Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1984-09-01

By Kirsten Gruesz ’86 and Hilary Hochman ’86
It’s the middle of August in Swarthmore,
and even the walls of Parrish Hall are
sweating. Most students prefer to be on the
beach but three Swarthmore students are
busy trekking through the New Jersey Pine
Barrens charting the relative sizes of various
plants and incidentally collecting an assort­
ment of mosquito bites as well. Sean Thomas
’86 flew to Florida, not to surf but to collect
terrestrial arthropods (daddy longlegs) for
an ongoing experiment he designed during
the school year to conduct over the summer.
It may be sweltering, but for students at
Swarthmore summer is an ideal time for
research.
What makes student research at Swarth­
more unique, however, is not the heat or the
humidity, but the number and scope of
opportunities available to undergraduates.
At larger universities, actual research work
is usually open only to graduate students,
and the competition is fierce for the few jobs
open to undergraduates. At most small
liberal arts colleges, facilities often are not
available for sophisticated research. But
many Swarthmore students do not have to
overcome these obstacles.
Science students, in particular, are fortu­
nate. Most who want to work on a research
project over the summer are able to do so,
and a few are even able to design their own
projects, with faculty supervision and finan­
cial support from various faculty and student
research grants.
Many students assist professors with their
research over the summer months. Four
seniors (Jay Scott, Ian Aberbach, Karen
Ohl, and Yatin Saraiya) worked this summer
with mathematics professor Eugene Klotz to
develop a computer program to help teach
calculus, one of the most difficult advanced
mathematics courses. Klotz hopes to have
the program available within three years,
and foresees other research projects, such as
computerized mathematics placement tests.
Part of what makes Klotz’s research
appealing to his students is the sophisticated
color graphics computer used in their re­
search. Its resolution is almost as fine as that
of a photograph, and it can generate 16.7

million shades of color, 257 at a time. The
computer’s graphics capabilities are espe­
cially useful for the educational programs,
since they allow students to draw their own
graphs and diagrams on the computer and
compare them with the computer’s rendi­
tions. In their spare time, Klotz’s research
assistants have designed a “paint” program
for drawing anything from diagrams to
impressionistic artworks.
Studying science in Swarthmore’s liberal
arts context makes the opportunity to work
with a professor on his or her research
particularly valuable. The broad education
required of any major encourages students
to apply one field of knowledge to another.
The students assisting biology professor
Jacob Weiner (Rachel Wallach ’86, Sean
Thomas ’86, Franz Amador ’85), for exam­
ple, spend much of their time in the Crum
Woods and the New Jersey Pine Barrens
measuring the sizes of various plant groups,
particularly jewel weed. When they return
to the lab in Martin, however, the data are
analyzed by a statistical method usually used
only by economists to study income. The
method is being used to analyze the distribu­
tion of plants according to size and age and
to determine why certain plants grow larger
than others. Weiner recently published a
paper on this method, which has “shaken up
all the population people,” he says.
Many students, especially those working
on independent, faculty-supervised research,
relish the chance to discuss specific research
problems with their professors. Dan Ifft ’85
is working on an independent project funded
by the Shell Foundation, studying salt gradi­
ent solar ponds. “It’s all part of treating
undergraduates as if they were adults, even if
they’re not quite ready for it,” Ifft says. This
commitment to undergraduate research can
be seen in the number of papers co-authored
by faculty and students; during 1980-83,
forty-one papers were co-authored by
Swarthmore faculty and students.
The College has many scientific facilities
and pieces of research equipment not usually
found at small liberal arts colleges. Most
impressive is the new wing of Du Pont,

designed to allow faculty and students to
work on independent research projects.
Sproul Observatory, long a familiar land­
mark, is the sight of the longest ongoing
research project on campus: the measure­
ment of star positions and the study of
double stars.
Less impressive at first sight but equally
important is a nuclear magnetic resonance
spectrometer, valued at approximately
$200,000, recently donated by IBM. It is
used to study atomic particles, while physics
professor Frank Moscatelli and his two
student assistants use state-of-the-art laser
equipment to measure atoms in transition
elements. As Peter Thompson, chair of the
Chemistry Department, points out: “There
are no research instruments at Swarthmore
that are not in the hands of students.”
The broad range of research opportunities,
plus experience gained using sophisticated
equipment and exchanging ideas with the
faculty, often pay off when it comes time to
apply to graduate schools or for grants.
Swarthmore students have earned more
National Science Foundation grants per
capita than students at any other college or
university, except for MIT and CalTech.
Over the past ten years, an average of 7.3
NSF grants have been awarded each year to
Swarthmore students. Research experience
is also invaluable when applying to graduate
schools.
Even for Swarthmoreans who do not
continue their education after college, such
research experience can prove equally worth­
while. “Research requires a broad intelli­
gence,” says Ted Abel ’85, who is assisting
chemistry professor James Hammons in his
study of the behavior of various molecules in
solutions. “You learn what not to ask, as
well as what to ask, and you get a perspective
of what’s going on in your field. It’s very
broadening.”
So while the humidity hovers at 99
percent and many students retreat to the
nearest beach, Swarthmore students who
remain on campus during the summer gain
valuable research credentials and a firsthand
grasp of basic research.

Student research runs the gamut from
daddy longlegs to binary stars
Student researchers (left to right) Yatin Saraiya
85, Karen Ohl ’86, and Ian Aberbach ’85 refined
software using a color graphics computer.
PHOTOS BY MARTIN NATVIG

1

Student research grows
in the humanities and
social sciences
Seven months ago Will Reese ’85 walked
into Yom’s luncheonette in Swarthmore to
get a cheesesteak and found himself talking
to an 86-year-old Swarthmore resident who
is a regular there. The conversation was so
interesting that Reese wrote to Jennie Keith,
a professor of anthropology at the College,
and asked about her research on Project
A.G.E. (Age, Generation, and Experience).
Because of that conversation, Reese is the
first and only undergraduate student to work
on the federally funded international project
budgeted at close to half a million dollars. “It
seems like my wheels of karma were turning
then,” Reese says. “It just sort of fell into my
lap.”
Project A.G.E., sponsored by the Na­
tional Institute on Aging in Washington,
D.C., is a cross-cultural comparison of the
meaning of aging in communities around the
world. Anthropologists are now working in
Swarthmore, Momence, 111., and Hong
Kong to explore the experience of aging
within each community. Anthropologists
may eventually work on the project in

Senior assays solar
pond potential under
corporate research grant
With a handful of colorful ink markers, Dan
Ifft ’85 reduces the theory behind his re­
search to a few boldly drawn lines. Its
simplicity seems, at first glance, suspect:
After all, this project is on the frontier of
current physics and could lead to significant
advances in the field of solar energy. The fact
that the diagram, which represents sunlight
going into a body of water, takes only a few
strokes to complete reflects two of Ifft’s
major concerns: making the arcane theories
of physics understandable and making them
applicable.
“Solar energy has intrigued me for a long
time,” says the Swarthmore College senior,
a native of Redlands, Calif. Itching to do
some independent research, he approached
Assistant Professor Rush Holt last semester
with the idea of doing solar pond experi­
ments. The Shell Corporation later awarded
a $2,500 grant to the Physics Department to
help fund Ifft’s proposal. He was named a
Shell Scholar and given free rein to set up the
2

Ireland, Kenya, Latin America, New Guin­
ea, and Africa’s Kalahari Desert as well. The
project is unique, Keith explains, because it
studies the positive aspects, as opposed to the
problems, of aging, and studies the old as an
integral part of a community, not in isola­
tion.
Swarthmore was chosen as a research site
for the project because it is both a small,,
distinct town and a suburb of a major
American city. The. population includes
people who have lived in the town all their
lives and people who have been transferred
to the area and will be transferred again.
Although there is a large pool of college
students in the community, the 1980 census
puts the percentage of senior citizens at three
percent over the national norm.
This past summer Reese talked to Swarth­
more residents and spent time both partic­
ipating in and observing the life of the town.
While sketching a portrait of the Swarth­
more community, he spent much of his time
interviewing local merchants and business­
men, asking for their perceptions of the
community. Reese also spent time in places
where the townspeople gather—the swim
club, Yom’s, the local supermarkets. “I got a
pretty fair idea of where people are at what
time of the day.. . . Bus stops can be a lot of

fun,” Reese adds.
More than 200 Swarthmore residents,
selected randomly by computer, were inter­
viewed last year for the study. Once Profes­
sor Keith and her researchers have finished
the interviews, the data will be coded by
computers and compared to the results in
other communities. Eventually, it is hoped,
the project will identify some of the factors
that make a community a good place to
grow old.
Reese is only one of several students who
were involved in research projects in the
humanities and social sciences on campus
this past summer. The projects ranged from
independent papers to supervised research in
the Psychology Department’s infant percep­
tion laboratory. Much of this student re­
search was funded by private or federal
grants.
Bill Cohen ’85 and Joanne Wood ’86
spent their summers writing papers under a
National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) grant. It was the first summer this
grant was available to undergraduate stu­
dents wishing to do independent, noncredit
research; NEH selected Cohen and Wood,
along with sixty-five other college students,
out of 351 applicants for the newly-founded
Younger Scholars program. Cohen, an

project on his own.
pond settles into a gradient, with the heavier,
“The beauty of it is that it’s so simple,” denser liquid at the bottom. A typical graph
says Ifft. His impromptu drawing represents of the salt-waiter gradient looks like a
a solar pond—a receptacle of salt water of straight diagonal line. But Ifft has succeeded
varying densities. Light from the sun going in creating gradients which have a “kink” in
into the pond is converted to energy and that line, hoping to resolve a debate among
trapped on the bottom layer. A solar pond physicists about whether or not such kinks
thus generates low-grade heat—about 70 to could straighten themselves out. Progress
80 degrees Fahrenheit—which can be used, with the theoretical kink should also help the
for example, to heat buildings, or to dry ponds work better in practice.
grain.
Professor Holt, while ostensibly serving as
According to Ifft, such ponds are one of the project advisor, stays in the background
the cheapest and most maintenance-free as much as possible. “He lets me work on an
sources of solar energy. However, solar- equal basis with him,” says Ifft. “My ideas
pond technology has yet to be widely used: count as much as his.” That equality makes
One problem is logistical, a question of for a close relationship between professor
where to store thousands of cubic feet of salt and student which is usually found only in
water; another is simply a lack of experi­ the final years of university graduate study.
mentation with the method, and that is a gap It also means that the younger physicist is
that Ifft is attempting to fill.
encouraged to work independently. “Some­
His research this summer is a step toward times I wish he would push me,” Ifft adds,
making solar ponds more efficient. Though with only a touch of wistfulness.
the research has made important strides in
Ifft began the project in May and worked
the theory of the field, Ifft notes that it is on it throughout the summer. So far, he says,
gratifying to him that “it has applications in the experience has been, predictably, both
the real world.” For the summer experi­ rewarding and frustrating: “If you think a
ments, he designed and constructed model job will take five minutes, it takes two or
solar ponds and equipment to analyze them. three hours,” he laughs. “I’m learning a lot
As he explains it, the salt water in the about research.” After the project is finished,
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

(*)
¿O

I

m

ridge. Both students hope to publish their
papers written under the NEH grant.
“The best aspect of the project for me,”
says Wood, “was being given the oppor­
tunity to really go into depth researching a
topic I would never have had the chance to
do during my college career. The Philosophy
Department generally doesn’t appreciate
your dragging Conrad into a discussion of
the categorical imperative; the grant allowed
me to combine the study of philosophy and
literature in a way normally not open to
undergraduate students.”
Four students also worked in the psy­
chology department in the Infant Perception
Lab during the summer, testing infants’
abilities to perceive three-dimensional ob­
jects, while another student worked for
philosophy Professor Hans Oberdiek, ab­
stracting books and articles from the syllabus
of a course on social justice taught last year
at Harvard University. Though the oppor­
tunities for undergraduate summer research
in the social sciences and humanities at the
College are not as plentiful as those in the
Will Reese ’85 (right) interviews Greg Byrnes, manager o f the Co-op food store in Swarthmore.
natural sciences, they are available to a
English Honors student, studied “The Inter­ Wood, a philosophy Honors student, wrote growing number of students interested in an
action of Modern Critical Theories and
on “Kantian Morality and Conrad’s Lord educational alternative to the usual summer
Shakespearean Texts,” under the guidance Jim: The Problem of Moral Agency,” ad­ job.
of English Professor Thomas Blackburn.
vised by philosophy Professor Richard Eld— By Hilary Hochman ’86

Ar

(
oO

1

\

-

A

h

..—
T-—

io)(A .r

Y

N

Ah

Uh

â ' c
1
CA

ÒS-

1/

V

o&

y

7 .

C

V

LO

/

f
Dan Ifft ’85 explains what happens when sunlight enters a solar pond.
SEPTEMBER 1984

he plans to write a paper, with Holt’s
assistance, which he hopes to publish in a
scientific journal.
Going into his final year at Swarthmore,
Ifft’s plans for the future are already solid,
involving graduate study and a teaching
career. Obviously at home with his colored
markers, making complex theories under­
standable, he has both interest and experi­
ence in communicating his knowledge to
others. He is the coordinator of the Physics
Clinic on campus, where he tutors intro­
ductory physics students, and is also in­
volved in the work of the nonpartisan
Nuclear War Education Project.
Ifft feels that his summer research experi­
ence will be invaluable to him as a scientist,
as well as an asset in applying to graduate
schools. He credits Swarthmore’s small size,
as well as its unique Honors program, with
emphasizing the independent work which is
crucial for a science student to gain a real
understanding of his or her field. “Only at a
place like Swarthmore does an undergrad­
uate have a chance to do something like
this,” he says earnestly. “I mean, here I am
with my own research project—where else
can that happen?”
— By Kirsten Gruesz ’86
3

Ken Meter 71, a Minnesota-based agricul­
tural journalist, to give us their perspectives
on the problem.
Raym ond Hopkins: Basically, there are
two problems. One is money. Faminestricken countries, like those in Africa, do
not have any money. They’re so poor, that
they’re not even as deeply in debt as many
Latin American countries. They do
not have a credit rating and since they
cannot get credit, they cannot borrow
the money they need to eat right now
either. So essentially they’re not part
of the effective demand for food in the
world and the only way they
can get food supplies is through
aid. Now, that’s not a very
happy situation, nor one in
which they can survive for
long.
Why haven’t they been able
to get food aid? That’s a more complex
problem. Most world food aid used to be
subsidized by the United States. But while
the federal budget has grown, funds for food
aid have decreased. Other countries have
given more assistance over the past four or
five years as food aid has become more of a
humanitarian, rather than an export promo­
tion device. And that’s where our farm
surpluses come in.
It used to be that when we had surpluses,
as we now have, and when farm prices were
depressed, as they now are, there would be
enormous pressure from farm groups to
increase food aid. But there is only a very
modest amount of pressure now for such aid.
Most of the pressure for food exports is
directed at other areas. A congressman from
a farm state recently acknowledged that he
gets political mileage by pushing for export
credits—that is, short-term commercial
credits for outright sales—not by promoting
food aid.
In other words, most developing coun­
tries just do not have the money to buy our
surplus food and, because we are less affluent
. . . , we don’t support food aid programs as
we used to do.
Ken Meter: I’ve noticed a change in the
last five or six years in farmers’ attitudes
towards food aid, very much along the lines
that Ray is describing. But I think the
reasons are a bit different than he suggests.
I’ve seen farmers’ attitudes shift away
from feeling that they have a responsibility
to feed the world. Farmers are discovering
that many third world countries see them­
selves building a new economic order in
which nations will do better at feeding
themselves. Also farmers have looked into
the fate of their food after it is shipped
abroad and have found that much of that

Famine
amidst
plenty
Why are American
farmers going
bankrupt while
millions go hungry?

ast year twenty-two countries in
Africa were designated as faminestricken, while in the United States it
is estimated that nearly 200,000 farmers
have gone bankrupt since 1981 largely
because huge food surpluses have kept farm
commodity prices low. Recently, the W. K.
Kellogg Foundation funded a new threeyear program at the College aimed, in part,
at examining this sad irony (see accompany­
ing story, page 6).
The director of the new program is
Swarthmore political science Professor Ray­
mond Hopkins, an expert who has testified
before Congress on food aid and published
several books and articles on the subject. In
hopes of throwing some light on the eco­
nomic and political reasons why millions
continue to starve around the world while
America has more food than it knows what
to do with, we asked Professor Hopkins and

L

4

food is not going to the people it is intended
to help. So they ask, why should we send it.
And farmers are now in an economic
position where it’s much harder for them to
feel we can afford to give food away.
There was a time when surpluses meant
farmers were producing more than they
needed, but they still were making a living.
Now, farmers are still producing more than
is needed, but they’re going broke doing it.
We have farm families who need to buy
food stamps in order to eat.
A third factor is that farmers are much
more aware of some of the relationships
between what they produce and worldwide
economic conditions. And when you talk
about third world or less developed coun­
tries [LDCs] not having money to buy our
grain, you have to remember that most of
their exports are agricultural products. One
of the root causes of the current worldwide
depression is the drop in prices paid for those
commodities. A combination of two factors
has forced prices down. The domination of
monopoly interests and also government
policies which keep grain prices fairly low
have effectively forced down prices on a
whole range of farm commodities through­
out the world. When the prices for their own
products are so low, it’s not surprising that
the LDCs don’t have enough money to feed
themselves.
We can afford to have higher farm prices
in the U.S. There is only three-cents-worth
of wheat in a one-pound loaf of bread, for
example. If commodity prices were high
enough to cover the costs of production, and
if production were controlled, the U.S.
farmers could produce less and earn more
and LDC farmers would have more eco­
nomic incentive to produce for their own
home market. It would not be a matter of
depending on U.S. food aid.
Cheap food prices can hurt the U.S.
economy. The stock market collapse of
1929 was preceded by nearly a decade of
farm depression. Now, the same processes
are at work. Corporations are merging with
each other, producing paper growth without
any real increase in productivity. Mean­
while, farmers toil long hours just to make
immense interest payments. Farmers are
raising more debt than food. And when
farms slide, the rest of us are in trouble.

The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0279-9138),
o f which this is volume LXXXII, number 2, is
published twice in September, and in November,
December, March, and June by Swarthmore College,
Swarthmore, PA 19081. Second class postage paid at
Swarthmore, PA and additional mailing offices. Post
master: Send address changes to Swarthmore College
Bulletin, Swarthmore, PA 19081.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Farming fo r the banker?
milk fifty to pay for this place. I’m paying
forty dollars a day to the bank just for
interest. About half this many, that would be
about right.”
Fifty cows are fifty udders filling up with
twenty-six pounds of milk, twice a day.
Never lets up. Always hay to feed, always
silage, always grain, always haylage. Piled
quickly on the feeding alley, or carried to the
trough outside. Clean manure off the floor.
Two or three hours in the field, to fix a fence
or grind the grain. Coax the cows inside, sort
them by name to their proper stall. A helper
to tend to the incessant feeding and cleaning.
Five-thirty in the morning until nine at night.
Maybe eleven. Maybe two-thirty at harvest.
Every day. On Sunday, the chores are done
before church.
Minnesota farmer Arnie Narr
Bill is luckier than some. He built in 1973,
a good year for prices and the first year of the
inflationary spurt. He decided he had to take
the chance or lose it. He jumped in with both
ill Harjes’ barn is wide, brightly lit. feet. New barn on top of an eight-year-old
The speckled coat of paint is the house.
original—only nine seasons of flies
But still, luckier than some. Neighbors
have settled on it.
who have bought in the last two years now
I
stand at the open door, with my back tocarry interest bills of $290 every day.
the warm breeze curling in from the south­
Bill captures the erosion of his economy
west. The barn is a long white tunnel full of with concise stories. He stopped the sales­
shuffling cows. Full flanks raised to eye level man cold, two weeks ago, the one who
measure the mileage to the gaping north brought over the new Bobcat. That’s a small,
door.
versatile vehicle Bill needs to plow manure
The feed alleys are unusually broad, off his cement feeding platform, to haul hay
enough to allow a large silage cart to pass bales, to carry fence posts.
through. The stanchions are set wide apart,
“I told the guy to look behind him. He
so the cows have room to maneuver in their turned around, and I said, see that house
austere homes. Overhead, tons of drying hay
are tucked neatly under a cavernous roof.
The shingles are clean and straight.
Polka music scratches from a small radio
hung from the ceiling. The surge pump gasps
punctually. Bill weaves down the long row
in a rapid step that never subsides. Crouch­
ing near a cow, gentle forceful hands sooth­
ing the final pint of milk out of an udder, Bill
shouts the name of the seventh cow down on
the right. His teenage helper is already
poised with the warm cloth, cleaning her
udder.
Between hurried massages, Bill and I talk.
We catch up with each other like commer­
cials amidst the two-hour parade he runs
twice a day, every day. Today, we’re talking
about his barn.
“If I had my way,” he begins, “I’d milk
about half this many. About twenty-five.
That gives you more time for the field work,
and some time with the family. But I need to

B

Photos courtesy o f Ken Meter 71 © 1983
SEPTEMBER 1984

over there? I had it built fifteen years ago.
That house cost the same then as this little
Bobcat does now.”
If the salesman answered, his words were
lost in the wind.
Bill’s Bobcat is not an isolated example. A
tractor that cost $13,000 in 1973 now costs
$62,000. Same model, same power, same
features. In that stretch of time, the price of
corn—the most basic source of money most
farmers have to bargain with—has con­
tinued to hover around $2.25 per bushel.
The price Bill gets for his milk has been
protected by price supports, so it has risen in
the same period from $5.00 per 100 pounds
to $13.50. Now it has declined to $11.50
under pressure from the Reagan adminis­
tration. That is 75 percent of what it costs to
produce.
Farmers are being squeezed hard. The
total net farm income in the U.S. was $14
billion in 1981, a drastic drop from $36
billion two years earlier, and (inly $5 billion
above the 1919 level, without accounting for
the decline of the dollar’s value. For all of the
“advance” in productivity and technology,
hardly any more money is flowing into rural
communities.
For the first time ever, over half of a
Minnesota farm family’s income is coming
from off-farm sources.
I mull this over, following Bill to the next
stall. He works intensely, then turns to me.
He has another story about erosion. This
one’s about the local bank.
“When I banked there, only two people

worked there. You went to the bank closest
to you—like a church, like a creamery.
That’s what made them strong. People had
to go because they couldn’t afford to drive
everywhere.”
Several years ago, Bill needed to expand
in order to keep his farm operation alive. He
became bigger than the local bank could
afford. So, he started borrowing from an­
other bank, farther away. He has discovered
he works better with the new banker.
The local bank is now owned by a man
from the Cities, whom Bill has never met.
“I just wonder who is behind him.”
W hat bothers Bill about an outside
owner?
“It’s the pressure to get big.”
As we finish chores, the milk truck pulls
in to haul the milk to the creamery. The new
stainless steel truck will drive to a large
regional processor, halfway to Minneapolis.
Bill rinses the milk bucket; the warm breeze
curls in from the southwest.
— B y K en M eter 71

Reprinted with permission from Green Isle:
Feeding the World, Farm ing fo r the Banker,

©Ken Meter, 1983.

Kellogg funds new study
program in world hunger
orld hunger, the international
interdependence of food systems,
and the opportunities for world
leaders to improve health and nutrition will
be among the subjects examined in a new
program of study at Swarthmore College
funded by a three-year grant, announced in
July, of $93,500 from the W. K. Kellogg
Foundation of Battle Creek, Mich.
The new program, “Food Systems and
Food Policy,” is designed to help students
and the general public understand the com­
plex problems involved in the production
and distribution of food throughout the
world. It will stress the interdependence of
people throughout the world with one an­
other and their environment, and the impor­
tance of conscious choice in planning food
policies that will feed the world in the future.
Political science Professor Raymond Hop­
kins, director of the new program, says issues
such as the existence of large American
surpluses alongside world hunger will be
explored. The Kellogg Foundation grant
will fund the development of courses, field

W

6

trips, student and faculty research, guest course on environmental issues in agricul­
lectures, major symposia, and summer in­ tural and fishery management, an anthro­
ternships and research for students with pology course on food systems of nomadic
peoples, and possibly an interdisciplinary
national and international agencies.
“American students, in particular, should course on the history and biological proper­
be knowledgeable about food systems and ties of food systems.
New material on food subjects will be
policy, because our country supplies so
much of the world’s food and food growing inserted in a variety of existing courses. For
technology,” says Professor Hopkins, a na­ example, global food politics will be intro­
duced into a course on international politics.
tionally known expert on food aid.
“In our program, we hope to blend It is also anticipated that food and agricul­
idealism with practicality. Students will tural issues will be introduced into courses
witness farm production firsthand and will on economic and political development, and
visit policymaking centers in America and farm technology, water use, and energy
abroad. They will examine the values that efficiency will be inserted in biology and
underlie policy choices and consider which engineering courses.
The new program will involve the public,
values in fact should nurture them.”
The study of food policy, Hopkins as­ according to Hopkins, through symposia
serted, will “support the basic ideals that and lectures, as well as through the involve­
Swarthmore seeks to foster: personal and ment of students and the community in joint
civic responsibility and the importance of activities.
The W. K. Kellogg Foundation, estab­
rational choice.”
The new food program will initially in­ lished in 1930 to “help people help them­
volve as many as twenty faculty members in selves,” has distributed more than $703
the departments of Economics, Political Sci­ million in support of programs in agricul­
ence, History, Engineering, Biology, and ture, education, and health. It supports
Sociology/Anthropology, according to Hop­ programs in the United States, Latin Amer­
kins. They will teach such courses as a ica, and the Caribbean, as well as interna­
history course on food and famine, a biology tional fellowship programs in other coun­
course on food and nutrition, a political tries. M i
— By Lorna Shurkin
science course on food policy, an economics
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

By Sally A. Warren ’65

he three century-old townhouses at
9, 11, and 13 East 63rd Street in
midtown Manhattan must have
seemed ripe and ready for picking to Queens
real estate developer Joseph M. Mattone. In
February 1981, just one month after secur­
ing an option to buy the buildings, the
Mattone Group Ltd. confronted tenants of
the brownstones with plans to demolish
their twenty-nine apartments and construct
an eleven-story luxury condominium apart­
ment complex with only twenty-four units,
each selling for upwards of $600,000.
Situated just off Fifth Avenue, the East
63rd Street site long had been coveted as a
prime spot for development. During my
three-and-a-half-year tenancy a succession
of five different speculators had owned the
properties—the last being millionaire horse
trainer Howard “Buddy” Jacobson, who
occupied and subsequently removed the
tenants from one of the buildings, No. 13.
Jacobson had put the properties up for sale
in April 1980, one day after his conviction
for murder.
Mattone’s appearance as landlord/devel­
oper coincided with a booming real estate
market and formulation of long-anticipated
changes in city zoning laws encouraging
preservation of historic buildings. In May
1981, the city Landmarks Preservation Com­
mission (LPC) designated parts of Manhat­
tan as the Upper East Side Historic District,
which included our block on East 63rd
Street. If the historic district was ratified by
the city Board of Estimate, before demolish­
ing or even altering the facades of our
brownstones, Mattone would have to con­
vince the LPC that they did not contribute to
the “architectural value” of the area.
We were encouraged by this develop­
ment, since an LPC survey already had cited
9 East 63 rd Street as a landmark, stating that
it was built in 1879 in the Neo-Grecian style
and noting that the “stylized foliate carving,”
which remained intact on its facade, was one
of the finest examples of its kind in the
historic district. Unfortunately, the decora­
tive elements had been stripped from the
facades of the buildings at 11 and 13 East
63rd Street when they were renovated in
1938. They therefore were classified as
having “no style” by the LPC, which meant
they could be demolished without any
public hearing upon approval of the owner’s
request for a “Certificate of No Effect.”
With a $7.5 million profit at stake (ac­
cording to the developer’s own projections),

T

Showdown onE. 63rd St.
Historic preservation
or high-rise development?
Confronted by the threat of
dislocation, these Manhattan
residents fought a powerful
developer to a standstill to
preserve their neighborhood

HITOSHI NAGAL/The East Side Weekly

The developer planned to demolish three historic
brownstones with twenty-nine apartments and
build an eleven-story, twenty-four unit high rise.
7

he “stylized foliate carving” was one o f
the finest examples o f Neo- Grecian style
in the Upper East Side Historic District

T

Mattone retained an impressive array of the
city’s most prominent, powerful, and wellconnected attorneys, architects, and lobbyists
to push for approval of his condominium
plan. Mattone’s advocates included a former
city planning commission chairman, a for­
mer deputy mayor from Abe Beame’s ad­
ministration, the finance chairman of Mayor
Ed Koch’s gubernatorial campaign, an ar­
chitect who was a former LPC commis­
sioner, and the law firm headed by John E.
Zuccotti, regarded by many as the most
influential attorney for developers in the
city. Having deployed this juggernaut of
veteran political operatives to ensure ap­
proval of his development plans, Mattone
also retained the leading “relocation special­
ist” in the city and confidently consummated
purchase of the East 63rd Street brownstones in mid-August 1981.
That same week, Mattone invited his
tenants to a meeting. After serving us coffee
and cookies, he handed us individualized
relocation proposals with offers ranging
from $29,000 to $42,500 in relocation
expenses. The offers varied depending on
length of tenancy, the amount of rent being
paid, and type of tenancy (“rent-controlled”
or “rent-stabilized”). Mattone and his attor­
ney emphasized, however, that the compen­
sation offers were contingent on acceptance
of their terms by all tenants as a group within
two weeks. Only one tenant wanted to take
Mattone up on his offer. The rest of us were
determined to stay and put up a fight.
The reasons the tenants declined Mattone’s offers varied. Residents of the brownstones were part of an unusually friendly
neighborhood atypical of the New York
City stereotype. Many were long-time resi­
dents, some for upwards of forty years, of
diverse backgrounds, financial means, and
ages. About a third lived in rent-controlled
apartments. Some of them were paying less
than $200 rent a month. All the residents
knew they would never duplicate their
accommodations in the tightest rental mar­
ket in a decade in New York City. The threat
of dislocation represented by Mattone’s
high-rise project strengthened our sense of

community, but other events united us in
organized resistance.
Two months before Mattone issued his
ultimatum, tenants had begun complaining
about a series of suspicious incidents in the
brownstones. Several residents reported
hearing loud banging on their doors in the
middle of the night, accompanied by voices
shouting, “We want to talk to you.” One
female senior citizen got a late-night phone
call and heard a male voice ask, “Are you
secure in your building?” Mailboxes were
broken into and mail was opened or stolen.
The heat was mysteriously turned on in
July, causing temperatures to soar in the
apartments. And in August, three tenants’
doors in one building were smashed in on
the same day and their apartments ran­
sacked, suggesting burglary attempts, but
only one tenant noticed anything missing.
Even before these intimidating incidents,
several tenants had felt harrassed by being
forced to respond to “dispossess actions” in
city housing court charging that they had
failed to pay their rent, even though they had
their canceled checks to prove payment. A
tenant must answer such charges within five
days, or risk receiving a court-issued eviction
notice three days later. While none of these
tenants was evicted, the sometimes pro­
tracted court proceedings proved frustrating,
expensive, and humiliating.
The “East 63rd Street Block Association”
was formed in July 1981 under the leader­
ship of Jeanne D. Brown, a resident of a
building down the block from us. Besides
rallying community support for our efforts
to preserve the brownstones, the association
established a tax-deductible fund for contri­
butions to our cause. Meanwhile, we began
preparing our testimony for upcoming public
hearings on the LPC’s historic district desig­
nation and Mattone’s development plans.
To counter his claims that the block was
shabby and would be improved by his new
building, the block association’s Beautifica­
tion Committee arranged for trees to be
planted and worked with the city sanitation
department to improve refuse collection.
Meanwhile, the block association’s Pres­

ervation Committee prepared and distrib­
uted information packets, including news­
paper clippings generated through press
contacts, aimed at alerting our neighbors to
the negative impact the high rise would have
on their homes by reducing sunlight, elimi­
nating views, and lowering property values.
We also gained assistance from Nikki Henkin in the office of state assemblyman Mark
Alan Siegel and involved nonprofit preser­
vation groups like the New York Municipal
Arts Society in our struggle.
With pressure mounting to force us out, in
September 1981 we formalized our tenants’
group, naming it the “Landmark Tenants
Association.” The association improved
communication among tenants and helped
us present a united front in resisting eviction
efforts. Two lawyers were retained to repre­
sent tenants’ interests. We dealt with sus­
pected harrassment, such as periodic lack of
heat and hot water, leaking radiators, a
broken intercom, and failure to renew leases,
by filing complaints with the appropriate
city agencies. We also kept track of building
code violations and filed complaints about
the landlord’s failure to pay interest on
security deposits. Action on the complaints
was slow, but they kept Mattone’s legal staff
busy.
Public hearings on the East 63rd Street
project began in August 1981 before the
landmark commission. Attorney John Doar,
who was special counsel to the House
Judiciary Committee in its impeachment
investigation of President Nixon and who
had lived at 9 East 63rd since 1973, testified
against Mattone’s proposed project. The
high-rise building would be “a terrible,
terrible affront, totally out of scale with the
rest of the block and most of the neighbor­
hood,” Doar told the LPC. After seeing a
presentation of Mattone’s building plans and
hearing objections to it by Doar and other
residents, the commission granted our re­
quest that it defer any decision pending a
recommendation on the project by the area’s
Community Board.
Between then and April 1982, Mattone’s
project was on agendas seven times at
Community Board Eight, once at the city
Board of Estimate, and seven more times at
the LPC. After agreeing to repeated “hold­
over actions,” which we sought as delaying
tactics, our local Community Board voted
unanimously in November to recommend
against Mattone’s high-rise plan and, in a
separate timely development, also endorsed
proposed city planning commission legisla­
tion to limit mid-block development to sixty
feet above curb level—about the height of
the existing brownstones and far below the
eleven stories Mattone proposed.
In September, the Board of Estimate had
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ratified the LPC’s designation of the Upper
East Side Historic District, thereby sub­
jecting to LPC approval any major changes
in building facades on our block. At that
hearing Mattone had argued that the historic
district designation process was unconstitu­
tional, that he was unaware of the possible
designation when he secured an option to
buy the brownstones, and more generally
that development should be encouraged
since it increases the city’s housing stock. In
refuting his testimony, I argued that a
developer of his stature could not have been
unaware of the historic district designation,
pointed out that his building plans called for
30 percent fewer housing units, and noted
that his option to purchase the townhouses
gave him an out before reaching this stage.
Despite these two victories, we knew
LPC opinion still was divided over the
propriety of Mattone’s development plans.
The advantage of being an early test case
under the new historic district designation—
namely that the potential public outrage
would deter the LPC from granting demoli­
tion permits for our brownstones—was
counterbalanced by the fear that the stripped
facades of two of our three buildings might
encourage the LPC to sacrifice them to
appease outraged developers. We knew we
would have to shore up our political alliances
to prevail.
To neutralize LPC lobbying on Mattone’s
behalf by Donald Manes, the borough
president of Queens, we were determined to
get a formal statement of opposition to the
project from Andrew Stein, the borough
president of Manhattan, who was then
fighting hard for reelection. Despite personal
assurances of support for our position by
Stein, his staff ignored a stream of corre­
spondence and phone calls urging him to
formally oppose Mattone’s plans with either
testimony or a letter to the LPC. Finally we
confronted Stein in person at a community
meeting the night before a crucial LPC
hearing in December. That discussion
prompted a letter of support from Stein that
was read into testimony at the LPC hearing
the next morning.
Our protracted effort to gain Stein’s
support was rewarded by the sight of Mattone, his attorney, and his architect walking
out of the hearing as the letter was being read
into the record. Following that hearing, the
landmarks commission unanimously voted
to deny Mattone’s application to demolish
our brownstones.
Undeterred, Mattone applied for a certifi­
cate exempting from LPC protection the
two brownstones whose facades had been
stripped and stuccoed in 1938. The action
was premised on the notion that No. 11 and
No. 13 essentially had “no style” that needed
SEPTEMBER 1984

to be preserved, despite testimony by a
respected architectural historian, Christopher
Gray, that they exemplified the mid-1930s
Art Moderne style. The application was
granted in January 1982.
Mattone then reapplied to the LPC with
revised construction plans, calling for the
demolition of the back two-thirds of No. 9.
But our local Community Board refused to
consider Mattone’s new plan and after two
meetings it was clear the LPC was unsym­
pathetic. Ads listing the three brownstones
under “DISTRESS SALE” appeared in the
April 18 New York Times. Mattone with­
drew his LPC application on April 27, a day
after passage of new zoning laws prohibiting
mid-block high rises. In January 1983, 9

B
U
I—

East 63 rd Street was sold and currently is
being renovated. With ownership of the
three brownstones divided up, we seem to
have prevailed, at least for the time being.
Persistence, firm belief in our cause, and
broad community support had translated
into a highly effective force for preservation
of our East 63 rd Street neighborhood. The
public hearing process may be slow and
often frustrating, but, in this case at least, it
allowed all those concerned to participate
democratically. Ironically, a comment made
by Mattone’s attorney, after his success in
advancing the interests of a developer in a
different case, seems to best sum up our
feelings: “It wasn’t neat. But, in fact, the
process worked.”

M

B
HSII B
n 'V.| 111RIH11
SiWimfl
■
F ffig f

|H
n
m Sm
KH

»

HI

SB

M
Residents o f the three brownstones advocated
restoration o f the facades o f their townhouses.
Their architect’s proposal is shown above.

Industrial engineering professor
Seymour Melman warns a g a in st...

PROFITS W ITHOUT
PRODUCTION

Visiting Professor Seymour Melman with Andre Gingerich ’84

Ordinarily, an industrial engineering profes­
sor would seem an unlikely choice as
Swarthmore’s Eugene Lang Visiting Profes­
sor of Social Change. But long-time anti­
militarist scholar Seymour Melman is hardly
an ordinary industrial engineering professor.
He has had the audacity to challenge much
of the conventional wisdom taught in Amer­
ica’s leading schools of business, economics,
and engineering. By virtue of this audacity,
not to mention his temerity in writing five
books that deal with economics as much as
engineering, engineer/economist Melman
has emerged as one of the nation’s most
outspoken authorities on the effects of mili­
tary spending on the civilian economy.
During spring semester, Melman taught
two courses—“The War Economy” and
“Production Without Hierarchy”—which
were listed as both engineering and econom­
ics courses in the College’s class schedule.
Such hybrids are a product of the cross­
pollination of the Columbia University pro­
fessor’s technical expertise with his political
interests. Melman, for instance, currently is
co-chairman of the National Committee for
a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), was long a
vocal critic of American involvement in the

war in Vietnam, and before that worked to
reverse the nuclear arms race.
“I count military spending as non-produc­
tive economic activity,” declared Melman in
a recent interview. “Traditional economists,
on the other hand, count anything that has a
price tag as an economic product.
“The matter, in fact, came up in a doctoral
examination not long ago at Columbia,” he
continued. “The student had a diagram
showing money being converted to capi­
tal—meaning production facilities—then
being converted again to money with an
increment of money.
“So l turned to this student and said: ‘Let’s
look at your diagram. You start with money,
we convert it to production resources, we
make goods, which we then sell and we have
more money. Now, let’s say the next round
of production includes some military goods.
Can you use those for further production—
as additional capital—or for consumption?’
“Well, the answer, of course,” Melman
noted, “is ‘no.’ By their very nature weapons
can’t be used to produce anything. That’s
what sets military goods apart.
“You could say they have some religioususe value to some persons,” Melman added

a bit sardonically. “I’m prepared to concede
that. But that’s not the same as an economicuse value, as for consumption, or usefulness
for further production.”
While this kind of iconoclasm has earned
the scorn of some conservatives and main­
stream economists—including a few at
Swarthmore— Melman gets high marks
from many of the leading liberal lights in the
profession. In a review of Melman’s most
recent book, Profits Without Production,
Harvard’s John Kenneth Galbraith wrote:
“Conservatives who come automatically to
the support of the Pentagon budget claims
are major architects of our industrial decline.
Melman’s case here is exceedingly compel­
ling, made more so by the background in
engineering and the practical arts that he
brings—along with a wealth of economic
data—to his argument.” Galbraith also cred­
its Melman with identifying the nation’s
“large commitment of capital to econom­
ically sterile military production and its
similar appropriation of engineering and
scientific talent (as) a major factor in the
poor performance of the modern American
corporation.”
Besides detailing the “deadend economic
qualities of Pentagon spending,” Melman’s
book decries the disastrous effects of “man­
agement science,” as taught in leading busi­
ness schools, on American industry. “The
business schools and the economics depart­
ments have played an important part in
providing the ideological justification for the
current pillaging of U.S. industry,” Melman
charges. “They’ve largely defined and rein­
forced the now standard methods of short­
term corporate decision making. . . by prop­
agating the idea that making money is the
name of the game and that calculations
based on very limited time perspectives are
just fine. That ethic of short-termism has put
major constraints on the ability to make
serious long-term production investments or
do serious policy planning.”
In an opinion piece for the New York
Times last year, entitled “Managers’ Deba­
cle,” Melman argued: “A generation of
managers has been trained by our business
schools to make money, not goods.. . . The
result. . . is visible in the dissolution of oncegreat industries. These industries have been
managed by persons increasingly oriented
towards profits by financial strategems, com­
modity speculation, and fast-return invest­
ments, finally striving for profits without the
burdens of any production at all.”
American taxpayers, as well as workers,
now are paying for the short-sighted policies
of their employers and political leaders,
Melman maintains. “We have a growing
number of employers and managers not
interested in and not competent to organize
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

productive enterprises. In fact, they are
prepared to do all manner of other things,
rather than organizing work, in order to
make money. It is an unprecedented situa­
tion. Nothing in the history of American
industry, much less trade unionism, has
equipped anybody to cope with the present
scene. There is no body of economic theory
—not from Adam Smith, or David Ricardo,
or Karl Marx, or John Keynes, or Milton
Friedman—that anticipates incompetence
in production among industrial managers as
a general economic problem.”
The managers of many multi-national
conglomerates, encouraged by huge corpor­
ate tax write-offs for plant closings, are
effectively cannabalizing American industry
in the interests of short-term profits, Melman
says, while exporting industrial capital,
equipment, and jobs. “Meanwhile, business
schools rationalize the collapse of entire
industries,” Melman noted in the New York
Times, “with facile explanations about post­
industrial society, sunset and sunrise indus­
tries, service economies, subsidized imports,
government regulation, the unions, and
‘What’s wrong with making money?’ ”
The most effective way to stem the tide,
Melman suggests, is to encourage those with
the most immediate interests in the success
of firms as productive enterprises—produc­
tion workers, engineers, and productionoriented middle managers—to become
directly involved in managing their own
enterprises. “The traditional lines between
labor and management will blur,” Melman
insists, “or many American industrial firms
won’t survive.” He points to recent buyouts
of steel mills and supermarkets, by middle
managers and workers threatened with the
loss of their jobs, as healthy signs that labor
and management are learning to share deci­
sion-making authority.
At the same time, many American edu­
cators and corporate leaders are being forced
to recognize the value of long-term planning
and investments by foreign competitors.
Melman sees Swarthmore’s unique liberal
arts-based engineering program as especially
well-suited in some ways for teaching his
specialty, industrial engineering.
“It is crucial to underscore here that
unlike other engineering fields—civil, or
mechanical, or chemical, or electrical engi­
neering—the core knowledge that has to be
applied in industrial engineering comes not
only from the natural sciences, but also from
knowledge of human behavior.. . . To re­
spond to the decay of production compe­
tence in the U.S., it is essential that we give
renewed attention to social costs, as well as
technical cause and effect, in making engi­
neering decisions.” ¿At
— By Larry L. Elveru
SEPTEMBER 1984

rV
d

Mp

3
fc *

ft

Sarah Sangree ’85 (center), friend Jamie Gamble (left), and her mother Gail Sangree
take a break from their labors in Morrillo, Nicaragua.

Sandinistas
A Matter o f Conscience
By Larry L. Elveru

t definitely was not your typical mid-winter
vacation. Margaret Neisser Lobenstine ’65 had
decided, though, that it was time to find out for
herself what life was like in Nicaragua under the Sandi­
nistas three years after their overthrow of U.S.-backed
dictator Anastasio Somoza. So Lobenstine— a mother
of two who, with her husband Geoffrey, runs the
W ildwood Inn in Ware, Mass.—joined a group of 130
Americans who went to Nicaragua in January to help
harvest the beseiged country’s export crops. After a
two-week stay in Nicaragua, Lobenstine came home
exhausted, but clearly inspired by what she had seen.
“Each morning, after waking around five,” she
recalls, “I would walk through the predawn darkness to
the latrines, my path lit by the cooking fires of the vil­
lage women already preparing breakfast for their fam­
ilies. A long day later, passing the same way again, I
would see those same women, still awake, ironing

I

clothes. Amid the dust, and the dirt, and the
shortages of water, their pride fought back
with an iron.
“It’s far from perfect down there,” Lobenstine adds, “but we wouldn’t let any other
country do to us what we’re trying to do the
Nicaraguans.”
The Reagan administration, claiming the
Sandinistas are supplying arms to leftist
guerrilla forces in neighboring El Salvador,
is trying to destabilize the Nicaraguan gov­
ernment by having the CIA fund, train, and
equip the Contras. Based in Honduras and
Costa Rica, the Contras are counter-revolu­
tionaries, mainly Somoza’s ex-National
Guardsmen, who have mounted guerrilla
attacks across Nicaragua’s borders in hopes
of eventually overthrowing the Sandinista
regime. Last spring Congress discovered that
the CIA had gone so far as to direct the
Contras in mining the harbor at Corinto,
Nicaragua’s main port, despite a law passed
in December 1982 specifically forbidding
U.S. support for any attempt to overthrow
the Nicaraguan government.
Lobenstine, and hundreds of other Amer­
icans and West Europeans opposed to the
CIA’s not-so-covert war in Nicaragua, went
there last winter in response to a call for
volunteers to help harvest cotton, coffee, and
sugar, while Nicaraguans were preoccupied
defending their borders. Each cash crop is a
vital source of foreign exchange for the
country, which is staggering under severe
economic sanctions imposed by the U.S.
government. The sanctions have hobbled
efforts to rebuild the Nicaraguan economy
in the wake of its revolution, mainly by
limiting access to international credit needed
to finance the import of crucial parts, equip­
ment, and even medicine.
“I knew the U.S. government was under­
mining the Sandinistas with economic sanc­
tions, as well as with guns,” Lobenstine
explains. “But that vague generality took on
shape and substance . . . when I heard a
nine-year-old scream out all night from the
pain of rheumatoid arthritis because the
medicine and pain killers she needs are not
available.. . . The CIA likes to blame such
things on ‘inefficient Sandinistas,’ but it is
U.S. policy that brings that child her
screams.”
Lobenstine’s group called itself the “Mar­
tin Luther King Brigade” because it left for
Nicaragua on January 15, King’s Birthday.
Brigade members came from many states,
age groups, and religious denominations,
Lobenstine says. Her own interest in going to
Nicaragua grew out of her work with a local
study group called the Northampton Com­
mittee on Central America, which puts out a
newsletter and does community education
on the issue.
12

member.
“Before the revolution, ‘all’ she was was a
washerwoman, who worked at home sur­
rounded by her kids. She never went any­
where but to Mass and market; she just did
washing. But the Sandinistas saw past that,
she said, they saw her potential. They trusted
her with secrets, and weapons, and she
became a night-time courier.
“Somoza’s National Guard grew suspi­
cious and several times they came to her
house, but each time they saw ‘only a
washerwoman’ and they went away con­
vinced she could not be a threat. I can see
why today she stands guard with, attends
literacy classes with, and will certainly vote
with the Sandinistas,” Lobenstine notes.
“They not only ended Somoza’s power, they
also recognized hers.”
Like Lobenstine, Sarah Sangree ’85 spent
two weeks in January working under the
hot Nicaraguan sun to protest U.S. policies
in Central America. Sangree, who has taken
four courses in Spanish at Swarthmore, had
expected to pick coffee in the Nicaraguan
highlands, but was diverted from that course
by guerilla attacks in the region. Instead
she and twenty-nine other members of her
group, including her mother, found them­
selves in Morillo, near the Costa Rican
border.
“We slept in a school house that used to
be one of Somoza’s summer homes, so it was
one of the nicest buildings in that little
1 town,” Sangree says. “The biggest thing we
|O did was dig bomb
shelters and trenches
.
z because the Nicaraguans were really fright< ened after the U.S. invaded Grenada. They
| felt it was just a dress rehearsal and that the
2 U.S. was going to invade Nicaragua next.
© “So we dug seven trenches. They were
Margaret Lobenstine ’65 helped harvest cotton.
six-and-a-half feet deep and three feet wide,
with steps going down into them. We spent
our canteens, and our hats, while finishing entire days doing that, using shovels that
were falling apart. But the Nicaraguans
breakfast.”
Lobenstine and the 130 members of her shared the work with us. They have a whole
brigade worked in the fields alongside Nica­ different ethic,” Sangree says.
“We went down there with all this guilt
raguan farmers and students, sent from
neighboring towns and cities, to help speed because our tax money is paying for the
the harvest on the 15,000-acre cotton plan­ bombs they feared, so we really wanted to
tation, which was once owned by the dig those shelters. But they kept telling us
Somoza family. They picked cotton from 6 that our work was to learn as much as we
until 10 a.m. each day, when the sun could while we were there and come back
overhead would become too intense. Lunch home and tell people about the situation
often was a bowl of spicy, hot soup, which there. In a way that’s a lot harder than
was intended to encourage perspiration. digging trenches,” Sangree adds.
Since returning from Nicaragua, Sangree
They returned to the fields from 3 to 5 p.m.,
and after a dinner of beans, rice, and tortillas, and her mother have put together a slide
had an opportunity to discuss politics with show about their trip which they have
the Nicaraguans, some of whom were will­ shown to a local Rotary Club, libraries, and
ing to tell the North Americans about their at Wesleyan University. They and their
individual roles in the revolution. Loben­ fellow brigade members also have made
stine remembers well the story of one 47- hand-painted posters and sold them, raising
year-old woman, who is now a militia $900 so far to pay for medical supplies to be
“There are four reasons why we went to
Nicaragua,” Lobenstine says. “To show the
Nicaraguans that not all Americans want to
see a return to a Somoza-style dictatorship,
to see for ourselves the situation there, to
come back and share that information, and
to show President Reagan that many Amer­
icans don’t agree with his policies.”
As coordinator of her work brigade,
Lobenstine was responsible for making sure
that the members of her group used their
water purification tablets and took daily
anti-malaria pills, as well as for handling
more mundane details while they were in
Nicaragua. “At six in the morning it was
time to leave for the cotton field. Inev­
itably,” she recalls, “some of us were still
rushing around looking for our cotton sacks,

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

A return to teach-ins
A woman seated two rows from the front in the Dunwoody
Retirement Village’s community room in Newtown Square,
Pa., had been shifting uneasily in her chair for nearly half an
hour. She had listened impatiently, but courteously, while art
history Professor Curtis Brizendine and Professor of Russian
Thompson Bradley, two members of Swarthmore’s Faculty
Seminar on Central America (FCSA), outlined the political
history of Central America. Now she was determined to have
her say.
“I came here tonight knowing nothing about the situation in
Central America,” she began, “except that I am under the
impression, from what I have read in the newspapers and seen
on television, that we should be worried about the Russians
taking over there. You haven’t mentioned that once.”
“I know I haven’t,” Professor Bradley responded.
“Why not?”
“I haven’t because there is no real solid evidence of Russian
involvement there.. . . I’m not saying there aren’t some very
serious and radical changes being proposed there. There are, but
they’re coming from within. They are not coming from the
Soviet Union or from Cuba. And I don’t mean to say that the
Soviet Union isn’t gloating, isn’t delighted, that these things are
happening.
“But this is not an East-West problem,” Bradley continued.
“Major political, economic, and social changes are going on in
El Salvador and Nicaragua, as they are all over the Southern
Hemisphere, and all I can suggest is that we in the United States
must try to understand why and try and help those changes take
place nonviolently. What we can’t do is stop change. But what
we can do is try to see that change is accomplished demo­
cratically.”
“May I say something?” the woman interjected. “Russia has
a policy of making trouble anywhere they can, which I have
seen in action in this country, in fact, in Bucks County [Pa.].
They get in and do their best to make things worse because it’s
the only way they can get anywhere. They infíltrate.”
“I don’t think that’s an idle thought,” Bradley said, “but if we
live in a democracy—and I think we do—then the problems
that develop in our society won’t persist unless everyone here
just washes their hands and ignores them .. . . I really don’t
believe outsiders can take advantage of our problems, much less
create them, so long as we are honestly trying to resolve them.
They will get worse, however, if we don’t.”
While it is obvious the woman still is frustrated that she
cannot convince Bradley that he is more than a little naive about
the Russians, she lets the matter drop, gratified at least that she
has had her say. With both sides tacitly agreeing to disagree, this

short-lived confrontation is over and the meeting breaks up
without any rancor lingering in the air that would be
reminiscent of Vietnam War-era teach-ins.
Since February members of Swarthmore’s FSCA have
spoken at churches, synagogues, and high schools, as well as
retirement homes, on U.S. policy in Central America. The
group is composed of eighteen faculty members from different
academic disciplines, including political science, philosophy,
and history. While they do not share a common opinion about
what the U.S. should do in Central America, they all agree the
present policy should be carefully examined. In the spring,
FSCA sent eleven people to Washington, D.C., to express their
concerns about the Reagan administration’s policies in Central
America in meetings with U.S. Senators John Heinz and Arlen
Specter, and Swarthmore-area U.S. Representative Robert
Edgar.
FSCA formed a year ago, when several professors found that
they shared concerns about the situation in Central America.
Like most ordinary citizens, though, they felt they didn’t have
enough facts to make informed judgments about U. S.
involvement in the area. “We wanted to look behind the
newspaper headlines and explore responsible alternatives to the
Reagan administration’s policy,” recalls philosophy depart­
ment chairman Hans Oberdiek.
The group began meeting weekly over brown bag lunches.
At first, they listened to background briefings by two members
of the group who were especially knowledgeable on the subject:
political science Professor Kenneth Sharpe and philosophy
Professor Hugh Lacey. Sharpe teaches courses on Latin Amer­
ican politics, has testified before congressional committees
about the area, and is a former advisor to the Senate
Democratic Caucus on Central America. Lacey teaches a
course on the growing influence of the Catholic church on the
social and political movements in Latin America.
Eventually the group began assigning and sharing research
papers, and they did a thorough examination of the contro­
versial recommendations issued by the presidential commission
on Central American policy headed by former Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger. By spring semester, the faculty seminar
group felt it was ready to share with others what they had
learned.
“We were convinced that the crisis in Central America poses
a more serious challenge for the United States than many
people realize,” explains political science Professor Charles
Beitz. “There are choices to be made concerning American
policy, and these choices should not be left only to the policy
makers in Washington.”
— By Larry L. Elveru and Lorna Shurkin

sent to Nicaragua.
Wendy Hoben ’83, who has spent almost
three months in Nicaragua during two
summer trips to Central America since
graduating from Swarthmore, shares Sangree’s feeling that Nicaraguans are genuinely
friendly towards U.S. citizens down there.
“It’s a very different feeling than you get
from going to most other Central American
SEPTEMBER 1984

countries,” Hoben explains. “You don’t feel
that people are being nice to you because
they know you have money and you might
spend it. It’s much more a sense that they
have something to teach you and they’re
glad you came down to learn.
“They make it quite clear,” she adds.
“What they say is: ‘Anyone who comes
down here as a friend, we welcome as a

friend. But anyone who comes down here
with arms, we will greet with arms.’ ”
Hoben majored in political science at
Swarthmore and says she went to Nicaragua
two weeks after graduating to learn the
language and because of her interest in the
politics of the region. Hoben returned to
Nicaragua this summer after earning an
M.A. in political science from the University
13

PHOTOS BY SARAH SANGREE ’85

A t right: Sarah Sangree ’85
(in the trench) and other North
Americans helped dig bomb
shelters in Nicaragua last Jan­
uary in the wake o f the U.S.
invasion o f Grenada.
Below: Children in Nicaragua
still suffer from malnutrition.

of California at Berkeley. Her master’s work
included a study of the evolution of the
political role of the military in El Salvador.
By tracing the course of the five or six
military coups there since the early 1930s,
Hoben says she found that the military’s
shifting political alliances reflected the ten­
sions in the country between U.S. interests
and the economic oligarchy there.
While visiting Salvadorean refugee camps
in Honduras this summer, Hoben walked
across the border into Nicaragua to visit
friends. She was accompanied by William
Ulrey ’83, who has been in the Peace Corps
in Honduras since graduating. Though they
heard a shot ring out as they crossed the
contested frontier between the two coun­
tries, Hoben said she felt safe once they were
inside Nicaragua.
“My father’s advice before I went down
there the first time was: ‘If you hear shooting,
hit the floor.’ I was a little nervous,” Hoben
14

acknowledges, “last year and again this year
in the refugee camps in Honduras, where
they’ve been known to take people out and
shoot them. In Nicaragua, though, they are
incredibly concerned that no North Amer­
icans get killed. It would be terrible press for
them.”
Hoben, who has returned to Berkeley to
work on her doctorate in political science
specializing in political theory in Central
America, found that some progress had been
made in Nicaragua since she was first there.
“Things are changing there and generally for
the better.. . . Food and housing there are
quite cheap, much cheaper than in Hon­
duras or Costa Rica. The biggest economic
problems definitely are caused by the U.S.
economic sanctions, which have given them
an incredible foreign exchange problem.
“Industry has suffered immensely because
it’s so expensive now to import the raw
materials and semi-finished goods they used

to assemble. Agriculture, on the other hand,
has done fairly well.
“There is a disaffected group of middleand upper-class people,” Hoben says. “When
you go into the middle-class neighborhoods
you’ll see a lot more propaganda for the
Liberal Independent Party and less for the
Sandinistas. But in the poorer barrios you
see almost total support for the frente [the
Sandinistas].. .. People are affected in a lot
of different ways by the economic prob­
lems,” she explains, “and their political
attitudes depend on how they analyze the
situation.”
While she refuses to predict how close the
November elections in Nicaragua will be,
Hoben is confident the Sandinistas will win
a majority of the votes cast. When asked
how much influence the Russians and Cu­
bans seem to have in Nicaragua, Hoben said
that she had seen only one Russian, a
woman, during her visits there.
“There are more Cubans than Russians,
but there are also immense numbers of Swiss
and Swedes. Sweden, I believe, gives more
foreign aid per capita than any other coun­
try,” she notes. “There are a lot of Cuban
doctors, though, and teachers working on
increasing literacy in areas considered very
dangerous, where Nicaraguan teachers are
being killed by the Contras. They get great
respect for that.”
Despite the presence of Cubans in Nica­
ragua, though, Hoben doubts that Nicaragua
is funneling many arms to rebels in El
Salvador, pointing out that the CIA has
come up with no convincing evidence for its
claims. “I don’t think Nicaragua has the
resources to be sending arms into El Salva­
dor, although a few individuals might be
able to.
“There definitely is some Russian and
Cuban influence in the region,” she con­
cludes, “but really the U.S. has much greater
negative influence.”
Donna Mullarkey ’83, a friend of Hoben’s
who went to Nicaragua with her two weeks
after graduation, decided to stay longer than
the two-and-a-half months she had antici­
pated. She finally returned to the U.S. in
August after spending over fourteen months
there. While in Nicaragua she picked coffee,
taught English, and worked for an agricul­
tural cooperative.
Mullarkey plans to return to Nicaragua in
January to help harvest coffee again. After
that, she hopes to study nursing in the U.S.
and do her practice nursing in Nicaragua.
“I had a terrific experience there,” she
says. “I felt very alive and personally
challenged . . . . When you see the sharing
and the sacrifices, the vision for the future,
and the real hope there, you just can’t help
but feel that it’s really worth living.” Jbk
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

A soggy send-off for
the Class of 1984
The word came the day before: Barring a
downpour, commencement will be held
outside\
Although heavy rain had been predicted
for the morning, it was well into the cere­
mony before intermittent showers began.
From under a sea of umbrellas, parents and
friends of the 320 graduating seniors ap­
plauded Board of Managers Chairman Eu­
gene Lang’s [’38] admonition, “Keep it
short. We’re getting wet.”
Prior to awarding degrees to the College’s
112th graduating class, President David
Fraser directed his remarks to the seniors.
“I have this image,” he said, “that you and
I are travelers who chanced to meet two
years ago, walked for a while together and
are now parting. I have enjoyed our brief
walk and am sorry in many ways to have the
parting come so soon.
“We know each other far better now than
when we met. Then we exchanged greetings

that were generously optimistic but without
any of the depth that comes of experience
and friendship. However, we have walked
long enough together to catch glimpses of
what lies a bit deeper. I have watched as you
endured comprehensives and Honors exams,
fires, international crises, changes in the
calendar, a fraternity closing, angry poetry,
and fallen trees, and so I have seen you
brilliant, dedicated, tired, frightened, in­
dignant, analytical, whimsical, and impas­
sioned. I have watched you grow even as we
walked and I have found myself growing as
a result of the companionship.”
President Fraser presented honorary de­
grees to Clifford Geertz, professor of social
science at the Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton; Nannerl Overholser Keohane,
president of Wellesley College and a former
Swarthmore professor; Fatima Meer, South
African civil rights activist; Victor Navasky
’54, editor of The Nation; and William
Foote Whyte ’36, a sociologist and professor
emeritus of the New York State School of
Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell
University.

In a small break with tradition, the Class o f ’84 elected two speakers: cousins Rebecca Fountain
(left) and Katherine Wilson. They spoke on how their differences and their similarities helped one
another grow while at Swarthmore.
SEPTEMBER 1984

\
Clifford J. Geertz

Clifford J. Geertz
“The old ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ contrast isn’t
enough anymore. Not only are the ‘Thems’
different one from the other, but they have in
turn their own ‘Thems,’ and so on ad
infinitum. Everyone is now involved in
everyone else’s life and, despite the great
disparities in power which persist, there is no
single center, not even eastern Pennsylvania,
from which one can look out at the world
anymore and hope to understand it. Com­
paring others with one another, and in terms
of one another, is at least as important as
comparing them to ourselves, in our terms.
“But this is what anthropologists, ‘Back
Here’ or ‘Out There,’ have been trying to
learn how to do for at least this century, and
why, if only to make myself less of a misfit, I
respond to the laudation you have given me
today by appointing you all honorary an­
thropologists. Welcome to the world behind
the looking glass.”

FOUND: A ntique filigreed gold bracelet in
the Scott Outdoor Auditorium after com­
mencement on May 28. For information and
identification please write to the Alumni
Office, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA
19081.

Nannerl O. Keohane
“During my years at Swarthmore, the
existence and effects of some long-standing
discriminatory policies were first being rec­
ognized: nepotism rules, unequal pay and
status for female faculty members, exclusion
from faculty seminars and bull sessions. It
was part of my Swarthmore education to
become conscious of these things, and they
are not that far behind us .. . .
“To become the first coeducational insti­
tution that takes its mission seriously, by
adopting and living out an explicit and
fearless feminist commitment, could be a
worthy goal for Swarthmore College.
“Taking such a stance would mean speak­
ing bold and unfamiliar truths that could be
considerably less comfortable and less so­
cially accepted by traditional liberals than
some of your other commitments. Yet the
feminist commitment I propose is not hostile
or bitter. It can be playful and collegial, it
promotes sisterhood as well as brotherhood,
it is surely thoughtful and intense. It means
paying attention to the words you use, the
material you teach and learn, the assump­
tions you make, the jokes you accept, the
myths you live by. It means a concern for the
fortunes of women—past, present and fu­
ture—which is the necessary step for reach­
ing a true humanism, and a true coeduca­
tion.”

comes from the nature of American society,
from its system of values, and blame has to
be shared by the American people, by that
artifact the mass media puts together at each
election time, the American will.
“The American people will come into
themselves when they stand up against the
forces of consumerism, and take their own
vows of poverty, to reflect the essence of
Christ and identify with the meek and the
mild.
“And the capacity to do so is implicit in
the body of American society, in the many
fine, decent, upright, and concerned men
and women. It has its basis in the great civil
rights movement and the hundreds of com­
mittees of concern that work for racial and
economic equality throughut the world.”

N annerl O. K eohane

V ictor S. N a v a sk y ’54

F atim a M eer

Fatima Meer

Victor S. Navasky ’54

“American commitment to anti-racism is
strong and admirable, but American foreign
policy supports the racist regime in South
Africa and conspires with it to destabilize the
region and thrust it into violence. It has the
temerity to interpret our freedom struggle as
a ‘Soviet machination to get control of South
Africa’s mineral riches.’ I have never seen a
Russian in sight in my country.
“One may blame American foreign policy
on a particular president or a particular
regime, but in the final analysis its impulse

“My first advice is to take what I, as the
unelected representative of the class of ’54,
have told you about the [bleak] prospects for
changing the national direction and weigh it
against our generation’s overall record. If
you find it wanting, if you find that we have
generally made a mess of things, then prove
us wrong in this prognostication as well.
“My second advice is that you think of the
country which I have described not as a
mature society but rather as what is these
days fashionably known as a developing

16

nation. After all, in Washington, D.C., the
infant death rate is higher than that of
countries such as Barbados, Jamaica, Costa
Rica, and Cuba. Like the citizens of other
developing nations you may want to change
your country’s name to reflect its heritage.
Perhaps the Unreal World would be more
like it.
“Which brings me to my final suggestion,
which may strike some of you as odd, this
being your last day at Swarthmore College.
Don’t leave. Ever. For here is a place which
takes seriously ideas and ideals, which val­
ues values, which cares more about moral
energy than the other kind, which devotes
itself to the search for justice, truth, and
occasionally even beauty, and which has
provided the context, if you are lucky, for
enduring friendship. Swarthmore, I would
submit, is the real Real World. But don’t
take my word for it. Go to the other place,
decide for yourself where the Real World
lies and act accordingly.”

William Foote Whyte ’36
“Will you learn from the experience of
others? And especially from those of more
humble social backgrounds without the
advantage of your higher education? . . .
“We cannot realize the potential benefits
of advancing technology unless we devise
systems that utilize the total human re-

W illiam F oote W hyte ’36

sources of our industrial organizations—and
that means the brains of workers as well as
their muscles and manual skills.
“Now I don’t believe that you have been
mentally deformed by Swarthmore, but
your education equips you to gain an elite
position in society. Many of you will be
working among others much less educated
but rich in experience and ideas. Only as you
are able to learn from them as well as lead
them can you fully realize your potential
contribution to your family, your commu­
nity, and your country.”
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Third Music and Dance Festival is a “charm”

Friend heads EEF program

The Swarthmore Music and Dance Festival held
its third— and best attended— season June 10-23.
Among headlining performers were jazz pianist
Marian McPartland (right), who opened thefesti­
val, and internationally renowned soprano Judith
Blegen (above). Under the direction o f James
Freeman, chairman o f the Music Department,
and Paula Sepinuck, acting director o f the
College’s dance program, thefesti val also brought
to campus acclaimed violinist Peter Zazofsky,
lyric soprano Neva Pilgrim, the Emerson String
Quartet, and the dance troupe Dan Wagoner and
Company. During the two-week festival, master
classes in chamber music and dance were con­
ducted by various o f the performing artists.

Pasternack and Scherer
named to endowed chairs
Two nationally eminent scholars have been
named by the Board of Managers to en­
dowed chairs at the College.
F. M. Scherer, an expert on U.S. industrial
policy, has been appointed Joseph Wharton
Professor of Political Economy and Robert
F. Pasternack, one of the world’s leading
bioinorganic chemists, was named Edmund
Allen Professor of Chemistry.
Scherer has conducted extensive research
in industrial economics, with emphasis on
technological change and its implications for
productivity and economic growth. Under a
National Science Foundation grant, Scherer
is currently engaged in a three-year research
project to determine why large numbers of
corporate mergers are subsequently undone
and how “spin-offs” affect the quality of the
divested firms’ performance.
An honors graduate of the University of
Michigan, Scherer received M.B.A. and
Ph.D. degrees from Harvard. He has taught
at Princeton, Michigan, and Northwestern
SEPTEMBER 1984

principles formulated by the Rev. Leon
Sullivan (Hon. ’68), recently became a non­
signatory and has refused to allow outside
monitoring of its activities. Dart & Kraft
accepts the Sullivan Principles but has not
reported its progress for several years.
The divestures follow a precedent set last
year by the Board when it authorized the
selling of 6,000 shares of common stock in
Dresser Industries because of concern about
the corporation’s activities in South Africa.
The Board monitors the employment prac­
tices of all the companies listed in its
investment portfolio that do business in
South Africa, to ensure their compliance
with the principles of equal pay for equal
work, non-discrimination in access to facili­
ties, and opportunities for training and
advancement for black employees.

Universities.
Pasternack joined the Swarthmore faculty
in 1982, after teaching for nineteen years at
Ithaca College, where he also held an
endowed chair. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate
of Cornell University, where he went on to
earn his Ph.D., he has been a research
scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory
and at the Universities of London, Paris, and
Rome.

College sells its stock in
two international firms
The College, through its investment man­
agers, has divested itself of 500 shares of
common stock in Champion Spark Plug Co.
and 4,000 shares of common stock in Dart
& Kraft, Inc., because of the Board of
Managers’ concern about the companies’
corporate activities in the Republic of South
Africa.
The College sold its Champion Spark
Plug stock because that company, which
had formerly endorsed the racial equality

Former College President Theodore Friend
has been chosen to serve as president of the
Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships (EEF)
program. The appointment, effective Sep­
tember 1, was announced by former U.S.
President Gerald Ford, chairman of the
board of EEF, Inc.
Under the EEF program, outstanding
diplomats, scholars, and professionals from
a number of countries spend three months in
the United States.
The EEFs were created in 1953 as a
tribute to President Eisenhower on his first
birthday in office. The late Thomas B.
McCabe ’15 was founding chairman of the
program.
During the past year, Friend has been a
Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Smithson­
ian Institution, where he has been complet­
ing a comparative history of Indonesia and
the Philippines under Japanese occupation.
A second book, his first novel, is scheduled
for publication next year.

Reference Librarian Emeritus
Howard H. Williams dies
Howard H. Williams, Reference Librarian
Emeritus, died in early July while vacation­
ing at Cape May, N.J. He was 74.
A graduate of Lake Forest College, Wil­
liams received his master of arts and his
master of science in library studies degrees
from Columbia University. He came to the
College library in 1949 as a readers’ services
librarian, overseeing reference, interlibrary
loans, and circulation. From 1967 until his
retirement in 1975, he was reference librar­
ian responsible for general reference, library
instruction, and interlibrary loans.
17

A record 1,250 Swarthmoreans re­
turned to campus on June 1, 2, and 3
(including one who came all the way
from Pakistan) for Alumni Weekend
’84. It took the largest staff of students
ever, fifty-six in all, to serve over 120
gallons of coffee and more than 400
yards of foot-long hotdogs to the hungry
hordes of Swarthmoreans and their chil­
dren at a picnic lunch following the
traditional parade on Saturday morning.
With eighty or more members on
campus, the Class of ’79 set a new
attendance record for 5th Reunion
classes. Not to be outdone, the 50th
Reunion class, the Class of ’34, handed
President David Fraser a check for
$504,254.08, the largest ever class gift.
ALUM NI WEEKEND ’84 Clockwise
from top left: 1 President David Fraser
had a chance to chat with Andrew Dannenberg ’74 before the parade. 2 Physics
Professor Paul Mangelsdorf ’49 with
Chris Miller ’68.3 “Sixteen Feet, ’’Swarthmore’s student a capella octet, entertained
during Collection. 4 Alice K. Brodhead
celebrates the dedication in her name o f
the College’s Education Materials Center
with a commemorative T-shirt in hand.
5 Physics Professor John Boccio attempts
to unravel the mysteries o f computers fo r
two prospective Swarthmoreans. 6 Singers
Vaneese Thomas ’74 (left) and Carolyn
Mitchell ’74 joined pianist James Batton
’72, guitarist Jim Kelly ’76, and friends
fo r a rhythm and blues and folk music
performance in Lang Concert Hall. 7 Sarah Van Keuren
’66 exhibited her non-silver print photography in Wilcox
Gallery, alongside 8 a display o f watercolors by classmate
Rachel Folsom. 9 Professor Emeritus o f Biology Robert K.
Endersand 10 Provost Harrison Wright with alumni before
the parade. 11 Assistant Physical Plant Director David
Melrose gave early bird alumni a campus tour. 12 Ed
Mahler ’50 (left) offered choice commentary as alumni
passed in review before Alumni Association Secretary
Monica Panwitt Bradsher ’63, past President Jack Lippincott ’27, President Sue Willis R u f f ’60, and Vice President
Sally A. Warren ’65.

warthmoreans of all ages celebrated reunions
ranging from their second to their seventieth
on June 2. Besides the traditional parade,
alumni enjoyed athletics, faculty lectures, campus
tours, concerts, picnics, and dancing. Look for
your classmates and friends in the special Alumni
Weekend ’84 Class Notes on the following pages.

S

Photography by Alan Dixon ’83,

¿k

Brendan Flynn ’86, and Steven Goldblatt ’67

Retiring Alumni Manager
Joann Bodurtha 74

Retiring Alumni Manager
James Dolliver ’49

Who will replace these two
alumni representatives on
the College Board of Managers?
The Swarthmore College Alumni Association is seeking nom­
inations fo r two positions o f Alumni Manager on the Board
o f Managers, officers o f the Alumni Association, and
members o f the Alumni Council. Every person who has ever
attended Swarthmore is encouraged to participate in the activi­
ties o f the Alumni Association.
The Association elects two alumni— one man and one
woman— each year to the Board o f Managers fo r four-year
terms. Incumbent Alumni Association officers are: President
Susan Willis R u ff ’60, President Designate Walter A.
Scheiber ’46, Vice President Sally A. Warren ’65, Vice Pres­
ident Donald Fujihira ’69, and Secretary Monica Panwitt
Bradsher ’63. Their two-year terms expire in June. In addi­
tion, fourteen positions on the Alumni Council must be filled.
Vacancies fo r the Alumni Council occur in the following
zones as indicated:

Zone A New Jersey (Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape
May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Mercer, Ocean,
Salem, Warren Counties), Pennsylvania (except Western
Pennsylvania). Two men and two women.
Zone B Connecticut, New Jersey (Bergen, Essex, Hudson,
Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex,
and Union Counties), New York. Two men and two women.
Zone C Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, Vermont. No vacancies.
Zone D Delaware, District o f Columbia, Maryland, Virginia.
One man and one woman.

Zone E Ohio, Western Pennsylvania (Allegheny, Armstrong,
Beaver, Butler, Clarion, Crawford, Erie, Fayette, Greene,
Lawrence, Mercer, Venango, Washington, and Westmoreland
Counties), West Virginia. No vacancies.

Zone F Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas. One man and one woman.
Zone G Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minne­
sota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wis­
consin. One man and one woman.
Zone H Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii,
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah,
Washington, Wyoming, territories, and foreign countries.
No vacancies.

Mail your nominations to
Alumni Office, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081

WH

Remembrances of
Swarthmore past
A

D

f

a?

)

h#*;
M

Whether for family, friends, or yourself, there’s
nothing like a gift that says you are proud of your
alma mater—and the alma mater is proud of you!
Those old campus memories are only as far away
as your mailbox. If you can’t get here in person, let
a gift from the Bookstore bring Swarthmore back to
you. A classic idea for holiday giving, too. Send us
your order today.
Swarthmore Chairs (A) Captain’s Chair, cherry arms, $158.00.
(B) Rocker, $129.00. Tax and common carrier freight
(approximately $25) are in addition to the price quoted.
Crew Neck or Hooded Pullover Sweatshirts, 50/50 blend.
Garnet with white seal imprint; Men’s sizes SMLXL. Crew Neck
(C) $11.99; Hooded Pullover (D) $17.99.
Crew Neck T-Shirts, 50/50 blend. (E) white script
imprint on silver or raspberry; (F) gold & white block
imprint on royal blue or garnet. Men’s sizes SMLXL.
(E) $6.50; (F) $6.99.
Swarthmore Golf Umbrella. Garnet & white. With
Swarthmore imprint. One size fits all, $12.99.
Swarthmore Bib. “Class of 20??” imprint (Bear not
included.) $2.50.
Swarthmore Glassware with garnet imprint. (G) Beer
Mug. $3.79; (H) Wine Glass. $3.29; (I) Rock Glass,
$2.29.
Swarthmore Ceramicware. (J) Deluxe Beer Mug.
Multicolor seal and gold trim. $11.99 (K) Coffee Mug.
Garnet imprint, $2.99.

‘ *J

* .
w Ê Jk
[«Sr

m m
Jk
f e ­

rn

Ml

mm
¡¡■¡SB
Ü 8
■

um gm
nttarr Ca

V

ill

zL V® _ iUi

All prices subject to change without notice.
In sweatshirts (left): standing, Matt Roach ’85 and Becky
Henderson ’86; seated Jan Merin ’85 and Ben Fulves ’87. In
T-shirts (above right): Maria Figueroa ’87 and Albert Park ’86.

H

K

■

■ CATALOG
NUMBER

ITEM

SIZE

IMPRINT

COLOR

QTY

UNIT
PRICE

TOTAL
PRICE

ORDERING NOTE...In ordering clothing, please
indicate a second choice for color, in case your first
choice is out of stock, otherwise, we will hold the
order until the original selection becomes available.

Bookstore O rders S

Shipping/

Handling

-

Add

$ Value

Up to 10.00.. .. 1.50
10.00 to 20.00.. . 2.00
Over 20.00.. ..3.00

ORDERED BY (please print legibly):
Merchandise Subtotal

Ï Master card or VISA No.

Exp--------

IN PENNSYLVANIA, ADD
6% TAX (Clothing is exempted)

■ Author i7ing Sinpaturfi
1 ( )Che ck ( ) Money Order is enclosed.
■ Make cnecks payable to: b r e n n a n c o llege
1 Do not send cash. Sorry, no COD’S.

HANDLING &SHIPPING
Please use chart at right

Name.
Address.

Date.

s e r v ic e , in c .

TOTAL AMOUNT

Zip.

City___
Tel. C-

L

In tiiis issue:
1 Hot time—summer in the
science labs
By Kirsten Gruesz 86
and Hilary Hochman 86
4 Famine amidst plenty
7 Showdown on E. 63rd St.
By Sally A. Warren ’65
10 Profits without production
11 Support for the Sandinistas
15 The College
18 Alumni Weekend ’84
20 Class Notes
Editor
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Managing Editor
Larry L. Elveru
Assistant Managing Editor
Kate Downing
Class Notes Editor
Kathryn Bassett ’35
Copy Editor
Ann D. Geer
Designer Bob Wood
Cover Daniel Ifft ’85, one of many
Swarthmore students engaged in
independent research.
Photo: Martin Natvig

heorem: You should enroll in the 1985 Swarthmore Alumni College
Abroad Adriatic Adventure with Professors Helen North and Michael
Cothren, April 2 3 -May 4.
Corollary: You also would enjoy the Prelude in Macedonia, April 18-23, and
the Postlude in Veneto and Verona, May 4-8.
Proof: I. Choice treasures of the ancient, Byzantine, medieval, and Renaissance
worlds are easily accessible along the beautiful shores of the Adriatic Sea.

T

O

V

-

...

m

i

Address

8

0»

Name

Telephone

Class_____

3

6C

Please send me details on Swarthmore’s
Adriatic Adventure

Send to: Alumni Office Swarthmore College
Swarthmore, PA 19081

Swarthmore Alumni College

Adriatic Adventure
April 23 to May 4, 1985
Prelude in Macedonia

Postlude in Verona

April 18-23, 1985

May 4-8, 1985

*

4>

II. Our itinerary samples these treasures, taking
us into such fabled harbors as Corfu, Brindisi,
Dubrovnik, Ancona, and Venice.
III. Swarthmoreans will have exclusive use of
the private motor yacht Argonaut and the
services of its skillful Greek crew.
IV. As a leader of our Adriatic Adventure,
Centennial Professor of Classics Helen North
will bring to bear her extensive knowledge and
experience as a traveler in the footsteps of the
ancient Greeks and Romans. Art history Pro­
fessor Michael Cothren, her co-leader, has a
special interest in Byzantine art.
V. Your traveling companions will be Swarth­
moreans and their relatives and friends.
For more information fill out and mail the
accompanying coupon.

ip: