Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1990-08-01

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SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE BULLETIN • AUGUST 1990

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Faultless Tennis!
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Playing at home, the men’s tennis team wins the 1990 NCAA
Division III championship fo r the third time in a decade.
By Roger Williams

6
Streetwise
Chester, Pa., is poor, often squalid, and by no means hopeless in
the eyes o f pragmatic idealist Kent James ’84, head o f the Chester
Community Improvement Project.

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10
When the Wall Fell
The tearing down o f bricks and mortar may not have been as
significant in Germany as the March 18 vote fo r unification.
By Andrew Perrin ’93 and Elliott Moreton ’88

12
The Giftlike Nature of Work
The best employers respond to their employees’ gift o f work by
offering three qualities crucial to a great workplace: trust, pride,
and pleasure.
By Robert Levering ’66

W IÊ Ê m
Editor:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Managing Editor:
Roger Williams
Assistant Managing Editor:
Kate Downing
Editor for Copy and Class Notes:
Rebecca Aim
Assistant Copy Editor:
Ann D. Geer
Designer: Bob Wood
Cover: Kent James ’84 (seated) with
volunteers and residents in Chester.
Photo by J. Martin Natvig.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), o f which this is volume
LXXXVII, number 6, is published in
September, twice in November, and in
February, May, and August by Swarth­
more College, Swarthmore, PA 190811397. Second class postage paid at
Swarthmore, PA, and additional mailing
offices. Postmaster: Send address changes
to Swarthmore College Bulletin, Swarth­
more, PA 19081-1397.

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15
Where the Buck Starts
William Spock ’51, vice president fo r business and finance, offers
a candid appraisal o f the College’s economic status.
By Roger Williams

24
Farmhouse Face-off
A fam ily treasure, restored, is still a fam ily treasure (and not a
fam ily albatross). But is it worth it?
By Daniel Menaker ’63

DEPARTMENTS
16 Letters
18 The College
26 Crossword Puzzle by Charles M. Bush ’49
27 Class Notes
31 Deaths
46 Recent Books by Alumni
57 Alumni Council

by Roger Williams

Faultless Tennis!
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Andy Mouer ’90 plays with an intensity that
belies his amicable off-court demeanor.

Swarthmore’s immaculate Faulkner Tennis
Courts face the deceptively benign May
afternoon painted in a merciless geometry of
green rectangles and white lines bisected by
taut nets. Created with a state-of-the-art
acrylic base, they offer the hard-hit balls
dancing off their surfaces only the precise
properties of physics.
Tennis on such courts proves unequivo­
cally just, as players from the nation’s top 12
teams have discovered at the men’s 1990
NCAA Division III Tennis Team Cham­
pionships hosted by Swarthmore— no play­
er ever gains more or less than he lends of
art and power to the ball.
The crowds gathered courtside in sun hats
and soft cottons to watch the tournament
remain oblivious to the warm spring sun;
their attitudes range from simple respect to
awe at the extraordinary levels of skill and
concentration revealed before them.
Some individuals have traveled to Swarth­
more from as far away as Michigan and
California to see the matches. W hen a point
is suddenly won or lost by a favored player,
their chorus of cries explodes like a shell
above the competition: Exultation and dis­
appointment are flung away in shrapnel
shouts that rip the air.
Down on the courts where as many as six,
games occur simultaneously, sun and pres­
sure join forces to create a penetrating,
relentless heat. Suddenly a player bellows,
“All right, yes!” and thrusts his racket up-

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Steve T ig n o r'91 (left)
was undefeated in
team play, while Tom
Cantine ’91 (above)
won the final point of
the championship.

S

warthmore’s coach
paces around with
an expression that
looks like the mask o f
Agamemnon.

Andy Dailey ’91, soon
off to do research in
Sri Lanka, is deter­
mined not to leave
without demanding
justice from the
umpire.

ward like a weapon. Triumph is a point
won, an opponent outsmarted. And good
psychology, a crucial part of the game, is
sometimes loud and vocal.
Two courts away another player smashes
an easy overhead into the net and walks
stoically back to the fence. He lays his racket
gently on the painted surface at his feet.
Then violently, without warning, he punches
the fence twice with a clenched fist; probably
his knuckles bleed. He picks up the racket
and reenters play as if nothing unusual has
occurred. Until the next serve, he will hate
himself.
Late in a close match, each tensely con­
tested point ignites a rush of emotions
flushed with hope or fraught with despair.
Some players control those emotions better
than others. Swarthmore’s coach, former
nationally ranked pro and 12-year leader
Michael Mullan, appears a master of control.
He paces around the concurrent games, each
destined to return one winner and one loser,
with an expression that looks like the mask
of Agamemnon. Mullan’s features are not so
much grim or despairing as set. Fatalistic.
His long body, hardened from years of play,
is a restless corpus of sinew and muscle all
tuned up with no place to go. The coach
can’t help his players now, in the final hours
of the national championships; he can’t play
for them.
But he tries anyway. Mullan slips onto the
courts between games and into an empty
chair at the foot of the umpire’s platform. A
Swarthmore player, locked with his oppo­
nent at three games apiece in a third and
decisive set, feels the coach’s presence, steals
a quick glance, gains a sense of momentum
and control. Mullan whispers a few words
inaudible to the crowd, and it works. The
player wins a point, and then another. But
it’s time for the coach to move away. He has
five other players in five other matches, each
crucial to him. Behind him, the Swarthmore
player loses the next point and mutters
viciously.
Who will win the point, game, set, and
match? For that matter, how much of victory
is simply getting to the national champion­
ships, or getting through them and perform­
ing well? At Swarthmore they occur during
exam week, an especially unforgiving sea­
son.
,
But down on the court there’s no time to
dwell on those questions. The next serve is
coming like a bullet, and the receiving player
does a tiny ceremonial dance on the balls of
his feet, then skips suddenly backward in a
split-step to meet the ball.
Only the final scores—bloodless, clean
numbers—will tell of defeat or a victory
gained in the heat of intense competition at
the national championships.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Swarthmore’s
players, accustomed
to steady pressure,
respond by playing a
cool, aggressive
game.

Team Results
Day 1: Swarthmore draws a bye; players are
tense and ready.
Day 2: Swarthmore defeats the University of
Rochester, 5-2.
Day 3: Swarthmore defeats Kalamazoo Col­
lege (Mich.), 5-2.
Day 4: Swarthmore defeats the defending
champion, University of California at Santa
Cruz, 5-1. The Banana Slugs are unable to
win the two singles matches required to
progress to doubles play against the powerful
Garnet, whose self-appointed nickname is
the Bandits. Playing the final matches inside
due to rain, Bandits and fans erupt in a
spontaneous show of joy when Tom Cantine
’91 steals the final point of a hard-fought
third set to secure the victory, Swarthmore’s
third national title in nine years and the
team’s first since 1985.

ent James ’84 sits in his office in
the oldest public building in the
state of Pennsylvania, a building
older than Independence Hall,
and contemplates freedom.
He believes that in some measure, at least,
freedom is financial. And for the people
who lead their lives on the crumbling streets
and in the struggling neighborhoods around
the Chester, Pa., historic courthouse where
he works, very little of it exists".
James heads up the Chester Community
Improvement Project, or the CCIP as Swarthmoreans have, come to know it, an organi­
zation that for some holds about as much
good-works glamour as a Salvation Army
clothing store.
But for him and a few others, most of
whom admit they once considered more
exotic and fashionable endeavors like the
Peace Corps, the organization’s focus on a

K

Streetwise
When a house saved is a home earned
by Roger Williams

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

desperate, backyard community satisfies a
moral responsibility to offer the nearby
needy a chance to manage their own desti­
nies.
“A lot of people told me that the Peace
Corps was a good way to travel but that you
didn’t get too much actually accomplished,”
he remarks. “I don’t know that I’ve done
much here, but at least I’ve had the chance.”
The goal of the CCIP, according to James,
is simple: to increase the independence of
“poor and moderate-income people in the
community by giving them the opportunity
to own and care for their own homes.”
These homes are broken and abandoned
buildings that have been purchased by his
organization from the city for as little as
$600 or as much as $4,000, carefully re­
stored to almost-mint condition, and sold to
proud new homeowners at prices they can
afford.
Each house sale results in the project’s loss
of money—as little as $10,000 (“cause for
celebration,” says James) or as much as
$35,000, the deficit he accepted recently
when he sold a home on Chester’s west side.
“We probably shouldn’t have tried that one
because there was too much work in it for
us,” he admits. “But you learn by trying.”
Traditionally the CCIP has been a dogooder’s organization harnessed to the mul­
ish ironies that sometimes hold back such
groups: They get very little actually done,
they make the do-gooders (in this case
usually volunteer students from Swarthmore,
Haverford, and area schools) feel better
about themselves without making anybody
else feel much differently about anything
else, and they’re actively supported by bright,
capable people whose talents sometimes
seem lost or ineffective in the environments
they wish to serve.

of people: those in purposeful motion and
those who are seemingly without direction,
drifting across the square, leaning or sitting
against buildings, watching the time pass
away. “I’d like to change what we do, how
much we do,” he comments suddenly. “I
think we’re at a juncture where the CCIP
needs to think in terms of having a real effect
on this community.”
After some five years as head of the
project, James remains a problem-solving
optimist who firmly believes in the old
principle of citizen action. His calloused
hands are not those of an administrator or
an academic, although he manages all as­
pects of the organization and reads and
studies constantly. As an undergraduate he
ames is a matter-of-fact pragmatist was a runner-up for a Rhodes scholarship;
who agrees: “That has characterized someday, he says, he will return to graduate
us to a large extent.” But good works school to study law, perhaps, or public
are also a matter of degree and opin­ policy.
ion. The project has restored 13 houses in theDressed without pretension in blue jeans
last four years and sold them to working and a loose shirt with a wilting collar that
families who might otherwise have been seems embarrassed to stand up, he is skep­
consigned to inescapable lifetimes of rental tical about human aspirations and their
living. To do this James has utilized one translated achievements. But he appears also
“underpaid and very good” construction to be without cynicism, sparked instead by
foreman and mostly volunteer or minimally a pure respect for the hardworking men and
paid student help, including an annual intern women who use the opportunity he provides
from Swarthmore, the status James first to improve their lives.
accepted with the CCIP in 1985.
On a wall of the large room that James
He glances outside where the afternoon has occupied with a single metal utility desk,
streets of downtown Chester hold two kinds a dented file cabinet, and a few chairs is a

J

AUGUST 1990

Savaged by time and the poverty of
previous inhabitants, Chester’s aban­
doned houses become showpieces at
the hands of volunteers.

7

Volunteers, wellarmed with
enthusiasm and
youth, usually come
from Swarthmore,
Haverford, and the
community.

map of Chester. The city isn’t small. Largely
abandoned by industry and business in the
1950s, Chester stretches in ungainly fashion
for miles along the Delaware River, a gaunt
and twisted creation of row houses and
vacant lots, housing projects, more than its
share of crime and drugs, struggling schools,
and plenty of hardship.
“Chester is divided into a couple of areas,”
James explains, eyeing the map like a unit
commander in a beleaguered battle zone.
“There’s the nice part north of Widener
University, where houses sell for $50,000 to
$100,000 or more. The east side is really
rough, with houses so close together and
streets so narrow that everybody lives on top
of one another. Drugs and crime are bad—
a lot of horror stories come out of there. But
it’s really so small that I think if people
focused on it they could do something about
it.” He pauses restlessly and considers the
dark, tightly drawn lines that mark the east
side of Chester. But that’s not his immediate
problem.
“Then there’s the west side, not quite as
bad, especially above Ninth Street. Down
closer to the river, though, it gets worse. We
work mostly in neighborhoods down there
on the west side because we started out
originally down there. Calgary Baptist
Church was down there, and people from
that church were on our board of man­
agers.”
The map reveals a number of small circles
marking houses already renovated by the
CCIP, purchased and waiting for renovation,
or available for purchase. James not only
works on the handle end of the hammer; he
cultivates the gratuitous funds that allow the
CCIP to buy and sell houses.

It is also his responsibility to find the right
buyers, “individuals who have some income,
no matter how small, who can get credit,
and who can make a down payment of 10
percent on a house,” he explains. “These
houses usually run in the $15-20,000 range,
requiring $1,500 or $2,000 in down pay­
ment. This means the buyers must have
some financial skills. That’s not real common
in a poor community like this.
“And we face some other problems here
many groups doing this kind of thing else­
where don’t face. If we were restoring houses
and neighborhoods in Philadelphia or blew
York, for example, we might spend $60,000
renovating a house and sell it for $25,000 or
$30,000—and we could do that every time
because the city might subsidize us.
“But there’s none of that in Chester. And
all of these abandoned properties still cost
the city money. First of all you have to board
up an abandoned property. That costs $350
to $500. If the property gets trashed or just
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

sits there for a while, it has to be cleaned up.
Then ultimately the city has to demolish the
place and fix the house it’s attached to. So
this costs an average of $4,000 a property,
not counting the loss of taxable income to
the city from an uninhabited place.”
James, who garners his small $100,000a-year budget from such supporters as the
Scott Paper Company, the William Penn
Foundation, the Philadelphia Foundation,
Provident Bank, and the Swarthmore Foun­
dation, has submitted a proposal to the city
of Chester.
“Basically it says, ‘Look, give us the
$4,000 to renovate. Then you will have an
income stream from this property and you’ll
be paid back for this in just a few years.’ But
their view is that they have a budget problem,
and they have a $200,000-a-year demolition
fund they might as well use.”
The example provides a case study not
only of his imaginative responses to the
myriad housing problems in Chester, but
also of the corruption that may be revealed
from time to time in city government.
“To demolish buildings here, the redevel­
opment authority requires three bids,” James
explains, a warning note of amusement in
his voice, “unless it’s an emergency demoli­
tion, in which case their organization awards
a no-bid contract. So in the last year the
emergency demos tripled and all went to one
guy. And the head of the redevelopment
authority got a kickback. He resigned, but
that kind of stuff goes on all the time.”
The CCIP faces a philosophical question
every time it buys a house, James explains.
“Do we want to improve neighborhoods, to
buy all the houses on a block, for example?
Or are we trying to provide as much afford­
able housing as possible? If that’s the case,
we probably ought to buy houses that take
the least amount of work and turn them over
as fast as we can.”
Right now, says James, the organization
is trying to do two things: “One is to provide
affordable housing; the other is to improve
the quality of life on the west side of
Chester.” He will not consider building
houses from scratch, or outside of Chester,
if it means abandoning buildings in the city,
he says, because he is passionately commit­
ted to a philosophy of use and reuse.
“City planners and the government should
encourage people to work with what they
have and not to abandon houses or neigh­
borhoods or cities,” he states flatly. “I feel
very strongly about that. Unfortunately, gov­
ernment policy encourages and subsidizes
people who go elsewhere.”
He cites one situation on Fifth Street in
Chester where the CCIP is selling a house
for $17,500. “The government is footing the
AUGUST 1990

bill for a family that is renting virtually next
door in a place that costs $550 a month. The
government foots the bill for anything above
30 percent of their income, and if their
income is low, the government will pay over
$500. Of course the family can’t get this
money to make house payments, which in
our case ironically are much lower. So this
policy encourages a rental system, and the
money goes to the landlord, not the tenant.
In effect the government is subsidizing the
landlord and leaving the tenant with the by­
product. Tenants end up just moving around.
“And I know a woman who was paying
$200 a month for 16 years, and all of a
sudden her 21-year-old son started to work
and her rent doubled. So what’s the incentive
to work? Either some people in the govern­
ment are asleep, or they have a vested in­
terest.”
The various ironies and injustices he
confronts appear less likely to cause James
despair than to excite or anger him. He
describes the whole subject of housing, from
construction to real-estate law to financial
planning, as “hugely complex, endlessly fas­
cinating.” His anger comes when he notes
injustices that play hard with people of low
or moderate income.
“For example,” he says sharply, “people
with expensive houses in Swarthmore may
pay no more in property-tax dollars than
people in Chester, where property taxes are
almost formidable on a percentage basis.
And whose children get to go to much better
schools? It never ceases to amaze me that the
poor must struggle much harder than the
rest of us just to remain in place.”
James is unquestionably principled.
When, after much discussion of the facts
and figures, he is asked bluntly to describe
his ideology, he proves characteristically
direct. “I guess it’s based on a belief that my
life would be better if everybody else’s lives
were better. I don’t want to live obliviously
in a world where a few people are privileged
and have ‘fine lives,’ and other people are
having trouble getting food or housing. Be­
cause I don’t feel comfortable with a world
like that even if I’m one of the privileged; I’d
rather live in a world where everybody had
pretty much enough, and nobody had too
much.”
He notes unhesitatingly that he is one of
the privileged. “I went to Swarthmore, and
it wasn’t on a scholarship. That’s not cheap.”
He is grateful, he says, and proud. His
parents, Paul James, Jr., ’55, and Janet
Lewis Honecker ’58, also attended the Col­
lege, as did his brother Randall ’87, a
grandfather, two uncles, one aunt, and three
cousins.
“I don’t think my ideals were born at

Swarthmore,” he observes. “But I think the
College helped to shape them.”
What he does for those less privileged is
try to provide them with an opportunity to
shape themselves and their own lives. But he
doesn’t do it for them.
One of his homeowners, for example, had
worked steadily as a housekeeper at a health
clinic in Chester for more than 15 years.
After receiving approval for several credit
cards, something she had no experience
with, she spent the maximum amount, ran
up a $5,000 debt, and was able only to pay
her monthly interest—at 18 percent a year.
“When you’re making $9,000 a year, that’s
hard to do,” says James sardonically.
“She was different than some people who
inquire here about buying houses because
she was paying off her bills. But she just
wasn’t able to get credit with a bank for a
down payment because of the outstanding
debt.”
So James worked out a lease-purchase
agreement with her, charging her 30 percent
of her income for rent but keeping only what
it cost the CCIP to hold the house. The
remainder was applied to her credit-card
debt.
“Over the course of a year and a half,”
James reveals, “she got rid of the credit card
Continued on page 56

don’t want to
live obliviously
in a world
where a few people
. . . have ‘fine lives,’
and other people
are having trouble
getting food or
housing.”

I

9

For m any,

EAST BERLIN, March 10-20—On the
train into East Berlin from the West, just
past the Wall, stands a decrepit apartment
building. Superimposed on the gray, peeling
paint of the chipped wall, the word Arbeiterwohlstand—“workers’ prosperity”—
is painted in huge letters. The irony is typical
of many aspects of life in East Germany.
Ultimately it was this irony, combined with
visions of West Germany’s conspicuous con­
sumption beamed in on the television news,
that led to the East Germans’ choice of the
center-right coalition Alliance for Germany
in the March 18 legislative elections. Under
the auspices of the Institute for Peace and
International Security and Swarthmore’s
Department of Political Science, we went to
Berlin to observe those elections.
Almost everything had changed in East
Berlin since a brief and informal tourist visit
the previous June. But one thing remained:
the incredible red tape. The East German
Embassy in Washington, D.C., had provided
us only with entry visas, no exit visas. Upon
arrival in East Berlin, we spent several hours
shuttling between our apartment, a local
university, and the police headquarters. We
were required to register with the police and
the manager of our apartment building, as
well as to get two more visas and a “permis­
sion to reside in the GDR” stamped in our
passports. Such inconveniences as this are
still part of daily life in East Germany.
In the past, West Berliners did a fairly
good job of forgetting that Berlin was an
island of the West, entirely surrounded by
East Germany. West German money, postal,
and telephone systems were used there, and
West Berliners lived much like other West
Germans. One of the few reminders of their

Andrew Perrin ’93
10

when the G erm ans

voted

special situation was the sign for Deutsche
Reichsbahn prominently displayed at the
main train station in West Berlin. This is the
East German rail agency that runs the
station and controls all rail lines in and out
of Berlin.
Now, ironically, the first indicator of the
staggering changes of the last few months
also appears in front of that train station. In
an informal display of monetary German
unity, scores of people stand outside the
station trading the ostmark, East German
money, at cheaper rates than the banks.
Black-market currency exchange that used
to occur in back alleys in Soviet-bloc coun­
tries has hit the main streets of West Berlin.
Unification: ifs, ands, or buts?
Change in the black market is only one of
the ways de facto German unification had
begun long before the elections guaranteeing
its formalization. Heavily subsidized food
prices in the East attracted West Berliners,
and the lure of Western brands in West
Berlin brought Easterners pouring in. The
border crossings at Friedrichstrasse train
station and Checkpoint Charlie, which took
as much as IV 2 hours to get through last
summer, presented almost no delay at all in
March.
Even as the questions of German unifica­
tion (if, why, how, and when it would
happen) were being discussed in the context
of the election campaign, the biggest parties
in the campaign served as indicators of
decisions to come. The two major parties—
the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the
Social Democrats (SPD)—amounted to spin­
offs of the West German parties of the same
names. Their rallies sported Western politi­
cians like Willy Brandt (for the SPD) and
Helmut Kohl (for the CDU). This unique
campaign structure made it clear that many
Germans counted the national division as
artificial and temporary.
In Potsdam, Brandt justified his presence
by referring to an “international movement”
of social democrats, but the implications of
his speech were clear: Westerners would run
the big campaigns, fund and print campaign
literature, observe the elections, rejoice in
the results, and carry out the Anschluss the
voters chose on March 18.

Proposals for unification
The “how” of unification fired the fur­
naces of the campaigns and their activists,
often late into the night. At the Alexanderplatz—the main square of East Berlin—
hundreds of people, many of them vendors
who had earlier used their carts to sell
sausages and other food, moved through the
crowds distributing campaign literature from
9 p.m. until 1 or 2 in the morning.
The Alliance for Germany, the centerright coalition that includes the CDU and
two smaller East German parties, garnered
the most votes and favored unification “as
quickly as possible.” Its adherents favored
simple annexation under the West German
Constitution. “We are one people!” said
their stickers and campaign posters; for
them, the division between East and West
Germany was entirely artificial and should
simply be removed.
The Social Democrats supported unifica­
tion as well. But their literature stated, “It is
not enough that we want unity. We also have
to work things out together.” They tried to
point out the advantageous rent and food
subsidies, as well as the semblance of full
employment, that East Germany had ac­
complished. These achievements would be
lost, they said, if simple annexation took
place. Oskar Lafontaine, the leader of the
Western Social Democrats, said, “We want
the common growth of Germans to happen
in such a way that social justice is guaranteed.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

fedfor reunification

And the people of the GDR have to be able
to care for themselves.”
While the Alliance was using slogans like
“We are one people” and “Germany a
united fatherland,” the Party of Democratic
Socialism, the successor of the Communist
Party, made the transition from 40 years as
the ruling party to an opposition party. PDS
posters proclaimed, “We are one people:
1:1,” referring to detrimental monetaryunion plans offered by Bonn. And their
slogan “GDR a united fatherland” was part
of a larger effort to point out the accomplish­
ments of the East German regime. They
pointed to “social justice and security, equal
chances for exposure to culture independent
of monetary status, [and] the antifascist
character of the GDR.”
At the massive single-party rallies we
observed, however, there was often internal
debate and protest: one large PDS poster
facing a crowd had been altered from “Party
of Democratic Socialism” to “Party for
Democratic Stalinism,” a reminder of the
dark 40-year history of the PDS in East
Germany.

l

i

“Wessis” and “Ossis”
The revolution in East Germany, for
which West Germans (“Wessis” or “Bundis”
in the local slang) had hoped for years, has
not brought universal rejoicing in the West.
The hundreds of thousands of poor East
Germans flowing into the West expected
housing and employment—benefits pro­
vided in both Germanys. But the huge
number of Ubersiedler caused severe stress
on the West German welfare system, and
serious questions remain as to its ability to
support the entire East German population
after unification.
In West Germany, the “Ossis,” as the
East German immigrants are called, are not
universally welcome. New Forum activists
promoting the agenda of their relatively
small political party, headquartered in the
town of Cottbus, spoke of a habit that had
developed among East German workers:
Many would leave work for lunch and not
come back for the rest of the day. Others
would take months off from work without
notifying the employer ahead of time; upon
their return, their jobs were guaranteed. This
AUGUST 1990

by Andrew Perrin ’93 and Elliott Moreton ’88

relaxed attitude toward work, which existed
throughout the former Soviet bloc, has
created problems for discipline-oriented
West German employers.
The problems encountered by East Ger­
mans in West Germany are indicative of
those that will be faced by the whole country
as it unifies. The East Germans have chosen
reunification under Article 23 of the West
German Constitution: complete annexation
to West Germany. Essentially they have
chosen, as a German “land,” to emigrate en
masse to the West—to join the Federal
Republic. But integration into a Western
economic and political structure will not
come easily.

left the radical-change line to the Alliance
for Germany. Like Solidarity, this party
garnered a large number of votes.
Finally, the smaller, less well-funded Biir­
gerbewegungen without Western financial
connections were forgotten in the rush of
Western campaigners. These “citizens’ move­
ments” seemed exceptionally eager, even
grateful, for the attention of Westerners
when they got it. New Forum activists, for
example, had time to talk to us for more than
two hours when we arrived unannounced in
their office in Cottbus.

Bananas
The question of German unification and
its phoenix specter arising from the March
Citizens’ movements
18 election has led to a wide range of
A striking difference between the East thinking on a new order of security in
German elections and other recent ones in Europe. Whatever social and military forms
Eastern Europe was the East Germans’ this new order takes, it is certain that the
almost complete disregard for the “citizens force of the pocketbook will be a deciding
movements” (Biirgerbewegungen) that
factor, as it was in the East German elections.
brought about the revolutionary changes A partially humorous, partially serious re­
last fall. Polish voters gave Solidarity almost minder of that was the presence in the East
unanimous support. By contrast, the East German election of the banana as a cam­
German Bundnis ’90 coalition (a grouping paign symbol.
of three Biirgerbewegungen) got less than
As East Germans poured across the bor­
3 percent.
der into West Germany, they were met with
Why? In part because Germany had a crates of bananas, which were unavailable in
theoretically operative political structure in the East. The fruit quickly became a symbol
place, since some parties existed from pre- of the variety of consumer goods available
Hitler times.
in the West. The CDU handed out bananas
Also, the Polish Solidarity had taken a in southern East Germany with “Vote CDU”
role antithetical to the old regime. Bundnis stickers on them, and jokes were made
’90, on the other hand, put forward a about banana republics. Signs sprang up
middle-of-the-road platform, advocating a with a hammer and banana in the traditional
mixed economy with “democratic control hammer-and-sickle arrangement. Willy
over the power of business.” Its program Brandt told voters in Potsdam to “get the
resembled that of the Social Democrats and bananas wherever you can, but vote for the
SPD.”
In a very real way, East Germans voted
for their bananas in March.

Elliott Moreton ’88

Andrew Perrin hails from Brookline, Mass.,
where he has pursued his long-standing
interest in Germany while working fo r the
Institute fo r Peace and International Secu­
rity, a Boston-based think tank, since its
inception in 1985. Elliott Moreton majored
in mathematics and minored in Latin at
Swarthmore. He will return to live and work
as an au pair in southern Germany this fall.
11

The best employers offer trust, pride, and pleasure for

The Giftlike Nature
great place to work?
That phrase sounds
like a contradiction in
terms to far too many
Americans (possibly
to the overwhelming
majority of us). Yet
companies and organizations do exist where
employees unabashedly sing the praises of
their employer. I know they exist because I
spent much of the past decade visiting them
and writing about this unusual social phe­
nomenon.
My fascination with great workplaces
began in 1981, not long after co-authoring
a book that profiled the largest corporations
in the land. An editor of a New York pub­
lishing house called me at home in San
Francisco and asked whether we’d like to
write a book entitled The 100 Best Com­
panies to Workfo r in America.
Terrific title, I replied, but I immediately
expressed skepticism about whether we
could find 100 good employers. From what
I knew about the corporate world, it would
be a lot easier to write a book about the 100
worst.
What’s more, I personally had never
worked for a company or organization that
I would ever nominate for such a list. One
magazine I’d worked for had been down­
right dreadful. Nor did I have any friends or
acquaintances who raved about their work­
places even if they liked their particular jobs.
On the contrary. While some regularly com­
plained about their employers, most reflected
the common wisdom about the nature of
work for any organization (particularly a
big one) as a Faustian bargain: money/
security for a piece of your soul.
The editor persisted (that is, offered
enough money), so my co-authors and I
agreed to set out on a search for America’s
best employers. Since so little has been
written in the business or popular press
about what goes on inside companies, we
decided to tap into the underground grape­
vine. Everybody talks about his or her
workplace; therefore, we assumed, the best
employers must acquire good reputations
within their communities or industries.
12

We spent the next two years crisscrossing
the country asking a wide variety of people
in the business world to nominate companies
for our list. At each company we conducted
individual and group interviews with em­
ployees at various levels, paying special
attention to the opinions of nonsupervisory
workers. We wrote up the results of those
visits and interviews in The 100 Best Com­
panies to Workfo r in America. Much to our
surprise, the book became, as they say in the
trade, an instant best-seller.
While researching the book, I was also
surprised that many of the 100 best were not
merely the best of a sorry lot. Their em­
ployees talked convincingly about the lack
of politics, the sense of “community” or
“family,” the fair treatment, and the open
communication. Because I heard almost
identical comments at different firms, I knew
that these places had much in common with
each other.
I also knew that coming up with a
definition of a good company would be of
interest to both managers and other em­
ployees. Everyone, after all, would rather
work in an uplifting environment rather
than an alienating one. With a better under­
standing of what makes for a great work­
place, managers could find ways of improv­
ing their own organizations—to attract the
best workers and possibly to improve pro­
ductivity. Similarly, prospective employees
could use a better understanding of what
makes for good and bad workplaces to help
pick, or avoid, particular employment situa­
tions.

No magic set of
personnel policies
and practices
is common to
the best employers.
by Robert Levering ’66

But defining exactly what great work­
places have in common baffled me for two
reasons. First, good employers I had visited
are superficially very different. Exceptional
employers can be found among organiza­
tions that are both big and small, old and
young, as well as in a wide variety of
industries—from banking to oil to high-tech
and trucking—and located in every part of
the country. (Though the book doesn’t deal
with the nonprofit sector, some educational
institutions, hospitals, etc., are also great
places to work.)
The second problem: Personnel policies
alone can’t explain why some companies are
so good. For instance, employees at Pitney
Bowes, Federal Express, Delta Air Lines,
and IBM all speak in very similar terms
about the nature of their workplaces. But the
first two of those firms have marvelous
profit-sharing plans, while the other two
never have had any form of profit sharing.
By the same token, some great employers are
largely employee-owned (including some
where the employee-owners have gone out
on strike against their own company). So,
much to my dismay, no magic set of person­
nel policies and practices could be drawn up
that is common to the best employers.
After months of grappling with this prob­
lem (including revisiting 20 companies I
considered to be the best of the 100 best),
it occurred to me that the common thread is
the quality of the relationships at these
firms—not type of organization or manage­
ment structure or personnel policies or bene­
fits. Once I understood that, I almost imme­
diately came up with a definition of a great
place to work: One where employees trust
the people they work for, have pride in what
they do, and enjoy the people they work
with. That definition seemed to sum up
what employees at all those firms talked
about.
Several implications flow from that defi­
nition. By focusing on relationships, you
have a tool to analyze your own workplace.
It suggests that employees are involved in
three basic relationships: with the company,
with the job, and with other employees. At
the best workplaces, all three relationships
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

e of Work

AUGUST 1990

13

are good. It’s more common for only one or
two to be good. Often people feel pride in
their jobs and enjoy the people they work
with but distrust their boss(es) and/or the
organization itself.
This definition also offers a way to under­
stand why many so-called job-enrichment
or similar programs fail to improve morale.
Such programs typically focus exclusively
on the employees’ relationship with their
jobs. Such programs often improve the qual­
ity of the job by giving employees more
variety in their work. In the short run, they
may even boost productivity. But often such
programs are introduced in a way that
appears manipulative (“They’re only doing

this so that we’ll work harder”), so that
distrust between the workers and the com­
pany actually increases.
It’s not that progressive job-enrichment
programs or personnel policies aren’t impor­
tant. Quite the opposite. Policies and benefits
are the tangible expressions of the relation­
ship between the organization and its em­
ployees. But by focusing on the relationship
rather than the policies, one can see that
what’s always most significant is how the
policies affect the relationship. In some
cases, introducing a new savings plan may
have a big effect on the relationship between
the employee and the company. At another
company, however, a new savings plan may

1 0 B E S T P A Y IN G C O M P A N I E S

A tla n tic R ic h fie ld
L eo B u rn ett
T ram m ell C row

Exxon
G old m an Sachs
H e w itt A ssocia tes
H ew lett-P ackard

Linnton P lyw ood
Merck
S h ell O il

Tram m ell Crow
H e w itt A ssocia tes
IBM
Joh n son Wax

J. P. Morgan
Procter & G am ble
Tim e Ine.

10 B E S T F O R B E N E F IT S

A p p le C om p u ter
A tla n tic R ich field
B e ll Labs

10 B E S T F O R JO B S E C U R IT Y

A d v a n ce d M icro
D e v ic e s
D e lta A ir L in es
D ig ita l E q u ip m en t

Exxon
H ew lett-P ack ard
IBM
Joh n son Wax

Linnton Plyw ood
Procter & G am ble
W orthington
Industries

10 B E S T FO R C H A N C E S TO M O V E UP

C iticorp
G ore
IBM

L ow e's
3M
N ord strom
Procter & G am b le

Q uad Graphics
Tandy
W estin H otels

H ew lett-P ackard
K ollm orgen
Los A n g e le s
D od gers
M erle N orm an
C osm etics
H erm an M iller

N orthw estern
M utual Life
O detics
P hysio-C ontrol
Pitney B ow es
P ublix Super
M arkets

15 B E S T F O R A M B I E N C E

A d v a n ce d M icro
D e v ic e s
A p p le C om p u ter
D e lta A ir L in es
D o y le D a n e
B e m b a ch
H a llm a rk C ards

14

have no discernible effect or even a detri­
mental one if employees perceive it as a
manipulative trick.
As in any relationship, most important
are the underlying attitudes. One of the
people I interviewed, Ewing Kauffman,
founder of Marion Labs in Kansas City,
explained it well when describing his attitude
about the large bonuses that Marion distrib­
utes several times a year: “If you [give the
bonuses] because you want to be a father
and a giver, that’s no good. You don’t give
anything. They earn it. Marion doesn’t give
anything.” Kauffman says he is not interested
in a father-child relationship with employees;
rather he wants to achieve more of a part­
nership relationship with them.
The idea of a good workplace has much
in common with the idea of a good marriage.
We would never think of defining a good
marriage in terms of the number of dogs,
cats, and children, the amount of money in
the joint savings account, and so on. We
would probably do so in terms of the quality
of the relationship between two people. In
particular, we would probably use love as
the defining characteristic of a good mar­
riage rather than any of the externals a
couple may or may not have acquired. In
much the same way, trust is the defining
characteristic of the primary workplace re­
lationship.
Trust is an extremely difficult quality to
build in a workplace. As I tried to under­
stand how my findings related to the moun­
tain of material that has been written about
the workplace, I found precious little that
had been written about trust. (I can testify
to the value of a Swarthmore education as
I plowed through literally dozens and dozens
of books and articles in doing research.)
Because trust involves risk, vulnerability,
and commitment, it results in a kind of social
bonding when it works.
est this sound too theoretical, trust
is the one quality employees point
to as lacking in the typical work
environment. Studs Terkel, in his
book Working, talked about “daily humili­
ations” as the lot of most people he inter­
viewed. And, from reports from overseas, it
seems that the American workplace is far

L

Continued on page 56

Robert Levering ’66 lives with his son,
Reuben, in San Francisco, where he is at
work on his sixth book, Everybody’s Busi­
ness: A Field Guide to 400 Leading Com­
panies. His most recent book, A Great Place
To Work, analyzes 20 o f the 100 best com­
panies and will appear this month in paper­
back.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

W here the Buck Starts
And where it stops at Swarthmore

William Spock ’51, Swarthmore’s vigorous
and candid vice president for business and
finance, loves to offer a quote he recalls from
the business world whenever he discusses
money at Swarthmore.
“A society which does not honor both its
plumbers and its philosophers,” he repeats
prophetically, “will soon find that neither its
pipes nor its theories hold water.”
Everywhere in the society of higher edu­
cation, it seems, the pipes and the theories
show signs of leaking. Spock’s office sits in
Parrish, which overlooks the placid College
vista of Magill Walk, where everything ap­
pears in perfect, manicured order but isn’t.
Beyond that vista, in such places as Colum­
bia, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins (and also
in dear view of Spock), perfect order is a
thing of the past.
“Look here,” he says, pointing to a recent
article in The Philadelphia Inquirer. The
article reveals that in spite of the highest
tuitions in history measured either in current
dollars or in real dollars, Columbia is closing
its linguistics and geography departments
and scaling back its art department, Johns
Hopkins is reducing its faculty by 10 percent,
and Cornell will cut faculty ranks by 4
percent in order to grant existing faculty
higher salaries.
Princeton, which holds the distinction of
having the highest endowment per student in
the United States, had to cut expenses to
make up a million-dollar deficit and to raise
moneys needed to increase library acquisi­
tions, expand the faculty, and beef up faculty
salaries.
So what’s happening at the top of Magill
Walk? Coming home at the end of the fiscal
year with a belt-tightening balanced budget
and an endowment of over $300 million,
Swarthmore feels the pinch like everyone
else. “I’ve never seen tighter times here,”
remarks one administrator who has served
at the College for some 25 years.
“We’ve told every department in their
budgeting for next year that they could not
have enough money to meet inflation,”
AUGUST 1990

Spock explains. “Most of my departments
will have less money to spend, not even
adjusted for inflation, than this year. So
we’ve tried to cut.”
The question is why. The answer, though
complicated, is not simply “because.”
Broadly viewed, says Spock, the causes
amount to a many-headed Scylla that in­
cludes hugely increased expectations for
programs and services, the soaring costs of
technologies that have so far failed to alter
the expensive teaching environments in
which they’re used, faculty salaries that must
remain in the competitive forefront, massive
deferred maintenance costs that include fed­
erally required asbestos removal and the
like, and the drop in federal support for
philanthropic causes.
“Let’s take parent and student expecta-

djusted for
. inflation,
Spock says, faculty
salaries have
gone down.

A

by Roger Williams

tions first,” Spock says. “This reminds me of
the health-care industry, where the expecta­
tions drive up the prices. People want not
only the best surgery but the best food,
private rooms, TV, and hot water. When you
pay more than $20,000 for tuition, room,
and board, you expect a lot. We have to
meet those expectations, but at the same
time we cannot continue to raise tuition as
we have in the past.”
The vice president is speaking not only of
the immediately apparent—the lavish ath­
letic and art facilites many colleges have,
elaborate housing, luscious food plans, and,
at some competing schools, among them
Smith and Mount Holyoke, such appealing
frills as extensive and carefully maintained
riding stables.
“We stop there,” Spock says. “But we
have discovered that Asia and Africa exist,”
he adds with a wry smile. “Our programs
both here and abroad are directed at global
history, culture, and languages. We have an
extremely diverse student body with various
needs, so we require exceptional health and
counseling services, for example.”
Deferred maintenance now stands at $20
million, Spock reports, citing several impor­
tant campus buildings that do not have
access for the handicapped, others that may
require new roofs or asbestos removal, and
many in need of upgrading.
Then there are faculty salaries (never
mind staff salaries, which remain several
percentage points behind the marketplace of
peer institutions). Adjusted for inflation,
Spock says, faculty salaries have gone down.
“We’ll fall short of our goal this year of
putting faculty salaries at 102.5 percent of
our peer institutions,” he admits. “Their
salaries don’t buy as much as they once did,
either, and some are pulled away by the big
research institutions.”
One young faculty member well-liked by
students and peers, for example, will move
his family to M.I.T. this fall where, for less
teaching, his salary will increase more than
Continued on page 56

15

LETTERS
THE POWER OF THE PEN
TO THE EDITOR:
Well, you have done it again—produced
a fascinating College Bulletin (May 1990).
The stories on Patrick Connell and Carl
Levin were superb. I even read the one on
cycling (I was going to skip it), and I’m glad
I did. My husband even feels like contribut­
ing to Carl Levin’s campaign! So the article
is a real accomplishment.
JUDITH L. INSKEEP ’60
White Plains, N.Y.

TARGET: TRAIL BIKES

he nobby tires
o f trail bikes
are a serious
menace to fragile
environments . . . . ”

T

16

GUTTER LANGUAGE
TO THE EDITOR:
I wrote several years ago about the gutter
language printed in a College Bulletin. The
article was autobiographical, the author be­
ing a returned veteran from ’Nam. My
protest was that, while I knew all the words,
I considered the use of them, in a publication
meant for distribution among decent, refined
Swarthmore graduates, was inexcusable.
I was pleased to see that the Bulletin
appeared to have learned a lesson in imme­
diately subsequent issues. Now, the article
“Emergency Room,” starting on page 6 of
the May 1990 issue, is similarly objection­
able.
Since the managing editor is the author of
the article, one can assume that he has a
different philosophy than I do about what
Swarthmore graduates will tolerate (I notice
he is not a Swarthmore product). I expect
other “Sages” may begin to wonder about
continuing support.
It is difficult for me to understand why
Mr. Williams wrote as he did, unless he
believes that Swarthmore alumni need to be
shocked and that students are to be led to
think such language is condoned in polite
society. If so, I suggest that you consider
whether he is a sick man and in need of care.
I shall watch developments with interest.
GEORGE W. STEPHENSON, M.D., ’24
Chicago, 111.

TO THE EDITOR:
The bicycle articles (May 1990) hit the
right note for me, though the intensity with
which some of the cyclists go at the sport is,
as the young people say, awesome. Various
friends and family members were struck by
the contrast between the high-tech equip­
ment, sleek clothes, and serious mien of
some of the pictured grads and the happygo-lucky, beer-drinking Bowditch brothers.
I’m not sure we are acceptable members of
the dedicated cycling fraternity.
One portion of the article gives me some
concern, concern which is not shared by
many cyclists but which is expressed by en­
vironmentalists. It has to do with the current JAPAN BASHING?
surge in the sale and use of trail bikes. Any TO THE CDITOR:
In response to Clyde Prestowitz, Jr., ’63
human intrusion into the natural world
leaves its mark, but of course some leave on “Unacknowledged Differences” (Feb.
more lasting scars than others. Hiking boots 1990), I should like to protest some items of
with Vibram soles are more damaging to inaccuracy and misjudgment.
The suggestion that Japan, on its own
trails than softer soles and are banned in
merits,
would not have been admitted to the
some wilderness areas. The nobby tires of
trail bikes are a serious menace to fragile General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
environments and leave scars that are long- (GATT) and the Organization for Economic
lasting, increase erosion, and, in the end, Cooperation and Development (OECD)
destroy some habitats. Used on gravel roads because Japan’s economic system was some­
or old logging roads, they are relatively how fundamentally different from that of the
benign, but on hiking trails, particularly then-member nations is, to say the least,
those with steep gradients, they are much debatable. To say the U.S. decided it would
“open its markets to Japan” as part of an
more destructive than hiking boots.
Just as important, it seems to me, are the unstated postwar deal, sounds, well, a bit
aesthetic reasons for leaving civilization be­ condescending. Does the U.S. “open” its
hind and venturing into the natural order. If markets to Great Britain—or Germany—or
you only go to see how fast or how far you does the American consumer have access to
can go, to conduct cross-country races, or to foreign products from the West and the East
carry civilization’s comforts with you, why as a matter of course?
The notion that Japan does not buy
go at all? These human-powered machines
American
is incorrect. Japan is the world’s
are less intrusive than mountain motorcycles,
but they are still far worse than the hiker or second largest purchaser of American pro­
backpacker who has time to enjoy the na­ ducts, second only to Canada—but if you
tural world and feel that he/she is a part of want to sell cars instead of soybeans, you’ve
got to come up with a better car.
it.
The social systems are admittedly differ­
BENSON A. BOWDITCH ’41
Conway, Mass. ent. The Japanese have about the world’s
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

highest literacy rate in what I consider to be
the world’s most difficult written language.
The educational level of their work force
gives employers in Japan—and South
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singa­
pore—a nice head start, and this may be a
bit sneaky but not in direct violation of the
American values of “liberty, equality, and
human rights” which Mr. Prestowitz so
proudly hails.
There are other differences. The bluecollar worker in Japan does not get laid off
(a matter of corporate obligation) and usu­
ally does consider himself a member of a
production “family,” which he can quit for
another job but normally doesn’t. The
worker’s willingness to express opinions on
how to improve production and the worker’s
desire to put these ideas into effect are
directly related to the productivity of the
system whose values Prestowitz describes as
“duty, obligation, hierarchy, and avoidance
of open discord.” Actually, the type of
industrial democracy I have just described
works about as well in Japanese-operated
companies in western Kentucky as it does in
Shizuoka Prefecture.
Another difference: The Japanese salaried
worker’s paycheck is almost always depos­
ited to his wife’s bank account, since she is
in charge of all family finances. (She gives
her husband an allowance for personal
expenditures, including his bar bill.) This
system enjoins her to put 15 or 20 percent
of the family income into savings, without
fail, so the national level of personal savings
is the highest in the industrialized world.
This provides cheap money for personal
expansion and a lot left over to buy U.S.
treasury bonds that have financed the
drunken borrowing spree that began with
the Reagan administration. Nothing very
devious here. In spite of our peccadilloes,
treasury bonds draw investment money from
all over the world.
Japan is responding to recent American
threats of discriminatory duties on Japanese
products by complying with many of the
demands made in the “Structural Impedi­
ments Initiative” talks held here recently,
and the Japanese public generally favors the
adjustments, according to a recent poll. But
I, for one, found the demands as demands
rather embarrassing. . . . Japan has little or
no coking oil, iron ore, or petroleum, and it
cannot afford a trade war, so adjustments
are being made—but whether these will
save the sleeping giant who lives beyond his
income is quite another question. I am
afraid, Mr. Prestowitz, that prudential fail­
ings are among the causes for America’s
decline in power.
The Japanese market is difficult for
American companies to enter, and for Jap­
anese companies as well, as Prestowitz him­
AUGUST 1990

self suggests in his comments about the
Kyocera Corporation, but American com­
panies that put as much effort into a sales
program for Japan as Japanese companies
do for developing their American markets
stand to make a killing: Witness IBM,
Schick, and the fast-food franchisers.
It shouldn’t be necessary for an absentminded art historian like myself, who greatly
prefers the 18th century to the 20th, to have
to remind his fellow citzens of the dangers
of Prestowitzian jingoism, but there aren’t
many voices. Asian studies have not flour­
ished on American campuses during the
Reagan years___
Our intermittent stays in Japan have now
added up to a quarter of a century, and I’m
only indirectly aware of what’s happening at
American schools at the moment, but I am
concerned about the quality and quantity of
Japan bashing that seems to be current. For
quality, I would recommend Chalmers
Johnson, but if you want equity in the
survey of Pacific relations, you will have to
abandon the bashers altogether.
LLOYD CRAIGHILL ’49
Hirakata City, Japan
Editor’s note: Lloyd Craighill serves as a
professor o f East Asian studies at Kansai
University o f Foreign Studies, where his
wife, Maryly Nute Craighill ’50, is a profes­
sor o f English.

HIGH PRAISE

am concerned
about the
quality and
quantity o f
Japan bashing.. . :

I

TO THE EDITOR:
What a wonderful issue! I refer to the
Swarthmore College Bulletin of February
1990. A class act from cover to cover.
The fact-filled article by Clyde Prestowitz
’63 taught me so much about Japan that
when I discovered he had written a book on
the subject, Trading Places, I went out and
bought it. Not surprising that Business Week
should call it “one of the 10 best business
books of the year.”
The Bulletin has so many dimensions.
Excellent articles on a wide variety of sub­
jects, updates on what’s happening on cam­
pus, and—the first thing I turn to—class
notes for the Class of 1937 (followed by
notes for the “surrounding” classes of 193440). The Bulletin helps keep the memories
of Swarthmore alive.
Congratulations to you and your fine staff
for such outstanding productions. Keep on
doin’ what you’re doin’, the way you do it.
E. MORTON SCHAFFRAN ’37
El Cerrito, Calif.
TO THE EDITOR:
Thanks for another beautiful College Bul­
letin. The four-color photos truly enhance
the excellent contents.
JEAN DINWOODEY LINEHAN ’51
Chevy Chase, Md.
17

s COLLEGE
Changes on the wind
m ark celebration of
118th com m encem ent
Celebrating the world’s in­
creasing democratization by a
remembrance of things past,
many commencement partici­
pants filed into a breezy, cool
Scott Outdoor Auditorium
wearing white armbands in
memory of the Chinese vic­
tims of Tiananmen Square
one year earlier.
Following a welcome to the
328 graduating members of
the Class of 1990 from Board
Chairman Neil Austrian ’61,
celebrants were congratulated
by President David Fraser for
their achievements and
charged by honorary degree
recipients to “Mind the
Light,” Swarthmore’s motto.

“The challenge,” said Presi­
dent Fraser, “is to create a life
that is animated by your con­
tinued intellectual engagement
and, moreover, a life in which
you act on the social concerns
that have been fostered here.”
President Fraser presented
honorary degrees to Mary Pat­
terson McPherson, president
of Bryn Mawr College; au­
thor, actor, and television
commentator Heywood Hale
Broun ’40; Robert Whitman
’48, an earthquake-engineer­
ing and seismic-risk expert;
David Montgomery ’50, social
historian and Yale University
professor; and Robert Putnam
’63, dean of the John F.
Kennedy School of Govern­
ment at Harvard University.
In other commencement ac­

Spontaneous jo y comes to the Class o f 1990.

18

tivities, the Rev. Paul M.
Washington, rector emeritus
of Philadelphia’s Church of
the Advocate, delivered the
baccalaureate address. Philip
Weinstein, professor of En­
glish, spoke at Last Collection.

some new interesting concept
that you have discovered. An
old Quaker, Logan Pearsall
Smith, said, W hen they can
no longer sustain me with oys­
ters or sips o f champagne, be­
fore I depart into the azure I

Heywood Hale Broun ’40

Mary Patterson McPherson

Heywood Hale Broun ’40
“A ll o f you are familiar
with those articles which say
your college degree is worth
$468,000 or $352,000 or
something. I read them with a
certain irony because I suspect
that my degree at Swarthmore
cost me something like
$200,000. The high-minded­
ness o f my teachers and the
impractical ideals imposed
upon me made it almost
impossible to enter into any
fields o f endeavor which prom­
ised a decent living.
“And so I chose writing and
acting, two professions in
which over almost 20 years I
earned about as much as a
substitute postman. But it did
give me, and this is the thing I
cherish in my Swarthmore
education, it gave me a sense
o f organized curiosity that
made it possible fo r me to
move across the map o f his­
tory, which is lit and colored
by literature, in a meaningful
and intellectually profitable
way.. ..
“I trust that your education
is never completed and that
with your last gasp you will be
husking out some new fact or

shall say with my last breath,
“You cannot be too fastidi­
ous. ” ’ I think you cannot
either be too studious. And I
hope you will continue to be
so.
“A s I was wished joy sitting
there 50 years ago, I wish you
joy now. ”
Mary Patterson McPherson
“You have ju st finished a
period o f your lives during
which, even though you have
often been extraordinarily
busy, you have had a great
deal o f time to devote to things
that matter. A s individuals,
you have examined and devel­
oped your values and created
important friendships. A s
members o f the larger na­
tional and world community,
you have already concerned
yourselves with issues o f
equity, justice, and peace.
“Continue to give your­
selves space and protect the
periods o f time that you will
require to continue to make
your own decisions. The years
you have spent here may have
led you to think that this pre­
scription fo r living is both ob-

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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vious and easy, but I think you
will all fin d that it takes con­
siderable diligence, ingenuity,
courage, and humor to do it.
“So I wish each one o f you
success and pleasure in ‘M ind­
ing the Light. ’ ”
David Montgomery ’50
“Wherever we look today—
to the east, to the west, or
especially to the south— we
see a world that cries out fo r
the deliberate redirection o f
economic activity to the goal
o f a more harmonious social
existence. For fa r too long, we
have tailored our lives to the
alleged ‘needs o f the econ-

Robert Whitman ’48
“In the heart o f the finan­
cial district o f Boston, an
aged, unsightly, unsafe, cityowned parking garage is
being replaced by a public
park at street level over a deep
underground garage. The
park— the design was the re­
sult o f a national competi­
tion— will be an oasis in a
crowded cityscape.
“The construction under­
ground is technically difficult.
This project is being under­
taken by the private sector, not
fo r profit but as a contribution
to the improvement o f life in
Boston. It has resulted from

and Latin America), we now
stand on the threshold o f a
new era in which peace and
liberty may go hand in hand,
a new global age o f democ­
racy. . . .
“Our democratic traditions
are deep, our economic struc­
tures stable. I f only we can
emulate their enthusiasm, their
idealism, their ardent engage­
ment with the cause o f democ­
racy, what limits can there be
to our aspirations?
“You and I have been
mightily privileged to have had
a Swarthmore education. You
have been bequeathed by his­
tory an unparalleled opportu-

*

the self-doubt and personal
growth. There are professors
who really cared about your
work and encouraged you to
care about it too. There are
fam ily members who try not to
ask about your future plans
more than two or three times
per telephone conversation
and friends who listen. . . .
You realize that it is these peo­
ple who have made Swarth­
more so much more than ju st
a description in an admissions
brochure, that have made
Swarthmore our college. And
you realize that sometime next
year or maybe the year after
th a t. . . you will think about

Robert Whitman ’48

David Montgomery ’50

omy. ’ Can we not tailor our
economy to the challenge o f
living like human beings?
“Most o f us in the Class o f
1950 once cherished such
hopes, only to have them over­
whelmed by the Cold War and
subsequently dismissed as
nonsense.
“Forty years later it is the
nonsense o f the Cold War that
is dying. The profoundly dem­
ocratic and egalitarian stir­
rings which are making
governments tremble around
the world today have given
you women and men o f the
Class o f 1990 a second
chance to make our world liv­
able. I wish you Godspeed in
I that task. ”
AUGUST 1990

the efforts o f a committed
group o f people: a developer
who had the dream, a lawyer
who mastered the legal and
political obstacles, an engineer
who urged a novel method o f
construction that helped to
make the project economically
feasible, and many others. It is
a small but exciting example
o f what can happen when
visionary leaders identify a
need and act to achieve it.
“Swarthmore’s tradition o f
mixing engineering and liberal
arts on this inspiring campus
has prepared you well fo r ju st
such challenges. ”
Robert Putnam ’63
“Thanks to the courage and
convictions o f democratic
patriots in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union (and their
counterparts in South Africa

Sara Anne Waterman ’90

Robert Putnam ’63

nity to deepen democracy in
this country and around the
world You and the world both
stand today at a remarkable,
momentous juncture. It offers,
I believe, a challenge worthy
o f your talents and your dedi­
cation. I pray you seize it.”

the people sitting around you
right now and know that they
are more than you could ever
describe.
“Thank you, and wherever
you go from here, I wish you a
most excellent adventure. ”

Senior class speaker
Sara Anne Waterman
“[By senior year] you look
around and realize that amaz­
ingly enough there are people
around you who have been
through the PDCs, the room­
mate conflicts, the academic
crises, the sophomore paper,
19

Achievement, celebration, jo y— and plenty o f humor characterized the
Class o f 1990, 328 recipients o f the coveted Swarthmore “sheepskin. ”
The graduates riveted the attention o f elated fam ilies and friends by
building upon the growing tradition o f decorating a bemused president

20

in meaningful paraphernalia. This year’s construction theme, leaving
President Fraser draped in such items as construction barriers, tools,
and toy cranes, suggested how fam iliar the students were with the good
works rising around them.

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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Music and Dance
Festival set to honor
musical mavens
The Swarthmore College
Music and Dance Festival,
directed by Professors James
Freeman and Sharon Friedler
of the Department of Music
and Dance, will honor three
men for their outstanding con­
tributions to the arts at
Swarthmore. They are Ken­
dall Landis ’48, Boyd Barnard
T7, and Alfred Swan.
From September 19 to 23,
the festival pays tribute to
Landis, who is retiring as vice
president for alumni, develop­
ment, and public relations.
The Wednesday afternoon
concert will feature students of
Joan Landis, Landis’ wife,
from the Curtis Institute of
Music. Orchestra 2001 will
perform Friday evening with
Landis as narrator in Stravin­
sky’s Soldier’s Tale. Also fea­
tured on this program will be
Gerald Levinson’s Black
Magic/White Magic. Saturday
evening will be devoted to
Mark Taylor [’75] and Friends
Dance Company, with a new
work commissioned by the
festival to honor Landis. Tap
dancers Lavaugn Robinson
and Germain Greer will
appear on Sunday.
From October 10 to 14,
Boyd Barnard, Swarthmore’s
patron saint of music, will be
honored on the occasion of his
95th birthday. On Wednesday
there will be an alumni cham­
ber music concert of Mozart
and Mendelssohn, and an
alumni symposium on music
performace as a career is
planned for Thursday. The
annual Lili Kraus Memorial
Concert on Friday will be an
evening of Mozart featuring
alumni and current students,
all of whom have been recip­
ients of Barnard scholarships.
On Saturday the Ken Pierce
Baroque Dance Company and
the Benefit Chamber Players
will present an evening of ba­
roque music and dance. The
weekend will conclude with a
AUGUST 1990

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piano recital on Sunday after­
noon by Barnard protégée
Cynthia Raim.
The November series will
begin on Wednesday the 14th
with a performance by the
Dmitri Petrovsky Music and
Dance Ensemble, followed on
Thursday afternoon by a Festi­
val of Gospel Choirs from
Philadelphia. Meanwhile, a
newly commissioned opera for
children, The Snow Queen, by
Braxton Blake, will be run­
ning in repertory on Wednes­
day and Thursday mornings,
with an evening performance
on Friday and a matinee on
Sunday. On Saturday evening
there will be a performance
by the Afro-American Dance
Ensemble. The Festival’s con­
cluding concert will honor
Alfred Swan, first professor of
music at Swarthmore, Haverford, and Dickinson colleges.
Choruses from the three
schools will unite in a concert
of Swan’s music in memory of
his 100th birthday.
For information on times,
locations, and (in some cases)
admission charges, contact the
Department of Music and
Dance by phone (215-3288233) or by mail.
Music and dance
alum ni—take note
The Music and Dance De­
partment is trying to keep
interested alumni informed of
developments in both curricu­
lar and extracurricular activi­
ties by adding to the lists of
people to whom concert
schedules and newsletters are
sent. If you are not currently
receiving information about
music and dance activities and
would like to do so, please
write to Judy Lord, Depart­
ment of Music and Dance,
Swarthmore College, Swarth­
more, PA 19081-1397. If you
are interested in visiting as a
guest artist or lecturer in
dance, please address your
correspondence to Sharon
Friedler, Director of Dance.

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Ring out the old,
ring in the new
Cloaked in August heat and
high expectations, two new
staff members have joined the
College.

Harry D. Gotwals takes the
reins from Kendall Landis ’48,
assuming the post of vice
president for alumni, develop­
ment, and public relations dur­
ing the coming academic year.
Gotwals was formerly director
of development at Duke. Be­
fore that he served in similar
positions at Goucher College,
the Gilman School in Balti­
more, and Johns Hopkins. He
received both a B.A. in social
and behavioral sciences
(1969) and an M.A.S. (1976)
from Johns Hopkins Univer­
sity.
In a letter to the College
community, President David
Fraser wrote, “In a very strong
field of more than 300 candi­
dates and nominees, Harry
stood out as the top choice
because of his extraordinary
experience in development
work, understanding of
liberal arts education, and
sympathy for Swarthmore’s
style of operation.”
Larry Schall ’75 returns to
the College as associate vice
president for facilities and ser­
vices after previously serving
as supervising attorney for

Larry Schall 75

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Community Legal Services of
Philadelphia, staff attorney for
the Juvenile Law Center, and,
finally, president of First
Philadelphia Real Estate
Corporation.
After graduating from
Swarthmore with Honors in
history and political science,
Schall received a law degree
from the University of Penn­
sylvania. His new position at
Swarthmore unites two previ­
ous positions, giving him the
responsibility for construction,
renovation, and maintenance
of facilities, as well as for aux­
iliary services.
Both staff members will
begin work this month.
Twelve win scholarships
Twelve Swarthmoreans were
among 1,000 recipients of
National Science Foundation
Graduate Fellowships and
Minority Graduate Fellow­
ships for 1990, more than
from any other small liberal
arts college in the country.
Five undergraduates and
seven alumni received the
prestigious awards, which
offer recipients $12,900 a year
for three years of graduate
study. Fellows may choose to
use the awards over a fiveyear period.
Six Swarthmore recipients
are women, placing the Col­
lege among the top 15 institu­
tions in the country in number
of women recipients. Swarth­
more ranks 17th among all
universities and colleges
whose students and alumni
received the fellowships.
Recipients of the fellow­
ships will study in the natural
and social sciences, mathe­
matics, and engineering.
In addition to 12 Swarth­
more fellows, John R. Boccio,
professor of physics and asso­
ciate provost for academic
computing, received an NSF
grant of $28,180 to continue
his project aimed at connect­
ing Swarthmore’s computer
network with others across the
country.
21

E
Five retire«
Five professors, two each from
the Departments of Modern
Languages and Physics and
one from the Department of
Physical Education, retired
last spring.
Oleksa-Myron Bilaniuk,
Centennial Professor of Phys­
ics, has left the College after
26 years as a faculty member.
Fluent in six languages, Bila­
niuk was born in the western
Ukraine and received a Ph.D.
in nuclear physics from the
University of Michigan in
1957. Since his arrival at
Swarthmore in 1964, he has
served numerous times in
teaching and research posi­
tions abroad, twice as a
Fulbright professor.
Eleanor “Pete” Hess, pro­
fessor of physical education
and associate chair of physical
education and athletics, retired
after 33 years as a teacher and
coach, at various times, of
women’s varsity field hockey,
lacrosse, tennis, and badmin­
ton.
Hess received both a B.S.
and an M.S. from the Univer­
sity of Pennsylvania. After her
arrival at Swarthmore in 1957,
she served women’s sports
through various professional
organizations on a regional,
national, and international
level. She has been called “the
first lady of sports” at Swarth­
more College.
Paul Mangelsdorf, Jr., ’49,
the Morris L. Clothier Profes­
sor of Physics, returned to
Swarthmore in 1961 after re­
ceiving his Ph.D. in physics
from Harvard University and
teaching and researching at
the University of Chicago and
at the Woods Hole Oceano­
graphic Institution, with
which he continued to be
associated for many years.
His many publications in­
clude several on subjects re­
lated to oceanography; he is
also considered an expert on
edible wild mushrooms.
Swarthmoreans of all ages
and interests have come to
22

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Oleksa-Myron Bilaniuk

Eleanor “Pete” Hess

Paul Mangelsdorf, Jr., ’49

Jean Ashmead Perkins ’49

know him both by his trumpet
playing in the Swarthmore
College Concert Band and by
his inimitable leadership of the
procession of each year’s
graduating seniors.
Jean A. Perkins ’49, the
Susan W. Lippincott Professor
of French, began her teaching
career at Swarthmore in 1957,
shortly after receiving a Ph.D.
from Columbia University.
Widely published in the field
of 18th-century ideas, she has
served in many professional
organizations, among them the
Modern Language Associa­
tion, of which she was presi­
dent for two years.
Simone Smith, professor of
French and a teacher at the
College for 26 years, con­
cluded her final semester by
returning to manage the ex­
change program in Grenoble,
where in 1972 she founded
and organized the program for
Swarthmore students.
Educated at the University
of Grenoble, she received a
second and third Certificat de
Licence in 1946, teaching at
various American institutions
before coming to Swarthmore
in 1964 as an instructor in
French. An occasional book
translator, she became a full
professor in 1984.

E

Simone Smith

President Fraser
intends to resign
College President David
Fraser has announced that he
will leave Swarthmore in Au­
gust of 1991, after nine years
at the helm of the College.
A search committee led by
Samuel L. Hayes III ’57, a
member of the Board of Man­
agers and a professor of invest­
ment banking at Harvard
Business School, has been
charged with making a recom­
mendation for a new president
to the Board by May of next
year.
The search committee in­
cludes five Board members,
three faculty members, and
two students.
Board members include
Barbara Weber Mather ’65,
Christopher Edley, Jr., ’73,
Susan Willis Ruff ’60, and

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Daniel Singer ’51. Faculty
members include professors
Philip Weinstein, Robert Pas­
ternack, and Jennie Keith.
Student members are Sameer
Ashar ’91 and Naomi Fisher
’91.
“We shall have completed a
very successful capital cam­
paign that has already ex­
ceeded the goal of $75 mil­
lion, and the College is in
excellent condition,” Fraser
said in a recent interview. It
was his intention from the
beginning, he explained, to
remain at the College for five
to 10 years. President Fraser
has said that he wishes to in­
crease his involvement again
in the fields of epidemiology
and public health while he
remains interested “in continu­
ing to build institutions.”
Ed Skeath, m athem atics
chair, dead a t 53
J. Edward Skeath ’58, Albert
L. and Edna Pownall Buffing­
ton Professor of Mathematics
and department chairman,
died April 29 after a long
bout with cancer. He was 53.
A member of the mathe­
matics faculty since 1965, he
served as chairman since 1981
and as dean of men for five
years in the early 1970s. He
strongly encouraged the devel­
opment of the College’s com­
puting services and introduced
computers into the mathemat­
ics curriculum.
Professor Skeath received
his bachelor of arts degree
with Honors and went on to
complete master’s and doctor’s
degrees from the University of
Illinois. While at Swarthmore
he was a star on the track
team. His 440-yard dash of
47.9 seconds still stands as the
College record.
Memorial contributions
may be made to Swarthmore
College or to the Swarthmore
ABC Program, for which he
was an active member of the
board.

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Four nam ed to
endowed professorships
President David Fraser has
announced that the Board of
Managers has approved the
naming of four members of
the Swarthmore faculty to
endowed professorships begin­
ning with the upcoming aca­
demic year.
Susan Snyder becomes the
first Gil and Frank Mustin
Professor of English. The
Mustin Professorship, a recent
gift to the College by two
Philadelphia-area alumni,
classes of 1942 and 1944
respectively, is unrestricted in
regard to academic field.
Jennie Keith is named the
Centennial Professor of
Anthropology. Well known
for her research on aging, she
succeeds Hans Wallach and
Paul Beik in the chair reserved
for the social sciences.
Mark Heald is the Morris
L. Clothier Professor of Phys­
ics. An expert on electromag­
netism, Heald succeeds Paul
Mangelsdorf ’49, who retired
this summer.
Plant physiologist Mark
Jacobs assumes the Centennial
Professorship of Biology upon
the retirement of OleksaMyron Bilaniuk, professor of
physics.
Former professor
George J. Becker dies
George J. Becker, former
chairman of the Department
of English Literature, died
December 22, 1989, in Bel­
lingham, Wash. He was 81.
Becker came to Swarth­
more in 1945 and remained
for 25 years, becoming a full
professor in 1952 and depart­
ment chairman the next year.
In 1961 he was named
Alexander Griswold Cummins
Professor of English, a post he
held until leaving the College
in 1970 to return to his native
Northwest. In 1986 the
George Becker Faculty Fel­
lowship was created anony­
mously by a former student,
who said, “He revealed new
AUGUST 1990

worlds to me, and because
I’ve long been certain he did
the same for many others, I
resolved years ago to honor
him in this fashion if life’s
lottery made it possible.”
Becker’s many publications
include the books John Dos
Passos, Shakespeare’s His­
tories, Realism in Modem
Literature, D.H. Lawrence,
and James A. Michener.
His three sons are alumni of
the College, John Becker ’55,
George Dennis Becker ’56,
and Michael Becker ’63.
Sports and music
highlight Homecoming
O ctober 12-13
Among many other activities
and events, the Garnet Tide
meets Georgetown on the
gridiron while the women’s
field hockey team will con­
front an alumnae team. A
reception sponsored by The
Friends of Swarthmore Ath­
letics following the football
game will welcome new coach
Karl Miran. For the fleet of
foot, the men’s cross-country
team races Drew University.
On a clearer note, two con­
certs in the Swarthmore Music
and Dance Festival series will
take place on Friday and Sat­
urday nights. The Friday night
Lili Kraus Memorial Concert
will feature eight alumnae
soloists and a Swarthmore
orchestra in a program
entitled, “Mozart’s (and
Swarthmore’s) Women.” The
Saturday night concert is an
evening of baroque music and
dance. A lecture/demonstra­
tion by faculty of the Music
Department on Saturday
morning will focus on music
of the two concerts.
Alumni and parents in the
mid-Atlantic states will receive
details in the mail; others may
call the Alumni Office at 215328-8404.

It happens every spring
M en’s Tennis (19-4): The
self-described Bandits proved
too much of a match for the
competition, taking the
national championship at
Swarthmore in a 5-1 defeat of
defending champion Univer­
sity of California at Santa
Cruz (see page 2). Juniors
Steve Tignor, Steve Tucker,
and Andy Dailey were named
All-Americans.
Women’s Tennis (5-11):
Despite several heartbreakingly close matches that came
down outside the line of vic­
tory, the Garnet women
hinted strongly at a promising
1990-91 season led by Julie
Shapiro ’92. Shapiro won the
MAC individual tournament
and qualified for nationals, a
first-time honor for a member
of the women’s team.
M en’s Track and Field:
Defeating Haverford 76-69 in
hotly contested Hood Trophy
competition, the men sur­
passed last season’s record,
finishing a respectable seventh
out of 16 teams at the MAC
Track and Field Champion­
ships. Senior Mike Vischak
won the high jump, soaring to
6 feet 10 inches for the vic­
tory.

Women’s Track and Field:
Despite losing to Haverford
after a slow season start, the
women gained momentum
rapidly, coming back to finish
sixth at the MAC Champion­
ships. Led by a strong distance
team, Garnet women also
placed high in the long jump,
the javelin, the 400-meter
hurdles, and the 100-meter
hurdles. Senior Kitty Keller
completed her fleet career
with a fourth-place finish in
the 3,000 meter run and a
fifth-place finish in the 5,000.
Baseball (7-20): Coach
Ernie Prudente led the Sultans
of Swat through a season of
various difficulties and disap­
pointments to a couple of high
points: two defeats of Haver­
ford (5-2, 3-0). In the second
matchup against the ’Fords,
Swarthmore’s sluggers not
only scored three runs but also
shut out ’Ford star Shawn
Garland, who was picked
high in this year’s professional
draft. No other MAC team
proved so able.
Softball (13-8): Saga­
ciously led by Garnet alumni
coaches Marc Peterson ’78
and former standout player
Annie Fetter ’88, the hard­
hitting, hard-throwing Garnet

The m en’s lacrosse team sticks it to the opposition.
23

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easily surpassed last year’s
sub-.500 season to finish a
noteworthy second in the
MAC, with a solid 7-3 record.
Barb Schaefer ’90 was named
Player of the Year by the
Pennsylvania Association of
Independent Athletics for
Women (PAIAW) and nomi­
nated to the MAC All-Star
team for the third year.
Schaefer achieved a peerless
career ERA of .68 and a
career win-loss record of
31-10. Classmate Liz Clarke,
who finished her four-year
career with a batting average
of .368, was named MAC AllStar catcher for the fourth
year, a record for the diamond
women.
Golf (7-10): Improving on
last year’s score by five strokes
at the MAC tournament, the
team scored 1,022 on the
Shawnee links, led by junior
captain Matt Schaefer. Sopho­
more Mike Costonis finished
11th in individual competi­
tion, missing a top-10 medal
by one stroke.
M en’s Lacrosse (5-6):
Showing exceptional speed
and depth, the fierce Garnet
outlasted Haverford 11-10,
missing a chance at postseason
play by falling to top-ranked
Drew, 13-8. Chris McCabe
’90 led all scoring with 32
goals and 11 assists for the
season, followed by classmates
Luke Mulligan (16,10) and
Chris Walsh (11,14).
Women’s Lacrosse (4-11):
Senior co-captains Cindy Loukides and Cindy Thomas led
the gritty Garnet into tough
competition to emerge with a
season record that fails to
show how successful the stillyoung team may prove next
year. Going 3-2 in MAC
competition, the tough women
came back from trailing 5-1
against Widener to win 12-11
in double overtime.
Hood Trophy returns:
Seizing 10 of 16 Hood Trophy
points for the year, the Garnet
easily outclassed the ’Fords,
proving once more that those
24

L

E

G

E

who study harder can also
win on the playing field.

Bulletin wins aw ard
The Swarthmore College
Bulletin has received a silver
medal in the annual national
contest for college magazines
sponsored by CASE, the
Council for Advancement and
Support of Education. Com­
peting against periodicals from
87 other institutions, Swarthmore’s alumni magazine was
one of three to receive silver
medals. Judges noted that the
Bulletin’s merits included its
class notes, which they de­
scribed as among “the best in
the country.”
Other winners included
gold-medal recipients Dart­
mouth College, the Art Center
College of Design at Pasa­
dena, and the Johns Hopkins
Medical Institutions; silver
medalists Radcliffe College
and the State U. of New York
at Buffalo School of Medicine
and Biological Sciences; and
bronze medalists The Colo­
rado College, Emory Univer­
sity School of Medicine, and
Western Maryland College.

by Daniel M enaker ’63

y uncle left me his country house in New
Marlborough, Mass., when he' died in
1985. The Farmhouse, as it is called by all
who know it. It quickly became clear to me
that I had spent more than 40 years of my life wit
mildly spoiled city/suburban kid’s idea of what a house
actually was. I thought a house was a house. It sat there,
at worst user-neutral, sempiternally ready to accommo­
date me. The householder’s lamentations of my uncle and
father seemed to my youthful ears a form of conversa­
tional recreation.
Well, I discovered I was wrong about houses. A house
is not a house: It’s an accordian. And The Farmhouse was
playing “Lady of Spain.” One end was sinking and
therefore pulling away from the other end, we learned.
There was also a huge David Lynchesque turnbuckle in
the attic, installed many years before to pinch the top of
the place together, which was further splaying the bot­
tom.
That was the major problem with the house. It meant
that a new partial foundation had to be poured, old sills
had to be replaced and the new ones leveled, and the land
at the back of the house had to be dug out and graded
to provide better drainage and thus avoid a rotten, tilted
future. But other things had to be done, too. Much of the
siding on the front of the house turned out to have all the
structural integrity of Wheat Chex, the roof was ready
to shed its deteriorating slate, the swaybacked front porch
had to be torn off, and the whole place had to be painted,
inside and out.
We took out a mortgage and acted as our own con­
tractors, interviewing highly voluble tradesmen and
getting estimates and drawing up budgets—a frantic
enterprise for a weekending family whose youngest
member, our 3-year-old son, had only recently learned
to say, “I want attention.” He practiced the clause re­
lentlessly as one carpenter candidate after another ripped
a piece of clapboard off and shredded it between his
thumb and fingers, shaking his head sympathetically all
the while.
That was in early spring o f’86. The work commenced
a couple of months later and continued well into autumn.
As I recall, that is. I’m not completely sure about the
sequence and nature of many of the renovative events,
thanks to the marvelous human capacity for forgetting
things like influenza and root-canal work. Some scenes
and sounds had so much impact, however, that they
survived this wonderful mechanism of repression, and
they remain in my memory as if graven there.
More than half of the house was up on jacks for quite

M

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Never look a gift house in the mouth
a while, for instance, and we
moved around the propped-up
parts in a tentative way, as if in
some danger, some peril of a
vaguely nautical sort. Maybe
the marine feeling originated
with opening the back door
and glimpsing the great declivity - lt was like looking out the
porthole of a ship—that lay just
outside. A backhoe had dug out
a swale, leaving a slope and a
trench where, if it ever stopped
raining, the foundation would
be poured. There was a sea of
mud there for many, many
weeks, and it all looked so
Marnelike that one half ex­
pected to find doughboys hud­
dling at the bottom.
Come to think of it, a martial
metaphor fits a major renova­
tion better than an oceanic one.
The noise of the backhoe,
coughing and whining and grat­
ing its teeth on enormous Berk­
shire boulders, combined with the carpenters’ hammering and cursing,
made us feel under seige when we stupidly came up early on Fridays
to “enjoy” the place and pigheadedly spent our “vacation” there in
August. The sound of the old slate roof crashing to the ground was
by itself sufficient cause for shell shock. We’d be sitting in the living
room when all of a sudden this enormous roar would start, as if we
were living underneath some Titan’s coal scuttle. The removal of each
small section of roof also evicted hundreds upon hundreds of bats, so
that when we went outside we’d find the dazed creatures hanging from
the most unlikely places—the barbecue grill, the antique sleigh bells
in the horse barn, the car’s side mirror.
The renovation reached its esthetic nadir that fall, when the
backside of the house still looked like a bunker on stilts in the middle
of the Mekong Delta. The old paint had been blasted off the exterior,
leaving deposits of sand inside, where it formed little dunes on the
drop cloths at the feet of deranged furniture. The numerous knots in
the cheap pine clapboards we’d chosen for the front of the house
stared at us reprovingly. A dumpster filled with detritus occupied the
top of the driveway, and large scars—bypasslike gashes—disfigured
the house where the front porch had been removed. It was getting to
the point where the mere crunch of gravel under the tires of a pickup
truck turning into our driveway soured my stomach.
The worst time, psychologically speaking, came the following
spring, when we approached our place one Friday afternoon after the
AUGUST 1990

paint had been sprayed on the
outside but the color hadn’t
really taken. (All that was
needed, it turned out, was a
second, hand-applied coat, but
we didn’t know that then.) The
house looked scrofulous, espe­
cially with those hideous plastic
membranes over the windows
bellowing disconsolately in the
breeze. Lord Bleary’s Castle.
My wife was nearly in tears,
and my son appeared to suffer
the first bout of depression of
his young life. We felt this de­
pression despite the fact that all
the work had come in at or near
estimate, that the workmen had
been competent and honest
and, God knows, cordial, that
we had encountered no serious
setbacks. (And despite the fact
that the bequest was, in the first
place, a really grand piece of
good fortune.) I shudder in
sympathy when I think of the
many people I know who have had renovation debacles.
For anyone about to embark on a major renovation, I can offer a
few tips. If you trust the workmen you’ve hired—and you like
omelettes more than breaking eggs—stay away from the chaos as
much as you can. If you don’t have time for long, leisurely, sometimes
even philosophical conversations with four or five people every Friday
afternoon, spend a little money and hire a contractor. Then you’ll only
have one such conversation every Friday afternoon. Also, kids and
renovations don’t mix. And if you’re married, try to remember that
paint samples can afflict even the most intelligent and sane people
with either severe indecision or a sudden and inexplicable craving for
a bathroom in bright orange.
Eventually, the second coat of paint went on our house, the mud
dried, and the grass grew in. We’ve completed some other projects
around the place—replacing the circuit panel in the cellar, having the
chimney repointed and repaired, and so forth—but all in a much less
blitzkrieg sort of way. Sitting on the lawn as our kids frisk and romp
around the house, enjoying a lovely spring afternoon, I look back on
that year and ask myself if, knowing what I know now, I would go
through it all again.
The answer is a definite maybe.
Daniel Menaker is an editor fo r The New Yorker. Copyright ® 1990
by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
25

ROSSWORD PUZZLE
by Charles Bush ’49
ACROSS
1 SWARTHMORE FOUNDER AND
SOCIAL REFORMER
5. WORTHY SUCCESSOR TO FRANK
AYDELOTTE
10. ORG. THAT VOTED OUT WOMEN’S
FRATERNITIES IN 1933 (abbr.)
14. National safety org. (abbr.)
15. Texas pro
16. Latin primer word
17. EARLY PRESIDENT (3 words)
20. Toast
21. Liberator of yore
22. Souchong
23. Swerve
24. Lacking elasticity
26. Composer Saint-_________
28. GREAT SOCCER COACH (1920-61)
29. HAMBURG SHOW STAR
SOMETIMES (abbr.)
31. Really (2 words)
34. Grand_________ , Acadia
35. London art gallery
39. INTEGRAL AND UNIQUE ASPECT
OF SWARTHMORE
42. Normandy city
43. Bustling excitement
44. Spiritual
45. Lights-out signal
47. Jean Valjean creator
48. Going or ographic preceder
51. LAMB-MILLER FIELD HOUSE
EVENT
52. Abate
55. Craze
56. Relating to Avena sativa
59. Asphyxia
61. RECENT PRESIDENTS (3 words)
64. Comic strip character Kett
65. Poplar
66. REVERED SORE MUSCLE HEALER
FOR GENERATIONS OF MEN
67. Remainder
68. Louvre
69. West and Largo
DOWN
1 Beatrix Potter character
2. Honshu port
3. Lose intentionally
4. Scarlett’s house
5. U.S. scientific org. (abbr.)
6. Coal furnace dependent (2 words)
7. Tolerated
8. Hockey great and family
9. U.S. town within 200 miles of U.S.S.R.

26

1

2

5

3

6

7

10

8

11

12

13

36

37

38

52

53

54

’
16

15

14

19

18

17

20

24

23

■

21

26

25

29

28

31

32

42

45

48

55

61

f:

40

39

49

■

27

30

34

33

■

■

35

41

44

43
47

46

51

50

■

56

22

57

58

■

60

63

62

64

65

66

67

68

69

10. Joker
11. Strike heavily
12. Greek physician
13. Source for 9 Down
18. Benito Mussolini (2 words)
19. Organization (abbr.)
25. Catch
27. When Romeo appears under Juliet’s
window (2 words)
28. Sioux
29. ITEM PROBABLY BURNED ON
CAMPUS IN THE ’60s
30. Go-between
31. FEW OF THESE ARE LOW AT
SWARTHMORE (abbr.)
32. Eccentric
33. Staff or conry starter
34. Capriati at 13
36. Florida ocean highway
37. Craggy hill

38. GARNET 11 POSITION
40. Football letters
41. Meshed (2 words)
46. Soon
47. Manipulate
48. Tender
49. A la
50. Redacts
51. Chromosome components
52. Follow
53. Thickset
54. Throws up (slang)
57. Palindrome “Madam, I’m
58. Protective prohibition
60. Recreational land
62. Tea anagram
63. Fixed charge

Solution, page 55

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

BUCK STARTS Continued from page 15
$30,000. “I couldn’t just say no,” he says.
According to Spock, 25 years ago a house
in Swarthmore cost approximately two times
the average annual salary of a faculty mem­
ber. Now that cost has risen to five times the
average annual salary. And in an environ­
ment where the quality of Swarthmore stu­
dents is maintained while the number of
first-class Ph.D.s is decreasing, such a situ­
ation proves decidedly uncomfortable for
the College.
While many of these factors remain en­
demic to higher education, there are particu­
lar circumstances that effect Swarthmore.
“The student-faculty ratio of 9 to 1,” Spock
says, “and the fact that no cap is placed on
students with financial need are two factors
very important for us to maintain, but
they’re also expensive.” Smith College, by
way of comparison, completed a recent
$160 million campaign only to drop its
need-blind admissions policy. “That does
not augur well for them,” explains another
Swarthmore administrator.
“Let’s look at specific figures,” the vice
president suggests, getting down to business.
“We have a total budget of $40 million, or
$46 million if you include financial aid as an
expense item. Now we have some 1,285
students paying tuition, but about half of
those are receiving financial aid averaging
about 50 percent of the total charge. In the
1970s financial-aid students received about
30 percent of their cost. Also, increasing our
foreign studies to complement our more
global outlook and culture is expensive.
“In terms of endowment income, we
receive some 12 million or 4.25 percent,
about one-half a percent higher than in prior
years. And by September we expect to be
fully divested from South Africa in domestic
equities while our overall endowment in­
come continues to keep pace with inflation.
That is very good.
“Obviously at this point our giving be­
comes critical. So you can see that while we
look like fat cats, that is not the case. To
remain equal to the best in this country we’re
going to have to do some careful strategic
planning.”
Spock ticks off the possibilities without
hesitation. “We ought to review our assump­
tions about needs and services and consider
possible cutbacks in services; we need to
weigh our student-faculty ratio against new
technologies or stronger needs that may
increase it; we need careful course and
faculty allocations, a wise utilization of
facilities, and creative development ideas.”
The vice president is both emphatic and
positive when he says, leaning forward ea­
gerly, “Our quality is excellent. We’ve got to
56

keep it that way. SAT scores are as good as
ever, the faculty is stronger than ever, and
we admit the best, whatever their need.
“And to help pay for this,” he concludes,
“it doesn’t look like we’re going to get a big
share of NCAA television revenue.”

STREETWISE Continued from page 9
debt and bought the house. I think that’s
great.”
In only two cases has the bank foreclosed
on his buyers because they couldn’t meet the
monthly house payments of approximately
$100. “This was very discouraging,” he ad­
mits quietly.
To help alter the extreme financial igno­
rance he often encounters, James has intro­
duced monthly counseling sessions on fi­
nance for prospective or current buyers.
But what he really needs, he adds, is
financial backing for the CCIP on a much
larger scale so that he can subcontract some
renovation work and increase the scope of
his effort, offering both rental properties in
lease-purchase arrangements and homeownership to qualified buyers all over Ches­
ter.
The problem, again, is glamour. James
believes that large corporations prefer to
offer money budgeted for such work to
endeavors that show quick and tidy returns.
“They like to see a nice, neat conclusion and
a problem solved,” he observes. “I don’t
blame them. But restoring houses in Chester
isn’t that kind of glamorous work.”
So he slugs away at the problems around
him by relying on funding from a few local
organizations and occasional gifts of such
valued items as good quality stoves, refrig­
erators, washers, and dryers.
“I’d like to make this organization selfsufficient before I step out,” he says. “Both
financially and in terms of personnel. Then
it could have a real effect. If I could do that,
I’d be happy.”
Where would he step out to? “I don’t
know,” he replies, “although my wife and I
don’t want to become too Northeast-ori­
ented because the rest of the country and the
world have so much to offer.”
His wife, Marianne Wizda, will complete
Temple University medical school next year.
“We have looked at places like Seattle. It’s
so nice in Seattle, you know?” He pauses.
“But if it’s so nice, there can’t be that much
work to do.” His open grin suggests he’s not
kidding.
“No, I’m not,” he admits. “There’s defi­
nitely a bit of the puritan in me—you’ve got
to suffer a little to make things work.”

WORK Continued from page 14
behind those in Japan and Western Europe
as far as basic respect toward the worker is
concerned. As a former labor reporter who
has covered numerous strikes and union­
organizing drives, I can also testify that the
lack of trust or the breakdown of trust is
always the central issue in such disputes—
even if the major demand is for more money.
More positively, trust is also what em­
ployees of good workplaces talk about in
almost glowing terms when explaining what
is so great about their companies. They talk
about “having confidence in,” “trusting,”
“believing,” “having faith in,” their com­
pany’s management. They often contrast
this attitude with what they have experienced
at other workplaces.
The point I am trying to make here is that
something very precious gets lost in the
typical work experience. Workers typically
start a job with some enthusiasm and eager­
ness to pitch in, but they often lose that drive
after a short period of time. What gets lost
is the desire to work, as opposed to the
willingness to labor.
I came across a book called The Gift, by
Louis Hyde, which helped me understand
this distinction. Hyde explains that a work
of art exists in two different economies—the
market economy and the gift economy. In
other words, a work of art viewed on its own
terms is an object that can be sold for a
certain amount of money determined by
market prices' A van Gogh painting can be
worth millions, for instance. But it exists on
an entirely different level as well. It also
exists aesthetically, a gift to humanity.

pplying this distinction to the
workplace, I would say that on
one level, employees often come
to an organization ready to give
their gift of work: They are willing to give
something of themselves to the firm. But
when the company does not recognize that
gift, the interaction is transformed into a
commodity exchange—strictly a time-formoney exchange. The employee then says,
“OK, if that’s what you want to do, I’ll do
the same and only give you time on the job.”
What good workplaces offer instead is a
consistent recognition of another side of
people—a recognition of the giftlike nature
of work.

A

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ALUMNI COUNCIL

Running for Council
During this year, the A lu m n i C ouncil report
has become a regular fe a tu re in the Bulletin,
keeping yo u inform ed o f the activities and
concerns o f the different C ouncil committees.
In return, we have been g ratified with a
number o f responses and suggestions, thus
achieving a com m unication that we hope
will continue to grow.
The m ost hotly debated issue this yea r
concerned the nom inating and election p ro ­
cedure fo r selecting m em bers o f the A lu m n i
Council. I appointed an a d hoc com m ittee to
sort through the variety o f responses we
receivedfrom alum ni by letter or on the tearo ff form s. The report o f the chair o f that
committee follow s, and we are a ll greatly
indebted to h er and her com m ittee m em bers.
Notice the accom panying te a r-o ff fo rm —
keep those lines o f com m unications open!

—Elinor Meyer Haupt ’55
President, Alumni Council
The Alumni Council has been struggling
for the past two years with the question of
how its members are elected. The bylaws of
the Council stated, “Each zone’s members
shall elect. . . one man and one woman to
serve as members of the Alumni Council for
a three-year term. For each zone, the Nomi­
nating Committee shall nominate candi­
dates___” Alumni, it said, may vote for two
candidates from their zone.
In practice the Nominating Committee,
appointed by the Alumni Council, has been
nominating three men and three women
from each of the seven geographic zones.
Instructions on the ballot have directed that
each voter select one man and one woman
from the zone of residence.
Problems with this system, adopted in
1985, soon became apparent. The Nominat­
ing Committee found it difficult to locate
three men and three women from the more
distant zones who were willing and able to
come to the College three times each year
for meetings of the Council. When six
names appeared on the ballot, four were not
elected; in some cases those persons most
willing and able to serve were not chosen.
The Council feared that defeat might dis­
courage the losers from further participation
in alumni affairs.

In addition, many alumni wrote to the
Council expressing their feeling that the
whole election process was sexist in that the
voter had to select one man and one woman
when the best candidates were of the same
sex. Some wrote to say that there should be
an (M) or (F) designation beside each name
on the ballot because the voters could not
determine the sex of an individual by the
given name.
At each of its last six meetings, the Coun­
cil has considered ways in which the system
could be revised to meet the expressed
concerns. At the fall 1989 meeting, Elinor
Meyer Haupt, Council president, appointed
an ad hoc committee to study the problem
and come forward with suggestions to im­
prove the election process. The ad hoc
committee (Nancy Fitts Donaldson ’46,
chair; Joan Heifetz Hollinger ’61; and Col­
gate Prentice ’49) met together on two
occasions. After its first meeting, a survey
which listed six possible options for the
selection of Council members was sent to
members of the Council, alumni members
of the Board of Managers, and regional
Connection presidents. Sixty surveys were
sent out, and 44 were returned.

As anyone familiar with Swarthmore
graduates can imagine, all of the options had
their supporters, and no one option was the
clear winner. However, it was clear that a
ballot which offered some choice was fa­
vored over a single slate. It was also clear
that those surveyed desired to elect the best
candidates regardless of sex and that the
ballot should list all candidates in a single
zone alphabetically with the (M) or (F)
designation in addition to the brief bio­
graphical sketch.
At the March 1990 meeting of the Alumni
Council, results of the survey were presented
to the membership, along with a proposal
that the ballots for the election of Alumni
Council members list the names of two men
and two women from each zone with the
instruction to vote for two candidates from
the voter’s zone of residence. Each candidate
would be designated (M) or (F), but the
voter would not have to select one man and
one woman. The proposal was accepted and
Section 2 of the bylaws was amended to
reflect the changes at the June 1990 meeting
of the Council.
— N ancy F itts D onaldson ’■46
Chair, ad hoc com m ittee

The officers of the Alumni Association and the Alumni Council want to hear from you!
Please write to Elinor Meyer Haupt ’55, president, Swarthmore College Alumni Association,
in care of the Alumni Office, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397.
Good people for Alumni Council candidates:----------------------------------------------------------Good people for Alumni Managers:
Good people for Nominating Committee:
I’d like to serve as a resource for the Career Planning and Placement Office:
| | Serve as Extern Sponsor
] Talk to students about career opportunities in my field
Q Provide leads for summer jobs
| | Participate in a career panel on campus
Your job/career description _ ---------------------------------------------------------I wish Alumni Council would do something about:
Signed: name and class
address______

The 1991
Swarthmore
Alumni College
Abroad invites
you to Soviet
Central Asia
April 27 to May 11

ying between the rugged mountains of north­
ern Iran and the vast steppes of Central Asia,
Bukhara and Samarkand dominate the Asian
gateway to the Near East.

L

Reflecting the exotic mixture of Central
Asian and Persian cultures, the two cities flourished as
caravan centers on the silk route to China; and under the
Mongol leader Tamerlane, Samarkand became a show­
piece of Islamic culture.
The trip will begin with three days and three nights in
Moscow, followed by a flight to Uzbekistan and visits to
Tashkent, Urgench, Khiva, Bukhara, and Samarkand.
Interpreting these vastly different cultures for Swarthmoreans will be Swarthmore professors Stephen P.
Bensch and Robert E. Weinberg. Bensch teaches Islamic
and Muslim-Christian relations and specializes in the
history of the medieval Mediterranean. Weinberg teaches
Russian and Soviet history and has lived and traveled
extensively in the Soviet Union.
Alumni Office, Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397
Please send me details on Soviet Central Asia.
N am e_____________________________________
Address

Telephone

Class