Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1983-06-01

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SWARTHMORE
INAUGURATES
ITS TWELFTH
PRESIDENT

Two past presidents o f the
College, John W. Nason
(above right) and Theodore
W. Friend (above left),
joined in the inaugural
ceremonies. Students, in
both form al and informal
attire (right), enjoyed a
picnic lunch afterwards.

PHOTOS BY STEVEN GOLDBLATT ’67

“There is a peaceful
grandeur, a power that
is created here as the
energy of our daily lives
meets the serenity of the
trees that form this
hollow—a standing
wave of purpose, of
resolve that we can call
upon in months and years ahead as we try to
translate our aspirations into action and our
actions into accomplishment,” David William
Fraser told alumni, faculty, and students
gathered in Scott Outdoor Auditorium April
30 to celebrate his inauguration as Swarthmore’s twelfth president.
After eight consecutive weekends marred by
snow and rain, the sun shone down on Crum
Woods as over 100 delegates from as far away
as Stanford University and Whittier College in
California joined in a colorful, robed proces­
sion from Parrish to the stage of the outdoor
amphitheater. Two past presidents of the Col­
lege, Theodore W. Friend and John W. Nason,
as well as the presidents of twenty-five other
colleges took part in the ceremonies.
An alumnus of Haverford and Harvard
Medical School, Fraser led the federal govern­
ment’s successful search for the cause of
Legionnaire’s Disease and won national recog­
nition for his work on toxic shock syndrome
before assuming the duties of president at
Swarthmore last November.

Haverford President Robert B. Stevens, pictured on the left with
Swarthmore Provost Harrison M. Wright, was one o f twenty-five
college presidents from across the country who took part in the
inaugural ceremonies held in the Scott Outdoor Auditorium (below).
Eugene M. Lang 38 (bottom left), chairman o f the Board o f
Managers, introduced President Fraser to alumni, faculty, and
students gathered fo r the occasion. Alumni Association President
Marshall Beil ’67 and his predecessor, Ruth Wilcox Mahler ’49,
(bottom right) represented alumni on the inaugural platform.

Biologist Noel Snyder ’62 and his endangered spe­
cies research team are developing new techniques
to deliver the California condor from extinction.

COURTESY OF THE SAN DIEGO ZOO

he prospect of being stranded
high in the Coastal Range
Mountains, more than twen­
ty miles from civilization, is
■1
not something most of us
would accept as a likely scenario in our
jobs. But for biologist Noel Snyder ’62
and the fifteen members of the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service-National Audubon
Society research team he co-heads, it is
an unavoidable risk if they hope to save the
giant California condor from extinction.
Sometimes, though, it must seem that
balancing the competing political consid­
erations involved in the effort is nearly as
treacherous as actually tracking the con­
dor through the canyons and passes.
It’s six a.m. At his home in the foothills
north of Los Angeles Noel Snyder is busy
already in his backyard gathering straw­
berries for breakfast. The night before,
he was asleep by nine, totally exhausted
following a frustrating day spent trying
to reach three staff members who were
Sisquoc and Tecuya, the first condor chicks
hatched in captivity, will help form a captive­
breeding flock to restock wild populations.
SW A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

PHOTO BY FRED SIBLEY
U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

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By Larry Elveru

marooned in the rugged mountains by
torrential rains that had swollen streams
into rivers.
“I was out in the field all day yesterday,
trying to get three people out. We’ve had
heavy rains and the roads are impassable,”
Snyder says. “The terrain is very inhospi­
table. You don’t just walk through it the
way you walk through Crum Woods.
You have to cut your way through.
“We’re hoping to get two of them out
today and get food through for the third.
But it’s literally a twenty-mile hike when
we can cross the river. Sometimes we
have to use helicopters to function out
there. That particular nest is an incredibly
hard one to deal with because of the
logistics involved,” Snyder explains.
Despite these difficulties Snyder is
buoyant, for just a few weeks earlier his
research team’s efforts had been rewarded
with Sisquoc-—the first condor chick ever
to hatch in captivity. The event made
headlines across the country, followed by
the news four days later that a second
chick, Tecuya, had hatched in an incu­
bator at the San Diego Wild Animal
Park.
JUNE, 1983

Snyder and his team had camped out
in the mountains for weeks in February,
watching patiently from camouflaged pup
tents, waiting for an opportunity to take
these eggs from their cliffside nests. Each
egg was then carefully packed into a
specially cushioned and heated suitcase
and carried a mile or more to a spot
where it could be picked up by a helicopter
and quickly transported to the San Diego
Zoo. There, the eggs hatched in incuba­
tors normally used for premature human
infants.
Altogether, Snyder so far has taken
four eggs from condor nests in the moun­
tains northwest of Los Angeles. The
snatching of eggs is aimed at building up
a breeding colony of condors in captivity
as quickly as possible to retain the widest
possible variety in the condor gene pool.
Rather than simply raising condors in
captivity, though, Snyder hopes first to
stabilize the wild population and eventu­
ally to reverse the ongoing decline of the
condors.
“By hatching these eggs, and then
raising the birds and releasing them,”
Snyder explains, “we can probably in­

crease the number of condors in the wild
very significantly and counter the current
rate of decline. The best figures we have
suggest a net loss of about two birds a year
from a population that we now estimate
to be down around twenty. If we can
make up for that yearly decrease and
begin to release a couple of extra young
each year, well be able at least to hold the
line on that wild population.”
Snyder’s hopes for saving the condor
from extinction hinge on his research
team’s recent discovery that most nesting
condors will lay a second egg to replace
one that is removed from the nest. Nor­
mally, a condor pair produces only one
egg every two years. “This discovery rep­
resents a tremendous breakthrough,”
Snyder explains, “because we now have a
tool that, regardless of the conditions out
there, enables us to help the reproductive
efforts of the species enormously.
“If a condor, for instance, lays an egg
during the breeding season in February,
normally the offspring won’t fledge (be,
able to fly) until the fall. Even then, the
young will be dependent for several
months after that. Sometimes the condor
3

PHOTO BY HELEN SNYDER

Noel Snyder (right) rushes a condor chick
down a mountainside to the San Diego Zoo.

pair can turn around and have young
again the next year, but other times they
just keep on tending the fledgling. Very
often that means they’re breeding only
once every two years.
“But now we’ve found that you can
take their first egg and hatch it in captivity
and they will respond to the taking of the
egg by producing a second egg. Right off,
that means we can at least double what
they’re doing out there.” In fact, one pair
of condors produced a third egg this
spring after its first two eggs were re­
moved by Snyder, an unprecedented
event that biologists find encouraging.
Andean condors, the closest relatives
of the California condor, already are
breeding well in captivity and have fared
well when released in the wild. “There is a
real hope that this kind of approach will
be successful as an interim solution for the
California bird,” Snyder says. “But while
we buy time with it, ultimately the goal is
a wild population that can sustain itself
out there.”
Despite these promising discoveries
and the successful hatching of condor
eggs in captivity, Snyder says that some
people still question the value of spending
tax dollars on a program to save the
4

condors. Although a third of the funds
marshalled for the effort come directly
from the National Audubon Society,
about $25 million has been budgeted for
the program by the federal government.
And along with critics who insist such
expenditures are a waste of scarce public
monies, some conservationists, including
the powerful Friends of the Earth, at first
opposed granting permits to Snyder and
his colleagues to collect condor eggs.
They and some Sierra Club members
argued that restrictions on all types of
hunting throughout the range of the
condor, combined with a ban on poisons
used by ranchers to kill ground squirrels
and other rodents the condors often feed
on, would be more effective in the long
run than a captive breeding program.
Collecting eggs might even hasten the
demise of the condor, they suggested, by
increasing stress on the few remaining
breeding pairs in the population.
“The Friends of the Earth are very
concerned about habitat protection, as we
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are,” Snyder says. “But they see that as
the total solution to saving the species.
Our feeling is that the salvation of the
species does not rest completely on the
strict preservation of their habitat at this
point. We agree that you have to preserve
the habitat, but we feel that you have to
do much more than that to get the species
to recover. We don’t know enough yet to
know what we need to do to save the
species. But if we don’t establish a captive
population that’s doing well, soon we
won’t have any condors left to study.”
Besides setting up a captive breeding
program, Snyder emphasizes the impor­
tance of using the best available tech­
nology to keep track of the remaining
population. Up until a couple of years
ago, for instance, the condor census was
conducted solely by correlating the sight­
ings of trained bird watchers who manned
strategic lookouts two weekends a year.
Since beginning his work with condors,
though, Snyder has compiled photo­
graphic files on the remaining population
and can identify individual birds by their
distinctive markings and such things as
feather damage. The current count of
twenty condors now can be verified by
reference to photographs of each indi­
vidual.
Another more controversial technique
is now being used to keep track of the
comings and goings of individual con­
dors. About a year ago Snyder’s team
began trapping condors in nets baited
with carrion so that they could attach tiny,
solar-powered radio transmitters to the
birds. By using the transmitters to readily
monitor the movements of individual
birds, Snyder and his colleagues hope to
document the reasons for the high mortal­
ity rate among condors.
“They evidently are dying faster than
they are breeding, but just what is knock­
ing them off, we don’t know, ” Snyder
says. “It could be some sort of environ­
mental contamination, or that they are
being shot, or that they are colliding with
power lines. All these things are suspected,
but there’s no hard evidence and without
hard evidence you can’t do very much
about these problems.
“You cannot, for example, stop all
hunting in the range of the condor. You
might think it would be a prudent thing
to do if you suspect shootings are the
problem. But already we have hunting
closures in several critical areas and every
one of them arouses some kind of back­
lash. If we were to totally shut off hunting
in the area, the backlash it would engen­
der would swiftly lead to losing the rest of
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

the birds—there’s no doubt about it.
There would be some people who would
be so angered by having those hunting
privileges taken away that they would
just eliminate the condors completely.
“These are the political realities. You
can’t accomplish such things until you
have laid an irrefutable scientific base for
them. So we have to proceed cautiously
with these kinds of approaches simply
because in practical terms we can’t move
any faster without losing our credibility
and risking serious backlash problems__
We can’t go to all the ranchers out there
and tell them to stop poisoning ground
squirrels until we have clear evidence that
it harms the condors. We need the cooper­
ation of the ranchers, because that’s
where the condors feed. It’s a very politi­
cally sensitive kind of program.”
Interestingly enough, there are actually
some indications that vultures like the
condor are unaffected by fairly large
amounts of pesticides, Snyder notes.
“There have been laboratory experiments
in the past actually dosing vultures with
these materials and they have appeared, at
least in this short term study, to be very
resistant to such poisons.”
There is another more unusual type of
poisoning, though, that Snyder suspects
may prove to be the single most important
factor in the decline of the condor—lead
poisoning. Like most other vultures, con­
dors readily feed on whatever carrion is
available to them and often that includes
animals or the remains of animals that
have been shot by hunters. Frequently,
those tissues contain lead fragments from
the bullets or shot used to kill the animals,
Snyder points out.
“For example, there’s a lot of deer
hunting out on some of these ranches and
deer hunters commonly gut their deer
right after they shoot them and it’s safe to
assume that a certain fraction of these
remains have pieces of lead in them. We
know that condors feed heavily on these
remains when the hunting season is on.
We also know that in captivity there haTe
been a number of cases where vultures
have been inadvertently fed carcasses that
contained lead and it killed the birds
outright.
“In fact, there’s enough lead in one
buckshot to kill a vulture if it is largely
absorbed by the bird. They seem to be
very vulnerable to lead poisoning. But
it’ll be tough to prove it’s a major cause of
death until we’ve got radio transmitters
on enough birds over a long enough
period of time so that we can find their
carcasses and analyze them for lead
JUNE , 1983

poisoning. Without radio telemetry, find­
ing condors after they die, when they are
spread so thin in such a large area, would
be a matter of colossal luck.”
Unfortunately for the condor, there is
really no satisfactory substitute for lead
bullets in deer hunting and steel shot is
more likely to cripple, rather than kill,
other game. For these reasons, completely
eliminating the threat of lead poisoning,
should that prove to be a significant cause

A “birder’s ”
eye view
“How can anyone be blasé about con­
dors? They’re beautiful, exciting birds.
You think a redtail knows how to fly.
Then you see a golden eagle and you
think it’s a pretty skillful performer. Then
you see a condor: It’s a 747!” exclaims
veteran bird watcher Jan Tarble, a mem­
ber of Swarthmore’s Board of Managers.
Tarble works closely with the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service directing annual cen­
suses of migratory birds in California’s
Mojave Desert and over the past seven­
teen years has been involved in seven or
eight counts of the remaining population
of California condors.
Although condors, like most vultures,
are repugnant to many people, Tarble
and other “birders” clearly see much to
admire in the creatures. “They’re black
and have beautiful white patches under
their wings so that when the wings are
spread you can see these lovely V-shaped
patterns,” she says “and they have short,
broad tails and wide, wide wings, which
make them consummate flyers. They can
soar and soar and soar.”
Seeing a condor soaring over the can­
yons of California, by all accounts, is
indeed a majestic sight. Adult condors,
the largest of all North American land
birds, measure nearly fifty-five inches
long and have a wingspan of up to nine
feet six inches. They once ranged from
British Columbia all the way down to

of death, may be nearly impossible with­
out severely restricting hunting in those
areas where the condors feed.
“The most cautious approach, of
course, would be to move everyone out
of Southern California. That probably
would be the best thing we could do for
the condors, but obviously we can’t do
that. So we have to figure out a course
that’s both biologically and politically
viable if we want to save the condors.”
Baja California. The species dates back
to the days when the sabre-toothed tiger
roamed the region. Hundreds of condors
remained in central California two cen­
turies ago, but by 1940 the number had
dwindled to just sixty. Today, there are
no more than twenty in the wild and four
adults in captivity.
“They’re odd creatures,” Tarble ac­
knowledges. “Their feet are suited only to
walking about, not to clutching, ripping,
or hoisting things aloft like eagles and
falcons. Yet, stories persist about their
carrying off small children and animals,
so they have always been a target for
hunters. Anything that size is tempting to
take aim at.”
The condors’ susceptibility to bullets
and other man-made hazards, combined
with an extremely slow rate of reproduc­
tion, has made them prime candidates for
extinction, Tarble explains. “It takes six
years or more to learn to become a fullfledged condor. They’re not sexually
mature until then, and they can’t raise
and fledge a bird of their own in less than
twelve months. So they lay an egg just
once every other year, instead of yearly
like most birds.
“They don’t build a nest of any kind.
They just lay their egg on a ledge under
an overhanging rock on a cliffside. But
like many birds of that type, their eggs
are pointed at one end and very round at
the other so that when they roll, they only
roll in circles.” Still, she points out it is
not unusual for condors to break their
eggs accidentally by stepping on them or
knocking them against a rock.
Tarble says she is “tremendously en­
couraged” by the recent successful hatch­
ing of condor eggs in captivity as the first
step toward building a breeding colony
to replenish the supply of condors in the
wild. “I can’t go along with those who say
we should just let them die out with
dignity. I don’t want to have to tell our
grandchildren that we let the condor go.”
— Larry Elveru

5

b y R o b e rt E. Savage
Ihere is no reason for not some half billion species on earth in its
'considering human ex­ 4.5 billion years, based upon what one
tinction. In fact, sees and infers from the fossil record. An
it is very likely, estimate of the number of species alive
^though I admit to now is about ten million. If both numbers
¡.the tendency to dis­ may be taken seriously, that means that
count the issue as some­ ninety-eight percent of the species that
thing ecologists use to scare Senator have at sometime existed on earth have
Proxmire into funding grant applications. become extinct. With that sort of past
My intuition tells me that the organism, experience to go on, why should we not
Homo sapiens, is practically in perpetuity anticipate extinction for Homo sapiens,
already, but in reality that is nowhere too?
near the case. There is no doornail deader
Furthermore, it looks as if the rate of
than dinosaurs, yet they triumphed glo­ extinction among higher animals is in­
riously on earth for 130 million years creasing. Since the seventeenth century,
before their extinction. That is a lot fairly accurate records have been kept of
closer to perpetuity than we have yet extinction among birds and mammals.
come. As the genus Homo, we have In the last 400 years, some 130 species of
survived only one or two million years so the fewer than 13,000 have disappeared.
far. Some of our current fellow travelers In other words, about one percent of the
on earth, like the dragonflies, have been species that existed then are now gone.
around 300 million years.
Much cruder estimates—of the sort that
Moreover, most species on earth have gave rise to the ninety-eight-percent
gone extinct, some with descendants in figure cited above—suggest that the rate
the form of new species (like early man of extinction before 1600 was of the order
and the dragonflies), others without of one percent per 2,000 to 20,000 years.
direct lineage into the present (like many Again, if we may take these numbers
of the dinosaurs). In fact, in 1952 G. G. seriously, they imply that the rate of
Simpson estimated that there have been species extinction in the last four centuries
6

has accelerated between five and fifty
times. Need I suggest what accounts for
the acceleration? If you guess, you will
guess right. It is man. Biologist Paul
Ehrlich reports that there are now about
300 more species of higher vertebrates on
the endangered species list. If only a fifth
of them disappear in the next two dec­
ades, then the rate of extinction will be
nine or ten times what it has been since
1600.
And one final estimate from the past:
As best one can guess, the “life span” of
higher vertebrate species seems to be be­
tween 200,000 and 2,000,000 years. Well,
we are right in there near the lower end if
you count “us” as Homo sapiens, near
the upper end if “we” are all the pre­
historic and current human-like species.
What I mean to suggest is that the
human species has not been here forever,
is of the sort of animal that exists for
about as long as we already have, is part
of life on a planet where in the past nearly
all species have gone extinct, and where
the rate of species extinctions has been
accelerating in the last few centuries. In
short, it would be quite extraordinary if
Homo sapiens did not become extinct.
SW A R TH M Ö R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

sapiens an

The question, then, is when? Do we
face immediate extinction or not?
By way of an answer, there is an
outside certain limit to our survival.
When the sun cools, so shall we—as all
else living on earth. But in human terms
that is very far off, at least two or three
times the length of time earth has already
existed. If we survive any major portion
of that time, it may just as well be said
that we all have been in perpetuity. If that
event—the death of the sun—also con­
stitutes the date of our own demise, then
there is no basis for worrying about
human survival today.
Extinction Now?
Curiously, there has always been an
undercurrent of worry among human
beings about the species’ survival, as well
as our individual survival. It has been
part of the Judaic-Christian tradition
that there will be an end to all— Dies irae.
That extinction, though, was to be an act
of God, retaliation for the wickedness of
Homo sapiens. The methods for that
denouement were to be natural—fire,
frost, flood, or famine. So far as other
species are concerned, their extinctions

A re humans investing in their
own extinction through the
wholesale wiping-out o f
plan t and animal species?

species?

have apparently been functions of just
those sorts of things. But in regard to
humans, it has not happened yet. That
being the case, once again, why bother
with the issue now?
The reason for thinking about the
issue now is that a number of events of
the past year or so have very forcefully
raised the question of human extinction.
Again! Similar sorts of events pushed the
issue into public awareness just twenty
years ago, too.
The issues raised this year that force us
to think about human survival are these:
1. There are wars going on in many
corners of the world in which the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R. are indirectly involved.
These are the two powers that have the
nuclear warheads (16,000 between us,
containing more force than twenty bil­
lion tons of TNT) which for three dec­
ades we have known could lead to a
nuclear holocaust.
2. Despite the existing stores, there are
some in U. S. military and governmental
circles who want to increase our nuclear
armaments, although it hardly seems
necessary and we can ill afford it.
3. There appeared Jonathan Schell’s

extraordinarily depressing book, The ocean species, among them some at the
Fate o f the Earth, wherein he very per­ base of the food chain; the temporary or
suasively details the events that could permanent alteration of the climate of
well follow a nuclear holocaust and lead the globe, with the outside chance of
to human extinction.
‘dramatic’ and ‘major’ alterations in the
4.
Then in April, Ground Zero week structure of the atmosphere; the pollu­
was observed, in which a variety of anti­ tion of the whole ecosphere with oxides
nuclear groups underscored the points of nitrogen; the .incapacitation in ten
Schell raised.
minutes of unprotected people who go
In regard to the relationship between a out into the sunlight; the blinding of
nuclear holocaust and extinction, I urge people who go out into the sunlight; a
that those of you have who have not read significant decrease in photosynthesis in
Schell’s work, please do so. One can plants around the world; the scalding and
argue about whether or not there is a killing of many crops; the increase in
likelihood of such a holocaust, but I fear rates of cancer and mutation around the
that all will agree it is within the realm of world, but especially in the targeted
possibility. What I wish to do as a zones, and the attendant risk of global
biologist is to assure you that the events epidemics; the possible poisoning of all
that Schell describes as possible conse­ vertebrates by sharply increased levels of
quences of a nuclear holocaust seem to vitamin D in their skin as a result of
me to be sound.
increased ultraviolet light; and the out­
It is, of course, not that the blasts right slaughter on all targeted continents
themselves would wipe Homo sapiens off of most human beings and other living
the face of the globe (although it might be things by the initial nuclear radiation, the
possible to eliminate close to a billion of fireballs, the thermal pulses, the blast
us at once), but that the ecological and waves, the mass fires, and the fallout
geophysical perturbations that followed from the explosions; and, considering
could lead to extinction. Let me quote that these consequences will all interact
from the book:
with one another in unguessable ways
“The view of the earth as a single and, furthermore, are in all likelihood an
system, or organism, has only recently incomplete list which will be added to as
proceeded from poetic metaphor to ac­ our knowledge of the earth increases, one
tual scientific investigation, and on the must conclude that a full-scale nuclear
whole Dr. [Lewis] Thomas’s observation holocaust could lead to the extinction of
that ‘we do not really understand nature, mankind.”
at all ’still holds. It is as much on the basis
In the third part of his book, Schell
of this ignorance, whose scope we are presents what he considers to be abso­
only now in a position to grasp, as on the lutely necessary if this sort of disaster is to
basis of the particular items of knowl­ be avoided: The superpowers must first
edge in our possession that I believe that negotiate disarmament, then rethink and
the following judgment can be made. redesign our political systems to obviate
Bearing in mind that the possible con­ the reappearance of nuclear weapons.
sequences of the detonations of thousands Moreover, he suggests that all of us as
of megatons of nuclear explosives include individuals learn to love one another.
the blinding of insects, birds, and beasts
Neither he nor I is at all sure that
all over the world; the extinction of many nations or individuals can make it in time
to prevent a holocaust—by intent or
blunder.

“The m ind m ay be our ultimate
weakness, but it is also our
ultimate hope. ”

BLACK-FOOTED FERRET

8

Ecological Disaster?
Sadly, a nuclear holocaust is not the only
human attack on human existence. As
Schell writes: “A nuclear holocaust, be­
cause of its unique combination of im­
mensity and suddenness, is a threat with­
out parallel; yet at the same time it is only
one of countless threats that the human
enterprise, grown mighty through knowl­
edge, poses to the natural world.”
In part, what he fears, naturally enough,
is an assault by Homo sapiens on the
world’s ecosystems. It was fashionable,

“It will take millions of
years to correct the loss of
genetic and species diversity
(caused) by the destruction
of natural habitats. ”

in the early 70s, to be very concerned
about ecology, but it has lost its attraction
now, perhaps because nothing obvious
happened. Do you remember using lowphosphate detergents and biodegradable
plastics?
But whether or not “nothing happened”
or will happen depends on the informed
sensitivity of the observer. If one has
been nurtured on an intellectual diet that
includes awareness of events that led to
the dust bowl, to enlargement of deserts,
to the acidification of northeastern lakes
and the consequential change in native
populations in these regions, then one’s
imagination is sufficiently keen to see the
symptoms of the possible consequences
of strip mining, of relaxation of clean air
and nuclear waste disposal laws, of the
absence of toxic waste disposal policy,
and of the “opening up” of the North
American preserve forests and Amazon
River basin for the short-term benefit of
Homo sapiens. There are readily avail­
able, to all who care to read them, grisly
descriptions of their consequences that
sound like those of Schell’s I just read to
you.
In the May, 1982, issue of Bio Science,
Paul Ehrlich, a professor of biology at
Stanford, claims we already have passed
the long-term carrying capacity of the
earth. “Only a change of paradigms
leading to reduction of human numbers
and impacts, and a comprehensive sys­
tem of reserves, can prevent catastrophy,”
he writes. The most blatant symptom of
this, he argues, is the rapid consumption
of non-renewable fossil fuels. How will it
be possible to feed, clothe, and shelter 4.5
billion Homo sapiens after the year 2000
if we run out of oil?
Rubbish! responds Julian Simon, a
professor of economics and business adS W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

ministration at the University of Illinois.
We always have made it and so we will
continue to do. Homo sapiens will make
liquid fuel from renewable resources,
squeeze energy from nuclear fusion, and
—as he wrote in an unfortunate hyper­
bole in a 1980 issue of Science—make
copper from other metals if we run out of
mineable sources. We have a whole uni­
verse to collect from.
What I take to be Simon’s hyperbole in
that instance is probably unfortunate
because every alumnus of “Biology 2”
will surely have questions to ask about
the energetics involved in that alchemy.
Moreover, it provided Dr. Ehrlich, who
is not prone to undertstatement, with
ample basis for rebuttal.
And sure enough, in 1981, Ehrlich and
his wife published a volume entitled Ex­
tinction. Aside from the damage a nu­
clear holocaust would wreak on Homo
sapiens and the world’s ecosystem, we are
investing in our own extinction, they
claim, through the wholesale wiping-out
of many other plants and animals.
As Harvard sociobiologist E. O. Wil*son has written: “The worst thing that
can happen—will happen—in the 1980s
is not energy depletion, economic col­
lapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest
by a totalitarian government. As terrible
as these catastrophes would be for us,
they can be repaired within a few genera­
tions. The one process ongoing in the
1980s that will take millions of years to
correct is the loss of genetic and species
diversity by the destruction of natural
habitats. This is the folly our descendants
are least likely to forgive us.”
What is so great about species diver­
sity? Setting aside aesthetic arguments,
the Ehrlichs point out that they provide
us “ecosystem services.”
“Ecosystem services include mainte­
nance of the quality of the atmosphere,
amelioration of the weather and regula­
tion of the hydrologic cycle, disposal of
wastes and recycling of nutrients essential
to agriculture, generation and mainte­
nance of soils, provision of food from the
sea, control of the majority of potential
pests of crops and vectors of disease, and
maintenance of a vast genetic ‘library’
from which humanity can withdraw,
among other things, some of the germ
plasm required for the continuance of
high-yield agriculture.”
Can we really get along without these
“services?” Can we adjust our standard of
material satisfaction downward so as to
alleviate our constant pressure on habi­

tats other organisms need for their sur­
vival?
DNA is the Problem
The problem is, of course, that our DNA
is not very good when it comes to
survival. It doesn’t code for much of a
coat of fur, so we have to grow cotton,
raise sheep, and mine oil to clothe our­
selves, and then cut trees, dig up stones,
and refine metals to house ourselves. Our
DNA also doesn’t code for an estrous
cycle, so we are always engaged in repro­
duction, which leads to 4.5 billion exem­
plars that need space, and food, and
clothing, and shelter.
But our DNA does code for too good a
brain that is forever engaged in diabolical
invention, like oil-fueled instruments of
destruction, such as automobiles (that,
incidentally, demand acres of macadam
and concrete on the earth’s surface), and
airplanes and rockets (that also like
pavement and, moreover, spew toxic,
ozone-destroying gases into the atmos­
phere, and drop nuclear devices), and
guns, and bombs, and so on. The problem
is that our brains are extraordinarily
bright in reasoning, but not necessarily
very wise.
Finally, our DNA has not equipped us
with any great amount of instinctual
behavior to enable us to build good
human societies. What we need are rit­
ualized ways of settling our intraspecies
differences, as some of the other animals
have.
Our nearest relatives, the apes and
monkeys, have a number of good mech­
anisms for settling territorial claims and
other sorts of disputes. The howler mon­
keys of Central America settle their terri­
torial conflicts by opening their mouths
into magnificent ovals and emitting un­
believable howls. Other apes simply drop
their eyelids and drive off offending
individuals with withering disdain. Still
others show enemies their bottoms in the
very epitome of insult. Unfortunately, we
are ill-equipped in these ways. If our
DNA coded for more ritualistic methods
of conflict resolution, we probably would
be less likely to fight with nuclear
weapons.

individual will just make it through the
remaining decades of my life before the
inevitable explosion. Or perhaps I will go
in the first bang—so suddenly as to be
painlessly.” Then, too, in the context of
all life on earth, perhaps the demise of the
whole Homo sapiens species, including
me, would not be so bad anyway. After
all, if the condors, whales, and snail
darters were capable of contemplating
human extinction, they surely would not
take its likelihood as self-evident tragedy.
As a matter of fact, the first time I
questioned the value of human species’
survival occurred only very recently, but
not at all in the context of a nuclear
holocaust or ecological disaster. One of
the last segments of David Attenbor­
ough’s “Life on Earth” series on tele­
vision was about monkeys and apes. In
one scene, the TV camera was focussed
on a great gorilla, apparently not more
than three yards away.
It sat solidly and roundly in the African
forest, its sleekly furred body in complete
repose, while its surprisingly dainty hands
gracefully stripped green bark from a
plant and pushed it into its methodically
munching mouth. Only its eyes showed
any hint of uneasiness, perhaps because
in the foreground, between the gorilla
and the camera, sat a Homo sapiens.
In contrast to the gorilla, Attenborough
was skinny, his crumpled shirt wet with
sweat or rain, his hair was in disarray; he
was awkward and brilliant, and he sat
edgily as if he were about to bolt. His
unease was accentuated by the fact that
he whispered to us, probably because the
gorilla sat three yards behind him. It
looked like the meeting of Buddha and
Puck!
But Attenborough told us, sotto voce,
that this great animal is a vegetarian, that
his plant-collecting area is miniscule com­
pared with what human beings require to
(continued on page 26)

Why Bother?
The obstacles to trying to avert the
disasters of nuclear war and ecological
deterioration are so enormous as to wear
down even the most energetic of goodhearted persons. At times they seem so
overwhelming as to give rise to the
feeling, “Oh, why bother? Perhaps I as an
ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF ANIMALS

JUNE, 1983

9

ast December, William Poole ’59
took a seat on President Ronald
Reagan’s Council of Economic
Advisers. Prior to his appointment, Poole
was chairman of the Economics Depart­
ment at Brown University.
Poole first studied economics at Swarthore under the guidance of Frank C.
Pierson ’34, who is now professor emer­
itus of political economy at the College.
After graduating with High Honors from
Swarthmore, Poole went on to the Uni­
versity of Chicago for his master’s and
doctorate. There he combined broad
academic training in economics and fi­
nance with intensive work on the opera­
tions of the Federal Reserve System, a
rare combination of expertise. “He is one
of a very small group of economists who
is equally respected by both conservative
and liberal economists in this field,”
Professor Pierson notes.
Ideologically, Poole is most closely
identified with the views of well-known
conservative economist Milton Friedman.
Friedman is generally regarded as the
leading proponent of the “monetarist”
school of economic thought. Professor
Pierson explains that “monetarists be­
lieve that changes in the quantity of
money in circulation are the principle
influence in determining major changes
in the general price level and in the
money or dollar value of the nation’s
total output of goods and services. By
contrast, changes in such factors as inter­
est rates, tax levels, government expen­
ditures, budget deficits, and the like are
believed by these economists to be of sec­
ondary, or even negligible, importance.”
When Poole was on campus recently,
we asked Professor Pierson to interview
his former student about plans for deal­
ing with the pressing economic problems
facing our country. The following is an
edited transcript of their conversation.
F. Pierson: Let’s start, Bill, by talking
about your first years after leaving
Swarthmore. You went to the University
of Chicago and you started at the busi­
ness school, but then you shifted over to a
straight graduate program in economics.
How did this come about?
W. Poole: If you remember, Frank,
you were the one who persuaded me to
go to Chicago because of your recent
study of business education. I went to
Chicago on its MBA program, and after
I was there for a quarter or two, I
switched to the Ph.D. program in the
graduate school of business. A few quar­
ters later, I became attracted to academic
life and rearranged my program to take

L

REAGAN'S
MODERATE
MONETARIST
Reagan’s moderate monetarist William Poole ’59
is ‘bullish’ on America

PHOTO BY JEAN GWALTNEY

10

SW A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

many courses in the eonomics depart­
ment but remained in the business school.
F.P.: That all must have been quite a
shock in one sense, coming from Swarthmore: Business school can be quite tech­
nical, detailed sort of work.
W .P.: Work at the graduate level nec­
essarily has a different thrust to it from
work at the undergraduate level. And I’d
say that I was very well prepared for that
by Swarthmore, with one exception. The
exception was, if you don’t mind my
joshing you a little bit, that my advisors
did not push me to take enough mathe­
matics at Swarthmore. That’s where I
was behind.
F.P.: You’re known as a moderate
monetarist. How do you distinguish be­
tween a moderate monetarist and a more
pure, convinced one?
W .P.: All this is a matter of the
attitude of the labeler. I suspect that
some monetarists call me a wishy-washy
monetarist, so you can add any label you
want.
F. P .: To push it one step further, what
makes you a moderate exponent of mone­
tarism? Do you play down, in some
degree, the all important money supply?
W.P.: The peculiar thing about this is
that in most respects I share the views of
Milton Friedman. I have difficulty in
defining just what a moderate monetarist
is supposed to be, on the grounds that if
Milton Friedman is not an extreme mone­
tarist, then I don’t know who is.
F.P.: Do the xirop in the rate of
inflation and the very rapid increase in
unemployment mean the Federal Reserve
Board and other monetary authorities
now have more leeway in formulating
their policies than during earlier periods
of severe inflation?
W.P.: A lot of our problems come
from what I call “NOPS”—the numberone-problem syndrome. When inflation
is the number-one problem, then we
adopt policies that are designed to reduce
inflation and we do not pay enough
attention to the fallout. In times when
unemployment is the number-one prob­
lem, we spend so much effort on that,
that we do not pay enough attention to
inflationary potential.
What we need to have is a policy that
pays more attention to the longer run,
one that does not careen back and forth
from one extreme to the other. It’s
impatience on both fronts that is a good
part of our current problem.
If you go back to the beginning of this
great American inflation, which is by far
JUNE, 1983

the greatest inflation we’ve had in U.S.
history, starting in 1965, you’ll find that
we’ve bounced back and forth, ending up
with an economy that is more infla­
tionary and more unstable, and that
unemployment has gone up in dramatic
fashion on a couple of occasions.
When you look back on this period,
you can see very clearly that in 1966
monetary policy tightened up sharply
and we had a short recession in 1967 that
was called a mini-recession. It was not
even an official recession, but there was
concern that the economy was weak.
So the Federal Reserve stepped on the
gas, and monetary policy got away from
us in ’67-’68. Inflation was built into the
system and inflationary expectations
rose. Then there was a political reaction
because of NOPS, if you will, and sud­
denly inflation was the number-one prob­
lem. So we pursued a very tight policy
and we had a recession again in ’69-’70.
We now have another recession. We’ve
got to find a way of getting off the roller
coaster. That means we have to think
about our problem as that of designing
policies that are more or less good for the
long run. This does not involve a diet of
attempting to manage the situation. We
have not been successful at managing the
situation. We’ve got to turn away from
the number-one-problem syndrome.
F.P.: From what you have been saying,
I take it that you feel our severe un­
employment problem can be effectively
dealt with by a long-range view of mone­
tary policy and that there is no reason
why our economy cannot generate suf­
ficient jobs over the next two or three
years to reduce the unemployment rate to
perhaps 8 percent.
W.P.: We ought to be able to do a
great deal better than that. I do not
believe that there is any tradeoff between
unemployment and inflation except pos­
sibly in the short run. But the reason I’m
so concerned about getting policy on a
stable, understandable track is precisely
that I’m concerned about the average
level of unemployment over a period of
time.
The so-called full-employment level,
with the present structure of the labor
force, is in the neighborhood of 6 to 7
percent unemployment. We should be
simultaneously pursuing policies to damp­
en the business cycle in order to get off
the roller coaster and to reduce the level
of structural unemployment.
F. P.: I assume you are fairly pessimistic
about any quick progress on structural

unemployment as far as government
efforts are concerned.
W.P.: Unfortunately, one of the most
severe parts of this problem is the disin­
centives for people to work, disincentives
especially for low-skilled people.
We have tended to put our govern­
mental efforts into job matching and
retraining, which no doubt are of con­
siderable value, although evidence is
mixed as to exactly which one seems to
work. But we have not paid enough
attention to the incentives, and there are
incentives columns on both sides of the
market.
The minimum wage is one of the items
that are clearly counter-productive. It
means that people whose skills do not
justify the minimum wage are simply not
hired and cannot be hired by profitseeking firms.
So I would favor doing whatever we
can to do away with the minimum wage,
a very difficult political maneuver. The
Reagan administration is attempting to
take the first crack at that by its proposal
to have a sub-minimum wage for youth
in the summer time. If it shows some real
dividends, perhaps attitudes toward the
minimum wage will begin to change.
F.P.: You don’t feel the problem of
displacement of older workers by a sub­
minimum wage for youth is very serious,
then?
W.P.: I believe that that is a question
during the transition, but if we had not
had a minimum wage at all, then you
would simply find more work being
done. There is no fixed amount of work
to be done. The amount of work done
depends fundamentally on the amount of
work people want to do. That’s clear to
anyone who works Saturdays instead of
taking Saturdays off.
Professionals know that. The amount
of work to be done is the amount of work
they want to do. Academics know that.
There is always another journal paper to
be written if they want to write it. So, in
the long run, the economy will generate
job opportunities for people who want to
work. In the short run, there will be a
transition caused by changing institu­
tional arrangements. That’s always true.
On the other side of it, the incentives
side, the effective tax rates for the poor
are very, very high. When poor people go
to work, they lose some of their welfare
support, they lose some of their food
stamps, they lose eligibility for medicaid
and public housing. It’s not surprising
that a lot of people do not want to go to
11

work because the net benefit of going to
work is near zero.
I think the reform of our income
maintenance system ought to be a very
high order of priority, if only to provide a
more coherent system that has fewer gaps
in the safety net. Everybody knows there
are some gaps there, but we also need a
system that provides incentives so that
people who want to work are able to do
so.
F.P.: How does this bear out the
administration’s recent proposal to tax
unemployment benefits?
W.P.: That is a related issue. The
proposal was not to tax unemployment
benefits, but to include unemployment
benefits in taxable income. Let’s take two
people. Assume one of them has earned
income of $10,000 and $1,000 in un­
employment benefits in a particular year.
The other one earned $ 11,000.
My notion of what is fair is that people
with the same income ought to be in the
same tax position. And, in particular, I
find it upsetting that a person who
received $1,000 of income from the state
for not working, in fact, has a lower tax
burden than another person who earned
all of his income. It seems to me, on
equity grounds, that all income from
whatever sources ought to be taxable.
F.P.: Let’s turn now to one other
difficult problem: the huge deficits that
are emerging from the federal budget. In
general, how did we get into this terrible
situation—these huge deficits?
W.P.: We got into it fundamentally
because there has been a long, upward
creep in government spending. I would
emphasize particularly the non-defense
part of the budget, including the entitle­
ments, which have been growing rapidly
over the past twenty years. Defense, on
the other hand, has been cut back.
So we get to 1981, and the president
feels strongly, as everyone well knows,
that we need to devote more resources to
defense. We need to check the overall
growth in the government, and we need
to reduce taxation in order to provide
more incentives for a more efficient econ­
omy. The expectations when the presi­
dent came in, that the non-defense part of
the budget could be substantially re­
duced, have not proven to be the case.
When people make commitments, let’s
say, to buy a house because there are tax
advantages to buying a house, it is ex­
tremely difficult and not clearly wise or
fair to take away the tax advantages of
buying a house. People have made com­
12

mitments in good faith to arrange their
affairs in a certain way and it becomes
extremely difficult to know how to han­
dle that situation.
But there is general agreement that
large parts of the federal budget ought
not to be there. People agree on different
parts, sure. Although you will find that
liberal and conservative economists will
agree, to quite an amazing extent, about
PHOTO BY BOB WOOD

PIERSON: “How did we get
into this terrible situation—
these huge deficits?”
POOLE: “... large parts of the
federal budget ought not
to be there. I

a lot of the same parts. These parts are
wasteful and nonproductive. . . .
When you look at the budget docu­
ment, you can’t help but be impressed by
the enormous number of small, at least
relatively small, programs. Politicians
like to complain about the inefficiency
and the overlapping of various programs,
but often it’s really quite deliberate.
Because these programs generally are
very complicated and benefit relatively
few individuals, those individuals natu­
rally have an intense interest in hanging
onto them. And because these programs
are so numerous and relatively small,
generally a few hundred million dollars
here and there, most taxpayers don’t
even know of their existence. So there are
lots of horrors that you and I don’t hear
anything about.
That’s because there’s an important
structural defect in the budget process. In
large part, it’s just politically expedient

for Congress to set things up this way,
since taxpayers in general don’t know
about these programs, but their constit­
uents who receive the particular benefits
do.
Even when citizens find out about one
of these programs, no individual taxpayer
has the incentive to go after it. Take a
fairly big program, say $2 billion. Rough­
ly speaking, that’s about $ 10 per capita in
the United States. To most taxpayers
that amount of money is really insignif­
icant compared to the rest of their tax
bill. Even for someone supporting a
family of five, that’s still just $50. So
virtually no one has a financial incentive
to go after these programs, even when
they know about them.
I think there is also a problem in the
efficient use of the defense budget. An
easy way to see why is to ask congress­
men pushing for reductions in defense
expenditures whether there is room to
reduce expenditures on the defense bases
in their own districts, or procurements
that involve plants in their districts. The
answer is always, “No.” It’s always some­
body else’s procurement that needs to be
cut.
F.P.: I gather that you feel the main
problem is the failure of the government
to work out a balanced program and that
there is no underlying structural reason
for the decline in private investment—
that is, that declining industries like steel
and automobiles represent unique situ­
ations, rather than common problems
afflicting the entire economy?
W.P.: Well, there are always lagging
industries and declining industries. There
has been some problem of insufficient
investment in physical plant in the United
States because of tax disincentives, par­
ticularly in their interaction with infla­
tion. That’s changed a lot under the tax
laws passed in ’81 and ’82.
But I think it’s too bad we emphasize
only physical capital. We have done a
very good job of investing in human
capital. We devote a lot of resources—I
think this is correct—more than any
other country in the world by far, to
education, to human capital. I don’t
want to short change that at all.
No, I don’t think there is anything
fundamentally wrong with the U.S. econ­
omy. It is an extraordinarily versatile and
vital and resilient kind of economy, much
more flexible than the European econ­
omy. We are able to move resources, find
capital for new ventures, in a way that
makes people around the world jealous.
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

In Search of

ROCKWELL
KEN T

y interest in Rockwell Kent,
first as an artist and then as
a person, began—as did
all of my present interests
—at Swarthmore. I had come to the
College with a narrow background of
knowledge in practically every subject,
but as I attended classes, talked with
other studentst and worked in the stacks
of the library, my horizons widened.
Among the books I shelved was an art
book with an interesting cloth cover,
printed in blue and with the more than
interesting title RockwellKentiana. Curi­
ous, I riffled through the book and then
looked a little more carefully at the
representations of the work of the artist,
Rockwell Kent. He was unknown to me.

M

The black-and-white reproductions of
the oil paintings were not memorable,
but those of the wood engravings were
strong and magnificent and so very new
to me.
One print in particular stayed with me.
The subject is simple. A man is lying on a
dock at night with the stars above him.
He is only partially visible. His right foot
is trailing in the water; his left leg is bent at
the knee; his two arms are raised up, the
left hand clasping the right wrist. He
seems to be reaching for the stars. You
know what he is feeling at this moment
because you, too, have stretched upward
in the night and tried to reach the
dazzling display of stars above.
I placed the book on the shelf in its

b y W illiam Span gler ’49

Before being blacklisted during the Mc­
Carthy era, Rockwell Kent (1882-1971)
was one o f America’s best-known artists.

proper order and forgot it for some
seventeen years. Then, one day in 1965,
when 1 was living in Philadelphia and
working as a librarian, I looked in the
window of a book store on East Market
Street and saw a small Christmas book
with a decorative blue cover of angels
and candles which brought back mem­
ories of that first Kent book that once
had so intrigued me in the stacks of the
College library. It was indeed a book
illustrated by Rockwell Kent. For the
modest price of ten cents I obtained the
first item in my Kent collection.
About a month later, browsing through
another used-book collection—this one
in a stall of Zern’s Farmers Market in
Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania—I took a thin
book from the shelf. At that time I was
naive enough to think that all thin books
were valuable. As I leafed through the
pages of City Child by Selma Robinson,
I realized that the drawings at the head of
each poem had a familiar style. On the
title page appeared the inscription, “Illus­
trations by Rockwell Kent.”
For thirty-five cents, the Rob­
inson book became number
two in my Kent collection.
My collecting intensified
when I discovered a thick book,
both written and illustrated by
Kent, in a book store on the
boardwalk of Ocean City, New
Jersey. It was N by E, the most
popular book Kent ever wrote,

MOBY DICK
KAPITOLA LX XVIII

OR

CISTERI

|~ritng jako koika stoupä TaJtego vzhüru, a
bHi po pfeinivajicim ram eni hlavniho
k mistu, kde stane vysoko nad zdviäenou
s sebou Ichky kladkostroj zvany houpaika, sklddajici sei
probihajicich jednoduchou kladkou. U pevniv kladku, .
novcho hrotu, spusti jeden konec lana, jej2 zachyti a p
mu£ na palubd. Pak ruikuje Indian dolü, ai obratnc pfi:
hlavy. A tarn — Stäle jeätf hodng vysoko nad ostatnim
pokfikujc — vypadä jako turecky muezzin, vyblzejici z
rctu zboinc lidi k modlitbi. PoSIou mu nahoru ostry
driadlem a Taitcgo pilni hledä vhodne misto, kudy
nadr/.c. Poiind si pfitom neobyiejni soustavnf — jak
bltda |K>klad v starim dom« a klepä na stfny, aby zjis

M

THE WHALE
BY HERMAN MELVILLE
VOLUME

h

[390]

I

3

Rockwell Kent created 280 illustrations
fo r a special edition o f Moby Dick pub­
lished in 1930. Three American and six
foreign publishers, including a Czecho­
slovakian, have reprinted Kent’s work.
C H IC A G O

14

TH E LA K E SID E PR ESS

19 30

a Literary Guild selection which went
through eight or nine printings. Kent
collecting became a major avocation in
my life with the purchase of this book for
one dollar in 1966.
Subsequently I learned that Kent was
alive, 84 years old, and living and painting
on his farm in northern New York State.
One of the tenets of librarianship is to go
directly to the source, so I wrote to Mr.
Kent. He was very courteous and sent me
a copy of a special issue of the American
Book Collector, with several bibliogra­
phies in it, and two other books he had
written or illustrated. I wrote again but
this time he advised me to correspond
with Dan Burne Jones of Oak Park,
Illinois, his designated bibliographer. I
tried several times to arrange a visit to the
farm to meet Kent in person, but I was
never successful. He died in 1971, having
lived a life filled with adventure, success,
notoriety, and finally obscurity.
Louis Untermeyer wrote in 1936:
“Rockwell Kent is probably the most
versatile man alive.... I suspect he is not
a person at all, but an Organization. ...”
Kent had strong needs and acted upon
them. His need for adventure carried him
to Monhegan Island, Maine; Fox Island
in Alaska; Tierra del Fuego; Newfound­
land; Ireland, and in the later years,
Russia. He built houses, fished for a
living, rebuilt a small sailing ship, sur­
vived a shipwreck in another, lived among
the Eskimos of Greenland at several
different times, lived as a hermit on an
Alaskan island, fought for the right to
have a passport, and challenged Senator
Joseph McCarthy on his own turf.
Kent was successful as an artist in
many different media. He wished to be
remembered as a worker in oils, but this
fame has not yet been achieved. The
vitality of his work in this medium,
however, reflecting the vigorous life he
led in places like Alaska and Greenland,
was admired by many critics and other
artists such as John Sloan and George
Bellows. As a printmaker, Kent used a
number of methods. He considered lithog­
raphy his strongest medium, but his most
memorable works were wood engravings.
At his death he was remembered as a
great book illustrator. Some of his best
drawings accompany texts by Shake­
speare, Chaucer, Whitman, Boccaccio,
and Melville. Moby Dick, for one, stands
high in a list of the finest books ever
printed.
A different form of illustration can be
seen in the more than 200 bookplates
Kent designed, using small pictures that
SW A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

CANTERBURY
IIE H m

■' O

IN MODERN K\'(;i,ISH
by

J. U.NICOI.SON

A gorgeous rendering of the iusly stories of Knglunds Rabelais.

Illustratedhy

ROCKWELL
■
KENT

Besides illustrating literary classics, Kent designed common household items, including
silverware and the chinaware shown above. Kent also designed over 200 bookplates,
five o f which are shown on the right, to supplement his income so he could “afford the
luxury o f painting pictures. ” Despite his preference fo r painting, K ent’s distinctive
lithographs (like the one above and those on the opposite page) are more widely known.

PHOTOS BY J. MARTIN NATVIG

illustrated one aspect of the plate owner’s
life or character or career. Even though
the headstrong artist argued that there
was no such thing as “commercial art,”
he demanded and received high fees for
his illustrations which were used in more
than 100 advertisements. Many of (his
drawings, prints, and paintings were
adapted for greeting cards. His work was
chosen by the Vernon Kilns for use on
three sets of its chinaware. Plates, cups,
casseroles, and tumblers were brightly
decorated with pictures of whaling ships,
Eskimos, or scenic spots of America.
In addition to this tremendous output
of art, Kent managed also to do a variety
of other things. He was active in labor
unions, trying to persuade his fellow
artists that they should unite in a single
union. Just before World War II he made
a successful lecture tour, prompted in
part by his need to help support two
ex-wives, a current spouse, and six chil­
dren.
Kent supported sixty different Socialist
organizations. His devotion to the pre­
cepts of Socialism began in his youth and
continued throughout his life. It brought
Jiim into the direct line of fire from
Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.
Kent tried to read a statement before the
Senator’s committee; when denied this
right, he became an uncooperative wit­
ness. The American art world was quick
to disown the “tainted” member of its
ranks, and for the next twenty years
Kent’s name never appeared in American
art journals. The only news of him re­
ported in the newspapers of this period
was his successful fight to acquire a pass­
port. Kent took the case up to the U.S.
Supreme Court and won. Upon his death
in 1971, he became newsworthy again,
and his obituary appeared on theTront
page of the New York Times.
Because Kent’s reputation had declined
in the 1960s,. I was able to buy two Kent
prints at Freeman’s auction in Philadel­
phia for only $10.50. To my regret, I
passed up a small collection of Kent’s
prints offered by Sessler’s book store
because the $20 price for each print
seemed high. George Mears, the book
collector who ran the history department
of Leary’s book store on Ninth Street,
learned of my interest and persuaded me
to invest in Kent first editions. Other
book dealers wanted to know why I
wanted to buy material by “that Com­
munist.”
learned more about Kent’s life when I
read his autobiography, It’s Me, O Lord,
but my real education took place when I
JUNE, 1983

visited Jacqui and Dan Burne Jones,
both avid Kent collectors. Jones was
Kent’s bibliographer and an artist in his
own right. The two men worked closely
together to try to locate Kent’s works,
but were not able to recall everything.
My searches in book stores, at flea
markets and auctions, and in book cata­
logues uncovered twenty-five pieces of
ephemera unknown to Jones. For exam­
ple, I found the Margaret Sanger book­
plate through a catalogue from a Ver­
mont used-book dealer. He told me the
book had come from a New England
college; a letter to the librarian provided
me with a second copy for Jones.
In 1974, Dan Burne Jones published
the Prints o f Rockwell Kent, the first
major work on Kent since 1953. This
book marked the re-entry of Rockwell
Kent onto the art scene. David Traxel’s
biography, An American Saga, was pub­
lished in 1980. In September, 1982, Knopf
published an anthology of Kent’s writ­
ings, which contains also ninety-six col­
ored plates and about 400 black and
white illustrations. The foreword has
been written by artist Jamie Wyeth, who
now owns the studio that Kent built on
Monhegan Island over seventy years ago.
My collecting and research of Kentiana
have become more specialized in recent
years. I have chosen the ephemera—
bookplates, Christmas cards, chinaware,
advertising pieces, etc.—as my particular
interest. When I retire I hope to put

together a small book about Kent’s adver­
tisements and to publish a third volume
of Kent’s bookplates to match the two
volumes Kent himself produced in 1929
and 1936. And, of course, there will
always be the need to seek out more
information and to document what an
excellent artist Kent was.

In the trio of one-act plays that
make up Sarnoff’s triple bill,
Milgrim runs the gamut from a
mousy housewife, to an offi­
cious social worker, to what
one critic describes as “a flashy,
tart-tongued redhead.” But per­
fecting her “Vegas showgirl”
persona for this last role was
not easy for Milgrim. Below is
Milgrim in a different guise
with co-star Christine
Estabrook (left).

■PI
Uff
4^ t
^¡¡ßm
S

Lynn Milgrim ’60 and Rosita Sarn p f f ’64 stage W in/Lose/Draw,
/a n off-Broadway triple treat.
Æ
WL.

Si
Mai

Late on a fine spring evening, while
seated in a booth in a Greenwich Village
tavern drinking in a conversation between
actress Lynn Milgrim ’60 and producer
Rosita Sarnoff ’64, one can easily become
intoxicated with their love of the theater.
“An actor, someone once said, is a
dancer whose partner is the audience.
Sometimes you have to drag that partner
around, but it’s wonderful when the
audience will dance with you,” Milgrim
says, beaming.
It is five days after the opening of
W in/Lose/ Draw, Sarnoff’s new offBroadway production of three one-act
plays, and as one of the two stars of the
show, Milgrim clearly has reason to
smile. In the course of the three plays that
make up the evening—Little Miss Fresno,
Final Placement, and Chocolate Cake—
Milgrim runs the full gamut of emotion,
playing first a shy suburban housewife,
then an officious social worker, and
finally what one critic describes as “a
flashy, tart-tongued redhead.”
It is in this last role, as the brassy Delia
Baron in Chocolate Cake, that Milgrim

PHOTO BY CAROL ROSEGG

SW A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

most delights audiences and critics alike.
The New York Times Magazine labeled
the one-act “hilarious” shortly after the
April 27 opening, while another critic
simply wrote: “Milgrim’s Delia is perfect.”
Yet, perfecting Delia’s “Vegas showgirl”
persona—complete with red wig, mink
coat, and slinky black dress—did not
come easily to Milgrim.
“I had enormous problems with that
character, especially saying all those hor­
rible things she says. But then one day,
Chris (Milgrim’s co-star, Christine Estabrook) and I were walking out of re­
hearsal and we saw this gorgeous red­
head with a mink coat and a man on each
arm, and I said: ‘That’s Delia!’
“At first, I had had a very different
image of Delia—someone with very
black, curly hair. But when I put on that
red wig it was like . . . ” And with that,
after a brief, but dramatic, pause, Milgrim raises her right hand and noncha­
lantly snaps her fingers.
While Milgrim and her co-star have
settled into what might be called a com­
fortable three-step with their audiences
each night, chief producer Rosita Sarnoff,
along with her three co-producers, finds
she must be ready to improvise to capital­
ize on the show’s good reviews.
“We have a good show here; people are
loving it. Now, it is simply a matter of
getting everybody to come to the theater
—of sustaining the show long enough to
generate word-of-mouth advertising,
which is really what sells a show,” Sarnoff
explains. “So far, so good.
“Then there’s the question of adver­
tising. How much do you spend on
advertising and where can you save?
People generally come to off-Broadway
shows on the weekend, so we’re running
big ads in the papers on Fridays. I’m very
optimistic about the show,” she says. “I
think we’ve got a real crack at a long
run.”
Sarnoff found two of the three plays
on her triple bill at a festival of new plays
in Louisville in 1981 and then commis­
sioned the authors to write a third play
together. “The two playwrights, Mary
Gallagher and Ara Watson, didn’t know
each other, but their plays were very
similar in sensibility,” Sarnoff notes, “so
we thought it would be interesting to
have them write something together to
round out the evening. The result, Little
Miss Fresno, is a curtain-raiser that sets
the tone for the evening very nicely.”
Despite the continuity of tone running
JUNE. 1983

throughout the three plays, there are
stark contrasts between the characters
portrayed in each. The producers had a
difficult time finding two actresses versa­
tile enough to shift from light comedy to
serious drama and then to dark comedy,
especially since there is barely enough
time to change costumes between plays.
“We had to find not only brilliant
actors,” Sarnoff explains, “but character
actors who have a sense of humor and
can play very serious drama. I don’t
think there are very many women who
could have done these roles, and certainly
not many who could have done them as
well as Lynn and Christine. The audi­
tioning process was very long and te­
dious,’’she notes; “it almost killed us all.”
Milgrim’s ties to Swarthmore, however,
had nothing to do with the producers’
decision to cast her in W in/Lose/ Draw.
In fact, as Sarnoff recounts, she had no
idea Milgrim was a fellow Swarthmorean
until previews were well under way.
‘I didn’t know Lynn went to Swarth­
more until one night when my parents
came to see the play and pointed out the
reference in the program notes,” Sarnoff
explains. “So I couldn’t wait until the end
of the performance to go and tell Lynn. I
thought it was a great coincidence. There
was no special consideration given her.
Her audition was brilliant, so we hired
her.”
Milgrim traces her initial interest in the
theater to plays she saw as a child in the
Swarthmore area.
“My parents often took the trolley car
out to Media [Pa.] to go to the Hedgerow
Theatre,” Milgrim recalls, “to see things
like Shaw’s Man and Superman. Then,
when I was a ten-year-old my mother
took me to acting school, and when I was
sixteen I was asked to join the Hedgerow
Theatre.
“Actually, I was part of the Hedgerow
company when we were asked to perform
at Swarthmore. It was Dylan Thomas’
Under Milkwood. I was a sophomore at
Swarthmore at that point.”
Although she was already performing
with professionals at the age of 16, Mil­
grim wanted to get “a straight liberal arts
education”at Swarthmore, she says, “be­
cause actors are made up of all the things
they know and experience in life.
“I majored in English literature, so I
got acquainted with all sorts of things
that feed into my work as an actress. For
instance, I’m glad I’m familiar with War
and Peace, although I have to admit I

Producer Rosita Sarnoff gave
up television fo r the theater.

read only the first half of it. The broader
your outlook is, the better actor you’ll
be.”
Milgrim appeared in two of the longest
running hits of recent Broadway seasons:
Simon Gray’s Otherwise Engaged, di­
rected by Harold Pinter, and A Bedroom
Farce, directed by Sir Peter Hall. Her
feature film credits include Otto Premin­
ger’s Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon
and Enormous Changes at the Last
Minute, a film soon to be released.
Both Milgrim and Sarnoff have worked
extensively in television, as well as in the
theater. Many daytime television viewers
know Milgrim best as “Susan Shearer”
on NBC’s Another World, while Sarnoff
spent seventeen years as a producer of
television shows before turning her talents
to the theater. Sarnoff has co-produced
two other off-Broadway plays: Sam
Shepard’s Pulitizer Prize-winning Buried
Child, and Elizabeth Swados’ Obie
Award-winning Night Club Cantata.
“lam a great proponent of live theater,”
Sarnoff explains. “I worked in television
production for many years after getting
out of college, but I stopped about a year
ago. I realized I really didn’t like it. The
process of putting together television
shows was no longer satisfying to me.
“But the theater, which is just as hard,
sometimes harder—I just love it. Believe
me, though, I can’t understand why
anyone wants to be an actor,” Sarnoff
says with a wry grin.
— L. E.
19

By Kate Downing

top Swarthmore athletes
match an urge to learn with the will to win

Mark
Handwerger
What, you might ask, is a shortstop who
bats .400 and wants to play professional
baseball doing at Swarthmore?
For one thing, Mark Handwerger is
getting an education in economics in the
event his dream of a pro career doesn’t
work out.
For another he’s a member of a varsity
team of all freshmen and sophomores
that this year won the College’s first ever
Florida Baseball School Tournament di­
vision title, and he himself was named
“most valuable player” among the ten
teams. (The Florida School is the site of
the annual spring training for Swarth­
more baseball teams.)
Certainly not too bad for a soph­
omore. But does he have what it takes—
including the right exposure for profes­
sional scouts—to play major league ball?
“The most important thing the pros
look for is speed,” says Ernie Prudente,
Swarthmore’s head baseball coach. “You
have to be able to run sixty yards in under
seven seconds. Next you must have a
good throwing arm. After that they
worry about fielding and hitting. Mark
possesses a very good throwing arm and
runs the 60-yard dash in 6.7 seconds.”
Last year, as a freshman, Handwerger
led the Swarthmore team in hitting (.433
in MAC league games) and in stolen
bases. The team, however, won only two
games in the entire season and was 0-10
in the MAC. This year’s team did consid­
erably better with a 14-5-1 record, 6-4 in
the MAC.
“Last year,” says Coach Prudente, ”we
were known as the ’soft touch,’ an easy
team to beat. This year we’ve been work­
ing on getting respect. Now the other
coaches are saying that next year we’ll be
the team to beat.”
As for getting scouts to take a serious
look at a player, the problem, says Hand­
werger, can be solved by getting into the
“right” summer college league. “I’ve been
accepted by the Cortland State league
and hope to get into the one on Cape Cod.
It’s the most prestigious of the leagues for

college students in the country.”
Coach Prudente also can help gain
recognition. Professional scouts send let­
ters out yearly to college coaches asking
for names of players to keep an eye on.
Prudente’s letter begins: “Mark Hand­
werger is one of the best shortstops I ever
had the privilege to coach on the college
level.”
Handwerger also has other essentials
to make it in the pro ranks—the desire to
win and commitment. “I talked with my
parents (his mother is Gretchen Mann
Handwerger ’56) and they’ve let me lead
my own life. I certainly wouldn’t have
foregone college to play baseball because,
if I’m not successful at it, I can always
turn my interests elsewhere. But I want to
give it a couple of years.”
So if you’re reading about the rookies
in the sports section some spring day in
1986 or ’87, remember Mark
Handwerger’s name.
He might very well
be on a team
roster.

SW A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

Michele
Fowler
In the vernacular, Michele Fowler is
known as a triple threat.
Actually, that description covers only
the sports she played this year, not the
range of her talents.
Originally interested in joining Swarthmore’s women’s basketball team, Fowler
started the school year as goalie on the
soccer team, played guard/forward in
basketball during the winter, and rounded
out the year with spring softball.
According to Bunny Watts, who was
Fowler’s contact with the College while
she was still in high school and now
coaches her in basketball: “She came out
of high school with good, basic skills
which go hand in hand with the natural
talent she has. I knew that Michele
excelled in sports other than basketball
in high school.”
Fowler’s freshman year was full of
“firsts.” She played right field on the
softball team which finished its season
with a record of 10-4 and is probably the
best softball team in the College’s history.
She also helped debut the women’s soccer
team in its first season as a varsity sport.
But her first love is basketball, and in
her first year as a collegiate player she
came off with impressive statistics: high
scorer with 321 total points (an average
of 14 points per game), and second places
in free throw percentage (64.4%) and
rebounding (177 rebounds for the season).
She also was the only member of the
team named to the Philadelphia Associa­
tion of Intercollegiate Athletics for Wom­
en’s all star-team, an especially high
honor since all-star status is bestowed by
other coaches in the association.
Says Coach Watts: “It’s unusual for
someone to come here who is so heavily
into athletics. But Michele does want to
do her best mentally as well as physically.
The best thing is that she’s so coachafcle.
She really has a good attitude and she’s
not afraid to learn. She’s improved a lot
in her first season and recognizes she can
do something better with practice.”
Fowler credits her parents for their
encouragement and support of her enthu­
siasm for athletics. Her one brother, she
says, “isn’t sports oriented. But / can’t
live without sports. I really don’t think I
could survive if my life consisted of
nothing but academic work all the time.
Besides, it’s a good way to meet people
and blow off a little steam.”
JUNE, 1983

An engineering major, Fowler is as
serious about her studies as she is about
her sports. That’s why she chose Swarthmore, she says, instead of a bigger school
that could have offered her an athletic
scholarship.
“You hear about some college athletes
who don’t go to classes and don’t learn
anything. I don’t want that to happen. I
want to be able to live a productive life
after school.”

Steve
Brown

Last fall while Steve Brown spent the
semester in Vienna, Austria, and con­
sidered spending the entire academic
year there, the standingjoke on the tennis
team was that a “kidnapping squad”
would have to drag Brown down from
the Alps. Not that the junior is that en­
amored with skiing, but this fiction does
reflect his relaxed attitude about his
tennis. He didn’t pick up a racket in four
months.
Brown began this spring season ranked
number two in singles play among all
male tennis players in Division III of the
NCAA. And even for Swarthmore, whose
tennis teams have won every MAC con­
ference championship in the last ten
years, Steve stands out.
Coach Mike Mullan recruited Brown
from his Cincinnati high school where
his team was always one of the top four in
the state, and his best personal record
was in the top eight.
“I had heard about Swarthmore and it
ended up having the combination I was
looking for—a quality education and a
competitive tennis team. Not many
schools in Division III have that to
offer.”
As a freshman, Brown played in the
number three spot on the team, winning
one round in the national tournament
and ending up as a quarter finalist in
doubles. By the next year he had been
moved up to the number one slot, ended
up one of the top eight players nationally
in the division, and was named an AllAmerican.
Coach Mullan has watched Brown
“grow and develop” since he first came to
the College. “He really has carried the
team, especially in a match this year
against the University of Southern Cali­
fornia at Santa Cruz. When it looked like
everyone on the team was losing, Steve
turned around and won.
“If he can win at number one, he
boosts the team,” Mullan says. “On the
other hand, when he loses, he’s not down
for long. He keeps his tennis in perspec­
tive.”
Both on and off the court Brown has a
reputation as a worker. Says Mullan:
“He conditions himself mentally to get
the maximum out of whatever he does.
He works hard, playing with his head

and using all the tactics and strategy he
can muster.”
A political science major, Brown isn’t
yet sure what career he’ll pursue after
graduation, but he does know it won’t be
as a tennis pro.
“I play because I like it. We’re certainly
not the same level as the better (and
bigger) college players, but we want to
play competitively and get a good educa­
tion at the same time. Besides, it’s more
fun to be a big fish in your own small
Division III pond.”

Joe
Valis
When Joe Valis graduated in May he left
with not only his degree, but also one
of the most outstanding records ever
achieved in Swarthmore men’s lacrosse.
As junior and senior co-captain and
four-time MAC all-star, Valis ended his
collegiate career as the all-time leading
scorer in Swarthmore lacrosse, breaking
the record set by Avery Blake, Jr., ’53 in
the 1950-53 seasons.
Says his coach, Jim Noyes: “Joe dom­
inated the game more than any other
athlete I’ve seen in this sport here. He
consistently set the pace and was a leader
in every sense of the word.”
In the spring of 1979, Valis was a much
heralded high school lacrosse player from
Fallston, Maryland. He visited the Swarth­
more campus to see the College take on
Widener in lacrosse and watched the
Garnet lose 7-6. That season they ended
up with a dismal 1-11 record.
“Joe came to a program that was 4-19
after my first two years here,” says Noyes.
“He could have played anywhere in the
country but instead he put his educa­
tional goals ahead of his lacrosse goals.
He made a very difficult decision when he
came to Swarthmore and I’m delighted
that things have worked out for him.”
Originally Valis was contacted by foot­
ball coach Tom Lapinski, and the tal­
ented young man did play football for
three years as the team punter. '
“I like lacrosse a lot better,” he says,
noting the somewhat lonely existence of
kickers on any football team. “I feel that
I’ve developed more and was a much
better team player in lacrosse. They say
team sports help build leadership and
character and looking back I feel it’s
really true. In a lot of contexts teamwork
is the key to success.”
Success, indeed! Three years after Valis
joined the team as an attackman, the
Garnet “stickmen” finished the ’82 sea­
son with a 10-3 record and defeated
heavily favored, nationally seventh-ranked
Franklin and Marshall for the MAC
championship.
Says Valis: “It was kind of a culmina­
tion of experience, confidence, and good
basic lacrosse. When I came to Swarth­
JUNE, 1983

more, I saw the opportunity to contrib­
ute to the lacrosse program and assist in
achieving a number of goals Coach Noyes
had set. When we won the MAC, it
meant we had achieved our first goal, and
the next logical step was to repeat as
MAC champions this year and gain an
NCAA Division III playoff berth.”
(Unfortunately, the team lost the M AC
championship game to Gettysburg, 16-6,
and did not go to NCAA playoffs.)
Armed with his degree in political
science, Valis is now looking for a posi­
tion in investment banking and would
like eventually to attend business school.
But lacrosse, he maintains, will always be
a part of his life.

THE COLLEGE

Delta Upsilon removed from
campus organizations list
Following a year of probation for a
“series of unhappy actions that members
of the fraternity had undertaken in the
several previous years,” Delta Upsilon
has been removed from the list of ap­
proved campus organizations for at least
two years.
In making the announcement early
this spring to cancel the lease of the DU
lodge, President David Fraser said he
had made the “difficult decision” follow­
ing a recommendation of a committee of
faculty, staff, and students and acceptance
of that recommendation by Dean Janet
Dickerson.
“In this year,” President Fraser said,
“when the fraternity was effectively on
probation, some welcome signs of more
responsible behavior [of fraternity mem­
bers] were evident. I sensed cautious
optimism that the corner had been
turned.”
But several days before final recom­
mendations were to be made on the
future of the fraternity, the secretary of
Delta Upsilon produced and distributed
to members an “offensive set of minutes”
of one of the fraternity’s weekly meet­
ings. Among other things, two freshmen
women were named in the minutes as
having been raped by particular men in
the community. The women, in fact, had
not been raped and the men identified as
the assailants were not members of DU.
Several copies of the minutes, which
were not individually addressed or in
envelopes, appeared in mailboxes of other
than DU members (including one in the
Dean’s box) on the afternoon they were
stuffed. Days later they were distributed
campus-wide by a group of non-DU
students who objected to the content of
the minutes and signed their names.
24

“Those minutes,” said President Fraser,
“caused quite an uproar generally on the
campus. DU responded to that expres­
sion of community concern by suggesting
that the minutes had been taken out of
context. There is widespread feeling that
the response by the DU undergraduate
officers was quite inappropriate since it
suggested that the minutes were justified
in the context of the fraternity.”
President Fraser said he had wrestled
with the “problem of selecting a penalty
for the fraternity sufficiently harsh to
convey an unambiguous signal that this
type of behavior is unacceptable at
Swarthmore and to break the chain of
antisocial actions that have plagued DU’s
recent history.
“At the same time,” he continued, “I
recognize that having DU on campus has
been of considerable value to the College
over many years and that alumni of DU
have contributed greatly to its strength.”
President Fraser added that he hoped
“that DU can be reconstituted after those
two years because I think that Swarth­
more stands to gain a great deal from the
distinctive views about life and Swarth­
more that those interested in fraternities
can bring to the College.
“For this to happen,” he said, “this
year’s sophomores will need the guidance
of DU alumni and the administration in
charting their way through a couple of
difficult years and in deliberating about
how the good aspects of fraternities can
be captured in a reborn fraternity.”
According to William F. Lee, Jr. ’60, a
member of the Board of Managers and a
DU alumnus, President Fraser has met
on many occasions with groups of DU
alumni. “There’s a clear understanding of
how DU can constructively propose to
reconstitute itself and a group of us has
already begun to do so,” Lee said. “Pres­

ident Fraser has indicated he will accept a
proposal from DU in June, 1984.”
The proposal would include the fol­
lowing points: What does DU mean to its
members, past and present? What has
DU meant to the College in the past?
What suggestions does the fraternity
have to eliminate what has been viewed
as negative aspects over the past few
years?
Said Lee: “If the administration feels
the proposal is worthwhile, it will be
examined in the fall of 1984 as part of a
campus-wide discussion on the role of
fraternities.
“We feel,” Lee added, “the College has
a problem with the quality and diversity
of its campus life. We also feel DU can
help solve it.”
In the interim, the lodge has been
rented to a member of the administrative
staff.

Board of Managers divests
Dresser Industries stock
Early this year the College, through its
investment advisors, divested itself of
6,000 shares of common stock in Dresser
Industries, Incorporated. The Board of
Managers took this action because of its
concern about the corporate activities of
Dresser Industries in the Republic of
South Africa.
The College, concerned that no exter­
nal mechanism exists to ensure compli­
ance by Dresser Industries with the Prin­
ciples for Operation in South Africa
announced by the company, “feels obli­
gated to refrain from continued invest­
ment” in the company.
The Board is monitoring the activities
of all companies in its investment portSW A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

folio to ensure their compliance with
racial equality principles formulated by
the Reverend Leon Sullivan (Hon. ’68).
Those principles include equal pay for
equal work, non-discrimination in the
use of facilities, and opportunities for
training and advancement for Black em­
ployees. The College is attempting to
encourage those companies in which it is
a shareholder to follow policies aimed at
promoting equality among Blacks and
Whites in South Africa.

College fights law linking
student aid to the draft
Citing its determination to preserve the
integrity of the College’s “need-blind”
admissions policy—under which qualified
students are admitted to Swarthmore
without regard to their ability to pay—
the Board of Managers decided on Feb­
ruary 26 to replace financial aid withheld
from draft nonregistrants by the federal
government under a controversial new
law.
The Board’s action came just two days
after President David Fraser told a con­
gressional subcommittee that the new
law should be repealed because “it dis­
criminates against poor and middle-in­
come men, because it inflicts punishment
without prior trial, because it threatens
the spirit of free inquiry so essential to
our colleges by restricting their ability to
assemble student bodies on educational
criteria alone, and because it unwisely
makes access to education contingent on
compliance with a totally unrelated law.”
Earlier in February the College had
joined the University of Minnesota in
support of a lawsuit by Minnesota stu­
dents to halt implementation of the law,
known as the “Solomon Amendment.”
On March 9, a U.S. district court judge in
Minneapolis issued a preliminary injunc­
tion barring the government from enforc­
ing the Solomon Amendment, stating:
“Enforcement of a law likely to be found
unconstitutional is not in the public
interest.”
Although that ruling is now being
appealed by the Justice Department, the
Department of Education announced on
April 7 that students would not be re­
quired to sign statements affirming their
compliance with the draft registration
law pending a final court ruling. The
education department did, however, sug­
gest, in a letter to college student aid
administrators dated April 15, that they
strongly encourage students voluntarily
JUNE, 1983

to sign such a statement.
Besides delaying implementation of
the Solomon Amendment, the Depart­
ment of Education has revised its pro­
posed regulations, at least temporarily
easing the burden placed on colleges and
universities in administering the law.
Instead of requiring student aid recip­
ients to produce a document from the
Selective Service System certifying they
have registered for the draft, prior to
1985 colleges would need only to have
students sign a form stating that they
have registered.
In his testimony before Congress, Pres­
ident Fraser estimated that following the
validation procedures initially proposed
by the Department of Education would
force even a small college like Swarth­
more to hire an additional person to
work “one-half or three-quarters time
just to handle the extra work.” Rather
than having colleges police the draft
registration law in this way, Fraser has
proposed that students merely submit
affidavits affirming that they have regis­
tered, or are not required to, for verifica­
tion by federal personnel.

Student charges increased
for 1983-84 academic year
The need for modest enhancements in
operations and programs, coupled with
the need to maintain competitive salaries
for faculty and other personnel, has
resulted in a 9.5 percent increase in
student charges for the 1983-84 academic
year.
In approving the budget, the Board of
Managers said that despite the decline in
interest rates that has affected the Col­
lege’s investment income, the College will
look to its endowment for an additional
11.8 percent in spending and to annual
giving donors for a 10 percent increase
over the 1982-83 budget. In these ways it
hopes to spread the costs that exceed
estimated inflation.
Tuition will increase to $7,840, up $710
from last year, while the general fee will
be raised from $540 to $590. Room and
board charges will total $3,260, an in­
crease of $260 over 1982-83, bringing
total charges to $11,690.
The increased charges and a slight
increase in the student body—to about
1,275—will require an increase of slightly
more than 18 percent in the financial aid
budget.
Despite the increases, charges are still
lower than those at many schools of

comparable status and perceived quality.
Yale has officially announce charges of
$12,980, a 10.1 percent hike, and Prince­
ton will charge $12,410, an increase of
12.6 percent.

Claude C. Smith, former
Board chairman, dies
Claude C. Smith ’14, chairman of the
Board of Managers from 1952 to 1966,
died at his home in Swarthmore on May
11. He was 94.
Raised in Indiana, he taught in the
public schools from 1905 to 1910 while
attending Central Normal College, where
he received his bachelor of science degree
in 1911. He then came to Swarthmore as
a political science major and continued
his education at the University of Penn­
sylvania, where he obtained his law de­
gree in 1917.
That same year he was admitted to the
Pennsylvania bar and joined the Phila­
delphia law firm of Duane, Morris, and
Heckscher. He was named a partner in
the firm in 1923 and in 1938 was admitted
to practice before the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Smith’s ties to Swarthmore were deep.
He experienced Swarthmore as a student,
a faculty member, member and emeritus
member of the Board for forty-seven
years, the husband of Mary Roberts (also
a member of the Class of 1914, who died
in 1948), and the father of four children,
all of whom graduated from Swarthmore:
Richard L. ’41, Gene Smith McCulloch
’42, Nancy Smith Hayden ’46, and Carter
’51. He also had four Swarthmore grand­
children: Corey Smith ’65, Stephen Smith
25

’71, Deborah Smith Hilke ’73, and Robert
G. Hayden, Jr., ’81.
In an open letter to the College com­
munity, President David Fraser said:
“When Claude Smith retired as chairman
of the Board, an article in the Alumni
Bulletin called him the ‘uncommon
chairman.’ For the fourteen years he
presided over the Swarthmore Board of
Managers, he conducted meetings in an
unorthodox manner, he refused to put
consideration of the law, though a lawyer
himself, ahead of consideration of the
human relationships involved, and he
made speeches on and off the campus
which pulled no punches and hit at the
heart of the matter.”
Smith told a gathering of local alumni
in 1956: “The Board of Managers must
assure academic freedom, free inquiry,
allow criticism and open discussion; per­
mit dissent from prevailing ideas and
accepted beliefs; maintain an open mar­
ket for new evidence for new ideas---The College must produce graduates
who are willing to support their convic­
tions, their sense of fair play and justice,
by leaning against the winds of popular­
ity.” In 1967 the College awarded him an
honorary LL.D.
He is survived by his wife Virginia,
four children, twenty grandchildren, and
twenty great-grandchildren.

Extinction

Harlow Ballard, Christopher Gwilt, and
Holt Meyer.

Six Swarthmore students won top indi­
vidual honors and as a group won the
most prizes among finalists during Ger­
man Language Week competition in late
March.
Sponsored by educational and cul­
tural organizations in the Philadelphia
area, the week of events was held for the
second time to encourage interest in
German studies and language and in
commemoration of the founding of Ger­
mantown in 1683.
Eighty colleges, universities, and high
schools sent participants to compete in
language proficiency and German cul­
ture tests.
Winning prizes in the highest level
language tests were senior German majors
Mark Montgomery and Ferrel Rose.
Montgomery won a round-trip flight to
Germany this summer, the top prize
given in the competition. Rose won a
graduate-level summer school course and
is an alternate for a German Academic
Exchange Service scholarship for sum­
mer study at a German university.
Christine Marx ’86 won the top cash
prize given for the second highest level
language test. Also receiving cash prizes,
for culture test competition, were seniors

David S. Cowden, professor
of English, dies at 63
David S. Cowden, 63, who taught English
at Swarthmore for more than forty years,
died May 20 at Bryn Mawr Hospital
following a brief illness.
Cowden’s long association with the
College began as an undergraduate, and
he earned highest honors and member­
ship in Phi Beta Kappa in 1942. He
joined the faculty in 1949 after com­
pleting doctoral work at Harvard and
serving in the Army Office of War Infor­
mation in London during World War II.
He was promoted to full professor of
English in 1968.
Known for his interest in the nine­
teenth-century novel, Cowden also con­
tributed to the College by service on a
wide variety of committees, most recently
as chairman of the Committee of Fellow­
ships and Prizes, and served as Secretary
to the Faculty from 1967 to 1970.
He is survived by his sister, Rosemary
Cowden Cadigan ’35, and six nieces and
nephews.
Contributions may be made in his
memory to the David S. Cowden Scholar­
ship, which he established in 1977.

(continued from page 9)

sustain themselves, and that it has no
natural enemies except Homo sapiens.
Except Homo sapiens!
Suddenly my subconsciousness whis­
pered to me: Why should Homo sapiens
be sitting so uncomfortably in that scene,
anyway? What right has that species to
impose itself on the gorilla? Would it
really be so tragic if that species disap­
peared altogether?
Let’s Bother
Actually there are reasons for bothering.
In his New Yorker articles, Jonathan
Schell gives some arguments for caring.
They are based on the nature and heritage
of the beast, Homo sapiens, and its
responsibility to future generations. I,
too, have reasons for bothering, though
they are personal and unrelated to bio­
logical needs. I find enormous pleasure in
a great deal of the species’ creative ex­
pression. For me the universe would be
significantly lessened in value if the sort
of human creativity heard in Bach’s
Goldberg Variations, seen in the archi­
26

Six students win honors in
German Week competition

tecture of Machu Picchu, read in the
novels of Tolstoy, felt in hand-woven
cloth, smelled in home-baked bread, en­
joyed in the simple elegance of the chemiosmotic-coupling hypothesis, laughed at
in the distilled irony of a political car­
toon—if all this vanished into the ether.
It is this quality of the human mind that
constitutes the basis for my concern
about human extinction.
There is, though, a curious thing about
this creative quality that needs now to be
underscored. It is just this expression of
the human mind that also creates the
threats to human survival—the nuclear
and ecological threats. Yet, even more
curiously, it is to that same mind that the
species must turn if there is to be any
hope of counteracting the destructive
impulse.
The mind, after all, may be our ulti­
mate weakness in regard to survival, but
it is also our ultimate hope. When com­
pared with other animals, the one thing
Homo sapiens is really good at is learning.
We cannot run very fast compared with

other animals, swim very well, fly at all
(except with help), climb trees with agility,
swing from branch to branch, or hang by
our tails with any expertise at all. But we
can learn\ and we have been doing that
just about fast enough to survive destruc­
tive acts of God and acts of man.
Perhaps, then, we can learn in time to
compensate for the deficiencies of our
DNA, for our instinctual shortcomings,
by carefully considering what actions
may be good for the human species as
well as for the individual, and at least half
the time deciding in favor of the species
when there is a conflict of interest.

A year ago, the Class o f ’82 asked Swarthmore
Professor Robert E. Savage, a cell biologist,
to deliver the traditional “Last Collection”
address. He settled on “extinction” as his
topic because o f growing concern among
students and the general public about the
threat to human survival posed by nuclear
weapons. This article is adaptedfrom Savage’s
address to the Class.
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

In this issue:
1 Swarthmore inaugurates
its twelfth president
2 A reprieve for the condor
6 Is Homo sapiens an
endangered species?
By Robert E. Savage
10 Reagan’s “Moderate
Monetarist”
13 In search of Rockwell Kent
By William Spangler ’49
18 Triple treat off Broadway
20 Four Swarthmore athletes
match an urge to learn
with the will to win
24 The College
27 Class Notes
Editor:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Managing Editor:
Larry L. Elveru
Assistant Editors:
Kathryn Bassett ’35
Kate Downing
Editorial Assistant:
Ann D. Geer
Designer: Bob Wood
Cover: Chief Marshal Paul Mangelsdorf, Jr. ’49 is shown leading
the inaugural procession, fol­
lowed by President Fraser,
former president John W. Nason,
and Board Vice-Chairman J.
Lawrence Shane ’56.
Photo: Steven Goldblatt ’67.

President Fraser and wife, the form er Barbara Gaines, an attorney.

U

' T ' he busy campus and
the peaceful woods lie
A
juxtaposed and we who
live or visit here gain much from
the juxtaposition,” said President
David W. Fraser in his inaugural
address. “We feel a creative ambiv­
alence pulling us at once into the
refuge and out onto the open
ground. As a metaphor for con­
trasting attractions of the academic
refuge and the outside world, this
ambivalence underlay the
foundation of the College in the
1860s and plays upon its
inhabitants today. Some years the
pull seems to be stronger in one
direction and some years in the
other, but the tension between the
two is always there.”