been surprised to find that
even in this intriguing field there is
much that is mundane. It is a job
not very different from many other
vocations. It is hard work, but re­
warding.

Meredith
Hunt’70
“A s wife, m other, and
priest, I find m yself
continually changing
gears.”
“ Merry, will you have this man to
be your husband; to live together in
the covenant of marriage? . . . as
long as you both shall live?”
“ It’s a boy!”
“ Therefore, Father, through Jesus
Christ your Son, give your Holy
Spirit to M erry; fill her with grace
and power, and make her a priest in
your Church.”
It is impossible for me to write about
my ministry without consideration
of the other two covenant relation­
ships in my life: with my husband,
David Lillvis, and my son, Matthew
Hunt Lillvis. For ministry is pri­
marily a way of relating. I find my­
self a priest in the Episcopal Church
in the context of being married (to a
man who also is a priest) and in the
context of being a mother to a
twenty-month-old son.
I am presently working part-time
as priest associate to Emmanuel
Episcopal Church in Detroit, Michi­
gan. I share liturgical and pastoral
responsibilities with the rector, the
Reverend Harry Cook, and together
with the parish we attempt to teach
and live God’s love and righteous­
ness in a broken world.
When I was young I had a pro­
found experience of the presence of
God. As I have grown, I have dis­
covered, however, that it is one thing
to meet God, and it is quite another
to live in God and to let God live in
me. It involves a lifelong search for
truth, compassion, and humility, all
of which, I hold, are ultimately
found in the capacity to understand
and overcome suffering and in the
capacity to give and receive love.
I believe that all vocations to min­
istry (whether lay or ordained) are
grounded in some experience of pain
overcome, and the voice of God
within us invites us to reach out,
with our own healed brokenness, to
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

achievement, regardless of the cost
to self or others. Nonetheless, I
gained two valuable gifts from
Swarthmore. It was there that I first
encountered people with a real de­
sire for intellectual integrity and a
hunger for knowledge. Second, I felt
my capabilities were respected at
Swarthmore, especially within the
Department of Religion.
Significant emotional growth be­
gan when I enrolled in seminary. In
addition to academic preparation, I *
had opportunities for participation
in supervised field work, clinical pas­
toral education, marriage growth
groups, group dynamics training,
and personal therapy. I began to
learn how to express my feelings, to
take responsibility for my own hap­
piness, and to derive satisfaction
from pleasing other people. All of
this has greatly benefited my mar­
riage as well as my ministry. Being
a mother has in turn enriched my
ministry. Bearing a child broadened
my understanding of suffering and
of creation.
There are continual adjustments
as Matthew grows and as circum­
stances change for David and me.
We both feel our lives are enriched
by our common vocation, but we
prefer not to work together, to any
large extent, at this time. I find my­
self continually changing gears—
from meeting with the board of di­
rectors of the National Council on
Alcoholism to changing diapers,
from reading a book to Matthew to
preparing a homily, from baking
cookies to counseling the wife of an
alcoholic, from conducting a funeral
to pushing my son in a stroller. In
the midst of all that I do, the respect
and love which my husband and I
share is a continual source of sup­
port, encouragement, and inspira­
tion. Finally, in the most basic re­
spect, my life revolves around cele­
brating God in my prayer and wor­
ship life and in all my relationships
with the people around me. I join
my words with those of the psalmist:
others who are hurting. During the
past 61/2 years, I have worked ex­
tensively in the area of alcoholism
and alcohol education. The groups
of people who have taught me most
about healed suffering are recover­
ing alcoholics and their families in
Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.
One cannot associate for long with
APRIL, 1978

such groups without seeing that hu­
man wounds are also God’s oppor­
tunities for new life.
As I reflect now on my journey
into the ministry, I find my years at
Swarthmore leave me with mixed
feelings. The general academic orien­
tation tended to glorify the rational
and reward personal scholastic

I will celebrate your love for
ever, Yahweh
age after age my words shall
proclaim your faithfulness;
for I claim that love is built to
last forever
and your faithfulness founded
firmly in the heavens.
(Psalm 89, Jerusalem Bible)

9

Barbara
T roxell’56
“Today a large number
of younger w om en are
entering the ministry, but
there are very few of us
in our forties or fifties.”
I was brought up in a liberal Meth­
odist church in Brooklyn, where my
father was organist and choir direc­
tor. It was a place of great com­
munity spirit and happy relation­
ships. From time to time we were
shown training films about church
vocations, but in the late ’40s and
early ’50s all clergy were pictured
as men. Even then the thought of
being an ordained minister appealed
to me, but I put it out of my mind.
I started Swarthmore as a pre-med
student. In the summers of my fresh­
man and sophomore years, I worked
in several rural parishes in Vermont,
and I began to think that I would
rather work with people’s minds and
spirits than with their bodies. It was
there, too, that I met my first woman
minister. The seed was planted, and
I began to sense a call of God to or­
dained ministry.
Back at Swarthmore, I was much
encouraged by Professor William
Hordern, professor of religion at the
College, and by Jack Kulp, the
Methodist minister in the Borough.
We had at that time (1952-56) a
lively and active Christian Associa­
tion on campus. It was a small group
of some thirty students, a theological
mixture of liberals and conservatives,
and we were completely engrossed in
our heated discussions, Bible study,
and prayer meetings. This group,
plus Dr. Hordern and Mr. Kulp, and
my summer project experience,
helped me to decide for seminary.
I went to Union Theological Semi­
nary (New Y ork). Out of a student
body of six hundred, only eighty or
ninety were women, and even that
was considered a large number for
the time. Even so, not many women
were seeking ordination. Most of
them were primarily interested in
other forms of ministry such as
teaching or chaplaincy. Many at

10

Union married other seminarians
and found their place within the
church that way. Today, one third to
one half the students in the major
theological schools are women.
There are many retired women
clergy who are in their seventies and
eighties. They are the pioneers. T o­
day, a large number of younger
women are entering the minstry, but
there are very few of us who are in
our forties or fifties. It seems to go
in cycles. I was in school and col­
lege during a conservative age; the
remembered upheavals of World
War II had left us all with a craving
for conformity, stillness, traditions,
and a yearning to return to things
as they always were. Women min­
isters did not fit into that comfort­
able pattern. But Swarthmore in
the ’50s was more politically and
theologically aware than were many
other colleges. I was surrounded at
that time by people who encouraged
change and innovation.
I was ordained a deacon in 1958,
and an elder in 1961. M y first ap­

pointment was to the Community
Methodist Church in Cold Spring
Harbor, New York. The committee
which interviewed me was uncertain
about me, but there was a big plus
in my favor— I was available, and
they hadn’t had a fulltime minister
in that parish for over five years.
They accepted me. Quite soon, the
congregation began to enjoy the
novelty of the situation, and so, I
must confess, did I. That kind of
attitude creates a trap into which it
is easy to fall. Some feminists call it
“ the queen bee syndrome,” and it
can be dangerous, leading to anti­
sisterhood and a tendency to lord it
over others, women included. For­
tunately, that wore off with time
and the congregation and I were
eventually free to wrestle with the
real challenges of the parish.
Two of the obstacles I have en­
countered as a woman in ministry
are paternalism and a patronizing at­
titude. I have never experienced vio­
lent hostility, though I know of
others who have, but I have been

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

patronized. “ W e’re so proud of our
woman minister.” “ Oh, you’re differ­
ent!” “ You have such a wonderful
Voice” (nothing about what I’d said
with it!). And perhaps the most
sexist of all— “ It’s so nice to have
somebody pretty in the pulpit.”
Paternalism arises out of a patri­
archal world view, which brings us
to the matter of the Biblical refer­
ences to the inferiority of women.
Much of what is written from a
patriarchal standpoint is the result
of the cultural mind-set of the com­
munities in which the authors lived.
In some Biblical passages the Eng­
lish translations themselves are
slanted in a masculine direction
rather than holding true to the nu­
ances of the original language. For
example, the Jerusalem Bible (trans­
lated in 1966) version of Deuteron­
omy 32:17 reads: “ You forget the
Rock who begot you, unmindful now
of the God who fathered you.” The
Hebrew word translated as “ begot”
and “ fathered” is more appropriately
translated as “ brought forth with
labor” or “ bore,” more maternal
images. In Biblical translations, as
well as in the language of liturgy
and hymns, we have an opportunity
to affirm the wholeness of God and
of human beings and to eschew a
partialness in terms of gender. The
language we use reflects our behavior
and our beliefs.
As a woman, I believe I bring cer­
tain strengths to my profession.
Sometimes women are happier dis­
cussing with me matters concerning
sex, marriage, and the problems of
being a woman in a world of men.
Often, too, men prefer to talk to a
woman because they say they want
the point of view of a woman who
is not a wife or a lover. But that is
only one dimension. The primary
strengths of women in ordained min­
istry arise from the very fact of our
experiencing life as women.
The major weakness stems from
the basic issue of attitudes and
images. We are constantly presented
with images of God in masculine
form and with masculine titles:
Father, Lord, King. We tend to
envision men as decision-makers in
positions of authority and leader­
ship. Women are usually presented
in submissive and secondary roles.
Within the organization of the
church, women have generally chosen
'RIL, 1978

or been relegated to the role of vol­
unteers. The idea of servanthood is
a basic element of the Christian life,
but too often it has been forced on
women. I believe that the church at
its best is all inclusive of both sexes
—a fully human community.
Team ministries, in which men
and women serve as co-equals, help
model such inclusiveness. Many
forces are at work today changing
our concept of the role of women.

We bring a rich diversity— theologi­
cally, politically, sociologically, and
ethnically—and have much to offer
in and through the church.
Barbara Troxell is associate director of
the Council on Ministries, CaliforniaNevada Annual Conference of the
United Methodist Church. On July 1
she will become district superintendent
of the Golden Gate District of the Con­
ference
which
includes
fifty-eight
churches.

Jane Totah
Davis’50
“ I remember, one dark
and rainy night, saying
to myself ‘W hat are you
doing out here?” ’
“ One thing I ask of the Lord, this I
seek. To dwell in the House of the
Lord all the days of my life.” This
psalm expresses the way I felt all
my life, so it really wasn’t so strange
that I, a married Catholic woman,
the mother of four children, entered
theological school. That was in 1970,
twenty years after I graduated from
Swarthmore.
I lived an ordinary, secular, rou­
tine life as a woman in a suburban
community. From my kitchen table
and my kitchen telephone, I ad­
ministered a Sunday school program
for our church, a huge job involving
about 1,200 children and forty-five
committed teachers. Through this
work I was exposed to a group of
people—priests, sisters, lay people—
whose lives spoke to me. Their lives
said to me that there is another way
of living than the way we ordinarily
live, a way of caring for others. This
concern, the simple “ everydayness”
of their spirituality, was contagious.
It almost shouted to me.
When I entered Drew University,
my plan was to be a religious edu­
cation coordinator, that is, to do
professionally what I had been doing
voluntarily from my kitchen. How­
ever, when I graduated, a friend— a
priest— suggested I apply for the
job I now hold— campus minister at
Montclair State College, Upper

Montclair, New Jersey. M y office is
in the Newman House on the edge
of the campus. I can be referred to
as a chaplain or as a campus min­
ister, and I am on the payroll of the
Archdiocese of Newark, just as a
priest is.
One of the earliest problems I
faced as a woman I brought upon
myself. I found, especially at first,
that I was often pulled apart. There
were strong voices from my past
admonishing me, “ Your place is in
the home.” I remember driving home
one particularly dark and rainy
night on the Garden State Parkway
and saying to myself “ What are you
doing out here?”
At the outset, I had no role models
to follow. Father Ken Herbster, the
priest with whom I worked, said,
“ I’m sure you have your own sense
of ministry. Go ahead and discover
it.” But still I struggled and ques­
tioned, and I wondered what people
would think of me. When Father
Herbster first took me around the
College, he presented me as his “ as­
sociate” which, I think, many people
interpreted to mean his secretary.
11

One of my courses at Drew helped
me enormously to find my place.
The course was called Clinical Pas­
toral Education and in it my class­
mates and I served as chaplaininterns at Overlook Hospital in
Summit, New Jersey. We visited
patients of all denominations to talk,
listen, and pray. I was certain that
no Catholic patient would really
want to see a woman, that when I
went into the room of a Catholic
patient, he or she would want to
talk to a priest. But that never hap­
pened. The patients were just glad
to see us. M y role was never ques­
tioned.
Some of my doubts about my min­
istry were allayed by a sad experi­
ence. A member of the administra­
tion, a man who was not a Catholic,
found that he had a malignant brain
tumor. He had heard me speak at a
luncheon, and, having no minister
of his own in the area, he asked for
me when he was in the hospital. I
visited him and prayed with him
and talked with him from August
until November when he died. I was
astonished when he asked for me,
for I had no idea that anything I
had ever said had reached him. But
here was a little piece of evidence
that I had left the land in which I
had been living, I had left my home
and had gone forth into a new land
— the ministry.
At Montclair I learned that I just
had to be myself. Each one of us has
her or his own gift from God and
each one of us has to locate these
gifts, find out what we do best, and
use them. I am not there to spread
the Catholic faith, but to serve.
I believe that being a woman gives
me some special strengths. M y office
is filled every day with young
women, often coming to me with
questions they might hesitate to ask
a priest. It may be my age, it may
be the fact that I ’m a mother, that I
have a daughter in college. I think
another experience that helps is the
fact that our older son, Jay, has
severe brain damage. He lived at
home until he was ten, but for the
past thirteen years he’s lived at a
nearby state school. I believe this
experience has given me an ability
to deal with, or at least to face, prob­
lems which might seem overwhelm­
ing to others.
I find myself specializing more
12

and more in counseling. Only a
small proportion of students live on
campus at Montclair, and those that
do live in a high-rise dormitory with
five hundred students in one build­
ing. It is very easy to be lost in a
crowd, to be lonely. The commuting
students have very little time for
friendship, and most of the students
work to pay for their college educa­
tion. When I graduated from Drew
I received a fellowship for further
study, and one day a week for the
past two years I have been studying
pastoral counseling. This has just
whetted my appetite for more, and
this year I have been accepted in a
three-year program for marriage and
family counseling.
I can’t agree at all with the Vati­
can declaration denying the right of
women to be ordained. Women may
not be ordained in my lifetime, but
it will come. I am particularly proud
of the work, of the leadership, that
has come from sisters, from nuns,
from orders of religious women.
Scholars in Rome have said there is
nothing in scripture that would for­
bid the ordination of women to the
priesthood.
Things are changing. Our Catholic
seminary in the Diocese of Newark
now accepts lay students, men and
women, and will give them a master’s
degree or an M.Div. This was not so
in 1970 when I applied. At that time
the Catholic seminary was not open
to anyone except male students
studying for the priesthood. For two
years now, however, I’ve been a
member of the Board of Trustees of
the seminary. Another woman, a
sister, and I are on the board— the
only women ever to be named to it.
I am chairperson of a committee of
the board, and have two bishops on
my committee.
None of this would have been
possible without the support of my
husband [Richard C. Davis ’50] and
my family. I can’t say that it has
been easy. It hasn’t. But they sup­
port me and see how happy I am in
the work that I’m doing. I certainly
would advise other women to go
into the ministry, even though it is
going to be a highly charged issue
for a long time to come. We are not
alone. If we know there are others
waiting to follow, others supporting
our goal, it gives us the energy and
the strength to go ahead.

Helen Cohen at Harvard Divinity School.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Helen
Lutton
Cohen’65
“It is going to be
difficult.”
I had been very active in the Uni­
tarian church and youth group in
Cincinnati before I went to Swarthmore, but while at the College, and
for eight years afterward, I didn’t
attend church at all. I was caught up
in Swarthmore’s intellectual life and
so I pursued an exclusively academic
career. I earned a doctorate in Old
English and Middle English and
then taught for two years at Yale
and for three years at Brock Univer­
sity in St. Catharines, Ontario. Dur­
ing that time I met and married Don
Cohen, then also an English teacher
and now a playwright. We have two
daughters, Rebecca, 6, and Sarah, 3.
I felt a growing dissatisfaction
with college teaching as a career for
myself, and I must have felt, less
consciously, that there were ele­
ments missing in our life. When I
left Brock, I began attending the
Unitarian Fellowship in St. Cath­
arines. I knew right away that I had
“ come home.” The members of the
fellowship had warmth and a sense
of community as well as intellectual
and spiritual curiosity. I was in
touch again with questions and is­
sues to which I hadn’t given much
serious thought for quite some time.
I was with people of all ages, taking
part in and thinking about the criti­
cal passages in life— birth, marriage,
parenthood, death. M y experiences
with people, issues, and ideas all be­
gan to connect instead of existing
in separate compartments. As I
thought about wfiat career I wanted
to pursue, ministry seemed the logi­
cal and compelling choice. It com­
bines my interests and needs and it
requires that I use my experience
and abilities. I am now in my first
year at Harvard Divinity School,
and both the course work and the
field work have convinced me that I
made the right decision.
The problems of being a woman
minister are probably not so acute
APRIL, 1978

for Unitarians as for members of
some other religious groups. Our
tradition advocates equality, at least
in theory, and I know of a number
of women ministers with their own
congregations. Still, the acceptance
of women ministers is a fairly recent
phenomenon, and I ’m sure that a lot
of uneasy and negative reactions to
it continue to exist. The minister and
the congregation at the Arlington
First Parish Church, where I am do­
ing my field work, have been wel­
coming and encouraging.
I think it is going to be difficult to
be an effective minister as well as
wife and mother. I am fortunate that
Don is a supportive husband and an
active father, and also that his career
as playwright makes his work sched­
ule flexible. Without these advan­
tages, I would find it hard to man­
age. I’m sure that many male min­
isters have survived only because
their wives have energetically and
devotedly fulfilled their traditional
roles.

Margaret
Garnett
Sewell 976
“I feel that a vital
spiritual life needs to be
supplemented by
a real involvement with
social need.”
I started contemplating seminary
early in my senior year, motivated
by a number of factors, including a
decision not to go to medical school,
an interest in mental health work
as a ministry, my personal faith and
church involvement, and certainly
course work in religion and psy­
chology at Swarthmore. In the fall
following graduation, just a week
after marrying David Sewell ’76
(who has graciously put up with a
lot since then), I entered Nashotah
House.
Nashotah House is a small, rather
unusual Episcopal seminary in rural
Wisconsin. When I was there, of the
one hundred students only seven

were women. Most of the faculty
were priests who, in addition to
being excellent and stimulating
teachers, served in administrative
and liturgical roles. The monastic
community of the school dictated a
very structured life: morning prayer
and mass daily at 7:15 a.m., and even­
song at 5:00 (we wore long black
cassocks to chapel, and sometimes
to classes); interludes of prayerful
silence throughout the day, marked
by the ringing of the Angelus; com­
mon meals; weekly work crews (my
job was oiling the intricately carved
woodwork in the chapel); and ro­
tating work assignments in the re­
fectory and in the sacristy.
Even though the Episcopal Church
was then at the height of its con­
troversy over the ordination of
women, being a woman seminarian
in this environment was never a
problem. Though many of the men
there (and even a few of the women)
ardently opposed women’s ordina­
tion, they had the integrity not to
let such disagreements overshadow
other things that we had in com­
mon. The real difficulty was being
married in a place that drew so
many of its traditions from the
model of medieval and, of course,
celibate monastic life. These tradi­
tions provided a sense of richness
and continuity with the past, but
also meant that there were many
demands besides academic ones on
our time, and it was implicitly as­
sumed that the student’s primary
community was the seminary, not
the family. This problem of con­
flicting loyalties was a distressing
one for many of the married men as
well, particularly those with young
children, who felt that the institution
demanded that the claims of family
relationships take second place.
13

Since I believe that wholeness of
relationships, not only between the
individual and God but also between
human beings, is very nearly the
essence of Christianity, I began to
feel that the emphasis of the school
on religious observances was exces­
sive and ultimately unhealthy.
So I left Nashotah, and David and
I transferred to Yale (he’s a grad­
uate student in English). Yale D i­
vinity School is a different world
altogether. It’s a bustling place, with
students from various denomina­
tional backgrounds. Forty percent
are women, of all ages. People talk
a lot about Liberation theology and
the role of the Church as an ad­
vocate for the oppressed. If Nasho­
tah represented an otherworldly kind
of piety, YD S represents the Church
in the world. All students are ex­
pected to have field work jobs,
whether in parishes, hospitals, or
various community service agen­
cies in economically-depressed New
Haven. M y job this year, for ex­
ample, involves social service work
with elderly people who live in lowincome projects of the New Haven
Housing Authority. In courses that
parallel the field work, we explore
the theological assumptions behind
our work— for example, that when
we personally care about a person’s
needs, we can also communicate that
God cares, even though religious
language may not be used at all in
some secular job settings.
In the midst of the activity and
chaos here, I sometimes miss the
peace and contemplative life at
Nashotah. If Nashotah was rather
overbalanced on the side of tradition,
YDS tends perhaps to lean too much
in the other direction, toward a sort
of theological faddishness and root­
lessness. Still, I’m glad to be where
I am, because I feel that a vital
spiritual life needs to be supple­
mented by a real involvement of
Christians and the church with social
need. I see my own life’s work as
secular, very much informed by my
faith and seminary training, but not
in the ordained priesthood. I hope
to finish the Master of Arts in Reli­
gion degree next December and then
to start courses at a nearby school
of social work. Eventually I want to
do psychiatric social work, and I
trust that the combination of secular
and seminary training will help me
14

to deal with clients as “ whole per­
sons,” as spiritual as well as psy­
chological, emotional, and physical
beings.

Elizabeth
Darling
Dean976
“ ‘There’s nothing
sinister about a w om an
minister.’ ”
Women are being ordained! In re­
viewing the history of women, we see
that they have always served God’s
children. They have always minis­
tered. The entrance of women into
the professional ministry means not
that they have only now begun to
minister, but rather that they are
accepting the public and administra­
tive duties that accompany the run­
ning of a parish. The current com­
plement of female seminary students
is not an army of liberation but a
group of people who feel a sincere
call to do the work of God through
the organization of the church.
However, I find that many women
I know, in seminary and elsewhere,
who feel quite comfortable with
themselves and their role in the
world, feel imposed upon by other
women who, they believe, are push­
ing too hard for “ equality.” If you

are the only woman in a class and
the professor makes a particularly
vehement statement about the wo­
men’s movement, you have the feel­
ing that everyone is immediately
thinking about you. A professional
woman who is comfortable with her
sexuality is more concerned with her
profession than her sex.
At the present time it is not the
clergy but the laity which is present­
ing the most difficult opposition.
Many people who accept in principle
that there is no reason why a woman
should not be ordained find that they
feel uneasy receiving communion
from a woman. They are not sure
they would like to be married by a
woman. Even women who are being
ordained may ask men to perform
the ordination service because, in
spite of all our conscious understand­
ing of the equality of the sexes, the
male physique still symbolizes au­
thority.
Thus, one task of the new profes­
sional women in ministry is the win­
ning over of their congregations. A
woman entering a business field can
prove her competence with graphs of
gains and profits, but there are no
records of the number of souls in
heaven. The trust needed to counsel
someone cannot be measured. Women
have a great contribution to make
to the professional ministry but first
they must work to make everyone
realize the truth of the bumper
sticker: “ There’s nothing sinister
about a woman minister!”
I believe that women can do much
with their new prominence in the
churches, particularly in the area
of theology. Women have yet to
make their mark as theological
writers, but there are indications
that they will soon be composing
theology which may function outside
the current philosophical methods.
The feminine touch may provide
new approaches to many new ideas.
As a first year seminary student
I am quite enjoying discovering how
ministers are made. Many seminary
students, particularly the younger
ones, tend to bring their adolescent
conceptions of religion to seminary.
However, as they pursue text-critical
approaches to the Bible and detailed
studies of history and theology, these
preconceptions are sometimes vio­
lently upset. The student may feel
that the very roots of faith are being
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLET:

attacked. Yet, the seminary com­
munity provides the supportive en­
vironment in which faith can be re­
formulated and reassessed to a
higher level of understanding. The
critical and philosophic approach to
religious study at Swarthmore was
excellent preparation for seminary
work but disillusionment must not
be considered bad for theological
growth. Only in turning away can
faith be returned to a greater under­
standing.

I am enrolled in a cooperative
program which enables me to study
for a Master of Divinity degree at
McCormick and a Master of Library
Science at the University of Chicago.
I am very much interested in the
study of church history and, some
day, I would like to develop a cur­
riculum for teaching church history
to congregations. A lot of Bible study
is offered to congregations today,
but church history is almost non­
existent.

Maijorie
Thompson
’74
“Our culture makes it
too easy for us to
champion the entry of
women into ministry for
all the wrong reasons.”
When I graduated in 1974 with a
special major in religion and sociol­
ogy/anthropology, I had no intention
of pursuing my interest in religion
with graduate work in seminary.
Ministry held no appeal for me, in
part because I was not clear about
my own faith at the time, in part
because it did not occur to me seri­
ously to consider an ordained clergy
position as a woman; I had no role
models and could not envision what
kind of career might emerge from
seminary training.
During the year following college
and preceding seminary, I was able
to assimilate my undergraduate
studies and to rediscover the depth
of my own faith, immeasurably en­
riched by the comparative, crosscultural framework opened to me in
college. I began to reconsider what
further study in theology, especially
within a community of faith, could
do to help me clarify my directions,
and I perceived seminary as a logical
sequel to my undergraduate work.
At the time I entered McCormick,
I had no plans to become a parish
pastor. It did not seem strange that
I, as a woman, was studying theology
APRIL, 1978

in seminary, but I could not yet
envision myself as an ordained
minister. My initial thought was to
follow a dual competency program
in counseling psychology and the­
ology which would prepare me to do
specialized ministry in counseling
from a perspective of faith.
My three years at McCormick
have proved to be a journey in under­
standing, understanding not only the
Church as a whole, in all its mani­
fold traditions and expressions, but
also myself in relation to that whole.
As I have grown in understanding
my faith and in skills of interpreting
that faith to others, I have recog­
nized within myself a stronger sense
of “ call” to the ordained ministry of
the United Presbyterian Church.
What form this ministry will take
remains unclear at the moment. It
is only within the past year that I’ve
seriously considered the possibility
of parish ministry. M y inclination

toward specialized staff ministry (in
pastoral counseling or ecumenical
work on a national or international
level) remains distinct.
I am aware that deeply ingrained
images of the male pastor have had
much to do with both my inability
to see myself as a parish minister
and my own sense of calling. In
developing beyond my self-limited
vision, I have the growing number of
women at McCormick and other
Chicago seminaries (between one
fourth and one half of theological
students) to thank.
There is nothing innate to minis­
try which makes men or women
more or less suited to its various
forms of service. What is most
significant is the sense of call and
the desire to use one’s gifts in the
most helpful, effective way. I also
think our culture makes it too easy
for us to champion the entry of
women into ministry for all the
wrong reasons. I will not enter
ordained ministry because I feel I
have “ equal rights” with men to any
career opportunity. I’m not interested
in “ bringing the Church up to date”
or challenging “ professional sex
barriers.” No one has the “right” to
become a minister, but everyone may
experience and respond to a valid
calling into God’s service. With the
Church’s frame of reference, the way
we live our lives calls for theological
grounding, not accommodation to
secular influences. I believe there
are sound theological reasons for
women to enter ministry, not be­
cause “ we can do anything a man
can do just as well if not better,”
but because if we are truly to re­
flect the image of God in our church
and its ministry, we must embody
the whole image, male and female.
I will not deny that the ideal
of accepting women into ministry,
priesthood, or rabbinate is far from
realized in the consciousness of the
general populace. My sincere hope
is that gradually people will be able
to accept others in any role on the
basis of their gifts and qualifications
rather than allowing distinctions of
race, sex, class, and age to influence
acceptability. To those who are
considering ministry as a vocation,
both women and men, I can only
say, with awareness of potential
difficulties, “ Consider your call” and
respond freely!
15

THE
UNDER­
GRADUATES

Ellen
Tamm978
“The politicizing which
se e m s necessary
d oes not sit well with
m e at all.”
M y mother is a doctor. She works
full time, and has for as long as I
can remember. From fifth to eleventh
grade I attended a girls’ school.
Largely as a result of these two in­
fluences I have never questioned the
personal competence and professional
ability of women. I was brought up
to think of men and women as
people who share many things and
have some differences.
Accordingly, until very recently I
never considered the subject of
“ women in the church” to be a
particular issue. I have been forced
to see it as such because of my in­
terest in ordination in the Episcopal
Church. While I recognize the need
to reshape the ecclesiastical insti­
tution to accommodate and welcome
women in all aspects of its ministry,
the politicizing which seems neces­
sary to accomplish this does not sit
well with me at all. It is painful to
watch people withholding the gifts
of respect and support from each
other for the sake of an ideal, es­
pecially in a community where we
claim the responsibility and promise
of the command to love one another.
I am convinced that the form of
my ministry, that is, my specific
occupation (whatever that may turn
out to b e), is secondary. M y funda­
16

mental commitment to be faithful to
Christ lies deeper in me than the
concerns of feminism or sacramental
theology or “ career.” I realize that
there are people for whom this is not
the case at all, and I respect them
for the actions they must take in
response to their callings as they
understand them. I only hope that in
any case, with grace, we can remain
obedient to the Gospel in loving and
forgiving one another as God loves
and forgives us.
I have been considering chaplaincy
and choral conducting as ways of
putting my talents to work in the
world. Ordination would allow me
to administer the sacraments and in
so doing to include an important
aspect of service to people in my
chaplaincy. However, I do not be­
lieve that that kind of motivation
constitutes a satisfactory call to Holy
Orders. I expect that the final de­
cision will evolve from a good many
more years of living.

Katherine
Meyer’78
“There is always a
certain am ount of risk
involved in loving.”
When someone is called to serve
God, the call comes to the whole
person, and that wholeness encom­
passes the individual’s strengths and
weaknesses, whatever doubts he or
she feels, and whatever imagination
he or she can muster. Individuals
are drawn to serve with whatever
gifts have been given them. To be a
woman is part of the blessing of life,
but so is the ability to listen to
another person with attention and
compassion, or the ability to comfort
and move other people with singing.
All these things are special and imSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

portant parts of the whole self that
is called to serve.
The value of imagination and
diversity in church life is important
both because there is always a cer­
tain amount of risk involved in
loving and because-—to the extent
that tradition is important to the
church— a yearning and an effort to
understand that tradition are needed.
As for my own call to serve God,
I think the fact that it has touched
so many aspects of my life is linked
to my understanding of ministry as
a response to all that is both special
and ordinary about each person. For
me right now that includes my being
a woman, my being young, my having
had certain experiences that others
have not shared. It includes the part
of me that is never entirely sure
what is going on, the part of me that
is driven to acttout of love or anger,
and the part of me that waits in
silence.

Ellen
Mutari’79
“ ...the need to break
down the barriers
between the spiritual,
interpersonal, and
political spheres of life.”
My desire to become a Unitarian
minister arose out of a long period
of non-involvement with organized
Unitarianism. During that span, I
hadJtime to articulate my career and

other life choices. My interests in­
clude a commitment to social change,
development of a capacity for critical
thinking, a fascination with personal
dynamics among people, and a love
of writing, talking, and listening. All
the obvious career choices— political
work, teaching, counseling, journal­
ism— covered no more than two of
these categories. M y belief that I
could synthesize these interests in
the ministry came from a recognition
of the two fundamental tenets of
Unitarianism: emphasis on the search
for truth (in place of any particular
creed or dogma) and a dedication to
work for social change.
I see my interest in feminism as
integrally shaping the sort of min­
ister I want to be. It was through my
involvement in women’s concerns
that I first acknowledged the need
for fundamental institutional change.
I believe that helping people cope
with the problems of family and
other personal relationships in a
changing society is a positive way in
which my concerns can be useful to
others. Finally, I believe that one
of the outgrowths of a feminist per­
spective is recognition of the need to
break down the barriers between the
spiritual, interpersonal, and political
spheres of life.

Tracey
Wren
S etel978
“Jewish w om en (and
m en) are beginning to
demand new answers to
questions regarding
their roles.”
Women may now be ordained as
rabbis only within the reform and
reconstructionist movements. Al­
though one of the Talmudic rabbis
was actually a woman, orthodox
Judaism has traditionally considered
the duties of a rabbi to entail a
personal prominence inappropriate
to female behavior. Even within the
liberal movements, which have been

?RIL, 1978

ordaining women for nearly a
decade, women have not been easily
accepted as rabbis and have had
difficulties finding positions compar­
able to those of the men ordained
with them.
I have many personal reasons for
wanting to enter the rabbinate, but
they center on two basic interests.
The first is a general interest in the
potential and use of religious and
ethnic identity, which I see as pro­
viding a positive sense of under­
standing and purpose regarding
ethical and existential concerns. My
second interest is in the specific work
of a rabbi: teaching and counseling.
Specifically, I envision working
with a small, cooperative congrega­
tion, called a chauerah (chaverah is
a Hebrew word meaning “ group of
friends” ). In this type of synagogue,
the members themselves take an
active part in the preparation and
leading of worship and in the religious
education of both adults and children.
In such a context, the rabbi serves
primarily as teacher and resource
person rather than administrator.
Ideally, work with a chaverah would
allow me the time to involve myself
also with activities oriented specifi­
cally towards women on both prac­
tical and theoretical levels.
Jewish women (and men) are be­
ginning to demand new answers to
questions regarding their roles and
relationships within both religious
and secular contexts. As a feminist,
I feel that women are particularly
capable of formulating those answers,
and I find the prospect of involve­
ment with that formulation an
exciting one indeed.
17

“ The trail was arduous,
always climbing steeply or
descending steeply . .

Kim craned around in the front seat
of the jeep and shouted over the noise
of the engine, “ Are you all right?” I
gave him a wan smile and nodded un­
certainly. We were racing along a nar­
row winding dirt track pinned to the
cliff wall high above the Chenab River
of Kashmir, trying to overtake a bus
ahead. I was sitting atop a great heap
of equipment and supplies piled on the
jeep’s tailgate, trying to prevent both
the luggage and my body from being
thrown out the back. M y head was
sore from bumping against the steel
framework supporting the canvas roof,
and it seemed that the jeep’s wheels
were more often in the air than on the
ground. I hoped fervently that we
would catch the bus soon.
We had missed the bus by two hours
at the railhead in Jammu just after
dawn, and it was the only bus all day
to Kishtwar, the starting point for our
trek into the Himalayas. The ticket
agent at the Jammu bus station had
told us that we could still catch a bus
to Doda, thirty miles short of Kisht­
war, so we took it and hoped some­
thing' would turn up. At our rest stop
in the afternoon, we had learned that
the earlier bus had left a few minutes
before we arrived, and as we wound
down the dusty hill into Doda that
evening, we could see the Kishtwar
bus pull out only moments ahead of us.
Bharat, our Indian friend, had
rushed to negotiate with the driver of
a jeep he saw, while Kim and I un­
loaded our mountain of food and
equipment. The driver had smilingly
agreed to chase the Kishtwar bus. He
was an Indian Army driver, but his
officer was away and he had nothing
to do, so we crammed the three of us,
APRIL, 1978

tllKINQ IN
VERTICAL
KASHMIR
the driver, his friend, and all our lug­
gage into the tiny one-seat jeep and
roared off in pursuit.
The road was a one-lane dirt track,
hand-carved out of the side of the
Chenab River canyon. It snaked and
wound its way through the deep sidecanyons and switchbacked up and
down the precipitous slopes. The bus
had managed no more than eight miles
per hour most of the day, but the jeep
driver was casually bouncing around
hairpins at thirty or more. Although
it was nearly dark, he babied the bat­
tery and declined to use the head­
lights, and at times he steered with
his knee while he lit a cigarette or
used both hands to point out the sights.
The result was harrowing. Although I
could stick my head out the window
and look straight down several thou­
sand feet to the river in the gathering
darkness, the driver piloted his flying
jeep inches from the edge with no sign
of concern at all.
We rapidly overtook the bus, hauled
our luggage onto the roofrack, and ar-

By Andrew M. Low ’ 73

rived in Kishtwar late that night. It
had taken us twelve hours of continu­
ous travel to cover about 200 miles.
I had met Bharat and Kim at the
Cornell Law School in 1973. Kim and
I were first-year students, and Bharat
was an Indian lawyer studying for his
master’s degree. Bharat showed us
movies he had taken in the Himalayas
and then invited us to come trekking
with him in Kashmir in the fall of
1976. Although the proposed date was
three years away, we agreed and began
making preparations.
Now, three years later, when Kim
and I finally cleared customs in New
Delhi, we stepped out into the crisp,
blue fall morning. Bharat emerged
from the milling crowd and welcomed
us both with hugs and handshakes. We
departed for Kashmir by overnight
train, and arrived just after dawn at
the northern end of India’s rail system
in Jammu. After our frantic jeep ride
to catch up with the bus from Jammu,
we wound north and then east toward
the edge of the Great Himalaya range
and the beginning of our trek.
Life begins early in these northern
Indian towns. By five a.m. we were
awakened inside our tiny Kishtwar
hotel room by roosters crowing, wail­
ing music blaring from radios, trucks
and busses warming up in the square
below, and the voices of hundreds of
people already beginning the day’s
business. From our little balcony, we
watched the bus drivers warm up their
gas lines and oil pans by building a
fire on the pavement under the engine.
Bharat had written to tell the local
political officer of our planned trip,
and we paid him a visit. He received
us cordially in the large, airy office
19

“ The tortured landscape rose in mile-high walls
of rock . . . the sheer verticalità of everything
that we could see dominated our senses.”

where he presided as the area’s judge,
mayor, and official clerk. He served
us tea, chatted amiably in Hindi with
Bharat, and then had his secretary
give us a letter directing official co­
operation in all the villages along our
route. The letter, he told us, would
help us find both reliable porters and
comfortable accommodations.
Later that day we climbed aboard
another bus for the trip to the end of
the road, eight miles further up the
valley. If the road thus far had been
only harrowing, these last eight miles
were terrifying. The road deteriorated
to little more than a narrow shelf,
looking as if at any moment it would
plunge directly into the river, thou­
sands of feet below. On the right side
of the bus, one could often touch the
hare rock walls from which the road
had been carved, while on the left, the
wheels crunched along the very edge
of the unguarded dropoff. Although
these ridges and canyons were no more
than low-altitude foothills, the effect
was awesome. The tortured landscape
rose in mile-high walls of rock from
the sides of rivers turned gray-green
with glacial silt. The sheer uerticality
of everything that we could see domi­
nated our senses and made us wonder
20

uneasily what the hiking would be
like. There was no flat ground at all.
Just before sunset our bus groaned
up the final hill to a tiny village at the
very end of the road. We unloaded our
luggage, produced our letter from the
Kishtwar political officer, and were
shortly ensconced in a simple tworoom government “ rest-house” opened
specially for us by the village leader.
Through Bharat we asked for two re­
liable men with donkeys to help carry
our supplies. Two young men arrived
shortly, and Bharat negotiated terms
with them. Their wages were fixed at
fifteen rupees—less than two dol­
lars— per day. They agreed to accom­
pany us on the round trip to our desti­
nation, the base of a mountain called
Brammah.
The next morning Mohansingh and
Iqbal, our two donkeymen, arrived on
schedule and packed our equipment
onto their donkeys. Bharat and Kim
and I shouldered our backpacks and
we set off. This first day set the pat­
tern for most of the next two weeks.
Our trail wound up and down the
rugged green hillsides, through tiny
farming villages, and past narrow yel­
low rice paddies that stair-stepped
down into the misty chasm a half-mile
below. Occasionally we saw a solitary
Himalayan eagle gliding easily above
the craggy ridges where it hunted for
food.
The trail we followed is the only
transportation and commerce route for
the entire valley, so we often passed
shepherds bringing their sheep and
goats to markets in Kishtwar. Because
the trail was never more than a few
feet wide, we crowded in toward the
cliffside and watched as the beautiful
long-haired Kashmiri goats flowed
past. The shepherds invariably wanted
to know the time when they saw we

were wearing watches, so when they
tapped their wrists inquiringly, I held
my wrist up and showed them the face
of my watch. After a few encounters
like this, Bharat informed me wryly
that none of them could tell time, and
that if I wanted to communicate I
would have to learn to tell them the
time in Hindi. As we walked, Bharat
began teaching us basic Hindi, and we
shortly mastered a small vocabulary.
When the next shepherd tapped his
wrist, I proudly told him the time in
Hindi. “ Pune-tin.” Quarter to three.
Most families in this valley make
their living by farming, and when we
were there they were out in the fields
gathering the rice harvest. There is a
strict division of labor between the
sexes— women and girls tend and har­
vest the crops, while the men plow the
rice-paddies and carry the heavy loads
of harvested crops to winter storage.
In each village the three of us were
objects of great curiosity. Every eve­
ning crowds of people turned out to
stare as we unpacked our western
camping equipment, laid out our sleep­
ing bags, and cooked dinner from
freeze-dried foods over a pressurized
gas stove. Our nightly audience was
particularly fascinated by Kim’s con­
tact lenses, and they sometimes asked
him to put them in and remove them
several times in a row. The crowds
were mostly men and boys who were
always eager to be photographed. In
Kishtwar, crowds of small boys had
followed us everywhere we walked,
begging to have their pictures taken,
and we obliged over and over again.
The few women in the crowds were
far more reticent, however. When we
pointed our cameras at them, they
hastily covered their faces with their
salwars— shawls wrapped about head
and shoulders— and ran away.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The trail was arduous, always climb­
ing steeply or descending steeply, and
we quickly lost our enthusiasm for
carrying our own backpacks. The
going rate for a porter was ten rupees
per day— a little more than a dollar
—and after two days we decided to
hire an affable teenager named Permanand. As we walked along, Permanand
skipped ahead and ran back to us,
chattering happily and talking to us
half in English, half in Hindi, and
always in sign language. Permanand
carried one pack, either Iqbal or Mohansingh carried another, and the
third pack went on one of the donkeys.
Our new arrangement freed us of
our loads, and it was just in time. The
day we hired Permanand, we left the
main river valley and began to climb

a tributary valley toward Brammah.
The trail rose steadily now, the vil­
lages were less frequent, and the for­
ests began to thin. At each turn in the
valley we began to catch glimpses of
glacier-covered peaks growing closer,
and the air grew cooler and sharper.
Five days and fifty miles from
Kishtwar we set up our orange tents in
a meadow at 11,500 feet, surrounded
by an immense sweep of Himalayan
scenery. Our campsite was at the edge
of a rubble-covered glacier a thousand
feet high and four miles long. Above
the glacier the enormous north face of
Brammah rose in great arching but­
tresses of rock and ice almost 10,000
feet directly above us. At 21,050 feet,
Brammah is higher than any peak in
North America, yet here in the Hima­
layas, it is only a minor summit that
has generally escaped the notice of
serious mountaineers. Across the val­
ley a triangular rock peak climbed in
sheer cliffs to nearly the same height
as Brammah, and every evening its
great rock face reflected the setting sun
in subtle tones that began in orange
and crept through the spectrum to end
in dark purple.
We used the meadow as our basecamp for several days of climbing to
nearby ridges or glaciers for even more
breathtaking views. In every direction

ice-clad peaks towered to over 20,000
feet, their white flanks shimmering
with terrible power and strength. On
the steep slopes of the Himalayas, the
glaciers shatter into unbelievably
rugged and dangerous zones of broken
ice known as ice-falls. The individual
blocks of ice, called seracs, may be as
large as ten-story buildings. The
seracs are poised in a delicately frozen
balance against the pull of gravity,
and when the midday sun or the in­
ternal pressure of the glacier disrupts
the balance, the serac collapses in­
stantly, pouring thousands of tons of
ice onto the valley below. We heard
the roar of many such ice avalanches,
although we saw none at close range.
After a few days we retraced our
route down the valleys to Kishtwar.
Although I later trekked through the
higher and more famous mountains of
Nepal, our Kashmiri valley held a
different, more personal attraction.
We traveled through places few West­
erners have seen and were treated as
guests, not tourists. Everywhere the
people were curious, outgoing, and
friendly, and we were always offered
the hospitality of the Village. We met
the people and were made to feel wel­
come— a pleasure which many Ameri­
cans no longer experience when they
encounter foreign cultures.

The indispensable Bharat on the trail and author Andy Low with a crowd of admirers.
APRIL, 1978

21

PEOPLE
TO
KNOW

Bell-issima

The exploring engineer
This is J osep h E. S p afford,
Swarthmore’s administrative en ­
gineer for facilities planning and
utilization. In his thirteen years at
the College he has helped to
guide through construction or
renovation Dana and Hallowell
Dormitories, Worth Health C en ­
ter, Tarble Social Center, the
north wing o f Parrish, and the
Lang Music Building. Currently
he is involved with final renova­
tions of the engineering depart­
ment facilities in Hicks Hall, the
remodeling o f the former Bartol
Building, and the Physical A c­
tivities Project — a $2,000,000
addition which will make the
Lamb-Miller Field House a com ­
plete co-ed facility.
For the past four years Joe has
been president o f the Swarthmore Borough Council. He is
shown here beside the new Yale
Avenue bridge which crosses
Crum Creek at the southern end
o f the College’s property. When
the Pennsylvania Department of
Transportation tried to build the
new bridge upstream from the
old location and immediately ad­
jacent to Crum Creek dam and
falls, Joe led the fight to have it
reloca ted dow nstream . The
many weary hours he spent in
Harrisburg and S w arth m ore
working on the project resulted in
a victory for local residents and
preservation o f the falls view.
After graduation from the Uni­
versity o f Missouri, Joe went to
w ork for B ethlehem Steel.
Twelve years later he was vice­

president and general superin­
tendent of the Conem augh and
Black Lick Railroad, a subsidiary
of Bethlehem Steel in Johns­
town, PA. Yielding to a d e ­
sire to see more o f the world, he
left both job and Johnstown and
joined the Standard Fruit C o m ­
pany in Honduras.
W h en he returned to the
States, his skills as a registered
professional engineer led him to
varied employment in New York,
Missouri, and West Virginia b e­
fore he settled in Swarthmore in
1964. His stint in Honduras gen­
erated a passion for the study of
Mayan Indian civilization which
has taken him and his wife Au­
drey to Central America many
times since his original stay. They
have traveled extensively in the
mountainous jungles o f British
and Spanish Honduras, Guate­
mala, and Mexico, where they
have examined numerous preColom bian Mayan ruins, includ­
ing som e hitherto unexplored
sites.
Joe, w ho admires these an­
cient artifacts as a professional
engineer, has lectured more than
once to the Philadelphia group of
the Explorers Club (of which he is
first vice-chairman) on the sub­
ject o f the ancient Mayans and
their works. In 1972, for a slight
change o f pace, he took part in a
caving expedition, sponsored by
LaSalle C olleg e, w hich was
mapping the extensive under­
ground system o f the Rio Camuy
in Puerto Rico.

It isn’t the face that’s familiar f l i t ’s the voice. Judy Feiy, chief
operator on the College switchboard, is the personality behind the
salutation heard by scores o f callers every day. She and her dog,
Charlie, w ho accompanies her to work regularly, occupy a narrow
room in Parrish annex.
Judy, w ho has worked from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for the past
nineteen years, never forgets a voice — even o f faculty members
w ho retired years ago. The board, which she describes lovingly as
“an antique,” has twelve outside lines and ten attendant trunk lines.
She and her assistant operators, Dorothy Olson and Helen Burgoyne, have had their share of emergencies and perhaps more
than their share o f overseas calls; they even get occasional obscene
calls. Judy reports that “ The only real problem here is that som e­
times you have to be a detective or a psychiatrist to figure out just
what it is that a caller wants.”
The professional operators are helped by about eight student
operators w ho take relief duty and cover the board late at night.
The experience is useful training for them, according to Judy, and
many of them go to her for letters of recommendation after they’ve
graduated.
Judy exercises vigorously each morning before work, attends
exercise classes at least twice a week, rides her stationary bicycle
four miles a night and, during last year’s arctic weather, went iceskating on the Crum during her lunch hour.

22

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The lure of lore

Scout’s honor
4

This past July Harold L. Frederick, Jr., escorted a group of twentytwo Boy Scouts to England for a three-week exchange visit with
Scouts in the south London area. Led by Harold, Scout Troop 461
of Souderton, PA, was returning a visit paid to them the previous
summer by a group o f Scouts from south London.
Harold, w ho is Swarthmore’s accountant, had worked hard over
the past fourteen years to achieve a successful exchange, taking
Scouts to Canada, Denmark, Austria, Norway, and England, and
providing travel expenses for a number o f Scouts from other cou n ­
tries in hopes o f establishing a two-way connection. It took the
Bicentennial-Silver Jubilee celebrations finally to bring it off.
Harold and his Scouts were accom panied by two assistant
Scoutmasters and two troop mothers (one of them Harold’s).
During the first week the com bined English and American
groups, organized as one scout troop, lived aboard the H.M.S.
Discovery, the ship taken by Captain Robert F. Scott to the Antarc­
tic in 1901-04 and now permanently m oored on the Thames near
the New London Bridge. The Scouts had to vacate the ship in the
afternoons when it was open to the public — not really a hardship
since their hosts had planned a busy program of walking tours and
coach trips to such places as Westminster, Greenwich, Canterbury,
the Baden-Powell House, and the London Fire Brigade.
The com bined troop m oved next to a cam p with the euphoni­
ous name o f Polyapes (meaning many bee hives), in Surrey. In­
terspersed with scouting activities and badge work were more trips:
to Windsor Castle, the Royal Naval Base at Portsmouth, and a visit
to Nelson’s flagship, the Victory. The third stage o f their stay was
spent in the hom es o f their host families, cementing the relation­
ships begun in 1976.
Harold Frederick’s interest in international scouting is mirrored in
several of his other activities. He is an eager photographer and a
coin and stamp collector, and has pen-pals in many countries
around the world. He has been treasurer o f the Montgomery
County Big Brothers Association for ten years, and is a member of
the Souderton Area International Student Exchange Council.
Harold also designs scout badges, many of which are used by his
own troop.
Scout Troop 461 meets at the Zion Mennonite Church, of which
Harold is a member. His affiliations with this church, with Juniata
College (as a graduate), and with Swarthmore affirm his belief in
the principles of non-violence. Harold Frederick believes strongly
that world peace can be achieved through better international un­
derstanding. “We can each help in our own way,” he says, “and if
we start with the youth today, w e can create a better foundation for
the future.”
APRIL, 1978

While working for her master’s
degree in sociology at the Univer­
sity o f Pennsylvania, Kathryn
Morgan “ stumbled” on the sub­
ject o f folklore and fell in love
with it. O ne of the oldest of the
arts and the youngest o f the pro­
fessions, folklore is gaining ever
wider acceptance as a discipline.
Kathryn is associate professor in
Sw arthm ore’s history depart­
ment.
A Danforth Fellowship brought
her back to her native Philadel­
phia from the south where she
had been housewife and mother
and where she had joined in the
struggle for black liberation after
her graduation from Howard
University. “ I am interested in all
people, especially black people
throughout the African diaspora,
and more explicitly the ongoing
struggles of black people right
here in the United States.” She
came to Swarthmore in 1969 and
quickly b eca m e im mersed in
work with the Black Studies
C om m ittee
and
with
the
Swarthmore Afro-American Stu­
dents’ Society.
Folklore, for Kathryn, is “ his­
tory in which you can see your­
self reflected.” More than a simple
verbal art, it is a combination of
the intellectual and spiritual and
intuitive elements in all o f us; “ a

way of knowing,” she calls it,
shared by human beings of all
cultures and centuries. It express­
es universal beliefs, taboos, and
understandings which can be
traced back over millenia; the
“multiple voice” of the people.
Her own students have col­
lected a wealth of folklore on
campus and in the borough —
legends, apocrypha, recollections
about well-known campus per­
sonalities, outrageous nicknames
for faculty. Som e o f it Kathryn
has classified as “ethnographic
dynamite.”
At present Kathryn is writing
two books. One is a fictional re­
construction o f black experiences
in Africa and America in the
1850’s, a combination o f folklore,
history, and literature, part of
which has been published in the
Journal of Ethnic Studies. The
other consists of interpretive es­
says based on her own family
traditions, on e of which has al­
ready been anthologized.
Kathryn has taught also at
Bryn Mawr, Haverford, the Uni­
versity of Delaware, and Berke­
ley. She finds Swarthmore stu­
dents less relaxed than those on
the west coast but, for her, enor­
mously stimulating, frequently
surprising, and a pleasure to
teach.

23

THE COLLEGE
Board of Managers authorizes internal management evaluation
The Board of Managers has, upon
the suggestion of President Theodore
Friend, authorized a management
evaluation of the College. The pri­
mary objective of the inquiry will be
an evaluation of the functioning of
the president and the president’s top
staff, individually, in relation to each
other, and in relation to all segments
of the College. The purpose of the
evaluation is to strengthen manage­
ment as a foundation for future
progress.
The Board has appointed an ad hoc
committee to conduct the study.
Members include Boyd T. Barnard
T7, Katherine Connor Doughty ’68,
Clark Kerr ’32, Sue Thomas Turner
’35, and Richard B. Willis ’33, chair­
man. The process will involve prepara­
tion of a “ State of the College” report
by President Friend. This report, co­
inciding with the conclusion of Presi­
dent Friend’s first five years at
Swarthmore, will constitute a review
of past activities and a projection of
future prospects.
Following the release of this report
at the end of the summer, the com­
mittee plans to solicit both written
and oral responses from the several
constituencies of the College during
September. The Ad Hoc Management
Evaluation Committee will then pre­
pare a report to be presented to the
Board at its December meeting.
All alumni are welcome to re­
ceive a copy of President Friend’s
report and to write to the committee.
24

For those interested in doing so, a
box number at the College will be
published in the July issue of the
Bulletin.

Four faculty members named
to chaired professorships
Four Swarthmore faculty members
were named to chaired professorships
in March.
Paul C. Mangelsdorf, Jr. ’49, was
named Morris L. Clothier Professor
of Physics, a chair endowed by Mor­
ris L. Clothier ’90, Hon. ’21, who do­
nated also the Alexander G. Cummins
Professorship of English. Helen F.
North was appointed Centennial Pro­
fessor of Classics, a chair established

in 1964 with funds received during the
Centennial Fund Campaign.
Martin Ostwald was named William
R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Classics,
a professorship inaugurated in 1973
to honor William R. Kenan, Jr., a
chemist, engineer, and industrialist
who was interested all his life in ed­
ucation at private institutions.
P. Linwood Urban, Jr., was named
Charles and Harriet Cox McDowell
Professor of Religion. This professor­
ship in philosophy and religion was
established by Harriet Cox McDowell
’87, an active member of the Board of
Managers for twenty-three years, in
memory of her husband, Charles
McDowell, a prominent physician.

R e p e a t P e r f o r m a n c e : Swarthmore faculty and staff produced The Man Who Came

to Dinner in 1955 and again in 1978. Vice-president Edward K . Cratsley played the
same role in both productions. H e is shown above (left, 1955) with the late Joseph B.
Shane ’25 and (right, 1978) with provost Harold E. Pagliaro.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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Hadassah Holcombe, life
member of the Board, dies
JC

Hadassah M. L. Holcombe, wellknown Quaker educator and a life
member of Swarthmore’s Board of
Managers, died on March 16th at the
age of 87.
Mrs. Holcombe was a member of the
George School Committee and chair­
man of the Committee of Education
of the Friends General Conference.
She also had been secretary of the
Friends Council on Education, a
trustee of Sidwell Friends School in
Washington, D.C., and a former
member of the board of corporators
of the Women’s Medical College.
Hadassah Holcombe’s service on
the Board of Managers extended from
1938 to 1961, during which time she
was a member of the executive, instruction and libraries, nominating,
! student life, and development committees. She became an emeritus
member in 1970.
Mrs. Holcombe was the widow of
Arthur N. Holcombe, a professor of
government at Harvard University,
Previously, she had been married to
Morris E. Leeds, founder of Leeds &
Northrup Co., who died in 1954, and
Raymond T. Parrot, a Montclair,
N.J., lawyer, who died in 1962. She is
survived by two daughters— Esther
Leeds Cooperman ’48 and Mary
Leeds Johnson— six grandchildren,
and two sisters.

Friends Historical Library and
the Peace Collection mark
first decade in new location
On March 16th and 17th the Friends
Historical Library and the Swarthmore College Peace Collection celebrated their tenth anniversary in their
new quarters in McCabe Library.
Highlight of the ceremonies was a
lecture by Norman Cousins, editor of
the Saturday Review. Mr. Cousins’
lecture, “ Hope and Present Realities,”
was presented before a capacity audi­
ence in the Meeting House and was
followed by a reception.
To mark the celebrations, a special
exhibit was mounted which included
some of the finest and rarest speci­
APRIL, 1978

J. William Frost, director of the Friends Historical Library, with writer-editor Norman
Cousins at the tenth anniversary of the Friends Library and the Peace Collection.

mens in the collections of the Library
and the Peace Collection. On display
were letters from Abraham Lincoln,
Patrick Henry, William Penn, Lucretia Mott, John G. Whittier, and
Herbert Hoover. The exhibit included
first editions of work by George Fox,
Thomas Paine, and Elias Hicks. Art
works included two versions of Ed­
ward Hicks’s “ Peaceable Kingdom,”
Howard Pyle’s “ Quaker Wedding,”

portraits (often satirical) of seven­
teenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenthcentury Friends, photographs of his­
toric meeting houses, and Benjamin
West’s drawings.
Manuscripts on display in the Peace
Collection focused on famous women
in the peace movement, including
letters written by Eleanor Roosevelt,
Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and
Helen Keller.

Old college photos in the attic?
They are wanted for an exhibit on campus
The Friends Historical Library is
asking for photographs from
alumni for an exhibit to be shown
on Alumni Days, May 26th and
27th. The library staff tries to dis­
play pictures and other memora­
bilia to honor the main reunion
classes, but the library’s own pic­
ture files need to be supplemented
to create a distinctive exhibit.
Each year alumni generously
bring many pictures to the library
as gifts at reunion time. While
these are most welcome additions
to the collection, they usually
arrive too late for inclusion in the
display.

If any alumni care to contrib­
ute photographs or other items to
the planned exhibit, the library
staff would be grateful if they
could be sent in advance. It is
very important, if at all possible,
to have any people or buildings in
the pictures identified. All mate­
rial contributed will be returned
to the owners if they wish, or
added to the library’s permanent
collection.
Photographs and other items
may be sent to the Friends His­
torical Library at the College, in
care of the assistant director,
Albert W. Fowler.

25

Second-class postage paid at Swarthmore, PA 19081 S w 3 T t h l l l O r B

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Volume LXXV, No. 5 April 1978

In this issue:
1 Administration would be easy i f . . .
An interview with
Provost Harold E. Pagliaro

5 No Longer Silent in the Churches
18 Hiking in Vertical Kashmir
by Andrew M. Low ’ 73

22 People to Know
24 The College
"What are you going to be at your class reun­
ion this year, Roscoe . . . A doctor or a lawyer?" *

For your class reunion
at Swarthmore this year,
just be yourself! Com e
back to the campus with
friends and classmates.
They’re looking forward to
seeing you — whatever you are!

Alumni Days
May 26« 27

26 Class Notes

Editor: Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Assistant Editors: Kathryn Bassett ’35
Nancy Smith
Editorial Assistant: Ann D. Geer
Designer: Robert Wood
PHOTO CREDITS:
George Vallilee: front cover, page 8. Martin
Natvig: inside front cover, pages 3, 11, 16, 17,
18, 19 and 25. Detroit Free Press: page 9.
Lorraine Karcz: page 12. R.D. Smith: page 13.
Thomas Arthur: pages 14 and 15. Courtesy
Andrew M. Low ’ 73: pages 20 and 23. Jane
Heald: page 24 left.
*GRIN & BEAR IT by Lichty & Wagner.
e Field Enterprises, Inc., 1977
Courtesy Field Newspaper Syndicate