Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1991-08-01

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hese are the
freshest new
faces to join
Swarthmore’s alumni! On
June 2nd, 308 members of
the Class of 1991 received
diplomas with the usual
mingling of anticipation
and relief. Afterward, their
sense of achievement
sparked unbridled laughter
and exuberant smiles.
Some posed for pictures
while others just basked in
the day, letting the camera
catch what it could.

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Photographs by Steven Goldblatt ’67

_____________ J j

SmKTHMORE
COLLEGE BULLETIN • AUGUST 1991

2

Strewn from the Stars
I f you think o f life as chemistry— organic molecules getting
together to propagate and flourish— then those molecules had to
come from somewhere. Did some o f them come from space?
By J effrey L ott

6

Restored Benjamin West Drawings Exhibited

Editor:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Managing Editor:
Jeffrey Lott
Assistant Managing Editor:
Kate Downing
Copy and Class Notes Editor:
Rebecca Aim
Assistant Copy Editor:
Ann D. Geer
Publications Intern:
Dana S. Calvo ’92
Designer: Bob Wood
Cover: Could the organic molecules
that made possible life on earth have
come from outer space? A computer­
generated model of the crash of a
comet 1km in diameter into a 3kmdeep ocean shows that, under certain
conditions, organic molecules could
survive the heat of impact. At one
second after impact, shock heating
has peaked and temperatures have
started to decline. They range from
300-800°K (blue) to 1,800-2,300°K
(red). Organic molecules in the area
opposite the point of impact would
have escaped destruction, says
Christopher Chyba ’82. Story, page
2. Photo courtesy Leigh Brookshaw,
Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, and Paul J. Thomas,
University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

The College’s collection o f drawings by the American artist
Benjamin West has been newly cataloged and restored. His work
was a fitting subject fo r the first exhibit in the new List Gallery.
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Labor’s Pains
Has the movement gone out o f the labor movement? We asked
11 alumni in organized labor, arbitration, and labor-management
relations. Their conclusion: D on’t count the unions out.
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16

Red Tape Near Red Square

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This spring’s Alum ni College Abroad in the Soviet Union seemed
like a good time to catch up with Ambassador Oleg Troyanovsky ’41.
It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, but we got the interview.

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Big Catalyst on Campus

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Printed on Recycled Paper

The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), o f which this is volume
LXXXVIII, number 6, is published in
September, November, December, Febru­
ary, May, and August by Swarthmore
College, Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397.
Second class postage paid at Swarthmore,
PA, and additional mailing offices. Post­
master: Send address changes to Swarth­
more College Bulletin, 500 College
Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397.

o n sta n c e

9

9 P fÌ
B B S m r lr fi

inani

j Mathematician Uri Treisman does more than wonder why there
are so few people o f color in advanced math and sciences. H e’s
challenging institutions like Swarthmore to do something about it.
By M

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1 DEPARTMENTS
22 The College
28 Letters
30 Acrostic by Carol Dubivsky Becker ’57
31 Class Notes
37 Deaths
54 Recent Books by Alumni
Special Insert following page 32:

Fall Sports Schedules, Courtesy of
Friends of Swarthmore Athletics

Strewn from the Stars
Som e o f the organic m olecules that m ade possible
life on Earth arrived from outer space, says
plan etary astronom er Christopher Chyba ’82
by Jeffrey Lott

hristopher Chyba ’82 hesitated a
moment, exhaled deeply, then
wrapped his gloved fingers around
the melon-sized chunk of rock. He slowly
raised it in his hands. It was a piece of the
beginning, a charcoal-colored meteorite old­
er than the Earth itself—and in the look that
came into Chyba’s eyes, you could sense his
wonder, his questions about the origin of life
on our planet. Most of us have pondered
such questions occasionally, but Christopher
Chyba is among those who are working full
time to provide some answers.
The rock he gently cradled was a piece of
the Murchison meteorite, a carbon-rich rem­
nant of our early solar system that fell to
Earth near Murchison, Australia, in 1969.
What makes it so special is that its fragments
were collected almost immediately after it
was seen to fall, giving scientists pristine
samples of debris almost certainly left over
from the formation of the solar system. Deep
inside these ancient rocks, scientists have
identified some 74 different amino acids, the
building blocks of proteins and therefore of
life as we know it. There are some 20 amino Wm
acids found in D NA , our genetic code, and
though not all of these were seen in Murchi­
son, the meteorite was one more bit of
evidence that life’s precursors are abundant
in the universe and could quite literally have
been strewn here from the stars.
At 31, Chyba is one of a number of
scientists who are challenging some longheld ideas about our origins. After earning an
honors degree in physics at Swarthmore, he
went to Cambridge University on a Marshall
Scholarship to study mathematics, theoreti­
cal physics, and the history and philosophy

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COURTESY THE PLANETARY SOCIETY

Sights like the comet Bennett (above), seen over the
A lps in 1970, are now a relatively rare occurrence,
but Christopher Chyba (opposite) estimates that more
than 30,000 such objects struck Earth in its early
history, bringing with them an amount o f organic
molecules greater than the contemporary biomass
^Mthe total mass o f all living things on Earth today.
How old is life on Earth? Stromatolites—primitive
mats o f algae that still grow along the coast o f
Australia (top)— are among the oldest, simplest
life forms on the planet. Fossils o f stromatolites
(bottom) have been discovered in rock estimated
to be 3.5 billion years old

CHIP CLARK, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

of science. Since 1985 he has been at Cornell
University, where he earned an M.A. in
astronomy in 1988 and a Ph.D. in planetary
studies in 1991. In collaboration with Dr.
Carl Sagan and others, Chyba has published
ground-breaking papers in Icarus, Science,
and the British journal Nature.
Chyba and his colleagues assert that a
significant proportion of the organic mole­
cules that made life possible on Earth must
have arrived here from space. They rained
down during a colossal bombardment by
comets and meteors that pounded our young
planet for hundreds of millions of years after
its formation. Chyba has calculated that
every 10 million years on the early Earth,
extraterrestrial impacts delivered a mass of
organic molecules greater than the contem­
porary biomass—the total mass of all the
living things on Earth today.
But let’s begin at the beginning. About 4.6
billion years ago, the Earth is thought to
have coalesced from a primordial cloud of Clockwise from above: Geological
gas and dust orbiting the sun. At first, this activity has erased most o f
matter “accreted” (clumped together) into Earth’s craters, but these
asteroid-sized chunks averaging about 10km impact-crater lakes in Canada
in size. Then, in the geologically short time are evidence that massive
of about 100 million years, the Earth itself objects once struck the planet.
Halley’s comet, seen here from a
accreted from these smaller chunks.
It was a hot, nasty, violent place. It seems space probe, is estimated to
likely that by 4.3 billion years ago there was contain up to 25 percent organic molecules.
Ancient impact craters on the moon, such as
a global ocean about 3km deep and very the 3.8 billion-year-old Orientale Basin,
little dry land. Thousands of asteroids, have been well-preserved. The 600-mile-wide
comets, and small meteors were still careen­ crater was formed when the moon was hit by
ing about the inner solar system, many an asteroid-sized body.
crashing into our planet.
Not until Apollo astronauts went to the a hundred million megatons of explosive
moon did we gain a clear understanding of energy into the Earth. Impacts of such ob­
the magnitude of this bombardment and the jects—whose size and velocity are so great
time scale on which it occurred. (“To learn that they would not be slowed at all by the
about the early Earth,” says Chyba, “you’ve atmosphere—would have vaulted enormous
got to look at the moon and the other plan­ amounts of dust and debris into the air,
ets.”) We learned that most of the moon’s blocking the sun’s light and suddenly low­
craters—especially the larger ones—are very ering global temperatures.
old, excavated by impacts that occurred
A few mega-objects would have had an
between 4.4 and 3.8 billion years ago. But opposite effect. They were probably so large
since this period of intense bombardment, that their impact would have briefly gener­
the frequency of impacts has been relatively ated a globe-encircling rock vapor whose
constant at a much smaller rate.
heat would have completely evaporated the
The Earth, being so geologically active, oceans—effectively sterilizing the planet.
has erased most of its own cratering record, (Chyba estimates the number of such giant
though photographs from Earth orbit reveal impacts as “possibly zero, probably sev­
more than 100 craterlike features. On the eral.”) Even if life had managed to get
moon, craters with diameters up to 2,200km started, it would likely have been temp­
suggest impacts by objects more than 100km orarily eliminated by such a cataclysmic
across. By extrapolating from the lunar crater­ event. In all, it was an extremely hostile
ing record, Chyba estimates that the Earth environment for the formation of life, yet
received proportionately more impacts due through processes that are still to be under­
to its greater gravitational pull—some stood, life emerged. Just how it emerged is
30,000 objects about 10km across or larger. the focus of huge scientific debate.
Imagine what it must have been like on
Biological life as we know it seems to
the early Earth! A single 10km object crash­ have appeared between 3.8 and 3.5 billion
ing into the planet would dump more than years ago. The fossil record shows that
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Some Definitions1
“
Amino Acids: Amino acids contain the
chemical group NH2 and are the chief
components of proteins extremely
complex molecules that can contain
thousands ol ammo acids. There are two
types, left (L) and right (R), which are
mirror images of each other. The 20
amino acids found in the DNA genetic
code are - like all biologically derived
amino acids -exclusively of the L vari­
ety. But the 74 amino acids identified in
the Murchison meteorite were balanced
between the L and R variety, evidence
of then extraterrestrial origin. Some, but
not all, of the 20 DN A amino acids
were found in Murchison.
Organic: Organic molecules are essen­
tial to life as we know it The chemical
term “organic” originally implied that
the material was biologically derived It
now more accurately describes mole­
cules where carbon is covalently bonded
with hydrogen and perhaps some other
atoms, typically nitrogen, oxygen, oi sul­
fur Methane (CH4), a hydrocarbon, is
organic, but calcium carbonate (C aC 03)
and carbon dioxide (CO?) are not.
Life: Some say the first life was an
evolving set of “autocalaljtic”
RNA molecules, the presumed
■ piecursors to the DNA genetic
code Others (perhaps moie
■ ehauvinisticall}) point to a
I so-called “breakthrough
organism, one that com­ —
bines proteins and DNA
to replicate genetically.
Human beings have been t i
on the Earth a very
short time. If the age of
the Earth weie equal to
one year, all of human
history would be less
than a minute long.

—JL

primitive mats of algae called stromatolites
were definitely present by 3.5 billion years
ago, and other organisms were probably
living well before that.
Darwin proposed that life began in a
“warm little pond,” a place where molecules
gradually cooked into protoplasm and began
the evolutionary process. In 1953 chemist
Stanley Miller demonstrated that amino
acids and other organics could be created by

zapping the supposed early atmosphere of
the Earth—a mixture of methane, ammonia,
and water—with electrical discharges sim­
ulating lightning. This atmospheric model
seemed to make sense because of the abun­
dance of hydrogen in the universe, and
Miller’s experiment accounted for the for­
mation in situ of the organic molecules
needed to stock the warm little pond.
But, says Chyba, “the history of science is
that sooner or later everything turns out to
be wrong, at least in part.” In this case it was
the premise that Earth’s atmosphere was
made up of methane, ammonia, and water.
It now appears that the early atmosphere
was mostly carbon dioxide, with an atmo­
spheric pressure of up to 10 times that of our
present-day nitrogen/oxygen mix.
Because a dense carbon dioxide atmo­
sphere is important to Chyba’s story, it is
worth looking at the reasoning behind this
new atmospheric model. It also gives us a
glimpse of the broad range of science that
goes into the study of life’s origins—from
geology, physics, and chemistry to biology,
astronomy, and mathematics.
The m ethane-am m onia-w ater atmo­
spheric model assumed that the Earth had
been “cold-accreted”—that the internal heat
of the planet was created by the release of
radioactive energy well after the Earth had
formed. The idea was that this energy grad­
ually heated the planet to the point where
most of the Earth’s iron melted and dropped
to the core, where it remains today.
The geochemistry of such a model would
require that most of the Earth’s oxygen be
bonded to the iron until the heating became
great enough to cause the formation of the
core. And because this oxygen would have
been tied up by the iron, the planet’s carbon
would have been forced to bond with ele­
mental hydrogen, forming methane (CH4).
But there’s a catch, and it’s typical of the
way science constantly tests and revises its
theories. “We understand planetary accre­
tion much better now,” says Chyba. “It
turns out that the kinds of velocities involved
in planetary accretion mean that the accre­
tion was hot, not cold. The kinetic energies
of these collisions dumped a whole lot of
heat into the Earth right away, so it was hot
from the beginning and you didn’t have to
wait for the radioactive heat to build up for
the core to form.”
What this means is that the iron core
probably formed immediately, and that by
the time the Earth’s carbon began spewing
out in volcanic eruptions, iron had already
disappeared from the mantle, leaving the
oxygen to bond with the carbon. Voila,
carbon dioxide!
Please turn to page 64

by Constance Cain Hungerford
Professor o f A rt History
he Am erican artist Benjamin West (1738-1820) has long been
inspirationally associated w ith the fine arts at Swarthmore. W hat
is believed to be West’s birthplace still Stands on the campus, and it
seemed especially appropriate that his drawings were featured in
January in the opening exhibit of the new List Gallery in the Eugene
M. and Theresa Lang Performing Arts Center.
In 1922 a large exhibition of West’s work was hung in Parrish Hall.
From this exhibit, a group of alum ni and other friends purchased
approximately 200 drawings for the College, establishing the collection
now housed in the Friends Historical Library and administered by the
D epartm ent of Art.
In 1930, following the presentation of a group of m odern paintings to
the College by the Class of 1905, interested alumni, faculty, and ad­
ministrators founded the Benjamin West Society. Its activities included
sponsoring art lectures, commissioning prints to be issued to members,
and encouraging further gifts of art to the College. Though dissolved
in 1954, the society’s traditions survive in the annual Benjamin West
Lecture.
In addition to the Benjamin West drawings, which now num ber 212,
Swarthm ore conserves several paintings by the artist. These include
Resurrection o f C hrist and Portrait o f Booth G rey, exhibited w ith the
perm anent collection in the List Gallery; Portrait o f John W est (the
artist’s father), hanging in the Friends Historical Library; A pollo and
H yacinthus, displayed at the Philadelphia M useum of Art; and Raising
o f Lazarus.
Though roughly cataloged in 1933, the West drawings at Swarthmore
were first studied in detail by Helm ut von Erffa, who taught in the
D epartm ent of Fine Arts from 1943 to 1946. His subsequent work
culm inated in the massive catalogue raisonne, The Paintings o f
Benjam in West, completed after von Erffa’s death by Allen Staley and
published in 1986.
In recent years the drawings and several of the paintings have been
the focus of a major conservation project funded by The Barra Founda­
tion, the National Endow m ent for the Arts, and Theodore P. Halperin,
as executor, in m em ory of Bertha and R ichard Alexander. Anna Jean
Rhodes ’88 re-examined all of the Swarthm ore drawings and created a
m odern catalog as her Honors thesis. She was invited to serve as special
curator for the recent exhibition. A selection of drawings from this
exhibition appears here and on the following pages.

T

Above: Anna Jean Rhodes ’88, special curator of the
exhibition and author of its catalog, with Constance
Cain Hungerford, professor of art history, at the
opening of the Benjamin West exhibit.
Below: West’s Conté crayon and watercolor drawing of
his patron William Beckford’s dwarf, Pierre Colas de
Grailly, drawn sometime after 1795. (815/i6 x 75/s in.)

P hotographs by the C onservation C en ter f o r A r t
a n d H istoric A rtifacts, P hiladelphia

6

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Above: Several pen-and-ink studies, including a self-portrait of West with his
wife, Elizabeth Shewell West, done in 1800. (93A x 7% in.)
Right: A study for Christ Blessing, ca. 1777. (175/s x 6l/2 in.)

AUGUST 1991

“A drawing represents the purest
extension of the artist’s imagination.”
—Anna Jean Rhodes ’88,
from the exhibition catalog

Above: Conté crayon study of a donkey for the painting Una and the Lion, ca.
1771. (105/s x 83/s in.)
Top left: A Conté crayon drawing enhanced with pen and ink, of Angelica
Kauffmann, ca. 1763. (6 x 43A in.)
Bottom left: “Doc-Bragg,” West’s sketch of a man fishing in the Susquehanna
River, dated 1769. (6lA x 43A in.)

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Above: West returned several times to
the subject Death on the Pale Horse,
taken from a passage in Revelations.
This study dates from ca. 1796.
( 83/4 x 8V4 in.)
Top left: A study for the painting
The Crucifixion, ca. 1796. (7 x 75/s in.)
Bottom left: A study for Daniel
Interpreting to Belshazzar the Writing
on the Wall, ca. 1775. (I8V4 x 12 in.)

From the crisis o f the 1980s, a new labor m ovem ent
is trying to be born. I t’s not the sam e
old union, say Sw arthm ore’s labor activists

Labor’s Pains
f

by Jeffrey Lott
Fewer members means less political clout.
he labor movement is in deep and
fundamental crisis,” says Paul Booth Gone are the days when a Walter Reuther
’64, who heads national organizing of the United Auto Workers or a John L.
efforts at the American Federation of State,
Lewis of the United Mine Workers could
County, and Municipal Employees in Wash­ call the White House to sway policy. AFLington, D.C. Even though AFSCME, with CIO presidents no longer influence the
1.25 million members, is one of the nation’s nation’s foreign affairs, as George Meany
largest, most prosperous unions, Booth is
deeply worried: “The labor movement can
be roughly divided into those who think we
are in an emergency and those who don’t.
I’m in the 911 group.”
The nature of the crisis is simple: Unions
have been hemorrhaging members. From a
peak of nearly 23 million in 1975, union
membership has dropped to 16.7 million
today. The percentage of unionized workers
in the work force has actually been declining
since 1954, when it peaked at 34.7 percent
of all nonagricultural employees. Now it’s
less than 17 percent.

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once did. Paul Booth thinks there is a point
of no return where organized labor could no
longer have the numerical strength to protect
itself from attack—even in areas where
labor-management relations have remained
'stable since the 1940s.
In the decade following World War II,
labor and management seemed to have
reached a broad social compact. The tumul­
tuous organizing drives of the 1930s had
forced the realization that unions were a fact
of life, and management finally agreed to
recognize them in return for a stable collec­
tive-bargaining system. Unions, in turn,
grudgingly accepted the restrictions con­
tained in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and
began to build a more businesslike relation­
ship with management. It looked like a
permanent arrangement, but in the opinion
of Paul Filson ’78, it was the beginning of
labor’s downfall.

UPI/BETJMANN

Editor’s Note
This is not an impersonal, unbiased story.
As an upper-middle-class teenager grow­
ing up in Pittsburgh, I was secretly more
proud of my United Steelworkers union
card than of my junior membership in the
Fox Chapel Golf Club. I held both mem­
berships for a time, when I worked
summer days on the galvanizing line at
U.S. Steel and passed pleasant evenings by
the country club pool.
At the mill I earned $4.85 per hour, a
lot of money for a high-school kid in
1965, when the minimum wage was just
$1.60. It was hot, dirty work, but it was a
good job. Nearly 30 years of organization
by the United Steelworkers had assured
that my pay, benefits, and working condi­
tions were about the best an unskilled
laborer could ask for. And when I walked
10

out of that mill at 4 o’clock in the after­
noon, heading for the leafy suburb where
my parents lived, I knew that my summer
job was different. It was a union job.
How things have changed! Incredibly,
no one makes steel in the city of Pitts­
burgh anymore, and most of the good
union jobs are gone. In that summer of
1965, nearly one in three nonagricultural
workers in America belonged to a union.
Today, it’s fewer than one in six—less if
you take out members of public-employee
unions, the only sector of organized labor
to experience significant growth in the last
two decades. The Steelworkers alone has
lost more than half of the 1.3 million
members it had at its peak in 1974.
Unions have fallen on hard times. The
basic manufacturing industries they once
dominated have withered, employers are
fighting them with new ferocity, and the

federal government—after decades of pro­
tecting union organizing—has tilted the
other way.
Has the movement gone out of the labor
movement? Is organized labor an old sol­
dier, just fading away to obsolescence and
irrelevance in the American economy of
the 1990s? In an attempt to answer these
questions, I interviewed 11 Swarthmoreans involved in organized labor, arbi­
tration, and labor-management relations.
Most of these men and women remain
committed to the idea that strong, healthy
unions are—as one told me—the sine qua
non of a democratic society, but all freely
admit that these are dark days for labor. If
organized labor is to emerge from this
twilight, it must become a fundamentally
different movement, shaped by new
economic and social realities. The union I
once knew is gone forever.
—JL
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN AFFAIRS, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

“Unions became so concerned with nego­
tiating nice contracts for their members that
they forgot about the interests of the working
class as a whole,” says Filson, who is
associate director of organizing for the Amal­
gamated Clothing and Textile Workers
Union (ACTWU) in New York. “Labor had
been instrumental in obtaining rights like
the minimum wage, unemployment bene­
fits, and social security—the safety net we
talk about today—but it retreated to ques­
tions of a nickel-an-hour raise, a penny
more into the pension plan.”
One of Filson’s ’78 classmates, Kathleen
MacKenzie of Denver, is a national field
representative for the National Treasury
Employees Union (NTEU). She blames the
AFL-CIO leadership for its lack of initiative
when unions were at their zenith. “For the
most part, they weren’t organizing. Com­
placency about the level of membership
kept them from capitalizing on their strong­
est time to reach out to new members.”
It wasn’t until the decline became pain­
fully obvious in the ’70s that
many unions began to organize
anew, says MacKenzie, who
spent nearly a decade organizing
local unions for ACTWU and
AFSCME.
John Braxton ’70 agrees. A
shop steward in his Philadelphia
local, Braxton is a longtime ac­
tivist in the movement to reform
the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters. He says that “a lot of
unions took the attitude that once
they organized a certain percent­
age of their industry, that’s all
they really needed. They had a
stable membership and just
thought of themselves as an insti­
tution.”
The Teamsters union is a
prime example of another of la­
bor’s big problems—corruption.
“It’s clearly documented,” says Braxton,
“that the Teamsters have had very close ties
to the Mafia. You didn’t get to be president
of the Teamsters unless you were approved
by the proper dons. So instead of wearing
the mantle of democracy, unions have car­
ried this aura of corruption, and that has
made potential union members very suspi­
cious.” Though most unions are not corrupt,
Braxton says, the poor image of labor is
exploited by management—“You can’t
quite blame them, can you?”
Filson of ACTWU knows that labor’s
poor image has hurt organizing efforts. He
occasionally gives talks on labor issues at
high schools and colleges and is both amused
AUGUST 1991

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN

Labor Loses Its Initiative

ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND
URBAN AFFAIRS,
WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

Militancy led to power as unions
moved from the opposition into
the establishment. From top:
Club-wielding strikers on a
Georgia picket line in 1934; Mine
Workers leader John L. Lewis
faces a congressional committee
in the early 1950s; Auto Workers
president Walter Reuther is
attacked by Ford Motor Co. thugs
in 1937; and AFL-CIO president
George Meany had the ear o f
President John F. Kennedy in
1962, as labor reached the apogee
o f its influence.

11

and disturbed that “most people expect me
to be some fat guy in a double-knit suit
smoking a cigar.”
Despite its negative image and internal
problems, most of the labor movement’s
recent woes have come at the hands of its
old adversary—employers. “In the late ’70s
and into the Reagan years, many employers
made a decision to try to get a union-free
environment,” says AFSCME’s Booth.
“They abandoned the social compact be­
cause the relative economic position of
organized workers was improving to such a
great extent that it was undermining the
profitability of their corporations. It wasn’t
just the wages, either, but the ‘social wage’
of the GreaJ Society programs—Medicare,
Medicaid, anti-poverty programs. The labor
movement and its social allies were doing
too well at the expense of the corporations
and their allies, so the corporations counter­
attacked, got themselves a president who
did just fine for them, and the rich did real
well in the ’80s—real well.”

Reagan Sets an Example
One of Ronald Reagan’s first acts in office
was the destruction of the Professional Air
Traffic Controllers Organization. This action
was widely seen as the administration’s
green light to union-busting employers
across the nation. Rolf Valtin ’48, who has
spent 35 years as an independent arbitrator

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f% ^

•- y

*

“In the late 70s and into
the Reagan years, many
employers made a decision
to try to get a union-free
environment. They abandoned
the social compact. . . . ”
—Paul Booth ’64
Director of Field Services,
American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employees

12

of labor disputes, says that even though the
PATCO strike was illegal (federal employees
are prohibited from striking), and even
though President Reagan was thus within
his rights in firing the strikers, “the horror
was that he did it with such clear gusto and
glee.”
Paul Filson calls the PATCO strike “a test
case” that led to a widespread change of
employer tactics in the ’80s. “Unions had
always struck with the assumption that
when the strike was settled, workers would
get their jobs back as a condition of the
settlement. Suddenly the playing field was
tilted in a dramatic way toward manage­
ment.”
The hiring of permanent replacement
workers—the ’80s euphemism for strike­
breakers (unionists call them “scabs”) effec­
tively took the strike weapon out of the
hands of labor and changed the nature of
collective bargaining. The long, bitter strikes
of the past few years at Eastern Airlines,
Greyhound, the New York Daily News, and
Pittston Coal have all seen the use of replace­
ment workers as a company tactic.

Collective Bargaining Threatened
In Washington the House Labor-Manage­
ment Subcommittee is working on legisla­
tion to prohibit the hiring of permanent
replacements in a strike. Fred Feinstein ’69
is chief counsel for the committee: “A key
element in the collective-bargaining process
is an effective right to strike. It gives workers
leverage. In the last 10 years, employers
haven’t hesitated to permanently replace
workers during a strike, effectively firing
them. You see the effect on organizing cam­
paigns where an employer will say, ‘If you
join the union, there will be a strike, and
you’ll lose your job.’ That strips away one
of the linchpins of the collective-bargaining
process.”
Peter Henle ’40, former deputy assistant
secretary of labor and now an independent
arbitrator, thinks legislation prohibiting per­
manent replacements might be necessary.
“You would need to have rules about when
you could and couldn’t replace strikers, but
the law as currently interpreted is overbal­
anced on the side of management.”
Henle’s fellow arbitrator, Rolf Valtin,
agrees that hiring permanent replacement
workers hurts the collective-bargaining pro­
cess, but he sees that the playing field can be
tilted toward unions as well—especially in
the two states where strikers can collect
unemployment compensation. “Just as the
pressure goes off management when they
can replace strikers, so it goes off workers
when they are collecting income while strik­
ing—except to the extent that the union

pays strike benefits. That’s the union’s busi­
ness, but it shouldn’t be public business.”
Labor-management relations have, in
fact, been public business since the Roosevelt
administration. The National Labor Rela-^
tions Act, passed in 1935, sought to “protect
the exercise by workers of the full freedom
of association, self-organization, and desig­
nation of representatives of their own choos­
ing for the purpose of negotiating the terms
and condition of their employment.” It set
up the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) to oversee union certification elec­
tions in workplaces and to ensure that
employers do not “interfere with, restrain,
or coerce employees in the exercise of these
rights.”
In recent years the whole government
regulatory structure has become more con­
servative, says Teamster John Braxton. “The
NLRB offers very little protection for orga­
nizing at this point. Befoie, it was an agency
that fostered organizing, but now it fosters
.the status quo.”
Paul Cohen ’79, a journeyman carpenter
who is field representative for the Bay
Counties District Council of the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in
Oakland, California, criticizes the NLRB
more explicitly. He calls the Board “very
quick to respond to employer complaints of
unfair labor practices, but very slow on
union complaints. We don’t see it as a
resource to help protect our members’ rights,
and we avoid it whenever possible.”
Cohen also asserts that conservative ap­
pointees to the federal courts have rewritten

“Reagan was within his
rights in firing the PATCO
strikers. The horror
was that he did it with
such clear gusto and glee."
—Rolf Valtin’48
Independent Arbitrator

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Saying the "C ” Word
Can unions help run the business?
As the United States comes to grips
with the economic challenges of the
1990s, unions are taking on a radical new
role. The word “cooperation,” once anath­
ema to unionists, is on everyone’s lips as
labor and management struggle to com­
pete in an international economy that is
changing the very nature of work.
“Physical labor is not the key com­
modity anymore,” says Saul Rubinstein
’76. “It’s brain power—even in manufac­
turing. And when you have brain power
at stake, you need to provide an opportu­
nity for workers to use their intelligence.
This means a new dynamic in which
workers have a different relationship to
the means of production.”
Saul and his brother, Marc Rubinstein
’81, have worked together in Participative
Systems Inc., a Princeton, New Jersey,
consulting and training firm that tries to
forge this new relationship between labor
and management. Saul is currently work­
ing on a Ph.D. in industrial relations at
M.I.T. Along with their father, Sidney
Rubinstein, they have designed and imple­
mented joint systems that bring these tra­
ditional adversaries together in all aspects
of running an enterprise. They feel that the
successful business of the future will be
one where management and labor co­
operate in areas of mutual interest—from
day-to-day decisions on the shop floor to
strategic planning in the board room.
Joint systems have a number of dif­
ferent names—employee involvement,
quality circles, labor-management partici­
pation teams—but their basic goal is the
same: to improve quality and productivity
and thus to ensure the viability of a busi­
ness. For management that means profita­
bility. For workers the goal is job security,
job satisfaction, and a measure of indus­
trial democracy.
According to Saul, “The transition to
high-involvement systems can most
effectively be made with the participation
of organized labor. The environment for
changing the way companies do business,
for making them more competitive, is
improved when workers have legitimate
representation of their own.”
Participative Systems has been espe­
cially active in the steel and auto indus­
tries, where old-line unions have

AUGUST 1991

adapted their thinking to the new realities
of the marketplace. “Initially, joint systems
begin to change the culture of a particular
business,” says Marc, “and that can’t help
but have an effect on the parallel organiza­
tions—the unions. When you give people
in the shop more opportunity to speak out
and take a more democratic approach to
work, then they also start looking at the
way their union is structured.”
Union leaders have had to change, says
Saul. “They’ve made their careers by
being successful adversaries, defending
contractual rights and arguing grievances,
and now they see a new role for the union
in a work system that is no longer defined
only by adversarial relationships.” As a
result, contracts themselves are changing
from rigidly defining what workers and
management can and can’t do to being
more enabling.
With the sharing of responsibility comes
the sharing of information. Unions are be­
coming knowledgeable in marketing, new
product development, and investment
strategies, and they are bringing with them
the wisdom of the shop floor. They can
help shape wage costs and institute manu­
facturing improvements as stakeholders,
not just as employees.
All of this leads to a more skilled work
force and thus to better job security. Saul
is hopeful that the labor movement will
broaden its focus from income security to
employment security. Traditionally, unions
have protected a core of most-senior
workers from job losses due to unemploy­
ment during business downturns. Unem­
ployment insurance protects the income of
those laid off, but a better system would
also protect the jobs themselves.
“In team-based high-performance
organizations, where you have invested a
lot of energy training people, it seems
counterproductive to lay them off,” says
Marc. “You ensure the security of the
work force by being flexible enough to
learn new skills and jointly re-evaluate job
definitions as needs change.” In a business
slump, these employees get the company
ready for the next upturn by doing main­
tenance, making improvements, research­
ing new markets, or developing new
products.
“I expect that more and more firms will

“I f management looks
carefully, it will see that where
labor is involved in creative
joint partnerships, having a
strong union can be a
competitive edge.”
—Marc Rubinstein ’81
and Saul Rubinstein ’76
Labor-Management Consultants,
Participative Systems Inc.

be moving to involvement systems that go
beyond the shop floor to a much more
strategic level,” says Saul. “It’s at that level
that you can really begin to guarantee job
security—not through a contract and a
rigid seniority system, but by helping
make decisions that are going to make the
firm viable.”
The need for cooperation presents a
particular challenge to unions, forcing
them to reexamine assumptions they have
operated under for more than a century—
that a fundamental separation of all inter­
ests exists between workers and capital. A
new value system will have to evolve, one
that recognizes multiple stakeholders and
involves workers in issues that have tradi­
tionally been management’s prerogative,
say the Rubinsteins.
Will owners and managers also be able
to change? Saul Rubinstein isn’t sure.
“Unfortunately, there’s still resistance. In
the ’70s there emerged a broad consensus
that workers have intelligence and can
contribute. In the ’80s many efforts were
made to create new systems and institu­
tional relationships. Now, if management
looks carefully, it will see that where labor
is involved in creative joint partnerships,
having a strong union can be a competi­
tive edge.”
— JL

13

labor law and eroded worker protection. A
“devastating blow” to construction unions
came in a recent case that released employers
from the obligation to bargain under what
are called “pre-hire” agreements. These
agreements, under which employers agree
to contract terms before a construction
project even begins, had formed the basis for
collective bargaining in the building trades
for decades.

they want a good union job or a job at all.
In this situation, voting against the union is
not unreasonable.”

NLRB Has "Missed the Boat"

New Employer Resistance
Not only are established bargaining rela­
tionships under attack, but employer resis­
tance to new union organizing has become
increasingly sophisticated. By tying up the
process in the NLRB, employers delay cer­
tification elections and use their 8-hour-aday access to workers to great advantage.
Even if a majority of workers have signed
cards to join the union and requested an
NLRB election to certify that union in their
place of employment, delaying tactics often
turn the situation in management’s favor.
Paul Filson sketches a typical ACTWU
organizing drive: “We research and target a
plant, meet with workers, and organize a
committee. A public campaign for worker
support begins, and union cards are signed.
We need only 30 percent to get an election,
and theoretically if we get 50 percent, we
can be certified without a vote. Often, a
majority can be signed in less than a week.
“We take the cards to the NLRB, which
asks the company if it will recognize the
union. Of course they say no, and an
election is scheduled. But generally, the
minimum wait for an election is eight to 10

“ The NLRB has missed
the boat.. . . They don't look
hard enough to separate the
business decisions from the
union-busting decisions.”
—Kathleen MacKenzie ’78
National Field Representative,
National Treasury Employees Union
14

“Instead o f wearing the
mantle o f democracy,
unions have carried this
aura o f corruption, and that
has made potential union
members very suspicious.”
—John Braxton ’70
Shop Steward, Teamsters Local 623,
Member, Steering Committee,
Teamsters for a Democratic Union

weeks, and companies know that the longer
the time between the signing of the cards
and the vote, the less likely it is that the
union will win.
“The process is completely bankrupt for
the unions. For 2(4 months the company
has complete access to the workers, and
during that time we’re beaten down. They
turn the process into a circus, and by the
time of the election, the workers are so sick
of it that they tend to vote any way the
company tells them to in order to stop the
circus.
“So we lose the election,” says Filson,
“because the company has been illegally
threatening plant closings or strikes or loss
of benefits. If we file a complaint with the
NLRB, it can take years to resolve, during
which time the work force changes and we
essentially have to start over. The law works
as an arm of the company to delay, to
disenfranchise, to take power away from the
workers.”
The threat of job loss is the most effective
tool that management possesses. “Employ­
ers have elevated it to a fine art,” observes
the NTEU’s Kathleen MacKenzie. “The
fear of closing or moving the plant has been
inculcated in workers for so many years that
when the union shows up at the door, it
doesn’t take very much to activate that fear
as the central reason to vote against orga­
nizing. People are forced to decide whether

While it is illegal to threaten to close a plant
strictly because of potential unionization,
the NLRB has “missed the boat” on this
tactic, contends MacKenzie. “Employer
claims that plant closings are strictly business
decisions (and thus allowable) have been
accepted by the Board. The Board isn’t
sufficiently appreciative of how completely
this tactic discourages unionization, and it
doesn’t look hard enough to separate the
business decisions from the union-busting
decisions. Of course employers want
workers to be fearful. That’s one thing they
have become very sophisticated about.”
Even if the union manages to win certi­
fication, there’s no guarantee that a first
contract will be negotiated. Management
consultants, says Filson, tell companies that
they have not lost until they actually sign a
contract—and many do not. He cites a
Georgia textile plant where ACTWU, won
the election 2(4 years ago by more than a
three-to-one margin, but where the workers
still have no contract. “We’ll win an election,
and the company will appeal to the local
NLRB. We’ll win that and they’ll appeal to
Washington. We’ll win again and they go to
the circuit court. We’ll win in court and they
Please turn to page 62

“In the last 10 years,
employers haven't hesitated
to permanently replace
workers during a strike,
effectively firing them __
That strips away one of
the linchpins o f the
collective-bargaining process. ”
—Fred Feinstein ’69
Chief Counsel, Subcommittee on
Labor-Management Relations,
U.S. House of Representatives
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

UPI/BETTMANN

any unionists point to Ronald
Reagan’s firing of members of
the Professional Air Traffic Controllers
Organization as the watershed labor event of
the 1980s. The president’s action, they say,
was a clear signal to employers that it was
open season on unions. Along with the loss
of industrial jobs and the move to a serviceoriented economy, this employer offensive
led to the first decline in the absolute num­
ber of unionized workers since the 1930s.
Yet as the ’80s ended, unions were working
to adapt to the new conditions. Clockwise
from above: PATCO strikers picket as Presi­
dent Reagan (right, with Attorney General
Smith) bars them from returning to their
jobs; the ’80s saw a rise in the number of
nonunion sweatshops, such as this one in
New York City in 1990; office workers-frA;
especially women—became a target of union
organization; and the labor movement took
on a wider social agenda in a bid to appeal
once again to a larger constituency.

M

By Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
f

Setting up an
appointm ent with
O leg Troyanovsky ’41,
form er S oviet
am bassador to Japan,
the U nited Nations,
and China

7 /9 /9 0 Wrote Oleg Troyanovsky ’41 at
address in College computer—U.S.S.R.
Mission, United Nations, 136 E. 67th Street,
New York, NY 10021—to set up an ap­
pointment with him to meet Swarthmore
Alumni College Abroad travelers during
their stay in Moscow in April 1991.
4/1/91 Phoned U.S.S.R. Embassy in Wash­
ington, following suggestion of travel agent.
No answer.
4 /2/91 Phoned U.S.S.R. Embassy in Wash­
ington. Busy signal. Phoned again and again
that day. Busy signal.
4 /3/91 Phoned U.S.S.R. Embassy in Wash­
ington. No answer.
4 /5/91 Phoned U.S.S.R. Embassy in Wash­
ington. No answer.
4/21/91 Phoned Robert Zoellick ’75, State
Department counselor, at home on Sunday
evening. Reached him one hour after he had
returned from Bonn. Asked him the secret
for phoning the U.S.S.R. Embassy so I
could get in touch with Troyanovsky. He
said he would get somebody in his office to
work on setting up an appointment for the
Swarthmore travelers.
4/26/91 Staff member from Zoellick’s of­
fice phoned to say the meeting was set up.
My instructions were to phone the U.S.
Embassy when we arrived in Moscow and
16

talk to Mr. Blaney about specific date and
time available in our full sight-seeing sched­
ule. Blaney would phone Mr. Lebedev of
the Foreign Ministry with this suggestion,
and he, in turn, would clear with Troya­
novsky.
4/27/91 Swarthmore Alumni College
Abroad left for two weeks in the U.S.S.R.
4/30/91 On our first morning in Moscow,
I phoned Blaney at the U.S. Embassy from
a phone in the lobby of the Cosmos Hotel,
where we were staying. I was told it would
be easier to get through there than to use the
phone in my room, another step removed.
I reached Blaney on first try. We set up
meeting for May 10 at 3 p.m. I was to
reconfirm when our group arrived back in
Moscow after eight days in Uzbekistan.
Blaney would be out of the country then,
but I should talk to Judy Dean.
5/9/91 Back at the Cosmos Hotel, I phoned
Judy Dean at the U.S. Embassy, and the line
was busy. I tried the middle number of the
nine numbers available for the embassy. I
got the maintenance department, and the
man on the other end of the line had never
heard of Judy Dean. I tried the first number
again. Busy. I tried the second number. No
answer. I tried the third number. No answer.
I tried the first number again and reached an
operator at the embassy. She had trouble
finding an extension for Dean. When I was
finally put through to an office, I learned
that Dean was not there but that Mike
Desaro would help me. I told him May 10
at 3 p.m. was still convenient for interested
members of our group, and he said he would
reconfirm with Mr. Lebedev. Desaro told
me to phone him in the morning.
5/10/91 Again from the lobby, I phoned
Desaro at 9:15. He had not yet been able to
reach Mr. Lebedev. He would phone me
back. I did not know phone number in room
(frequently phone numbers in hotel rooms
in the U.S.S.R. do not correspond to room
numbers). I said I would phone him back
with the number. I started for my room, and
then doubts crowded in. Why did I think he

would be able to get through to me in my
room if phoning out from my room was
deemed risky? With a trail of one letter and
more than a dozen phone calls and the
efforts of Zoellick and his staff already
behind me on the way to Troyanovsky, I did
not want to blow it now. ♦
I canceled my seat on the tour bus to
Kuskovo, a baronial estate on the edge of
Moscow, and instead phoned Desaro that I
was coming to the embassy to sit and wáit
for the confirmation to be received. Our
tour director told me the conditions I was
likely to face at the embassy—massive
crowds of Russians eagerly seeking visas. I
should try to get around or through them
and reach the Russian guard on the outside
of the gates, who could then get me inside
to the U.S. guards.
The taxi to the embassy cost $6. There
was no crowd (it was a national holiday). I
easily reached the U.S. personnel, but I was
in the old embassy area that only grants
visas, and I needed the new embassy com­
plex (walk to the end of the block, turn right,
and walk two-thirds of the way down that
block). Security personnel at this gate
phoned Desaro, and I was allowed into the
compound. On my right stood the empty
red brick multistory structure built a few
years ago for embassy offices and later
found to be bugged. On my left was a row
of attractive red brick one-story living quar­
ters. Ahead was the cafeteria, where I met
Desaro. A recent fire in the embassy dis­
rupted offices, and I was stashed in a cafe­
teria booth to await the promised reply from
Lebedev.
Some 45 minutes later, Desaro reap­
peared with the good news that the appoint­
ment was reconfirmed with all parties. Troya­
novsky was returning from his holiday at his
dacha to meet us.
Desaro told me you can’t phone for taxis
in Moscow but explained that to hail a cab,
one stands at the curb and holds out at arm’s
length a 25-ruble note. The return ride to
the hotel cost 35 rubles, approximately $1.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The Interview
O bservations
by A m bassador
Troyanovsky about
current S oviet
p olicies an d his
diplom atic career
5/10/91 2:45 p.m. Eight Swarthmore trav­
elers met the young officer on duty for the
holiday (“Sometimes,” he said, “I think the
U.S. Embassy times its diplomatic mail to
arrive at the Foreign Ministry on or just
before holidays”) in the deserted two-storyhigh lobby of the Soviet Foreign Ministry
building. He conducted us to the office of
Mr. Lebedev, where a smiling, genial Oleg
Troyanovsky ’41 met us. Lebedev seated
himself behind his desk; Troyanovsky and
the eight of us formed an informal circle in
front of the desk, and the duty officer pulled
up a chair just outside the circle and occa­
sionally added his comments. This informal
discussion ensued, in part:
Question: I understand that you have retired
from your recent post as ambassador to
China. Do you have a new assignment?
Troyanovsky: I am partially retired and
working as a consultant to the U.S.S.R.
Association for the United Nations.
Question: I am interested in hearing more
about your project for turning around pro­
duction.
Troyanovsky: It is a fact that production
has been going down since last year. It’s no
surprise, because the reforms have been very
deep and thorough and we are actually
moving from one system to quite a different

one. In the process there are many problems
that we are trying to overcome.
Take East Germany, where there has
been a changeover from one system to
another system, where perhaps in a way the
conditions are much more favorable. They
are having tremendous problems, and pro­
duction has gone down much further than
in our country. We hope that as a result of
some of the measures taken by the admin­
istration, our problems will be overcome.
Lebedev: We are now in a market-oriented
economy, but we still feel that not all the
elements are in place. We have introduced
a program of stabilization to help us manage
many things that you have in your society
but that we didn’t have. We didn’t have any
strikes in our country for many years. Now
the miners’ strike has disrupted not only the
mining but all adjacent industries. We are
still in the process of recovering from the
effects of that strike. The program of stabi­
lization includes economic measures, such
as changes in pricing.
Troyanovsky: We are aiming toward a
market economy but with a great many
vestiges of socialism.
Question: How would you characterize the
current relations of the U.S.S.R. to the U.S.?
Troyanovsky: We are glad that our relations
with the U.S. have been on an even keel for
a number of years, and we don’t see any
major clouds on the horizon. There are a
number of people who have concerns that
after the Gulf War there might be some kind
of dizziness from power on the part of the
U.S. so that it might not pay enough heed
to the interests of our country. I hope this
will not take place, but, to be frank, there are
some concerns on that score.
Lebedev: President Bush recently men­
tioned several times that there has been

progress in some areas of disarmament and
that we could still hold a disarmament
summit this year. The picture is very posi­
tive, but there are some clouds in such areas
as economic cooperation.
The Palestine problem remains the basic
problem, and it is very important that our
two countries work together to bring about
conferences on these issues.
Question: Would you please talk a bit
about your year at Swarthmore?
Troyanovsky: I planned to be an English
literature major. I attended Sidwell Friends
in Washington, D. C., while my father was
serving as the first U.S.S.R. ambassador to
the U.S. [1933 to 1938]. Enrolling at Swarth­
more was a natural step.
Question: Weren’t you president of your
class at Sidwell Friends?
Troyanovsky: Yes.
Question: We have just returned from one
of the very ethnically diverse republics—
Uzbekistan. What is happening now to
accommodate the various ethnic groups in
the U.S.S.R.?
Troyanovsky: Challenges of power be­
tween the republics and the central govern­
ment are a grave concern. Formally, we are
a federation, but in actual fact we are more
or less a highly centralized state. The repub­
lics don’t want to go along with this. They
want more authority for themselves. That is
one of the big discussions going on between
the central government and the republics.
Fortunately, two weeks ago nine of the
republics signed a general agreement as to
degree of authority. This opens up good
possibilities for the future, but when you
pass from generalities to specifics, you get in
trouble. There is still a great deal to do.
Certainly the republics will be getting a
great deal more authority than they have

In the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Oleg Troyanovsky ’41, center, is surrounded by Swarthmore
travelers (left to right): Miles Wedeman ’43, Barbara Binger Harrison ’40, Caroline Shew ’39,
Robert Greenfield ’36, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49, and Mary Lois Broomell Eberle ’40.

18

had, but in defense and foreign policy, the
central government will keep it in their
hands, I hope.
Question: Would you please outline your
major assignments with the Foreign Ministry
over the years?
Troyanovsky: I spent seven years in Japan,
nine years at the United Nations, and 4l/2
years in China.
Question: Didn’t you also serve as translator
for Khrushchev?
Troyanovsky: In the ’50s I spent five years
as a translator.
Question: I understand that is hard work.
Troyanovsky: It is hard work, particularly
when you begin to think you can say it
better than the person is doing.
Question: Would you talk about your ex­
perience in China?
Troyanovsky: I was there 414 years, begin­
ning in 1986 to September of last year. It
was a very rewarding experience. During
those years we were able to normalize our
relations, which had been quite bad, and to
bring about a program of neighborly rela­
tions. There are no prospects at all fdr
coming.back to our relationship of the ’50s,
when we were actually allies. One can say
for sure that China will not be establishing
strategic relations with the U.S.S.R. or any
other country.
Question: Please tell us a little about your
tour of duty in Japan.
Troyanovsky: Our president visited Japan
recently, and by and large it was successful,
although the Japanese moved the territorial
question to the front of every discussion. I
was ambassador there for seven years, and
we joked that each side could enumerate its
arguments by numerals instead of repeating
them in words. However, there is a desire to
find some compromise. These four disputed
islands are emotionally important.
We also have territorial problems with
China. If we give away these islands to
Japan, China will say, “What about us?”
Question: Do you mind a question about
your family?
Troyanovsky: Not a bit. I have a wife, a
daughter who teaches at Moscow University
and has two children, and a son-in-law who
works on population problems. My daughter
majored in U.S. history because it was the
shortest!
Chorus o f good-byes and thank-yous and
then a gemütlich photographic session.
Gillespie: Mr. Lebedev, we are especially
appreciative of your helping to arrange this
meeting and then giving up part of your
holiday to see us.
Lebedev: My pleasure. We are glad to be
able to honor a request from the distin­
guished Mr. Zoellick.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The dynamic—and sometimes controversial—Lang Visiting
Professor o f Mathematics spurs on his profession to help
solve the national crisis in mathematics education

Big Catalyst on Campus
By Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49

Minority Underrepresentation
in Math and the Sciences
Swarthmore is the kind of place you want
to wrap up and put in the Smithsonian.
Students are very earnest, and I found much
less cynicism here than I see in bright
students at other institutions. Swarthmore
students are getting ready for life, and the
College gives them the luxury of delayed
adulthood. Swarthmore students know little
of street smarts, whereas Berkeley students
AUGUST 1991

JANE SCHERR

Provost James England described the
1990-91 Eugene M. Lang Visiting Profes­
sor o f Mathematics and Social Change,
Uri Treisman, as a “big catalyst on cam­
pus.” Treisman came to Swarthmore from
the University o f California at Berkeley,
where he is director o f the Dana Center
fo r Innovation in Mathematics and Science
Education. His research and teaching have
been concerned with why mathematics
courses have been wastelands o f wrecked
aspirations fo r careers in mathematics, the
sciences, and engineering fo r blacks and
Hispanics.
“He is probably one o f the most pro­
found thinkers in our society about how to
reach a wider variety o f students than we
have before— that is, Latinos and African
Americans, ” said England. “Our educa­
tional system has not been successful
teaching them, whether in large institutions
with students o f all abilities or in selective
institutions that get the cream o f the crop.
In the long run, solving this problem would
have a bigger impact on society than any­
thing else we do. We don’t have a solution,
and we have to get one. Uri has done
something instead o f ju st talking about it
and wringing his hands. He has been
successful teaching students. ”
The following interview with Professor
Treisman covers some o f his catalytic ac­
tivities and some reflections upon Swarth­
more.
Uri Treisman, Lang Visiting Professor o f Mathematics and Social Change

are in the middle of the real world.
I have been impressed also by the enor­
mous amount of attention given to diversity
in institutional culture at Swarthmore but
surprised to see that many features of the
classroom and of student life are similar to
Berkeley, where students interact much less
with faculty and other students. To the
people on this campus who care deeply
about these issues, I’ve raised questions

about why people of color are not repre­
sented in some majors, mainly math and
sciences.
Students of color who come to Swarth­
more are extraordinary individuals, national
treasures, but their performance is low in
pivotal courses. When we started digging
around, we found that classes we thought
were gateways were not. We did a study of
math majors at Swarthmore over a 10-year
19

period. The faculty was astonished to learn
that, over that period, not one student who
graduated with a degree in math had taken
the standard freshman first-semester calculus
course (Math 5). Questions were raised
about whether, in fact, we were clear about
what the routes were that led to success in
the sciences.
Routes into the Math Major
One of the courses that I taught here, Math
5-1, was the first attempt of the Mathematics
Department to develop a device to draw
students into math. Swarthmore students
who choose math and the sciences are
extremely well-prepared and typically start
in second-year courses. There are few people
of color in the U.S.—in reality fewer than
100 in the whole country—who have had
the opportunity to do that kind of prepara­
tion. At Swarthmore the standard introduc­
tory courses were not preparing majors; in
fact, these courses felt relatively like courses
at Berkeley—large sections in which a tre­
mendous amount of material was covered at
a rapid pace. Students got lost and never had
a chance to catch up.
The hard part at Swarthmore is subtle.
Because the number of students of color is
small, and because the institution puts so
much emphasis on ethnicity, these students
are forced in their first few weeks here to
deal with their ethnicity—style, personal
life, models. We wanted to provide an
environment in which their intellectual in­
terests would be the principal bonding force.
Our first task was to create a setting in
which students would feel courted in an
environment of sufficient immersion, so that
students could make an informed choice
about whether to take more math courses
and, if they did, could excel in those courses.
We developed a course, Math 5-1, which
I taught in the fall semester as an extra
calculus class in addition to the standard
class that all students took at the same time.
There were 17 students in my class—all
first-year students who on the average had
a year less exposure to math in high school—
and 13 were ethnic minorities. The assigned
problem sets were more challenging than
those assigned in the general calculus course,
and students worked together in small
groups to solve them. The Math 5-1 students
did meaningfully better than students in the
standard course. Five have decided to be­
come math majors. Two will work with
Gene Klotz [professor of mathematics at
Swarthmore] this summer and will become
class assistants for next year’s version of the
course. We are beginning to create an eth-

s the top
priority to
produce
first-rate graduate
students or to
attract a more
diverse group to
math? That
question remains
unresolved.

I

nically diverse community of people who
share a deep affection for math. And I am
delighted that three faculty members plan to
teach this kind of extra calculus course over
the next three years.
Specifically, my calculus course gave stu­
dents an opportunity to work interactively
on extremely challenging problems over a
period of time. There were lots of group
discussions about the aesthetics of math,
about the power of this stuff they were
studying. As one of the students said: “We
had never heard the word ‘beautiful’ used so
much in math.”
Music and art are very similar to math in
that they require years of practice with
basics. From day one in art, you can start to
do something using basic skills and practic­
ing seeing and representing. In math it is all
external: You are expected to learn tools
for 25 years. After you pass your doctoral
exams, you are allowed to “do math.” En
route to the doctoral exams, students never
know what “doing math” means.
Unanswered Questions
The focus on first-year students raises some
very hard questions. Some members of the
department feel that this should not be a
priority. They argue that the quality of the
upper-level courses is more important than
working on access or equity at the freshman
level, especially when departments must
cope with a limited number of faculty mem­
bers and lack of graduate teaching assistants
and other departmental resources. Is the top
priority to produce first-rate graduate stu­
dents or to attract a more diverse group to
math? That question remains unresolved.
To go back to the beginning of our con­
versation, I was surprised that most of the
work on diversity at Swarthmore was rhe­
torical and social, but not much structural.
How do you redesign the review and budget­
ing process for work on ethnicity so that it
becomes departmental work, not just per­
sonal commitment? In large institutions,
affirmative-action programs that originate
with the administrative staff attempt to deal
with academic issues, which clearly must
be addressed by the faculty. In some ways
this is true at Swarthmore, and that was a
surprise.
A Course in Educational Policy
In the education course I taught, “Contem­
porary Issues in Educational Policy,” we
dealt very much with the real world, focus­
ing on issues of standardized tests and the
president’s cockamamy proposals for nation­
wide testing. It was organized like a typical
AUGUST 1991

doctoral seminar, and the students had to
dig out their own research materials and
come in and teach the stuff to me. Students
began the course thinking that tests were
instruments of the devil—skewed against
minorities and women. But they came to see
that that kind of bias had long been elimi­
nated, leaving behind a more subtle bias.
The course was a killer for all of us. It was
very hard to teach at the beginning. Swarth­
more students have high expectations, and I
was intimidated by them and made the
classic teaching error of presuming they
could work much more independently. I
sort of killed them in the third week. I lost
several nights’ sleep worrying about it. But
by the fifth week, everyone was comfortable
with the process, and we focused on the
National Summit on Mathematics Assess­
ment [held in the spring in Washington,
D.C.], which was the climax of the course.
The summit was a major political event
in which Swarthmore students actually par­
ticipated in small working groups with pol­
iticians, union leaders, and educators. The
educational policy course had been very
abstract, and the summit gave students a
chance to see how policy is actually made.
Students learned about political issues; they
learned how tests actually shape schools and
design curricula. They asked [Secretary of
Education] Lamar Alexander some chal­
lenging questions about equity. I encouraged
students to call up the authors of the papers
they were reading, and that suggestion led to
certain funny moments. One student asked
the head of the College Board whether he’d
be out of a job if the nationwide testing idea
went through.
Recruiting Others in the Crusade
I also used my three semesters at Swarth­
more to work in the Philadelphia area with
a group of college and university mathe­
matics faculty members and high-school
math teachers to revitalize math education
in the Philadelphia schools by creating a
vehicle to enable interaction between the
two groups. In addition, the local affiliate of
the Mathematical Association of America
(MAA) sponsored a symposium at which
more than 35 mathematicians from a dozen
surrounding colleges and universities came
together to work on increasing access for
minorities to mathematics and the sciences
at their institutions. Individual faculty
members and teachers independently have
begun to work on access in their classrooms,
but I was surprised at how little collective
action there had been to develop a local
cadre of activists. Historically, mathemati­

“There were no
cookie-cutter problems”
“Professor Treisman recruited students
for the course who knew their math
backgrounds weren’t particularly
strong, but who were willing to work
hard. He wanted to help them catch
up, and he emphasized really under­
standing the material. He gave them
problems that forced them to under­
stand the proofs to the theorems
rather than just to master the mechan­
ics. There were no cookie-cutter prob­
lems.
“During the second half of a threehour class, Uri gave them a set of
problems to work on. When they
asked me questions, I would try to
think of a way to ask them back. It
was really a good experience for me
because I want to teach high-school
math. I had been torn between educa­
tion and the law, but I had so much
fun in his class that I am going to the
M.A.T. program at the University of
Chicago.
“Everybody in the course went on
to take another semester in calculus,
but one question remains to be an­
swered: Can these students get
through a natural science?”
—From an interview with
Rebecca Jackson VI,
Student Assistant in Math 5-1

cians have tended to care more about exclu­
siveness than being social instruments. But
now these attitudes are starting to change.
In conjunction with the Dana Center for
Innovation in Mathematics and Science
Education, I am also collaborating with a
new group within the MAA called SUMMA
(Strengthening Underrepresented Minority
Mathematics Achievement), which will as­
sist mathematics departments in 200 colleges
and universities in re-examining their pro­
grams, setting goals for minority participa­
tion, and establishing programs to help
achieve these goals.
Swarthmore served as an experimental
base for me to learn about liberal arts
colleges. I am now working with the math
departments of 11 other liberal arts colleges
on projects similar to the work I began at
Berkeley more than 15 years ago, which is
now being adapted by the Math Department
here to suit Swarthmore’s needs. S k
21

ï COLLEGE
STEVE GOLDBLATT ’67

New beginnings for
Fraser, Dickerson, and
the Class of 1991
It was a day of new begin­
nings—not only for the Class
of 1991 but also for President
David Fraser and Dean Janet
Dickerson, who presided over
their final Swarthmore
commencement.
Following a welcome to the
308 graduates and their fami­
lies by Board Chairman Neil
Austrian ’61, President Fraser
thanked the celebrants “for
letting me learn with you
these last four years and for
setting an adventurous ex­
ample of what might be
attempted after leaving
Swarthmore.” Fraser also paid
tribute to Dean Dickerson
(see story on opposite page).
Three honorary doctorates
were awarded during the
119th commencement: Paul
Brest ’62, civil rights lawyer
and dean of Stanford School
of Law, was awarded the
Doctor of Laws; Cushing
Niles Dolbeare ’49, longtime
director of the National Low
Income Housing Coalition,
was given the Doctor of Laws;
and Walter Lamb ’39, chair­
man of Valley Forge Equities
and emeritus member of the
College’s Board of Managers,
received the Doctor of Sci­
ence.
In related commencement
activities, the Rev. Meishi
Tsai, minister of the Inter­
national Assembly of the True
Jesus Church in Heidelberg,
Germany, and father of gradu­
ating senior Julius Nanting
Tsai, delivered the baccalau­
reate address. Fittingly, Dean
Janet Dickerson spoke at Last
Collection.

22

Paul Brest ’62
“Though the apocalyptic
talk in the media is way over­
blown, there is genuine reason
fo r concern about the state o f
free inquiry in American col­
leges and universities. There is
equal reason fo r concern
about the sense o f acceptance
and self-esteem o f students o f
color, women students, and
gay and lesbian students on
our campuses, and even about
their safety.. . .
“On retiring as the presi­
dent o f Princeton University in
1972, Robert Goheen wrote:
‘I f an utter stranger to our
civilization should ask:
“Where in your society can a
person disagree with impunity
from accepted practices, dog­
mas, and doctrines?” the
answer should be, “The uni­
versities. That is part o f their
being.. . . They are committed
to freedom fo r the individual,
the dignity o f the human per­
son, and tolerance toward
dissent within broad limits. ” ’
“The challenges that face
us 20 years later are to articu­
late an encompassing vision
that honors [students’] free­
dom and their personal dignity
and to create an environment
where they can teach and
learn from each other, argue,
and even fight, with each
other. Because the intellectual
stakes are so high, we must

lower the personal dangers.
This means that [students]
must learn to trust each other.
A nd that requires the school to
earn their trust as an institu­
tion genuinely concerned with
their needs.
“You have ju st spent the last
fo u r years at a college that is
as committed to these goals as
any I know o f—committed to
the life o f the mind and o f the
spirit, to creating a nurturing
environment fo r a diverse stu­
dent body and fo r the vigorous
exploration o f diverse ideas.
Thus, you know firsthand
how challenging the task is.
I truly believe it is possible,
however— and I know it is
essential B
STEVE G0LDBLATT’’67

Cushing Niles Dolbeare ’49
“Looking back over the last
fo u r decades and the role that
my time at Swarthmore played
in shaping them, what can I
say?
“That the questions are
more important than the
answers— and the habit, in­
stilled at Swarthmore in spite
o f my internal protests, o f sus­
pending final judgment and
keeping an open mind is
essential to growth.
“That one must act on the
basis o f one’s best judgment,
even while keeping that judg­
ment open and continuing the
search fo r ‘truth. ’
“That the Quaker precepts
o f seeking ‘that o f God’ in
every human being and
‘speaking truth to power’ are
not only moral, they are effec­

tive in the political advocacy
arena,
“That incremental changes
are important— and that one
should accept what one can
get, even while continuing to
work fo r longer-range goals.
“That when the end—
decent, safe, and affordable
housing fo r all, fo r example—
is essentially unachievable
(at least in the short run), one
should learn to enjoy the
means and take pleasure in
the struggle.. ..
“What I studied at Swarth­
more has, fo r the most part,
been long forgotten. What I
learned at Swarthmore has
shaped my life, as I hope it
will shape yours. ”
STEVE GOLDBLATT '67

Walter Lamb ’39
“One o f the functions o f the
Alum ni Office is to keep in
touch with all Swarthmore
graduates. A nd the source o f
that information is largely
from the class secretaries. So
you want to appoint a very
good, capable class secretary
with a sense o f duty who will
keep track o f what you’re
doing. . . in the Swarthmore
College Bulletin.
“One o f the things we want
to be able to do is monitor
your success in life as you go
out in the world and start slay­
ing dragons. Please, let your
secretary know how your first
encounter with a dragon came
out Was it a fa ir fight? I f the
dragon wins, we’ll fin d you in
another part o f the Bulletin:
the deceased.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

“A s you know, one o f the
jobs o f the Development
Office is fund-raising. In addi­
tion to getting your diploma
today, you’re going to fin d that
you’ve been put on a very
select list o f about 18,000
Swarthmoreans who are in­
vited each year to participate
in the Annual Fund drive.. . .
So when you get this invita­
tion, try to figure out how you
can give something. D on’t
send the rent money. We don’t
want to fin d you listed as
homeless. . . . "

Classicist Helen F.
North retires
Helen F. North, Centennial
Professor of Classics, has
retired after 43 years as a
member of the Swarthmore
faculty, during which she has
taught courses and seminars in
Greek and Latin languages
and literature and, in trans­
lation, mythology, Greek and
Roman religion, and the
ancient theater.
Professor North has re­
ceived numerous accolades
during her career, including

STEVE GOLDBLATT ’67

sical Studies at Athens.
In April the Classics
Department honored her with
a symposium attended by
alumni and others, at which
time she was presented with a
bound volume of letters from
many of her former students.
An inveterate traveler,
Professor North has shared her
knowledge of the ancient
world on 10 Alumni College
Abroad tours. She is currently
at work on a book on Plato’s
rhetoric and, with her sister
Mary as illustrator, a guide to
the prehistoric megalithic
monuments in Ireland.

Janet Dickerson
to head student
affairs at Duke

Senior Class speaker
Alison L. Carter
“Parrish walls and the
whole discussion that took
place there demonstrated
speaking truthfully o f power.
Speaking truth came easy as
we wrote and scribbled many
o f the fears and the anger and
insecurity and confusion we
felt around the issues o f race,
racism, difference, and diver­
sity. Our power came in
claiming the once-blank white
walls and creating space fo r
issues that seemed to have no
other place within the College.
We were once real with each
other: real bigoted, real hon­
est, real obnoxious— often real
supportive and powerful in our
very expressiveness. There
was a need fo r voicing silent
vices that we had all learned
too well how to suppress. ”

AUGUST 1991

four honorary degrees (from
Rosary and Trinity colleges
and LaSalle and Yale univer­
sities) and the Charles J.
Goodwin Award of the
American Philological Asso­
ciation for her book Sophrosyne. She is also the author
of From Myth to Icon: Reflec­
tions o f Greek Ethical Doc­
trine in Literature and A rt and
has contributed articles to
numerous professional jour­
nals. Recently elected to the
American Philosophical Soci­
ety, she is also a member of
the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
Professor North is a mem­
ber of the board of trustees of
the American Academy in
Rome and chair of its Com­
mittee on the Classical
School, is former president of
the American Philological
Association and a trustee of
LaSalle University, and serves
on the executive committee of
the American School of Clas-

Counselor, friend, and
mother-confessor to thousands
of Swarthmore students over
the past 15 years, Dean Janet
Dickerson has left the College
to become vice president for
student affairs at Duke
University.
Leah J. Smith, director of
the Office of Institutional
Research and assistant to the
president since 1985, is serv­
ing as acting dean while a
national search is conducted
for Dickerson’s replacement.
In remarks made during

commencement ceremonies,
President David Fraser said:
“For 15 years, first as associ­
ate dean and then as dean,
Janet has guided generations
of students through the ex­
hilarating but treacherous pro­
cess of growing up—growing
up intellectually, growing up
culturally, growing up mor­
ally. And while dedicated to
the needs of Swarthmore’s
students, she has had at least
as profound an impact on the
institution itself. Quietly and
lovingly, but firmly, she has
uncovered and worked to cor­
rect instance after instance in
which the College has been
unfair or shortsighted, paro­
chial or pompous. She has
helped the College engage the
critical but complicated issues,
not by preaching to us but by
helping us work actively to
reach a higher order of under­
standing. By being a teacher
to us all, she has helped all of
us to be more successful stu­
dents.”
Dickerson’s duties at Duke,
which she assumed July 1,
include responsibility for all
undergraduate and graduate
student affairs on the campus
of 10,000 students in Durham,
N.C.
HARRY KALISH

Dean Janet Dickerson at a farewell reception in her honor.
23

E

Professor Oslwald
named to Academy
of Arts and Sciences
Martin Ostwald, William R.
Kenan, Jr., Professor of Clas­
sics, has been named a Fellow
of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.

C

Recognized both in the
United States and abroad as a
leading scholar in classics,
ancient history, and philoso­
phy, he has taught at the
College since 1958.
Ostwald received the
Charles A. Goodwin Award
of Merit this year from the
American Philological Asso­
ciation (APA) for his book
From Popular Sovereignty to
the Sovereignty o f Law: Law,
Society and Politics in Fifth
Century Athens. He has
served as president of the
APA and the Society for
Ancient Greek Philosophy
and is currently the only
American serving on the edi­
torial board of the Cambridge
Ancient History IV- VI.

0

L

L

E

Kohlberg Challenge
pledges expected to
exceed $10 million
As this Bulletin goes to press,
there are only a few days
remaining until the June 30
deadline for the Kohlberg
Double Challenge. Unless
some unexpected multimillion-dollar pledge is
received, the College will not
have achieved the full $5.8
million in matching funds
offered under the challenge
issued by Jerome Kohlberg,
Jr., ’46 in May 1990. Pledges
are expected to exceed $10
million from all who have
participated, which will earn
more than $3 million in
additional matching funds.
“This was a good re­
sponse,” said William F. Lee,

G

E

Jr., ’60, chairman of the
Development Committee of
the Board of Managers,
“particularly when we had
just surpassed our capital
campaign goal. Over the last
12 months, the economy and
the war in the Middle East
made a number of donors
uneQmfortable about making
long-term commitments.”
Final results will be
reported in fall publications.
HARRY KALISH

JAYSON KNOTT

North Carolina
horticulturalist
wins Scott Medal

Breaking g ro u n d ... Virginia “Dinny” Rath,
former associate professor and chairman o f
women’s physical education, prepares to turn over
the ceremonial first spade fo r the Dellmuth/Rath
Support Facility on Cunningham Fields. Also
present were Nancy Dellmuth ’60 and Margaret
Ball Dellmuth ’33, daughter and widow o f Carl K.
24

Dellmuth ’31, the College’s first alumni executive
secretary and director o f men’s physical education
during the World War IIyears. Expected to be in
operation when school starts next month, the
facility will provide meeting rooms, rest rooms,
emergency medical equipment space, and storage
fo r the field hockey, lacrosse, and soccer teams.

On April 23 horticulturist
J.C. Raulston received the
1991 Arthur Hoyt Scott Gar­
den and Horticulture Award
from Swarthmore College.
The award recognizes out­
standing national contribution
to the art and science of gar­
dening with a gold medal and
a prize of $2,000.
Since 1975 Raulston has
been both professor of horti­
cultural science at North
Carolina State University in
Raleigh and director of the
NCSU Arboretum.
Prestige is not new to
Raulston, who has been rec­
ognized six times for his out­
standing teaching. In addition,
Raulston has been honored by
the Men’s Garden Club of
America, the American
Horticultural Society, and
the American Society of
Landscape Architects.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

J. MARTIN NATVIG

Kendall and Joan Landis (right) with Claire Sawyers, director o f the Scott Arboretum, attend the dedication ceremonies in April fo r the garden
honoring Landis’ 19 years o f service to the College. The plaque cites Landis as an “avid gardener and supporter o f the performing arts. ”
STEVE GOLDBLATT '67

Consummate fund
(and friend) raiser
Kendall Landis ’48
retires
Kendall Landis ’48, vice presi­
dent for development, alumni
relations, and public relations
who led the College through
two of its most successful
capital campaigns, has retired.
Although his official re­
tirement was in June 1990,
Landis had remained on staff
as a consultant to help close
The Campaign for Swarthmore and ease the transition
for the new vice president,
Harry Gotwals.
Landis joined the College
administration in early 1972
after an 18-year career with
Citibank and development
positions at Wesleyan Univer­
sity and Bennington College.
At Swarthmore he orga­
nized and directed the two
largest fund-raising campaigns
in the history of the College,
AUGUST 1991

totaling more than $100
million.
In announcing Landis’
retirement, President David
Fraser praised his “charm,
intelligence, energy, and dedi­
cation” to the College and
said, “Succeeding the legend­
ary Joe Shane, he brought to
alumni relations and fund­
raising a distinctive and
engaging personal style that
clearly conveys both his
honest interest in people and
his deep appreciation of the
liberal arts.”
In appreciation of his
unflagging support of the fine
arts at Swarthmore, members
of the Alumni Council during
Landis’ tenure presented a
garden in his honor at the en­
trance of the Lang Performing
Arts Center.
He and his wife, Joan, plan
to divide their time between
their homes in Moylan, Pa.,
and Vermont.

Fraser receives
honorary degree
from Haverford
President David Fraser was
awarded the degree of doctor
of science by his alma mater,
Haverford College, May 19.
He was recognized for his dis­
tinguished leadership in the
search for the cause and treat­
ment of Legionnaires’ disease
and other infectious diseases.
Fraser was also recognized
for his leadership in higher
education.
At the end of August, Presi­
dent Fraser will leave Swarth­
more for Paris, France, where
he will head the Social Wel­
fare Department of the Sec­
retariat of Karim Aga Khan.
Fraser’s new responsibilities
under the Aga Khan will in­
clude directing five hospitals,
300 educational institutions,
and 200 health centers in
developing countries around
the world.

E

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G

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J. MARTIN NATVIG

became senior vice president
of the Urban Institute.
In December 1990 the
Board of Managers established
the Stephen B. Hitchner, Jr.,
Scholarship, to which memo­
rial contributions can be made.

Notice a change
in our paper?
If s recycled

Carolyn Mitchell 7 4 (left) presents Professor Kathryn Morgan with the
first Kathryn Morgan Award honoring significant contributions to the
black community at the College.

Kathryn Morgan
receives award
in her honor
Kathryn L. Morgan, professor
of history at Swarthmore, was
recently honored by the Black
Alumni Association as the
first recipient of an award
named in her honor.
The award, which cele­
brates “significant contribu­
tions to the black community”
at the College, was established
in March 1991 by former
students of Morgan at the
College. Future recipients may
be recognized for their contri­
butions to scholarship, profes­
sional services, student life, or
mentorship within the College
community.
As a pioneer in the field of
the oral tradition of African
American families, Morgan
has earned a great deal of rec­
ognition since her arrival at
Swarthmore in 1970. She has
received fellowships and re­
search grants from such or­
ganizations as the Smithsonian
Institution, the American
Philosophical Society, the
Danforth Foundation, and the
James H. Michener Fund. In
1991 she became the first
black ever to be elected to the
executive board of the Ameri­
can Folklore Society.
Children o f Strangers, Mor­
gan’s 1980 book, deals with
26

legends passed on through six
generations of the author’s
family, tracing the develop­
ment of thought and philoso­
phy amid the pain of servitude
and economic depression.
Currently, Morgan is finishing
Midnight Sun, a novel about
the African diaspora.

Two-term Manager
Steve Hitchner ’67 dies
Stephen B. Hitchner, Jr., ’67,
a member of the Board of
Managers, died July 4 from
complications of chemo­
therapy used in treating his
cancer. “Steve’s premature
death is a great loss to the
College and to those touched
by his public service,” noted
President David Fraser.
From 1984 to 1987
Hitchner served as an alumni
manager on the Board. He
chaired the Student Life Com­
mittee in 1986-87 and again
after his re-election to the
Board in 1989.
Hitchner devoted his life to
improving the condition of the
less fortunate. From 1979 to
1982 Hitchner directed the
Office of Policy and Manage­
ment, Criminal Division, of
the U.S. Department of Jus­
tice. From 1982 to 1986 he
was vice president for issue
development for Common
Cause. And in 1986 he

As reported in our February
issue, the College continues to
move in the direction of using
recycled paper wherever pos­
sible. You hold in your hands
the first Swarthmore College
Bulletin printed on recycled
stock—in this case a sheet
called Champion Sunweb,
which contains a total of 50
percent recycled fiber, includ- *
ing a minimum of 10 percent
post-consumer waste.
It’s not as bright or white as
our previous paper, but we
figure that’s a small price to
pay for the impact it will have
on the environment. As each
issue of the Bulletin uses more
than 10,000 pounds of paper,
that’s not an insignificant con­
tribution. Happily, it costs less
than the paper we used to use,
so we’re saving money in the
bargain.
Other publications will also
be using environmentally
friendly paper for the first
time. Next year’s College
calendar, to be mailed in
October, will be printed on
recycled paper, as will most
communications from the
Alumni Office.
On other fronts, the
College’s Computing Center
is now using a 100 percent
recycled paper in its laser
printers. Since most Swarth­
more students write on com­
puters and print their words
on College printers, this also
saves a tree or two.
Starting this summer,
administrative and academic
departments will be gradually
switching to recycled statio­
nery as current stocks are used
up. Centralized purchasing

should also lower this cost.
In addition, the College has
agreed to take over and insti­
tutionalize the student-run
program that has taken a
truckload of paper to the re­
cycling center every week for
the past two years. Consider­
ing the amount of wastepaper
generated at an institution like
Swarthmore, there’s a whole
forest out there that should
haye our name on it.

Tennis teams tops
in spring results
Both the men’s and women’s
tennis teams had winning
records this spring as some
other teams struggled through
a tough spring season. Here
are the highlights:
Baseball (12-14; 7-3): The
Swarthmore sluggers swept
Widener University to head
into a season-ending doubleheader against Johns Hopkins
with a 6-2 league mark and a
shot at stealing the conference
crown and a playoff bid from
the Blue Jays, but it was not
to be.
The season was highlighted
by an 11-10 victory over
Haverford, in which the team
overcame a four-run sixth­
inning deficit, and by a dou­
bleheader sweep of Ursinus.
The sweep of Ursinus was
capped off by pitcher Steve
Porrecca’s [’91] second game
shutout. Porrecca finished the
season overall 6-3 and was
later named to the MAC
All-Conference team. Team
MVP Jeff Clark ’92 and slickfielding shortstop Ben Mon­
tenegro ’93 joined Porrecca on
the All-Conference team.
Golf (2-12): The 1991 sea­
son was a struggle for Swarth­
more golfers, who returned
from a spring-break excursion
to Pinehurst, North Carolina,
to face both inclement weath­
er and tough opposition on
the local links. They finished
18th of 20 at MACs.
M en’s Lacrosse (5-7;
4-4): The Garnet completed a
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

competitive season. Highlights
included a 12-11 overtime de­
feat of Dickinson and a 24-10
thrashing of Chester rival
Widener. Swarthmore held a
narrow lead over Haverford at
halftime of their contest but
eventually succumbed to
defeat, 18-13, at the hands of
the ’Fords. Greg Ferguson ’93
led the Garnet in scoring,
while Kirk Ramer ’93 was
selected team MVP. At the
completion of the season,
Sandy Watkins ’93 was
named to the USILA Division
III All-America team as well
as second team All-MAC. The
four Academic-MAC’s were
seniors Burt Alper, Rob Butch,
and Bill Heyman and
sophomore Kirk Ramer.
Women’s Lacrosse (2-13):
The young Garnet laxers
welcomed eight beginners to
the squad, and, together with
high-scoring juniors Dana
Calvo and Martha Wofford,
they beat Bryn Mawr 14-12
and won two games at a
Hollins College spring-break
tournament. Calvo and
Wofford made the PAIAW
All-Stars team, and Wofford
also made the MAC AllConference team. During the
season co-captain Wofford
scored her 100th career goal
and led the team in intercep­
tions, ground-ball control, and
draw control.
Softball (10-16; 3-7): The
season started well for the
Sultanesses of Swat as they
completed a 3-2 spring-break
foray to Florida, during which
they beat Division I Fordham
University 3-1 behind the
stellar pitching of sophomore
phenom Stacy Conley. Conley
finished third in the MAC
Southern Division with a 0.92
ERA. Co-captains Cindy
Burks ’91 and Jeannine
Mastre ’91 were among the
leaders in RBIs, while Burks,
Conley, and Shanalyna
Palmer ’94 socked three of the
Southern Division’s eight
home runs this season.
AUGUST 1991

Men’s Tennis (13-12): The
Bandits of Swarthmore
College put together another
strong season, finishing fourth
in the national tournament.
The netters defeated six Divi­
sion I teams, including Penn
State and Temple. In its 16th
consecutive trip to the
national tournament, Swarth­
more placed four players on
the Division III All-America
tennis team (Andy Dailey ’91,
Steve Tignor ’91, Tom Cantine
’91, and Lee Tucker ’92).
Dailey and Tucker received
All-America laurels for the
fourth straight year.
Women’s Tennis (9-6):
The women netters compiled
one of their best records in
recent years in Coach Dave
Bronkema’s [’83] last season at
the helm. Their only loss dur­
ing the 5-1 spring-break trip
was to Division I Southern
Illinois University. Julie
Shapiro ’92 won her second
MAC singles title and ad­
vanced to national play, along
with her doubles partner,
Natalie Hopfield ’93, in
Atlanta. There Shapiro re­
ceived a Division III national
ranking of 15.
Men’s Track and Field
(0-5): Seniors Robert Marx
and Olato Sam paced the
tracksters through a somewhat
disappointing season. Marx set
a College record in the 5,000meter run (15:04), while Sam
smashed the record in the 100
(10.9). Dave Wilmore ’92

established a new facility
mark in the pole vault (14-6),
and Dave Graham ’92 ec­
lipsed a 41-year-old record in
the 800 (1:54.45). Marx fin­
ished sixth in the 5,000 and
third in the 3,000 steeple­
chase, while Graham was
among the leaders in the 800
and 1,500. Junior Guian
McKee took fifth place in the
10,000. They’ll have the
opportunity to strut their stuff
at the MAC Championships
in front of the home fans for
the next two years, as Swarth­
more has been selected to host
the conference meets in 1992
and 1993.
Women’s Track and Field
(2-4): During the course of
the season, five College and
two track records fell by the
wayside. Maricel Santos ’91
capped off her career with the
two facility records (2:24.5 in
the 800-meter run and 4:49.5
in the 1,500), in addition to
setting the College mark of
4:45.0 in the 1,500. Other
school records were set by
Jenny Willis ’94, with a jave­
lin toss of 96-0, Dayna Baily
’91 (18:01.4 in the 5,000), Liz
Dempsey ’93 (1:05.0 in the
400 hurdles), and the 1,600
relay team of Santos, Demp­
sey, Ann Horsky ’92, and
Amy Iwan ’94 (4:10.28).

Fueled by these recordbreaking performances, the
women sent an all-time high
of 16 qualifiers to the MAC
Championships. As a team the
Garnet placed fifth out of 16
teams, matching their highest
finish ever. Swarthmore
walked away with three indi­
vidual MAC titles: Santos

won the 1,500, and Baily, a
transfer from Sweet Briar Col­
lege, finished her successful
two-year career at Swarth­
more with wins in the 5,000
and 10,000.
Hood Trophy Results:
Swarthmore athletes struggled
through the spring campaign,
losing to Haverford in men’s
lacrosse, women’s tennis, and
both men’s and women’s track
and field. Baseball split two
games with the ’Fords, while
men’s tennis crushed its hap­
less Haverford opponents.
Final trophy score: Swarth­
more 6.5, Haverford 9.5.
— J e ff Zinn '92

Solution to acrostic
(See page 30 for puzzle.)
[John St. Loe] Strachey,
Swarthmore College: “Parrish
Hall is, from an architectural
point of view, extraordinarily
good. Though plain, it is in no
sense squalid. The stone and
wood used in the construction
are all as might be expected in
a Quaker foundation—sound,
honest, durable, and without
pretense. The building exactly
suits the institution.”
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
K.
L.
M.
N.
O.
P.
Q.
R.
S.
T.
U.
V.
W.
X.
Y.

Supposition
Tax Dividend
Ruinous
Annie Hall
Casablanca
Hand in Hand
Exquisite
Youth and Old Age
Sun God
Wall Street
Asquith
Runts
Tender Mercies
High Noon
Mutual
Opposition
Restitution
Enthralled
Chariots o f Fire
Outstretched
Lost Weekend
Lubrication
Exhibition
Grapes o f Wrath
Entity
27

PARRISH DEBATE IS
EVIDENCE OF
SWARTHMORE S CARING
To the Editor:
Either Swarthmore is one of the world’s
most caring and thinking institutions of
higher education in the world or its alumni
magazine is. Or very likely there’s a relation­
ship between the two, and the answer is that
both are. I think it would be hard for a
faculty member who cares about the quality
of life and examples of living that college
campuses provide not to want to quickly
apply for a position at Swarthmore after the
May 1991 issue. The story on Parrish walls
was wonderful evidence that an issue that
now tears campuses apart, and appears to
have promoted more than a few fissures at
Swarthmore, can also be handled in a way
that educates, reforms, and heals. And the
story of the sycamore, not to mention the
wonderful coda about its offspring growing
happily in Indianapolis, is in its own way
cheering testimony to an institution (and a
magazine) that nourishes what matters.
It Was a wonderful issue, and I thought I
should not only appreciate that but let you
know I do.
MICHAEL SCHUDSON ’69
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:
AN ARGUMENT-ENDER
FOR LAZY LEFTIES
To the Editor:
I enjoyed the Dancing in Pajamas/Howard Beach Comes to Swarthmore issue of
the College Bulletin. As an alumnus, I’m
tickled pink when I see serious controversial
stuff and avant-garde applications for striped
nightwear together between the same two
covers.
I agree with Peter Schmidt, High Priestperson of Political Correctness: Constructive
discourse isn’t served by name-calling. The
first smug reactionary to brand his opponent
28

“politically correct” doesn’t win the debate.
He cheats himself of its benefits.
Yet I hope Mr. Schmidt forgives me if I
enjoy a morsel of irony. When I attended
Swarthmore in the mid-1980s, “politically
correct” hadn’t become a popular epithet,
and certainly not a derogatory one. The
news weeklies hadn’t connected it to censor­
ship and self-righteousness. Frequently, only
the politically correct knew what the term
meant.
Far from being a liability to advancing a
program, political correctness five years ago
was a cudgel, an argument-ender for lazy
lefties. Those who fell short of an arrogant
peer’s measure of rectitude often were struck
dumb with the summary remark: “That’s
not politically correct.” Seconds later, they
were facing backs—often tenured backs.
Where was Peter Schmidt then?
Perhaps he addressed the issue and I
missed an opportunity to hear him out. Still,
I can’t help wondering: Is he really interested
in keeping minds open to the free exchange
of ideas or just in ensuring that a frayed,
brittle SDS platform isn’t shouted down?
TIMOTHY IRELAND ’87
Whitemale Alumnusperson
Cherry Hill, N.J.

SWARTHMORE SHOULD
NOT ACCEPT
PHILIP MORRIS MONEY
To the Editor:
I was pleased to read about Swarthmore’s
role in the Consortium for a Strong Minority
Presence at Liberal Arts Colleges (May
1991). However, I was dismayed to learn
that funding had been accepted from Philip
Morris Companies Inc.
Philip Morris Companies Inc. includes, as
the parent, one of the leading manufacturers
of tobacco products in the world. According
to the surgeon general, there have been 2.3
million lung-cancer deaths in the United
States since the 1964 surgeon general’s report
on the hazards of tobacco use. Philip Morris
refuses to acknowledge the link between
cigarette smoking and lung cancer, lung
disease, and heart disease. Philip Morris
tobacco products are peddled to us using
part of an annual advertising budget of $3.3
billion (for all tobacco companies com­
bined), but recent promotional efforts—
such as Philip Morris’ philanthropic gesture
to Swarthmore—have concentrated on mi­
norities.
These promotional efforts appear to be
meeting with success. Figures from the
American Cancer Society indicate that in
1987, 34.0 percent of blacks smoked, in

ftST

hose who fell
short of an
arrogant peer’s
measure of rectitude
were often struck
dumb with the
summary remark:
‘That’s not politically
correct.’ Seconds later,
they were facing
backs—often tenured
backs. Where was
Peter Schmidt then?”

T

comparison with 28.8 percent of whites.
Tobacco products may be particularly dan­
gerous for minority smokers: Black men
who smoke have lung-cancer rates nearly
40 percent higher than white men who
smoke.
Women have also been targeted as a
market for tobacco products, and again it
seems to have worked. Lung cancer recently
surpassed breast cancer as the leading cancer
killer of women. In addition, faced with a
decline in the number of smokers in the
U.S., tobacco companies are increasing shipSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

he story on Parrish
walls was wonderful
evidence that an issue
that tears campuses
apart... can also be handled
in a way that educates,
reforms, and heals.”

T

“LET US NOT HEAR
AGAIN THE PHRASE
‘WORKING MOTHER’ ”
To the Editor:
A belated comment on The Woman with
the Flying Hair (February 1991)—belated
because I thought surely someone would
note that the basic question has not been
addressed. But not so.
If you ask “The Woman” what she
“does,” she will probably refer to the brief­
case rather than to the child who is infinitely
more important. Our society places almost
zero value on bringing up children. Locally,
cleaning people get at least 10 dollars an
hour and child-care workers get $1.25 per
hour per child. It’s time to recognize that
bringing up children properly is a job—a
teaching job. Parents who choose to bring
up their own children should get the same
kinds of support as that given to parents who
put their children in day care, including tax
breaks, social security, regular time away
from the children, and a little respect. Let us
not hear again the phrase “working mother.”
All mothers work. The alternative is to lose
another generation to MTV and the streets.
BARBARA CALKINS SWARTOUT ’53
Canandaigua, N.Y.

'4 ^ 5 !

A COMPLIMENT
AND A COMPLAINT

J. MARTIN NATVIG

ments of tobacco products overseas, using
issues of free trade to force developing
countries to accept them. Overseas popula­
tions of the same racial and ethnic back­
grounds we call minorities in the U.S. will
suffer, even as increased Philip Morris profits
permit the company to make more philan­
thropic gestures.
Swarthmore and her colleagues will be
serving all of us well by encouraging minor­
ity scholars to teach at liberal arts colleges.
However, I wonder whether the good they
do will ever surpass the harm done to people
AUGUST 1991

of all colors by the products of the company
from which the colleges accepted money for
the project. At a time when some courageous
universities are divesting of tobacco stock
(just as others have divested of financial
interest in South Africa), it is a disappoint­
ment for me to see Swarthmore accepting
tobacco company profits, however good the
cause. How did a college whose outgoing
president is a physician come to accept the
Philip Morris money?
JAN MENEFEE McDONNELL 78, M.D.
Flintridge, Calif.

To the Editor:
A compliment and a complaint:
Congratulations on the “Parrish Walls”
article in the May Bulletin. It was gripping
stuff, particularly Professor Schmidt’s article
and his funny sidebar. It was in true Swarth­
more style to share this stuff with the
alumni. I showed the article to a friend who
edits a university alumni magazine, and he
was jealous.
I was annoyed, however, to get a recent
junk mailing from a company called Profes­
sional Classics, with a solicitation from an
alumna. Either you sold her the mailing list
or she cribbed it from the Alum ni Directory.
If the latter, I suggest that you place a
prominent “Not for Commercial Use” in the
next edition, for moral suasion.
MICHAEL BANCROFT ’63
Seattle, Wash.
Editor’s note: The Alum ni Office reminds
alumni that the Directory isfo r personal use
only.
The Bulletin welcomes lettersfrom readers on the
contents o f the magazine or issues relating to the
College. To be published, letters must be signed
and should be addressed to Editor, Swarthmore
College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarth­
more, PA 19081-1397.

A

c r o s t ic
1A

DIRECTIONS
To solve this puzzle, write
the words that you can
guess from the definitions
in the num bered blanks
provided and then trans­
fer the letters to the cor­
responding
numbered
squares in the diagram.
W orking back and forth,
you w ill find in the dia­
gram a quotation, reading
left to right. W hen all the
words have been filled in,
the author and source
from w hich the quote was
taken w ill appear as the
first letter o f each word
reading dow n. The solu­
tion can be found at the
end o f the C ollege section
(page 2 7 ).

18F
37a
55T
73U
88G

2R

3M

■
■
■
19D

56P

*
2 OX

11J

24B

25A

26T

27V

28L

21M

22S

HM H

290

3 OC

31K

32R

17M

33P

34S

35V

51U

52G

53E

54D

69X

70J

71S

72P

85G

86D

100V 101W

102E

103F

115Q

116X

117U

118T

119P

133E

134V

135U

136E

137A

1380

150P

151Q

152B

153A

154F

155E

45W

46J

47Q

48V

49N

570

58H

59H

60X

01V

62T

63X

64S

65P

66L

67N

68F

74W

75S

82T

83S

123X

124Q 125M

139B

1401

91D

92F

156K

1571

174T 175M

176B

192F

193X
211V

141D

230Q

■
■
77S

108B

126K

142Y

158H

78V

79P

80L

81C

94T

95W

96R

97K

98M

110L 111M

112F

760
109A
127G

1281

143W

144U

129A
145T

159U 160M

161J

162S

178A

179D

180G

181C

195Y

196N

197U

198K

199H

212G 213M

214E

215R

216C

217B

232R

233G

■

231U

114F

130D

131L

132U

146G

147A 148M

■
99Q

1

149E

WORDS

u

234A

163P

164V

5 OR

841

165N

166H

167F

168J

169 Y

170T 171W

36N

■
■
87A

1041

120H

121E

183M

184H

185S

186]

187E

188D

201X

202Y

203R

204J 205Q

219X

220B

235R 236U 23 7W

238N

■
■
■
182T

200P

218X

172J

173H

189R

1900

191C

206P

207B

208T

209F

221H ' 222E 223V

224R

225Y

2261 227C

239G 2 4 0 0

242K

243H

244Y

DEFINITIONS

A. Hypothesis
1

■
■

1

177N

194S

113W

■

16N

44M

1

Ü

15V

43J

122B

109

12Q.

42H

■
■
■

87

■

41S

107A

1

10H

7T

40B

105U 106W

210J

9B

6X

39S

90X

1

8K

23H

■

5D

38S

89C

228W 2 2 9 0

DEFINITIONS

by Carol Dubivsky Becker ’57

241Q

WORDS

N. Kelly film
147

178

137

234

25

153

196

238

67

177

165

16

138

240

229

29

190

57

163

33

200

119

206

72

49

36

150

56

O. S h ared ;jo in t
107

129

B. Fiscal refund
122

P.
9

220

108

30

89

216

191

81

227

181

54

179

19

5

86

141

130

91

188

222

136

121

155

187

214

102

53

149

24

40

139

152

207

th a t

has convictions”
(Friedrich W ilhelm IV)

~217 ~L76

C. Pernicious

" I lo v e a n

79

a

Indem nification
47

151

230

241

12

115

124

D. A llen film
E. Bergman film

37

209

167

103

112

92

154

68

18

114

—99 "2Ö5
96

235

203

232

50

2

32

224

22

64

71

4

194

38

75

77

180

146

88

212

52

85

127

239

233

"Ü 5

39 ~162 ~ 41 Ü 5
170

M illa n d

film,

135
184

199

23

158

120

93

83

174

208

82

94

55

182

118

7

li?

—62

132

159

144

26

The

H. G enerational extremes
243

34

T. Extended

U.
58

189

S. C ross film

192

G. "W h en she had passed,
it seemed like the ceasing
of
m usic” (Longfellow, Evangeline)

76

R. R apt

~133

F. C onjointly

65

197

236

231

105

117

173
73 ~ 51

10

166

226

157

84

140

128

104

43

186

11

70

172

46

221

59

42

V. A utom otive procedure
134

I. A pollo, for one

164

211

15

78

27

48

223

35

~~61 1ÖÖ

J. Douglas film
161

204

210

W. Public show
101

45

95

74

143

228

237

113

106

H 68
"Ï7 Ï

K. British statem an
31

97

156

198

242

131

66

80

28

110

98

44

175

183

160

126

X.

8

Fonda

film,

The

218

L. U ndersized specim ens
M. Duvall film

30

3

17

148

21

125

213

111

13

Y.

" W h e re

201

20

69

219

6

60

14

193

123

~90

”” 63

116

and

quiddity, the ghosts o f
defunct bodies, fly”
(Sam uel Butler, H udibras)

202

244

142

169

195

225

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Recent Books by Alumni
We welcome review copies o f
books by alumni. The books
are donated to the Swarthmoreana section o f McCabe
Library after they have been
noted fo r this column.

Bernard D. Beitman ’64 and
Gerald L. Klerman (eds.),
Integrating Pharmacotherapy
and Psychotherapy, American
Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1991.
This manual of basic psychi­
atric treatments reviews the
most current research in the
use of medication and psycho­
therapy in most diagnostic
categories, drawing out the
clinical implications.

Patrick Bond ’83, Command­
ing Heights & Community
Control New Economics fo r a
New South Africa, Ravan
Press, 1991. An overview of
the production, distribution,
and consumption of South
Africa’s enormous wealth, this
book describes the historical
tensions between big capital,
the state, and poor and work­
ing people.

Adele Diamond ’74 (ed.),
The Development and Neural
Bases o f Higher Cognitive
Functions, The New York
Academy of Sciences, 1990.
Written for a general audi­
ence, this book is a dialogue
between developmental psy­
chologists studying particular
aspects of cognition and
neuroscientists studying the
neural bases of those very
same aspects of cognition.

W. (William) D. Ehrhart ’73,
Just fo r Laughs, Vietnam
Generation Inc. and Burning
Cities Press, 1990. In this col­
lection of poems, the author
once again addresses his time
in Vietnam (and a return visit
in 1985), but he also writes
about his wife and young
daughter, his childhood, and
the nature of poetry, among
other things.
Daniel R. Headrick ’62,

54

The Invisible Weapon: Tele­
communications and Inter­
national Politics, 1851-1945,
Oxford University Press, 1991.
Examined in this study is the
political history of telecom­
munications— from the tele­
graph to the use of cryptography-B-and how the
technology gave nations a
new instrument for inter­
national relations.

Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr.,
and Jacquelyn K. Davis,
National Security Decisions:
The Participants Speak, Lex­
ington Books, 1990. Through
in-depth oral-history inter­
views, this book provides first­
hand accounts by the key
players who witnessed and
participated in historic events
and national security decisions
that profoundly shaped world
affairs over the past 40 years.

Clark Kerr ’32, Hon. ’52,
The Great Transformation in
Higher Education, 1960-1980,
State University of New York
Press, 1991. The author pulls
together the many currents
that ran through the commu­
nity of higher education after
World War II to clarify the
relevance and importance of
these institutions to the on­
going of American society.

Silvio O. Funtowicz and

Jerome (Jerry) R. Ravetz

Crook, and June Loy,
Exploring CTOS, Prentice
Hall, 1991. This book presents
a general overview and some
history of CTOS (Convergent
Technologies Operating Sys­
tem) plus a technical tour of
the commercially available,
message-based distributed
operating system for microprocessor-based computers.

’50, Uncertainty and Quality
in Science fo r Policy, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1990.
The notational system
NUSAP (Numeral, Unit,
Spread, Assessment, Pedi­
gree), created as a method of
expressing judgments of un­
certainty and quality, is ex­
plained and applied to exam­
ples from the environmental
sciences. J.R. Ravetz, The
Merger o f Knowledge with
Power: Essays in Critical
Science, Mansell Publishing
Limited, 1990. This anthology
of essays traces the evolution
of the author’s ideas and pro­
vides an insight into our
changing understanding of
science and its interaction
with society.

Charlotte Newman ’36,

Linda Robinson ’82, Inter­

Growth o f a Tree, Salt Lake
Alliance of Unitarian Women,
1991. This poetry collection,
created to commemorate the
centennial of Salt Lake City’s
First Unitarian Church, con­
tains poems on such subjects
as nature, love, and family
relationships.

vention or Neglect: The United
States and Central America
Beyond the 1980s, Council on
Foreign Relations Press, 1991.
Drawing on the political and
economic record of Central
America, this book traces the
growth of political opposition,
the evolution of regional
peace efforts, the rise of drug
trafficking, and the influence
of external actors, including
the United States.

Edna Ilyin Miller ’69, Jim

Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr.,
’56 and Richard H. Shultz,
Jr., The United States Army:
Challenges and Missions fo r
the 1990s, Lexington Books,
1991. Bringing together 21
leading security specialists and
strategic thinkers, this volume
provides incisive analysis of
the Army’s role within Ameri­
can defense policy in the
world of today and beyond.

Rudy Rucker ’67, The Hol­
low Earth, William Morrow
and Company, 1990. This
novel, which begins in 1830s
Virginia, follows the adven­
tures of young Mason Algiers
Reynolds, who meets up with
Edgar Allan Poe and with

him and some other adven­
turers enters a hole at the
South Pole that leads him into
the Hollow Earth.

William Foote Whyte ’36,
Hon. ’84, Social Theory for
Action: How Individuals and
Organizations Learn to
Change, Sage Publications,
1991. Committed to the con­
cept of participation as a strat­
e g y both for organizational
functioning and for research,
Whyte demonstrates the effi­
cacy of his views in examples
as diverse as Spanish work
cooperatives, Peruvian potato
farmers, and Fortune 500
corporations.
*

Richard Wolfson ’69,
Nuclear Choices: A Citizen’s
Guide to Nuclear Technology,
The MIT Press, 1991. With­
out taking sides, Wolfson pro­
vides the background needed
to make informed choices
about nuclear technologies,
introducing the concepts that
can be used for evaluating the
claims of both proponents and
opponents.

Julie (Biddle) Zimmerman
’68, Chronic Back Pain: Mov­
ing On, Biddle Publishing Co.,
1991. This book explains the
causes of chronic back pain,
the effects of living with and
the professional treatment for
the relief of chronic pain, and
self-help strategies for regain­
ing an active life. The Alma­
nac o f Back Pain Treatments,
Biddle Publishing Co., 1991.
Citing the conflicting claims
of success from health-care
providers, this almanac
focuses on the conditions that
cause back pain and the pros
and cons of back pain treat­
ments. The Diagnosis and
Misdiagnosis o f Back Pain,
Biddle Publishing Co., 1991.
This guide explains the con­
troversy among health-care
providers in treating back
pain, including the procedures
doctors use in diagnosis and
the reasons for misdiagnosis
and multiple diagnoses.

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The play’s the thing
Mark Lord ’84 takes student theater in surprising directions
Imagine a production of Ham­
let in which three actors play
Hamlet, sometimes all at once.
Imagine the ghost of Hamlet’s
father played by a car. Mark
Lord ’84 did, and the result
was an acclaimed production
of Hamlet at Bryn Mawr
College last November.
Lord has been director of
theater and associate lecturer
in the arts at Bryn Mawr and
Haverford Colleges for four
years. He appreciates the free­
dom the colleges have given
him, and he’s used it to do
some startling things. Like his
production of Hamlet, punningly entitled Hamlet In/Sites.
The production moved
around Bryn Mawr’s campus,
centering around Goodhart
Hall as Elsinore Castle. Early
in the play, the audience
tramped outdoors and was
brought up short when Ham­
let was transfixed by a pair of
approaching headlights— his
father’s ghost.
Lord decided to cast a car
as the ghost early on, and he
explains the idea: “The image
of Hamlet pinned by these
headlights and speaking
straight from the 16th century
to something that is much
more of us than of him gave a
sense of some big, incompre­
hensible, to some extent time­
traveling power.” He also
addressed his unusual choice
of symbols in the play’s pro­
gram notes, where he quoted
Roland Barthes: “What liber­
ates metaphor, symbol, em­
blem, from poetic mania. . .
is the preposterous.”
Three student actors (one of
them a woman) played Ham­
let in Lord’s production, with
sometimes one, sometimes
two, and sometimes all three
on stage at a time. That
choice had first of all a peda­
gogical reason, Lord explains:
“I didn’t want to crucify any
one student actor against the
role of Hamlet. It wouldn’t
have been useful for the whole
company to watch one person
slog through it.”

AUGUST 1991

But the decision also fitted
in with Lord’s ideas about
acting. “I don’t get what’s so
compelling about watching
people whine about what
they’re capable of feeling, or
what they wish they were
capable of feeling,” he says,
adding that he asks his actors
to use their roles to work out
their thoughts, not their “psy­
chological demons.” He calls
this century’s Hamlets, from
Laurence Olivier to Kevin
Kline to Mel Gibson, “psy­
chologically indulgent,” turn­
ing the play into a vehicle for
one actor to show how tor­
tured he can be. “We miss so
much movement and thematic
development because we’re

caught up in the psychological
dimensions of one character,”
Lord claims. Having three
actors play Hamlet “directs at­
tention away from the psycho­
logical center of the character
by saying essentially, ‘There
is no psychological center;
give up.’ ”
Where do the ideas for
such an unusual production
come from? “The larger things
and the visual context are my
work,” Lord says, “but inside
that there’s a lot of play. I’ll
watch what the students do
and try to shape it. A lot
comes from just watching
carefully, noticing accidents,
and steering in the direction of
the accidents that please you.”

In addition to directing
plays for Bryn Mawr and
Haverford students, Lord, a
graduate of Yale School of
Drama as well as Swarthmore, teaches courses in act­
ing, directing, performance
theory, and other aspects of
theater. He looks forward to
teaching freshman English for
the first time this fall. Outside
of Bryn Mawr, he serves as '
dramaturg for Philadelphia’s
Wilma Theatre, with such
duties as play reading and
rehearsal watching.
Besides Hamlet, Lord has
directed plays at Bryn Mawr
ranging from Waiting for
Godot to Gertrude Stein’s
Listen to Me and Alfred
Jarry’s Ubu Antichrist. His
most recent production was
Buster K eaton’s Trip (inspired
by the Garcia Lorca play Bus­
ter K eaton’s Stroll), presented
at Bryn Mawr in April. Jona­
than Sher ’83 did sound and
video work on the project,
which combined “processed”
performance with live perfor­
mance. “Buster Keaton is a
character in the play, and it’s
filmic in the way it’s written,
so we did it as a kind of colli­
sion between live performance
and film. I’m interested in
mixing processed perfor­
mance, like taped voices or
video images, with live per­
formance. The quality of the
processed presence vs. the live
presence is very striking.”
Above all, Lord does not
want audiences to turn off
their brains and settle down
for the expected. “To me the
best part of going to the the­
ater is when the first lights go
up and you’re in a totally
different landscape and you
don’t know anything. The first
10 minutes are getting used to
the language and trying to
figure out who’s going to be a
major character and who’s
just bringing in the news­
paper. Essentially, you’re lost.
That’s the 10 minutes I want
to make into the whole
thing.”
:$3i-Rehecca Aim

57

Labor Pains.. . continued from page 14

“ The National Labor
Relations Board is very quick
to respond to employer
complaints, but very slow
on union complaints. ... We
avoid it whenever possible”
—Paul Cohen ’79
Field Representative,
Bay Counties District Council,
United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners

46Unions have recognized
that many o f the factors
producing hard times
aren’t ju st management’s
stubbornness but really
came from heightened
competition__ ”
—Peter Henle ’40
Former Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Labor

62

will agree to bargain. But they won’t bargain
in good faith, so we file charges and they’ll
appeal the case___You’re talking about a
nightmare process.”
Leveling the playing field through laborlaw reform won’t be easy, says Nanine
Meiklejohn ’68, a former AFSCME staffer
and now a legislative consultant. “The
Democratic Party is less cohesive than it
used to be. You don’t have as many ‘labor
Democrats’ in Congress, people who under­
stand and support labor’s issues intuitively,
who do not have to be educated. Members
of Congress run their own campaigns, some­
times separately from the party’s structure.
Unions have to work through relationships
with individuals instead of the party. In
addition, power in Congress is more decen­
tralized.” And even if labor-law reform were
to pass, it is unlikely to survive a veto.
Organized labor is not merely working to
pass legislation in its own self-interest, says
Meiklejohn. “There needs to be more aware­
ness of the role that labor is playing in
legislation relating to families: child care,
family and medical leave, health insurance
reform—issues that are pretty broad-based.
I’d like to see the movement get the credit
it deserves, not only for what it has done to
improve the lives of union workers, but
everyone’s lives.”
It could be argued that with the passage
of each new social welfare program, unions
lose another organizing issue, but labor’s
legislative successes “don’t change the core
of what unions are all about,” says Fred
Feinstein of the House Labor-Management
Subcommittee, “and that is the basic demo­
cratic right to have some say over your
working conditions.”
AFSCME’s Booth agrees. “The reason
that workers need a union is so they have a
voice—not so they can have health insur­
ance. If we had national health care and
didn’t have to bargain for health insurance
anymore, that wouldn’t make any difference
in organizing. The need for unions would be
just as great.”

A New Economy
The historical experience of the 1930s
proved that a militant, broad-based labor
movement could achieve significant legal
protection and government support. When
100,000 workers crowded into Detroit’s
Cadillac Square on March 23, 1937, de­
manding unionization of the auto industry,
it was more than a demonstration—it was
workers using their collective power. The
sit-down strike, widespread boycotts, and
other tactics proved that organized workers

could do it on their own.
But this isn’t the 1930s. The economy has
changed dramatically, with service jobs re­
placing those in manufacturing, with new
technology changing the basic nature of
work, and with far more women in the work
force. If unions are to survive in this econ­
omy, they must adapt.
One problem some unions have been
struggling with is the organization of women.
Kathleen MacKenzie thinks that women are
tougher to organize: “Women have not had
as many experiences as men in being part of
a team, and historically their relationship to
the work force has been more tenuous. They
tend not to think of themselves as long-term
participants, but as working, then leaving to
have children, then working again, or maybe
leaving if their husband’s job takes them
somewhere else.
“This is less true now because of the
number of single-parent families,” says Mac­
Kenzie, “but in the past bringing a union
into the workplace hasn’t seemed worth­
while to women. Organizing them would
mean great things for the movement, be­
cause when women do join a union, they are
often its best members.”
With so many women in clerical and
service jobs, unions like AFSCME have had
greater opportunity—and success—in or­
ganizing them. A majority of AFSCME
members are women, and Meiklejohn says
that’s because the union has worked hard to
understand the needs of the people it repre­
sents. “AFSCME organized aggressively and
appealed broadly to a diverse population
of workers—professional, nonprofessional,
women, men, blacks, whites, browns—so
that workers could identify with it and see
it as an organization that represented their
interests.” The fact that public employees
are not covered by the National Labor
Relations Act may also have made a differ­
ence. AFSCME had to fight for state laws
legalizing public-employee unions, but it
has never been encumbered by the NLRB
bureaucracy.
Meiklejohn thinks other unions could
learn from AFSCME’s experience. “As the
work force diversifies, it’s important that
unions have an image of representing more
than just the white male crafts.”
But such change has been slow in coming.
MacKenzie recalls with horror an incident
at an AFL-CIO executive council meeting
three years ago: “The National Letter Car­
riers Union hired scantily clad women to
pass out favors at a party. The few women
who were there on the executive board were
terribly offended, as were women union
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

members who heard about it. That wasn’t so
very long ago, and these guys were still so
insensitive as to how it would be perceived.
The AFL-CIO is still led, for the most part,
by older white men, and that isn’t very
feflective of the work force unions seek to
organize.”
But AFSCME’s Booth feels that new
leadership is now emerging, and with it the
union movement can look forward to better
times. Young leaders like the Swarthmore
alumni interviewed for this story are part of
a healthy resurgence and revitalization in
the labor movement—and Booth says that
they are receiving lots of support from their
institutions. “What we are doing is a signifi­
cant counterpoint to the trends of the last 20
years. These are the people who will dig the
labor movement out of its difficulties.”
Paul Filson would like to see even more
young unionists “who have vision, who
have ideas, and are creative and charismatic.
Other social movements have attracted these
people—environmental groups, the civilrights movement, the peace movement, fem­
inism. More dynamic leadership would sure
help the labor movement.”

Challenges for the 1990s
In the next decade, union leadership will
face two basic challenges—to revitalize and
reset priorities within their own organiza­
tions and to adapt unions to the changing
economy. The two seem to go hand in hand,
and forward-looking unions are already
making changes.
The collective-bargaining system is adapt­
ing to new economic realities. “Unions have
recognized that many of the factors produc­
ing hard times aren’t just management’s
stubbornness but really came from height­
ened competition, both international and
domestic,” says former Deputy Assistant
Secretary Peter Henle. “Unions have been
willing to compromise on money issues in
return for greater job security, and there are
quite a number of experiments in employee
participation, cutting down supervisory lev­
els, and letting the ordinary worker have
more control over the flow of work.”
Cooperation with management [see “Say­
ing the ‘C’ Word,” page 13] is risky for
unions, says Henle. “There’s always some­
body in the back row who says, ‘To hell with
this stuff—you’re selling out—let’s fight it
out!’ That’s what makes a local union
official’s job so tough today.”
Fred Feinstein puts it another way: “The
critical ingredient in successful economies in
the modern marketplace is the ability to
compete in the high-technology, high-pro­
ductivity, high-wage sector. For that to
happen, you need the active participation
IN

AUGUST 1991

-

HH
■■i
COURTESY AFSCME

and cooperation of the work force. Collec­
tive bargaining and unionization are abso­
lutely essential in making that happen. You
can’t say to people, ‘Come in and cooperate,
but we still retain all of the authority, all of
the leverage, and all of the power.’ A viable
labor movement is absolutely critical in the
world economy today.”
On a more individual level, Kathleen
MacKenzie reports that every week her
union gets a half-dozen calls for help from
nonunion workers. Many are from workers
who find their jobs in conflict with their
family lives. “People say, ‘My boss says I
have to move to South Dakota or lose my
job,’ or ‘I have to work overtime this week­
end and my daughter is getting married.’
People think these things are illegal, but
they’re not.
“Americans have a basic sense that these
things are unfair and that a union might be
able to help them. A lot of us grow up with
the idea that there are agencies and organ­
izations that will prevent unfair actions by
employers, but the protection offered by the
government is very narrow—there’s really
just protection against discrimination. There
isn’t any other redress in a nonunion situa­
tion. As the percentage of unionized workers
declines and employers become more bold
in their actions, I think that lesson will come
through, and people will turn to unions for
help.”
Nanine Meiklejohn remembers a song
with the message that freedom is something
every generation has to win anew. “It’s
directly applicable to the labor movement,”
she says. “The conditions one generation
fights to overcome often re-emerge in the
next. In the transition between generations,
it might seem that the institutions that
fought to overcome those conditions are no
longer relevant. But eventually, in time,
their value becomes clear again.” A ,

“I ’d like to see the labor
movement get the credit it
deserves, not only for what
it has done to improve
the lives o f union workers,
but everyone's lives."
—Nanine M eiklejohn ’68
Former Assistant Director of Legislation,
American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employees

66The law works as an arm of
the company to delay, to
disenfranchise, to take power
away from the workers ”
—Paul Filson ’78
Associate Director of Organizing,
Amalgamated Clothing and
Textile Workers Union
63

Strewn from the Stars.. .continued from page 5
Science and a
Sense of Awe
“I’ve always been interested in science,”
says Christopher Chyba. “I grew up
with the feeling that scientists are peo­
ple who realty understand the world. I
remember a book my father had on
Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It
had the calculus of general relativity on
one side of the page and all sorts of sur­
realistic sketches on the other. I remem­
ber as a kid the visual impression that
somewhere in all this mysterious math­
ematics had to be profound things
about the woild
“At Swarthmore I knew people in
the humanities who argued that an ana­
lytical understanding of the world pre­
cluded - or at least strongly interfered
with—an aesthetic appreciation of it. In
Whitman’s poem When I Heard the
Learn’d Astronomer; the poet listens to
a very analytical lecture about the stars.
He gets completety disgusted and leaves
the lecture to go out to stare in silent
wonder at the sky The implication is
that the astronomer has lost any sense
of awe 01 appreciation of its simple
“I don’t accept that for a moment.
There’s no contradiction there at all In
science you use an analytical approach
because we’ve learned since Galileo’s
time that it works, that science lets you
predict the future in a reliable way, at
least in many circumstances
“The reason you do it isn’t because
you’re some automaton. You do it be­
cause you want to understand the uni­
verse and your place in it. That’s an ex­
pression of a kind of awe. . . .
“You’re addressing fundamental
questions that put youi existence into
context the same way that you studs
history or read literature to put your life
in context We all do that in one wav
or anothei
How can you not be
interested in your own origin? .
“Was it Shaw who said that ‘super­
stition is cowardice in the face of the
divine’? The implicit assumption here is
the divine.”
- From an interview, May 16, 1991

64

A carbon dioxide atmosphere makes a similar bombardment leading to possible
Miller’s experiment less relevant. You can’t biological activity prior to about 3.5 billion
get significant production of amino acids by years ago, when a thicker atmosphere and
applying simulated lightning bolts to C 0 2, greater internal heating kept Martian tem­
so Chyba and his colleagues began to look peratures higher—and at a time when life
elsewhere for the Earth’s supply of prebiotic had clearly emerged on the Earth.
Asked what experiment he would do if
organic molecules—including outer space.
About 3 percent of the weight of the money, time, and technology were no ob­
Murchison meteorite is in the form of or­ ject, Chyba fantasized about getting some
ganic molecules. Murchison is a carbona­ samples of Mars’ crust from tens of meters
ceous chondrite, a type of meteor that is below the surface. “Either Mars didn’t have
thought to have accreted at very low tem­ early life and the original organic record is
peratures in the original interplanetary dust preserved there, not all gobbled up by living
cloud. Halley’s comet appears to be about things,” he speculates, “or it did have earjy
25 percent organic by mass—and about 50 life, in which case some record of the life
percent water ice. Other comets appear to itself might remain. Either way, you’d like
to get at those early organics.”
have similar composition.
Such an experiment wouldn’t merely
The problem comes in explaining how
these molecules got safely to the Earth’s prove or disprove ancient life on Mars. It
surface without their being destroyed, or would go a long way toward explaining
“pyrolyzed,” by the heat and pressure of life’s origin on Earth as well. Failing a trip
impact. Chyba has made mathematical to Mars, this summer Chyba traveled to the
models of such impacts that seem to prove Siberian arctic, where a U.S.-Soviet research
that survival would be possible, given a team examined permafrost lakes that are
dense early atmosphere. If the C 0 2 atmo­ geological analogues to now-dry lakes dis­
sphere was indeed 10 times as dense as covered on Mars by the Viking spacecraft.
Yet going to Siberia—or even to Mars—jj
today’s, the velocities of impact would be
further reduced by what Chyba calls “aero- could only provide a few more data points
braking” of the comets. Using complex to refine Chyba’s ideas. “Ultimately, this is
hydrodynamic computer codes, he and his model-dependent stuff,” he emphasizes. “It
colleagues have shown that under such relies on numerical modeling and not a lot
conditions a 200m-wide comet striking a of real data. And if it happens that there’s
3km-deep ocean would slow and cool garbage in, it’s going to be garbage out.” For
quickly enough that a significant percentage instance, the geological data extrapolated to
estimate the rate and time of bombardment
of the organic molecules would survive.
Another way to deliver organics, says came from fewer' than 15 points on the
Chyba, is through airbursts—the breakup of moon. The assumption of an early C 0 2
objects as they enter the atmosphere, scat­ atmosphere could also change.
There is no question, however, that for
tering thousands of very small pieces. An
airburst over Revelstoke, Canada, in 1965 life to have emerged on Earth there had to
provided an excellent example. Microscopic have been a considerable stock of organic
studies of pieces collected from this event molecules. “The work we’ve done shows
showed that the interiors of these tiny mete­ that one way or another you get the building
blocks. If you don’t make them in situ, then
orites had escaped being pyrolyzed.
Even today, a large amount of extrater­ you bring them in,” says Chyba. The hardest
restrial matter is falling on the Earth in the part to explain is how these simple molecules
form of interplanetary dust. One reliable linked up into the complex chains of RNA
calculation is that 3.2 million kilograms and DNA that truly make life come alive.
(about 3,500 tons) of interplanetary matter “That’s the really important question,” he
lands on the Earth every year—about 10 admits, “and if I could figure out a way to
percent of which has been found to be become a molecular biologist, I might very
organic molecules. Chyba estimates that well want to work on that.” d tk
early in Earth’s history the accretion of
extraterrestrial organic matter would have In September, Christopher Chyba will take
up a National Research Council Fellowship
been 1,000 to 10,000 times greater.
If all this happened on Earth, why not on at N ASA’s Ames Research Center near San
other planets as well? One major implication Francisco. He plans to take an introductory
of Chyba’s work is that life on other biochemistry course at Stanford while pur­
worlds—even in other solar systems—is suing his postdoctoral work in planetary
more likely. Mars would have experienced science.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ALUMNI COUNCIL

A Summing Up: Volunteers Make a Difference
ith the conclusion of the Alumni
summed up the experience when he said,
Alumni Association Officers 1991-93
Collection on Saturday of Alumni
“My soul has been vivified!”
President, Frank M. James III ’57;
Weekend, the new officers and representa­
This spring the Bulletin again received
President Designate, Gretchen Mann
tives for Council began their terms (see
national accolades as the winner of a bronze
Handwerger ’56;
names below).
Vice Presidents, Alan A. Symonette ’76,
award in competition among college maga­
It is interesting to note that in this first
Lee Smith Ingram ’66;
zines. By now I hope you are all avid readers
Secretary, Bonny M. Cochran ’61
year of balloting since our bylaw change,
of this Alumni Council page, usually on the
which eliminated the necessity to vote for'
New Alumni Council Members
inside back cover. No longer can you won­
Zone A: DE, PA
one man and one woman in each zone,
der just what the Alumni Council does, for
Adalyn Purdy Jones ’40, Swarthmore, PA
Zone C was the only one in which two
with each issue another aspect of its volun­
William A. Raich ’63, Lancaster, PA
women (or two men) were elected. As al­
teer efforts is highlighted. And send back the
Zone B: NJ, NY
ways, representatives will serve on the Alum­
response form; we want you to become
John M. Darley ’60, Princeton, NJ
ni Council for three-year terms, so we should
involved too!
Andrea Hoff Knox ’64, Collingswood, NJ
watch what happens in future years to affect
Zone C: CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT
In closing, my deepest thanks to Maralyn
Marcia Montin Grant ’60, Watertown, MA
the male-female balance on Council.
Gillespie ’49 and to all the Alumni Office
Miriam Jorgensen ’87, Cambridge, MA
In the two years that I have served as
staff: David Allgeier ’86, Astrid Devaney,
Zone D: DC, MD, VA
president of the Alumni Council, the most
Sherry Pringle (who is moving and will be
Robert Forster ’49, Baltimore, MD
pervasive concern can be summed up in one
sorely missed!), Mimi Geiss, and our student
Stephanie Ross van Reigersberg ’62,
word: volunteerism. The newest of Council’s
McLean, VA
intern, Alida McKay ’92. Also, my sincerest
committees is the Social Responsibility
Zone E: IL, IN, IA, KS, MI, MN, MO,
gratitude to the officers who served with me:
Committee, chaired since its inception by
NE, ND, OH, OK, SD, TX, WV, WI
President Designate Frank James ’57, who
E. Bruce Robertson ’76,
Lowell Livesey ’66.
chaired the Student Life Committee; Vice
Cleveland Heights, OH
Another form of volunteerism can be
Presidents Gretchen Mann Handwerger
Anne Davis Shullenberger ’41,
seen in the efforts of the Career Planning
’56, Admissions Committee chair, and Bill
Indianapolis, IN
Committee. These Council members
Fredericks ’83, chairman of the Career
Zone F: AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS,
worked hard under the leadership of Bill
NC, SC, TN, territories, dependencies, and
Counseling Committee; and Secretary Peggy
Fredericks ’83 to provide career resource
foreign countries
MacLaren ’49, who managed the Shane
Jacqueline Edmonds Clark ’74,
information and externships for students
Award for this Alumni Council.
Charlotte, NC
through the Career Counseling Office.
Our special thanks also go to these Coun­
Donald L. Kimmel, Jr., ’56, Davidson, NC
In addition to these, Council’s Admissions
cil members who have retired: C. Dante DiZone G: AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT,
Committee and the Connection groups have
Pirro ’83, Nancy Fitts Donaldson ’46, Carol
NV, NM, OR, UT, WA, WY
worked with volunteer alumni to host par­
Russell D. Fernald ’63, Stanford, CA
Thompson Hemingway ’52, Joan Heifetz
ties for prospective freshmen in order to
Judith McConnell Sondheimer ’66,
Hollinger ’61, John F. Humphrie, Jr., ’74,
Denver, CO
acquaint them with the College. And our
Robert M. Lippincott ’74, Allen B. Maxwell
Connections network grew to 13.
’61, Carolyn Shuler Minionis ’56, Patricia
We welcomed the emergence of a new
Another opportunity for alumni to join Imbrie Moore ’55, Colgate S. Prentice ’49,
organization of black Swarthmore alumni. together, this time for the stimulation of a David C. Rowley ’65, Barbara Starfield ’54,
It published its first newsletter this spring learning experience, is the annual Alumni Robert N. Stauffer ’45, Jill Kempthorne
and is encouraging networking among its College. This year the three-day courses Thompson ’73, and Anne Smith Weather­
members. We hope that our long-standing were “The Soviet Union Today: Challenges ford ’51.
committee to assist in the search for black and Prospects” and “Mozart, Jazz, and
Elinor Meyer Haupt ’55
faculty candidates, chaired by Alice Hand- Intelligent Listening.” Joe DeGrazia ’65
President, Alumni Association
saker Kidder ’63, will be able to continue
assisting the provost and the faculty through
Please return to Alumni Office, Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue,
this organization. Gloria Thomas Walker
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397.
’85, a member-at-large of the Alumni Coun­
Nam e:___________________________________________________ ________________________
cil, is our liaison with the African-American
Alumni Group.
Address:______________________________________________________ ____________________
Another way in which alumni are strength­
□ Please add my name to the list of hosts for the Directory fo r Traveling Swarthmoreans and
ening ties with one another and therefore
send me the necessary information.
with the College is through our new Direc­
I recommend the following alumni for these positions:
tory for Traveling Swarthmoreans. I’m sure
Alumni Council:__________________________________
you noticed in the last Bulletin the centerfold
listing of alums who would welcome fellow
Alumni Manager:
Swarthmoreans into their homes, a service
developed by Chris Kennedy ’54.

W

Nominating Committee of the Alumni Association:
(must be able to attend two meetings a year on campus)

FALL
W EEKEND
October 11,12,13
Come home to Swarthmore
for a stimulating weekend
o f ideas, athletics, and the arts
Take the opportunity to meet
President Alfred Bloom as he
begins his work at the College.
jS Enjoy traditional homecoming

football, field hockey, soccer, and
cross-country competition.
^ Attend seminars, lectures, and
workshops with invited speakers,
faculty, students, alumni, and friends.
« ■ Tentative topics include:
Quaker Traditions: How are
they relevant today?
Women’s Issues: What’s next on
the agenda?
Social Responsibility: Good tactics
for good works.
Plus: Music and Dance Festival
J jT events, beautiful fall foliage, and
a chance to rekindle your spirits in the
Swarthmore style of inquiry.

Mark your calendar now.
Call the Alumni Office
for further information:
215-328-8402.

A voyage to Japan, South Korea,
and China aboard the Aurora I.
May 6 to May 23, 1992
The 1992 Alumni College Abroad
will be led by Professor Kaori Kilao 1
of the Art Department. Beginning in
Kyoto, Japan, it will include a halfdozen other ports of call in Japan.
The cruise will make two stops in
South Korea and one in China before
disembarkation at Tianjin for an
overland trip to Beijing, where we will
stay four nights. A brochure with full
details will be mailed in early August.