Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1992-05-01

A new
perspective
on our
woven world.
A feminist
debate.
An actor’s life
And a new
president for
Swarthmore.

1 he won’t like this. She’s already nixed the idea
of a portrait to hang in Parrish Hall. But
between the covers of this magazine, which
she edited for 35 years, is where a tribute to Maralyn
Orbison Gillespie ’49 rightly belongs.

■m m

We have the privilege of working on a great college
magazine, and Maralyn Gillespie gets the credit for
making it one. Her love of Swarthmore, coupled with
her insistence that we reflect the institution warts and
all, has given this magazine a sense of integrity often
missing from alumni publications. Numerous national
awards have confirmed Maralyn’s unswerving commit­
ment to excellence, and her retirement leaves a great
void at Swarthmore.
To keep her values in our minds as we carry on
without her, we have appointed her (again, without
her permission— sorry, Maralyn) editor emerita of the
Swarthmore College Bulletin. May her name grace our
masthead for many, many years.
— The Editors

I

111
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SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE BULLETIN • MAY 1992

2

iÆ Ê m

The W oven W orld

Im agine a map o f the Earth that isn’t just a diagram o f
geographical boundaries, but a work o f art made from
indigenous textiles. Claire B rill ’89 made such a map, and it’s
helping to change our understanding o f the world.
By John Vaillant

4

M irror, M irror

Fem inist author N aom i W olf visited campus in February—
a visit she w on’t soon forget. H er presence sparked a spirited
debate over the nature o f the fem inist m ovem ent and the
im pact o f her controversial book, The Beauty Myth.
By Katherine Cook ’92
Acting Editor:
Jeffrey Lott
Assistant Managing Editor:
Kate Downing
Class Notes and Copy Editors:
Rebecca Aim
Nancy L. T. Lehman ’87
Desktop Publishing Assistant:
Audree Penner
Designer:
Bob Wood
Editor Emerita:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Cover: This map of the world is
different. Made from indigenous
textiles and based on a new
equal-area projection, it is a
reflection of an emerging
understanding of the Earth that
has changed our way of thinking
about everything from
Christopher Columbus to our
cultural history. It is the creation
of Claire Brill ’89 and hangs in
the University of Pennsylvania
Museum. Story on page 2.
Photograph by Walter Holt.
Printed on Recycled Paper
The Sw arthm ore C ollege B ulletin (IS S N
0888-2126), o f w hich this is volum e
LXXXIX, num ber 5, is published in
Septem ber, O ctober, N ovem ber, Febru­
ary, May, and August by Sw arthm ore
C ollege, 500 C ollege A venue, Swarth­
m ore, PA 19081-1397. Second class
postage p a id a t Sw arthm ore, PA and
a d d ition al m a ilin g offices. Postm aster:
Send address changes to Sw arthm ore
C ollege B ulletin, 500 C ollege Avenue,
Sw arthm ore, PA 19081-1397.

8

The P la y’s th e Thing

As acting careers are measured, Stephen Lang ’73 is still a
young man, but already h e’s in a position to call m ost if not all
o f the shots. From the Hamburg Show to Hamlet, this
Swarthmorean has always known what he wanted to do in life.
By W . D. Ehrhart ’73

12

A New P resident fo r S w a rth m o re

It was quite a day: With an academ ic procession and a
Chinese lion, with serious symposia and striking dances,
Swarthmore celebrated the inauguration o f Alfred H. Bloom
as its 13th president. We took lots o f pictures so you could share
in the occasion. Oh— and then there was the food!

16

Dear A l...

“D ealing with advice, ” writes Nancy Bekavac ’69, “is one o f the
first burdens visited upon college presidents. ” We asked all
seven Swarthmore alum ni who serve as college presidents to
add to the mountain o f advice President A l Bloom has been
getting since September. Can he manage to follow it all?

D epartm ents
20
25
33
50
64

The College
Class Notes
Deaths
Recent Books by Alumni
Letters
Insert: A Directory for Traveling Swarthmoreans

The Woven World
magine a map of
the world that isn’t
just a diagram of
geographical
boundaries, but a
work of art made from
indigenous textiles.
Imagine a map in which
Mexico is cut from a
handwoven blanket and
France is a fragment of
tapestry. Iceland is a
patch from a traditional
fisherman’s sweater,
and New Zealand is a
scrap of grass skirt
woven in a native Maori
design. Africa becomes
a collage of intricate
patterns and vivid
colors, and the ocean
is a sea of blue canvas.

I

by John Vaillant

2

A m e rica n rug w as su g g ested , but
he approaching quincentennial
of Columbus’ “discovery” of the would that be interesting to a 10-yearold? Probably not, and what if some­
“New W orld” has sparked a hot
one threw food at it? No, it couldn’t be
debate on what actually defines dis­
an irre p la c e a b le artifact. Posters?
covery, a misnomer that has become
a euphem ism for uninvited occupa­ T h e y w ere too rep laceable; no one
wanted the place to look like a sub­
tio n and th e ft. B eca u se a ttitu d e s
way. What about a map? Well, maybe,
tow ard expansion and colon ization
but it would have to be gigantic, and
have changed dramatically since the
besides, would that really engage the
naively self-congratulatory Columbian
interest of hundreds of children of all
Exposition of 1892, w e have begun to
ages?
re-examine the m otives, ethics, and
T h en Brill had an idea: It m ight
effects of Columbus’ endeavor. A new
engage their interest if it was a really
v ie w of the w orld is em erging, one
unusual map, one like they had never
th at in v ite s us to tra n s c e n d th e
seen before, a map filled with bright
boundaries of Eurocentrism.
colors, varied textures, and every pat­
Claire Brill ’89 has presen ted us
tern and material you could imagine.
with an enlightening perspective on
this new world. Brill, a staff member of A map of the world in which Colombia
the University of Pennsylvania Muse­ w as m ade from a c o ffe e sack and
um ’s Internation al C lassroom P ro ­ China was a dragon em broidered on
red silk.
gram, has created a map of the world
The solution to the problem of the
that would have humbled Columbus
and is even now changing the world­ wall had been found, but where would
view of countless adults and school- the material com e from? What does
an indigenous textile from Tuvalu look
children.
like, and how in the world would you
The museum’s Textile W orld Map,
get a piece? In many ways this was the
which Brill designed and made with
the help of two student interns, was a m ost d iffic u lt part o f th e p ro je c t.
There are 191 countries and territo­
sum m er p ro je c t sp o n s o red b y the
ries represented on the map; virtually
In tern a tion al C lassroom P rogram ,
all of them have their own textile or
w hich brings visiting scholars from
design, and Brill has used authentic
around the world to speak to school
materials wherever possible. This has
and com m unity groups throughout
produced som e exotic results, as in
the greater Philadelphia area.
the case of French Polynesia, where
The idea for the map came about
as the solution to a design problem in the native textile, called kapa, is made
the children’s lunchroom at the muse­ from pressed tree bark, and the Philip­
pines, where they make pina, a cloth
um. T h e dilem m a co n fron tin g Brill
and Mary Day Kent, the International woven from pineapple fibers. In order
C lassroom co ord in a to r, was a 300- to find the right material, Brill had to
research each country or territory to
square-foot cement wall as cheerless
as it was enormous. What, besides a determine what textile was native to
it. Once she chose a representative
dinosaur skeleton, would disguise the
textile, Brill had to locate a piece big
wall and be appealing and educational
enough to fit on a canvas sea that was
for the hundreds of schoolchildren
13 feet high and 20 feet wide.
who eat next to it each week?
Thus began an o d y s se y that led
Id eas ca m e and w en t. A N a tiv e

T

S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

B rill to em b assies, m useum s, g a l­
leries, former Peace Corps volunteers,
and in tern ation al organ iza tio n s of
every stripe. Says Brill: “I was amazed
at th e r e s p o n s e . T h e p e o p le I
a p p ro a c h e d w e r e so en th u sia stic
about the project. Almost all the tex­
tiles w ere donated to us.”
As Brill researched countries and
collected their textiles, the enormous
complexity of the task came home to
her. Inherent in her idea of a “textile
w o rld m ap” w ere a host o f ethical
questions that would challenge Brill
throughout the m ap’s creation. The
p r in c ip a l q u e s tio n w as w h a t d o
“ in d igen ou s” and “ re p re s e n ta tiv e ”
really mean in this context? And who
defines them, the “native,” the “dis­
coverer,” or the mapmaker?
Says Brill: “I made the map to get
kids who come to the museum excit­
ed about the world. At first, I thought
of it in terms of an art piece where the
point was to differentiate the coun­
tries from each other. Then I decided
that I wanted to represent the folk,
aboriginal, or native voice as much as
possible, where I had a choice. I was
interested in supporting that part of
the culture.
“W e couldn’t deal with all the pos­
sibilities of representation because of
the lim itations of the p roject. Y ou
could only choose one [textile], and
by the parameters of that choice you
had to be saying certain things; you
just have to live with that and know
there are an infinite number of ways
to make this map.”
The choice of Levi’s blue jeans to
represent the United States is a case
Please turn to page 62

Claire Brill ’89 collected textiles
from around the world to make a
13-by-20-foot world map at
Philadelphia’s University Museum.

by Katherine C o o k ’92

Mirror, Mirror
The debate about body image and feminism
was more than skin deep when Beauty M yth
author Naomi Wolf visited campus.

he weighs 23 percent less than
the average American woman
and has long willowy legs and
flawless skin. Her lips are swollen with
a fullness that looks like passion but
might well be collagen implants. Her
c lo th e s s e em r e a d y to fa ll aw ay,
revealing full breasts and perfect but­
tocks. She’s w h ite and sh e’s ev ery ­
w here— on billboards, in magazines,
on television, and etched in the minds
of both men and women.
She doesn’t need a mind or a per­
sonality. Advertisers have found that
her b o d y alone can sell everyth in g
from lip gloss to cars to beer, and her
“don’t hate me because I’m beautiful”
grin has becom e as American as apple
pie and Chevrolet. But while people
aren’t trying to starve themselves into
the measurements of an ideal Chevy,
as many as 20 percent of college-aged
wom en have an unhealthy— perhaps
deadly— relationship with food, diet­
ing, and their own bodies, the Renfrew
Institute reports.
In her best-selling book, The Beauty
M yth, fe m in is t w r it e r N ao m i W o lf
introduces “her” as the enem y of all
women, asserting that such images of
fe m a le b e a u ty a re b e in g u sed to
underm ine w o m en ’s advancem ent.
D u rin g a v is it to S w a rth m o re on
February 5, W olf told a crowd of more
than 850 men and w om en that this
pervasive, patriarchal myth sets up a
v irtu a lly u n attain able stan dard of
fem a le b e a u ty — on e that has c o n ­
vinced women that if they only work
at it hard enough, they too can look
like supermodels. And, according to
W olf, it ’s no a ccid en t that s o c ie ty
pressures wom en in this way. Estab­

S

lish m e n t m yth m a k ers r e ly on
wom en’s quest for physical perfection
as part of a plot to keep them from
uniting for social change. Striving to
be the fairest one of all divides women
and drains time, money, and energy
fro m th e ir s tr u g g le fo r p e rs o n a l
achievement and sexual equality.
In her book and again in her talk,
W olf cited alarming eating-disorder
statistics as examples of how young
wom en take societal expectations of
emaciated beauty to an extrem e but
horrifyingly logical conclusion. Equal­
ly provocative are the ways in which
W olf links the beauty myth with the
cosmetic surgery industry, pornogra­
ph y, and o th e r fo rm s o f v io le n c e
against women.
“You can be sure the powers that
be are laughing up their sleeves at us

w h ile w e ’re co m p u ls iv e ly jum ping
around at aerob ics and com p etin g
w ith one another,” W o lf explained.
“The beauty myth diverts our atten­
tion from coming together to accom­
plish anything real through a massive
wom en’s movement.”
Yet even coming together to hear
W o lf’s talk w as not ea sy fo r som e
Swarthmore women. The issues she
raises— and the w ay in which she rais­
es them— have led as much to conflict
as to consensus.
In November, before anyone knew
W olf would be com ing to campus—
and before many w ere familiar with
her book— a group from the W om en’s
Center had covered a Parrish Hall bul­
letin board with a collage of different,
y e t a m a z in g ly sim ila r, im ages o f
wom en in advertising, asking, “What
is really being sold here?” and “How
does it make you feel?” R esponses
written on the board included: “fat,”
“ugly,” “worthless,” and “furious.”
“What the bulletin board did was
sh ow young w om en w ho are strug­
gling w ith issues about their b o d y
image that these are societal norms
th e y h a ve in te r n a liz e d ,” ex p la in s
Elaine Metherall, who, in addition to

"What is
really being
sold here?”
and “How
does it make
you feel?”
were ques­
tions asked
when these
ads were dis­
played on
the Women’s
Center’s
Parrish Hall
bulletin board
last November.

her responsibilities as associate direc­
tor of Career Planning and Placement,
has been facilitating eating-disorder
support groups on campus.
Y et when Metherall and students
fro m th e S w a rth m o re W o m e n ’ s
Health Education Project decided to
invite Naomi W olf to be the keynote
speaker for their February “Working
fo r W o m e n ’ s W e lln e s s ” p ro g ra m
series, they knew she would not be
universally received as a heroine by
all feminists. W olf had already been
sharply criticized by academic femi­
nists who feel that her theory is too
simple, too all-encompassing, and too
q u ic k d o gloss o v e r issues o f race,
class, and sexuality. However, Mether­
all said, the project committee want­
ed to “create opportunities for stu­
dents to connect and explore issues
of wom en’s body image,” and they felt
certain that W olf’s ideas would spark
valuable discussion, even amid criti­
cism and disagreement.
The discussion began tw o nights
before W olf’s speech, when a mixedsex group of m ore than 20 students
gathered at the W om en ’s Center to
talk about her book. Members of this
group seemed to accept W olf’s theo­
ry, and, eschewing critical analysis of
the th eo ry itself, launched d irectly
into an exploration of how images of
beauty affected their own lives.
Talk soon turned to the question
“What is feminism?” as women shared
their struggles to reconcile their per­
son al id e n titie s w ith th e fem in ist
movem ent. A discussion of whether
w om en should w ear makeup led to
s o m e te n s e g la n c e s and h e a ted
moments. Some adamantly asserted
th at w e a rin g m akeup w as s im p ly
another w ay of surrendering to the
o p p r e s s iv e b e a u ty m yth. O th ers
countered that wearing makeup was a
woman’s right to be attractive. “I have
a real problem with a feminism that
does not allow for the feminine,” com­
mented Miriam Greenwald ’94.
Jennifer Leigh ’94 seem ed to end
th e d iv is iv e n e s s b y sa y in g , “ T h e
w hole makeup issue is just another
w ay of dividing women. This beauty
myth is getting all of us. I can feel the
tension right now in this room .” The
discussion then turned to one of com­
mon ground.
Jennifer Ekert ’94 summed up the
feelings of many women, saying, “I’m

at a point w h ere I’m tryin g to look
beyond appearances to see women as
w h o le p e o p le . It ’ s a rea l s tru g g le
because I’m going against everything
I’ve been culturally taught.”
But two days later common ground
was again elusive as Naomi W olf met
w ith stu d en ts fro m tw o W o m e n ’ s
Studies seminars. She hardly had her
coat off before the criticism began.
W olf became defensive when asked
to justify her theory along more aca­
dem ic lines of analysis. Several stu­
dents objected to placing beauty as
the p r o b le m th at all w o m e n fa ce
instead of as just one of many prob­
lems faced by som e (prim arily white
middle-class) women. W olf was frus­
trated as several students criticized
her for ignoring issues of race, class,
and sexuality and for failing to consid­
er how these might create different
p ro b le m s and m yths fo r d iffe re n t
women.

olf hardly had her
coat off before the
criticism began. Some
students confronted her,
while others felt silenced
by their peers.

W

“I didn’t want to speak for an expe­
rience I haven’t had,” answered Wolf.
“1was trying to com e up with a theory
of power, trying to look at the dynam­
ic, not the specifics, which change all
the time.” She added that she some­
times felt feminists w ere too quick to
see problem s that “just affect white
m idd le-class w o m e n ” as so m eh ow
less valid concerns.
Yet it Wets the specifics that struck
c r itic a l stu d en ts as c ru c ia l and
ensured that the d eb a te w ith W o lf
lasted for the rest of the hour-long
meeting. Caught off guard, W olf later
com m en ted that she had not been
en tirely prepared to m eet w ith stu­
dents who had such an agenda. These
differences in expectations made for a
very tense hour as students critical of
W olf’s book felt ready to confront her,
while students who liked The Beauty
Myth felt silenced by their peers.
Triana Silton ’92 summed up the
criticism w hen she later explained
6

that she felt W olf was irresponsibly
o b liv io u s to th e kind o f e x c lu s iv e
“v e ry white, v e ry middle-class, ve ry
h e te ro sex u a l” w o m e n ’s m ovem en t
that could result fronCa book as popu­
lar as The Beauty Myth.
“If m y book is inadequate for your
uses, then write your book,” W olf had
told Silton during the seminar, saying
that she w ro te The Beauty Myth so
that she could engage wom en in dia­
logue about their own experiences.
“One of the main reasons w e asked
Naomi to speak to the W om en’s Stud­
ies seminars was so she could have an
interaction w ith students w ho m ay
on e d a y w r ite th e ir ow n b o o k s ,”
agreed Elaine Metherall. She felt that
the criticism of W olf during the meet­
ing was valid and stressed that she
never meant to present W olf to the
two seminars as a model of feminism
that they should adopt.
Assistant Professor Anne Menke,
facilitator this sem ester of the Cap­
stone Colloquium, which is the single
required course for all wom en’s stud­
ies c o n c e n tra to rs at S w arth m ore,
reflected on the h eated session. “ I
think students came into the meeting
with W olf with an expectation of dia­
logue, where she would have as much
to learn from us as we from her.”
After the seminar, Kaethe Hoffer ’92
was glad to have a chance to speak
further with W olf at an informal pre­
lecture dinner at the Wom en’s Center.
Hoffer did not entirely agreed with her
fe llo w stu d en ts’ critic is m o f W olf:
“Naomi is trying to get other women
to talk. She’s trying very hard to say to
w om en, ‘Look, I h ave the sp otligh t
right now— com e and join me.’ More
women need to write their own books,
and I think she b elieves and hopes
they will.”
W hile W o lf’s visit was the reason
such an u n u su ally la rg e g ro u p o f
w om en g a th ered fo r din n er at the
W om en’s Center, the author willingly
took a back seat as the meal became a
valuable opportunity for women of all
ages to in tro d u ce th em se lve s and
share som e of their experiences as
women at Swarthmore.
After dinner, walking up Parrish
lawn to deliver her lecture at the Pearson-Hall Theatre, W olf admitted that
the seminars’ confrontational, go-forthe-throat style was milking her apprePlease turn to page 61

t a time when
populations are I
moved less by
militias and laws
than by images and i
attitudes, self­
esteem is a material i
resource that is
being deliberately
kept in short supply.

■

— N a o m i W olf
The following is excerpted and edited
from Naomi W olf’s February 5 lecture.

light now we are in the midst of a
iviolent backlash against feminism
and against the gains that women have ? son
gro
made over the last 20 years. This back­
feel
lash takes the form of an increasingly
rigid, increasingly non-negotiable ideol­
ogy about beauty that’s being used as a
political weapon to undermine
women’s advancement....
Now that the women’s movement
has dismantled other mythologies— I
like the mythjthat you went crazy five I
days a month, or the myth that
because your brains are smaller you’re
stupider than men— the beauty myth i
has intensified to take over the work of
social control that the others could no
longer manage....
My book does not attack beauty per f
se. All cultures adorn. All humans—
m a le a n d fe m a le — w a n t t o b e a ttr a c tiv e !
t o th e s e x t o w h ic h t h e y a r e a ttr a c te d . ]

My book is about how an ideology
about beauty, which is not about what
makes women sexual, is being used to 1
keep women down.
After the law made it illegal to dis­
criminate against women in the work­
place on the basis of gender, employ­
ers began to get around this by dis­
criminating on the basis of looks. Some
women, like a policewoman in Oakland,
got fired for looking too feminine, too |
pretty. Others, like Washington lawyer
Ann Hopkins, got fired for not looking
pretty enough. She was told she need-

II

im p
th e :

ed to walk more femininely, talk more
femininely, dress more femininely, and
wear makeup if she were to be consid­
ered for a partnership.....
By the end of the 1980s, professional
women were standing in front of their
closets before important professional
engagements, saying to themselves,
“Too pretty, too feminine. Too busi­
nesslike, too feminine. Too busi- *
nesslike...” And it’s not because Ameri­
can women are neurotic and dysfunc­
tional— it’s because legally we don’t
have a thing to wear.
•
When we open Elle or Glamour or
Vanity Fair or turn on the TV or go to a
movie, we are bombarded with images
of the ideal.... We are given the message
that some godlike authority has decid­
ed what is good to look at in women.
We’re made to believe that this is some
kind of template— a direct representa­
tion of male sexual desire.
•
These fraudulent new cellulite
creams are a perfect example of how
the beauty myth works. They find
something that’s innately female, call it
gross and disgusting, and make women
feel miserable about it...
In The New York Times Magazine the
other day I saw one of those ads—you
know, a butt, one of those butt ads—
and the headline read, “Cellulite: This Is
Your Dubious Legacy as a Woman.”
You could almost hear the deep male
announcer’s voice: “Ninety Percent of
Women Have Cellulite.” And it occurred
to me that if 90 percent of women have
it, then it’s a characteristic of the adult
female body, not some gross deformity!
.. •
[Then there is] the pressure of
pornography.... We see a million images
of what sex is supposed to look like, or
what a woman who is sexually valid and
worthwhile is supposed to look like— all
in explicit and graphic detail. We all
know what the Official Breast looks like,
right?
We internalize these images before
we have a chance to explore and dis­
cover our own real, human, beautiful,
imperfect sexuality. For many of us,
these images actually construct our
sexuality—they go deeper than skin
deep. We learn that we can only ask for
good erotic care or can only negotiate
the sexual contract from a position of
strength if we look like Miss July.

jg mm
Finally there’s the pressure of the

‘thin ideal.’ Something amazing hap­
pened in the early ’70s, and it’s proof to
me that this is a backlash against femi­
nism...
Twenty years ago one to two percent
of the population was anorexic or
bulimic. Today The New York Times
reports that half of all women under 30
have suffered from anorexia or bulim­
ia.... There are whole subcultures that
center around chronic caloric restric­
tion, throwing up, ritualized strange­
ness about food. It’s not aberrant any­
more; it’s highly rewarded....

feminist,” someone else will say, “Well,
no wonder she’s a feminist” or “You’re
too pretty to be a feminist”— that is
very effective political propaganda.
This tactic doesn’t just apply to femi­
nists, it applies to any woman who gets
out of line.... We get the message loud
and clear: We have to apologize with
beauty for power, and that in turn can
be used against us....
Feminism said you’re all sisters,
but the beauty backlash says no, you’re
not, you’re competing with each other
for scarce resources. Her beauty hurts
you. That’s why women say things
like, “She’s so gorgeous— don’t you
hate her?”
If any of you can read or write or
vote or drive, if you’ve ever looked up
to another woman, if you’ve ever want­
ed to walk home safely or use c6ntraception, if you ever wanted to work or
thought you deserved a voice, respect,
or fairness— each one of those rights
was given to you by generations of femi­
nists who worked and suffered and boy­
cotted and went to prison so that you
and I would have those rights.... If any
of you have ever done any of those
things, you are leading a feminist life
and you are a feminist.

Beauty Myth author Naomi Wolf
American women are not starving
because we are self-destructive,
masochistic, or bizarre. American
women are starving because of the thin
ideal. And the ideal did not become so
thin because thinness is sexy or beauti­
ful. The ideal became so thin because
right now in history obedience is beau­
tiful. ..
We should be the most powerful, the
most confident, the strongest young
women in human history— and we’re
not. W e’re silent, we’re barely coping in
many cases. We’re not causing the trou­
ble that we could be expected to cause
if we were operating at full strength.
»
Young women learn that all they
have to do is stand up and speak out
and someone is going to look them up
and down and tell them what is physi­
cally wrong with them. And that is
scary.... To know that if you say, “I’m a

Feminism has been portrayed to our
generation as not sexy. This is incredi­
ble because feminism is the sexiest rev­
olution that ever existed. At least for
women it invented sexual pleasure. Yet
we’re told this is stale, this isn’t new, it
isn’t h o t...
We need to make feminism sexy—each of us expressing our sexuality,
affirming it, saying we have a right to
it-—the right to say yes as well as the
right to say no.
We need to make it peer-driven.
Every generation of feminism is peerdriven. No matter how smart she is, you
never listen to your mother.
We need to realize that at a time
when populations are moved less by
militias and laws than by images and
attitudes, self-esteem is a material
resource that is being deliberately kept
in short supply. For many of us, the
enemy is so subtle because it’s inside
of us.
We need to make [the movement]
our own, to make it happen now. We
cannot wait. I have no doubt that we
are doing that. I’ve seen it and I’m excit­
ed to be a part of it. All of these things
you are going to do. I bet you will.

The
Play’s
the
Thing
Wherein we catch
Stephen Lang ’73
on Broadway
as Hamlet and
at home
as husband
and father.
“I’m not an overnight sensation,” says Lang.

am the luckiest man I know,” says
Stephen Lang ’ 73 as he rocks on
th e b a ck p o rc h o f his h om e in
W e s tc h e s te r County, N.Y., sip pin g
herb tea to ward off an early March
chill. “I’ve always known what I want­
ed to be, even when I was a kid, but I
never dreamed I would actually do it.
N o, th a t’ s n ot rig h t. I d id dream :
‘Someday I’ll be an actor.’ It was only
after I w as m aking m y livin g as an
a c to r th at it d a w n ed on m e that
‘someday’ was here. But this...”
He pau ses, sh aking his head in
w on d er. T h e fa m ily r o o s te r struts
among the bushes by the barn. “I’m
hot sure that even in my most fervent
fantasies I ever thought I’d be playing
Ham let on B roa d w a y ,” says Steve.
“This is the pinnacle. I can blow it, but
the opportunity is there.”
F ou r-y ea r-old N oah, on e o f th e
Langs’ four children, wants to play in
the tree house Steve built last summer
out of old fence rails. T h ey clim b a
la d d e r to the tria n gu lar stru ctu re

I

perched ingeniously among three tree
trunks. T h en N oah clim b s back
down and fills a bucket with small
ro ck s. “ W e m igh t n e ed so m e
rocks,” says Noah. Steve hauls them
up with a rope and pulley.
“ M om m y n eeds so m e k in dlin g,”
Steve calls. “Let’s fill up the wheelbar­
row.” Steve climbs down, and he and
N oah begin to gath er lo o s e sticks.
“I’v e paid m y du es,” he says as he
snaps twigs and throws them into the
w heelbarrow . “I’m not an overnight
sensation.”
Indeed not. Lang has been acting all
his life. At George School in the late
1960s, he used theater to escape the
structure and strictures of boardingschool life. At Swarthmore in the early
1970s, he a c te d in H edda G a b le r,
Macbeth, the annual Hamburg Show,
and original plays by John Loven ’70
and Aaron Schwartz ’ 70. He did his
first professional acting 22 years ago

by W .D. Ehrhart ’73

in the Hedgerow Theatre’s 1970 production of Othello, doing 10 shows a
week. A fter leavin g Sw arthm ore ( “I
took m y last class in 1974 and got my
degree in 1975,” he says, “but my allegiance has always been to the Class of
’ 73”), he spent a d eca d e doin g offB roadw ay shows in his native New
York City and acting in regional theater all over the country. But in the
1980s the big breaks finally came.
In 1983 he landed the role of Happy
in Dustin Hoffman’s Broadway revival
of D eath o f a S alesm an, earn in g a
Drama Desk nomination. In 1985 he
sta rred w ith G ene Hackman, Ellen
B urstyn, and A n n -M a rg ret in the
m ovie Twice in a Lifetim e. From 1986
to 1988, he p la y ed a tto rn e y David
Abrams in the NBC television series
Crime Story.
Since then credits and honors have
come at something approaching light
speed: He won the Joseph Jefferson
A w a rd fo r his p o rtr a y a l of Lou, a
h om eless V ietn am vetera n , in The
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

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Speed o f Darkness at Chicago’s Good­
man T h ea tre and the H elen Hayes
Award for his role as Lt. Col. Nathan
Jessep in A Few G ood M en at th e
Kennedy Center and later on Broad­
way. He earned w ide critical acclaim
for his starring role as Harry Black in
the gritty m ovie Last E xit to Brooklyn;
major roles in the m ovies The Hard
Way and Another You; the lead role in
last fall’s television m ovie Babe Ruth;
and Steven Ziegenmeyer in the televi­
sion movie Taking Back My Life.
And now the title role in the Round­
about T h ea tre C om pan y’s H a m let,
which runs until May 3.
R oundabout had been try in g to
persuade Steve to do a play for them
ever since he played in their produc­
tion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
A re D ead in 1987. He turned dow n
every offer until they finally said, “You
name th e play; w e ’ ll d o it.” S teve
chose Hamlet.
“You have to want to play Hamlet,”
he says. “It can’t be just your agent
saying, ‘W ell, I’v e signed you up for
Hamlet.’ It’s a deep er w ell than any
other I know. It’s a role laden with
traps and clues, an unsolvable cross­
w ord p u z z le o f a r o le . D iffe re n t
answers com e up depending on how
you play it. It’s an actor’s role.”
There’s a lot of pressure on Steve,
Roundabout has signed a long-term
lease with the Criterion Theatre on
Broadway, even though Ham let is only
the R ou n dabou t’s th ird B road w a y
production. If it’s good, it could make
Roundabout’s reputation as a Broadway company. Though Steve does not
say as m uch, th e o p p o s ite seem s
equally true.
“Everybody has an opinion about
Hamlet, ” he says. “People will notice
this production. Sure I’m scared, but
fear is a great motivator. Not paralyzin§ fear, but nerves, adrenalin. I get
nervous when I’m not nervous. It’s a
little like those Olympic figure skaters,
I’ve got the qualifications to be doing
this— it’s just a question of whether or
not I can win the gold medal.”

As acting careers are measured,
Steve Lang is still a young man, but
already he’s in a position to call many
if not most of the shots. This Ham let is
v e r y much his production. Though
he’s not the producer, he has virtually
all the p rero ga tives of a producer.
T h e cast has been ca refu lly hand­
picked. The director, Paul W eidner,
was chosen only after four separate
interviews with Steve. “I didn’t choose
Paul,” Steve explains. “W e chose each
other. W e share the same vision of the
process.”
hrough six hours of rehearsal
the previous day, what was most
striking was the congenial collegiality of the cast and crew . In the
midst of the bedroom scene between
Hamlet and Gertrude, Steve had sud­
denly stopped and turned to Paul.
“I’ve been thinking,” he had said.
“Oh, no,” Paul had replied as the
w h ole cast dissolved into laughter.
What followed, however, was a hud­
dle as th ey co llective ly w orked out
th e b e s t w a y to p la y th e scen e.
Almost the w ay Quakers might do it:
Ham let by consensus.
“It is unusual,” Steve explains later,

T

“but this is an unusual cast. Th ey’re
great actors. And w e ’v e w ork ed to
develop a sense of trust in each other.
When w e first began rehearsing, w e
to o k th ree full days to d o a sin gle
reading of the play. It was like a semi­
nar. E veryone got to say what th ey
thought and felt. W e did it to build
trust, to give each other a sense of
who we are.”
During rehearsals, which began in
early February, Steve has come home
only on Sundays, spending six nights
a week in a hotel room within walking
d is ta n c e o f th e re h e a rs a l sp a c e.
“When I’m working, I can’t think about
m y family,” Steve explains. “If Tina’s
changing Grace, and she says, ‘Let out
the cat,’ I can’t say, ‘Sorry, I can’t, I’m
being Hamlet now.’ That just doesn’t
work. So I have to be away from them.
I lo v e m y fam ily. N o th in g is m ore
important to me. But I have to block
them out, and I can do that because I
know Tina will take care of them.”
Steve and Tina have been married
nearly 12 years. T h ey met when he
was filming his first television role, a
portrayal of Percy Shelley for a public
te le v is io n sp ecial. Tina, then Tin a
W atson, was the costum e designer,

ive

ght ;
.on
[; a *
7 ,e

ft was a long photo session, but
the Langs managed to have
some fun. From left: Daniel, Steve,
Grade, Noah, Lucy, and Tina.

LTIN

MAY 1992

9

but she gave up her theater career for,
as she puts it, “a career in home man­
agem ent. Steve goes to C alifornia,”
she says, “and I go to the dry clean­
ers.” Then she laughs.
Th is Sunday m orning, h o w ev er,
Steve goes to Hebrew School with 11year-old Lucy. “I couldn’t go back to
theater,” Tina says after th ey leave.
“As a costume designer, I spent a lot
of my time doing things like shopping
for shoes. I do plenty of that at home.
I’m never lonely and I’m never bored.”
In addition to caring for their four
children, she’s a volunteer at the pub­
lic elementary school Lucy and 7-yearold Danny attend, is raising scholar­
ship m oney for area families in need
of nursery care, and is working on a
m a ster’s d e g re e in ed u cation (sh e
already holds a B.F.A. in painting and

an M.A. in theater).
“Tell Mom the question you asked,”
Steve says when he and Lucy return.
“What does God do all day while
w e ’re dow n h ere livin g our live s? ”
says Lucy.
“W h at d id th e rab b i sa y ? ” asks
Tina.
/‘I didn’t like his answer,” she says,
“so I d e cid ed not to rem em b er it.”
Later, away from her parents, Lucy
talks about what it’s like to have a
famous father: “Sometimes my friends
tell me they’ve seen Dad in a m ovie or
something, but most of the time it’s
no big deal. I always miss him when
he’s away, but I understand it’s what
he wants to do. It’s his decision, not
mine. And I think it’s worth it when I
see what he’s done and how good he
is. I feel really proud of him.” Then she
adds, “ M om ’s really im portant too.
Even if she isn’t publicly recognized,
at hom e sh e’s im portant. It d oesn ’t
m atter w hat oth er p e o p le think, at
least not to me. I know how important
she is.”
ucy shares the third floor of the
19th-century fram e house with
Steve’s office, a disheveled affair
tucked under eaves so low that even a
short person can’t quite stand up in it.
Th e desk is cluttered w ith playbills
and m anuscripts and loose papers,
the walls with posters and photos and
newspaper clippings: an old Interna­
tional W orkers of the W orld poster,
Johnny W eissm u ller and M aureen
O ’ S u llivan as T a rza n and Jane, a
signed ph oto of form er D odger Pee
W ee Reese, a photo of Steve playing
saxophone with Miles Davis, notices
for a dozen plays Steve’s been in, a
1965 Mets souvenir program, multiple
pictures of Tina and the kids, and an
o ld p h o to o f A lb e r t E in stein and
Sw arthm ore Presiden t Frank A ydelotte. Behind the tw o distinguished
gentlemen is a young fellow in cap and
gown. It’s Steve’s father, Eugene Lang,
Class of 1938.
Down in the living room , Steve is
stretch ed out on the sofa, h old in g
laughing 1-year-old Grace aloft on the
palm of one hand while cuddling Noah
u n d er th e o th e r arm . His a ctin g
awards are tucked away on a shelf,
almost lost amid stacks of books that
stretch to the ceiling. Assorted memo­
rabilia from his role as Babe Ruth are

L

For his role in the television movie
Babe Ruth, Lang spent six weeks with
baseball great Rod Carew, learning
how to swing the bat.
10

much m ore prom inent: a casting of
the bulbous nose Steve had to wear
for the part, a fram ed set of Topps
baseball cards released in conjunction
with the m ovie, a ph oto of Steve as
Ruth in mufti, a bat sign ed b y the
whole cast and crew, a signed model
of Rod Carew in batting stance.
“ I spent six w eek s w ith C arew ,”
Steve explains. “He helped me to learn
the Babe’s swing. I was up in the Berkshires w hen I heard I’ d gotten the
part. I w ent for a walk, w ondering,
‘H ow am I goin g to play this role?’
Then I looked down and there was a
bat handle lyin g right th ere in the
leaves at my feet. I still have it.” He
points to the splintered fragment on a
shelf. “I’ll have it all my life, you know
that. Th e hitting is the m etaphor. I

“You have to want
to play Hamlet,”
says Lang. “It’s a
role laden with
traps and clues,
an unsolvable
crossword puzzle
of a role.”
knew if I got that right, the rest of the
role would come.”
“He loved playing Ruth,” Tina adds.
“He’s having trouble letting go of it.”
“I always loved Babe Ruth,” Steve
says quietly.
On another shelf is a set of audio
books-on-tape that Steve has narrat­
ed. He does a science fiction series
and a detective series. “I really enjoy
d o in g th e m ,” he says. “ I can d o a
dozen or so a year. I’v e always read
aloud. I used to read to my grandfa­
ther. He worked in the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, near where w e filmed Last Exit.
In som e ways, he was a bigger influ­
e n c e on m e than Dad b e ca u s e he
shaped the man m y father becam e
and that influenced me, but he also
influenced me directly. He died only
10 y e a rs ago. He w as an o ld IWW
man.”
The grandfather’s politics may help
explain what the father, a self-made
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

¡S§£

1

Lang’s performance in Last Exit to
Brooklyn won wide critical acclaim.
millionaire many times over, has done
with his m oney. Huge chunks of it
have gone to various philanthropic
causes such as the I Have A Dream
Foundation, which provides college
scholarships for disadvantaged chil­
dren, and, of course, to Swarthmore.
Very little has gone to Steve and his
two older siblings.
Danny comes racing into the living
room, launches himself into the air,
and comes down on Steve’s stomach.
“I like a big family,” Steve says when
he’s recovered his breath. “I like being
able to p ro v id e fo r them b y doin g
something I love to do. You look at
what most kids are faced with— war,
poverty, disease, abuse— m ost kids
are born without a chance.”
e g e ts up and h ead s to th e
kitchen to help Tina make sup­
per. “What most people get out
of therapy,” he says, chopping bread
into cubes and tossing them into a
hot iron skillet, “I get out of making
croutons.”
“Steve comes home every Sunday
and makes croutons,” Tina teases.
After dinner and the kids’ bedtime,
the house is quiet for the first time
since the rooster welcomed the dawn.
Steve and Tina finally have a chance
to watch a tape of the TV m ovie Tak­
ing Back My Life. It was filmed in Mem­
phis in Novem ber and December, but
he hasn’t seen the finished m ovie yet.
He has no idea how it has turned out.
“Stage w o rk c o m e s d o w n to
rehearse, reh earse, reh earse, and
then perform,” Steve says. “In film, the
rehearsal is continuous. The camera
doesn’t respond to you the way a the­
ater audience does. What a film audi-

ence finally sees is determined by the
editor and the director. Each medium
has its own advantages. I en joy the
physical challenges of film. I had to do
an eight-story fall five different times
just to get one scene in The Hard Way.
But on television in Crime Story, I had
44 episodes to develop my character.
You don’t get that kind of luxury in a
film or a stage production.”
Steve seems pleased with the new
movie, though he deflects Tina’s com­
pliments with a diffidence that looks
for all the world like embarrassment.
He talks instead of the things he didn’t
like about the movie.
“Well, you can thank Steven Ziegenmeyer for Hamlet,” Tina says. The TV
m ovie paid well enough for Steve to
spend th ree m onths as Ham let for
what can only be described as ve ry
modest financial reward.
“Hamlet is the greatest role of all
tim e,” Steve says. “Shakespeare put
m ore of him self into that play than
any other play he ever wrote. He lost
a 9-year-old son just prior to writing
Hamlet. The boy’s name was Hamnet.
This play is the closest you can get to
S h a k esp ea re. H a m let, W a itin g fo r
G od ot, and D ea th o f a S a lesm a n .
That’s the trinity.”
T o m o rro w Steve must say a few
words at a ceremony honoring Arthur
M ille r, a man he ca lls “ on e o f m y

h eroes.” He picks up a first-edition
copy of Death o f a Salesman, trying to
fin d an a p p r o p r ia te e x c e r p t, and
begins reading one of Happy’s speech­
es aloud. T h e b o ok is sign ed, “T o
S tep h en Lang, w ith m y v e r y rea l
appreciation for your Happy, a foun­
dation and su pp ort through th ese
many months of evolution of this play.
All good luck! Arthur Miller.”
“ T h e s e c r e t to p la yin g H a p p y ,”
Steve says, “is to pretend you’re Biff
the whole time. It’s the younger broth­
er syndrome. I’m a younger brother,
so it was easy.” Probably not as easy
as S teve m akes it sound. A sin gle
scene in the previous day’s rehearsal
had left fiim drenched in sweat and
panting, as if he had just run several
miles. It’s real work, work he loves.
“I’d like to do a children’s .movie,”
he says. “I’d like to do a musical. I’d
love to do some Gilbert and Sullivan.”
He puts his arms around Tina, and
she lets her w eight sag com fortably
against his body. “Theater is magic,”
he says. “I’ve never gotten it right yet.
Just to k eep th e p r o c e s s a liv e is
enough.”
W. D. Ehrhart 73 is one o f five writers
featured in the Dictionary of Literary
Biography/D ocum entary Series #9,
“A m e rica n W riters o f the V ietnam
War, ” Gale Research, Inc., 1991.

H

m ay

1992

i

.1

(t il

Well-paid film and TV roles make it possible for Lang to take on projects
like Hamlet. Here he plays opposite Kathleen Widdoes as Gertrude.

M A C A R T H U R MCBURNEY*

A New President
for Swarthmore
President Alfred H. Bloom

At an unconventional inauguration,
Alfred H. Bloom calls on colleges to educate for
“ethical intelligence'1responsive to ou r times.

T

he inauguration of Alfred H. B loom as Swarthm ore’s 13th president was a feast for the eyes,

for the ears, and for the palate. But m ostly it was
a feast for the mind.
In an inaugural address that keynoted a care­
fully planned day o f artistic, cultural, and intellec­

tual e x p lo ra tio n , P re s id e n t B lo o m challenged
Swarthm ore to lead undergraduate institutions in ['
creating “a new mandate in Am erican education.”
He called for the teaching o f “ethical intelligence”
to prepare students to take civic responsibility in
a multicultural world.
“Our undergraduate institutions must prepare
a critical mass o f A m ericans to respon d to the
needs of a so ciety and of a w orld in need,” said
The day’s diverse music included a brass quintet,
student singers, a jazz band, and a mariachi band (above).
12

Bloom. “If w e do not, w ho will?”
Criticizing “value-free education” as something
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

Opposite: Seated in the front row on the Scott
Amphitheater stage were (left to right) former
President John Nason, President Bloom,
chairman of the Board of Managers Neil
Austrian ’61, former President Theodore Friend,
Search Committee chair Samuel L. Hayes III ’57,
Vice President Harry Gotwals, Acting Dean
Leah Smith, and Professor Emeritus Paul C.
Mangelsdorf, Jr., ’49.

STEVEN GOLDBLATT '67

Top: Dancers from
Stephen Koplowitz and
Company blended text,
song, and movement in
a program called “Dance
as Social Dialogue.”
Above: The ceremony
featured a traditional
Chinese lion dance
presented by students
from Philadelphia’s Hung
Gar Kung Fu Academy.
Left: More than 100
delegates from other
colleges came to honor
Swarthmore’s new
president on a near­
perfect May morning.

How colleges educate students for
civic responsibility in a multicultural
world was the topic of the first of two
afternoon symposia. Participants
were Nei Noddings, associate dean of
the School of Education at Stanford
(far left), Herbert C. Kelman, the Cabot
Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard
(above left), and Frank F. Wong, vice
president for academic affairs at the
University of Redlands, California
(left). Swarthmore plans to publish the
symposium papers in late summer.
PHOTOS BY STEVEN GOLDBLATT '67

International students (above)
performed folk dances as part of the
festivities. The second symposium
considered ways in which colleges as
institutions can embody and display civic
responsibility. Maxine Frank Singer ’52,
president of the Carnegie Institution
(right), was joined by Fernando Rosas
Moscoso, provost of the University of
Lima (top right), and Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the
Humanities at Harvard (bottom right).

cal sh ift o f c o n s c io u s n e s s fro m u n ex a m in ed
assumptions about what is right and w rong to a
consciously chosen set of values.”
He also called for “a horizontal
m ove ... through w hich students
must look beyond their ow n cul­
tural w orlds to recognize the con­
tinuities that bind their culture to
other human cultures, as w ell as
the discontinuities that separate
th eir cu ltu res ... and th e r e fo r e
make for a richer w orld.”
The them e of B loom ’s address
was ech oed throughout the day
as speakers and perform ers illus­
trated and explored other cultur­
al w orld s. T h e h ig h lig h t o f th e £
cerem ony was a traditional Chi- 3
nese lion d a n ce th at d e lig h te d §
Bloom, a linguist w h o is fluent in |
French, Spanish, and M andarin £
Chinese. The lion dance was part
of a full range of events, including a multinational
luncheon, that gave the inauguration a distinctive
cross-cultural tone.
Yet it was the content of B loom ’s speech* and
of two afternoon sym posia that set the intellectu­
al tone— and charted a future course for Swarthmore. Colleges, a sserted B loom , must g ive stu­
dents “a detailed understanding of the problem s
facing their society and the w orld ... an exposure
so viv id that it w ill d e v e lo p in them a lifelon g
commitment to responding to them .”
Scholars from H a rvard U n iversity, Stanford
University, the University of Redlands, California,
and the University of Lima, Peru, w ere joined by
M a xin e F ran k S in g e r ’ 52, p r e s id e n t o f th e
Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., in after­
noon sym posia that explored the key questions
of how colleges can educate for civic responsibili­
ty in a multicultural w orld and of h ow colleges as
institutions can them selves em b od y and display
such responsibility._______________
The text o f President B lo o m ’s address w ill be m a iled to Bulletin
readers in June. A videotape o f the inauguration w ill be available
for $15. Please write to the A lu m n i R elations O ffice fo r details.
MAY 1992

Antonio Goodwin ’94 (top) performed the spiritual
“Precious Lord— Take My Hand,” and the student
singing group Frionas (center), eschewing a
scheduled South African tune, sang “A Little
Gracefulness.” The day ended with an evening
performance by Urban Bush Women (above), the
nationally known African American dance company.

STEVEN GOLDBLATT '67

that “bears no responsibility beyond that of main­
taining the status quo,” Bloom called for a “verti­

Students protesting injustice
and racism (left) gathered
more than 700 signatures on a
petition demanding federal
civil rights prosecution of four
Los Angeles police officers.
“The events of the past three
days make starkly evident the
need to act” on a new mandate
for American education,
said President Bloom in his
address. Bloom was among
the signers of the petition.

Ill

maim
H

a

A friend says,
m “Swarthmore

graduates sometimes
act as if they belong to
a special society,
sharing some
remarkable secret
that outsiders
cannot comprehend. 99
Whatever it was, it
left the feeling that
for a period o f time
we lived intensely and
at one point actually
knew something.
— George R. Spann ’65
Thomas College

16

Dear Al...
Seven Swarthmore alumni currently
serve as college or university
presidents. We asked them to write
an inaugural advice column for
President Al Bloom.

Dear Al,
Some time ago, I was approached
by a man who is writing a book about
new college presidents. He is especial­
ly in terested in virgins, th ose w ho
have not been presidents before and
th e re fo re are still ... No, th at’s not
right. Let me start over. What he want­
ed was an impressionistic evaluation
made within the first two years on the
job. “W hat ex p erien ces,” he asked,
“from your undergraduate education
do you find most valuable?”
I told him th ere w ere three: The
first was learning that being smart
w a sn ’t en ou gh — you h ave to w ork
hard to achieve anything.
The second was learning from team
sports that working together is good;
it makes winning possible. You may
lose, but it’s still good to work togeth­
er as a team.
Th ere was a third thing that was
hard to put into words, but it included
the intense, exhaustive working out of
problems. Something along the lines
of Walter Pater’s advice to burn with a
“ hard gem lik e fla m e .” Or H o lm e s ’
n o tio n th at h a v in g th e ir h earts
touched with fire in their youth made
his generation exceptional.
A friend says, “Swarthmore gradu­
ates sometimes act as if they belong
to a sp ecia l s o ciety , sharing som e
remarkable secret that outsiders can­
not comprehend.” Whatever it was, it
left the feeling that for a period of time
w e lived intensely and at one point
actu a lly knew som eth ing. Perhaps
civic responsibility grows out of this.
It seems to me that Swarthmore peo­
ple are as sensitive and concerned in
th is re g a rd as a n y g ro u p I h a ve
known, except the Quakers, which is a
good reason for keeping that tradition
alive at the College as well.
George R. Spann ’65
Thomas College

WA eing a college
A J president is easy.
Everyone knows how.
Students and their
parents, alumni and
faculty, trustees and
staff—all are eager,
willing, indeed
passionate, about
explaining how to be
a college president.
— Nancy Bekavac ’69
Scripps College
Dear Al,
Pleased as I am to have been asked
to advise you upon your ascension to
the presidency of Swarthmore, I am a
bit embarrassed at the task.
First, you will discover, as all new
presidents discover, that being a colS W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

Mj

lege president is easy. I know that
giate leadership, which is the Princi­
because, as President Chace of W es­ p le o f U n e x p re s s e d A d v ic e : Even
leyan University has recently remind­ when you follow all of the advice on a
ed us, everyone knows how to be a given subject, and even if the advice
college president— students and their
is, or can be made to appear to be,
parents, alumni and faculty, trustees
consistent, som eone who knew what
and staff. Luckily, all of these people you really should do w ill have neglect­
are eager, willing, indeed passionate,
ed to tell you, and you w ill therefore fall
about explaining how to be a college
in to error. T h ere are, to m y know l­
president, often in w ords of one or
edge, no fail-safe strategies for avoid­
two syllables only.
ing this danger.
Dealing with the advice— and the
Having armed you with my advice,
c o rr e s p o n d e n c e , th e p h o n e m es­ and as an alumna and Manager, not to
sages, and the calendars of meetings
mention a resident of the American
to hear such a d v ic e — is one of the
city with the highest ratio of college
first burdens v is ite d upon c o lle g e
presidents to students, faculty, and
presidents. Then, after receiving the
staff, I will, of course, watch your pres­
advice, the fledgling president only
idency closely to assure m yself that
need follow the advice. Alas, it is my you are promptly, unhesitatingly, and
sad duty to tell you that there’s the
a c c u ra te ly fo llo w in g m y a d v ic e —
rub.
whether or not I’ve managed to write
Laughingly simple as our jobs are,
it all down. You get the idea.
pellucid as the directions for success
Nancy Bekavac ’69
are, there are just three factors that
Scripps College
stand between you and membership
on the All-Am erican C olleg e P re s i­
dents’ All-Star Team.
The first is an odd phenom enon
that could be labeled the Fickle Arrow
of Fate Principle: The advice is contra­
d ictory . Stu d ents u n ifo rm ly fa v o r
attention to student needs and wish­
es; parents want lo w er tuition and
higher standards; faculty m em bers
want to be supported as scholars and
confirmed in full participation in the
academic community without, howev­
er, too much service on committees;
trustees and alumni want the college
the way they remember it, perfect in
every way; and staff m em bers want
only what is best for the college, high­
er ed u c a tio n , and th e lo n g -ra n g e
future of X (X being their particular
field of expertise, whether deciduous
trees, fisca l s ta b ility , a u d iovisu a l
equipment, or health care).
trengthen the
The second barrier to presidential
underlying values
nirvana is the Problem of Excessive
Simultaneity: A ll o f the advice must be
o f the institution
acted upon at the same tim e. As w e
while reaching out to
know— or at least, as our faculty col­
leagues kn ow — it is im p o s s ib le to
new constituencies .
maximize, actualize, or apologize for
one piece of advice at the same time
— John H. Jacobson, Jr., ’54
that one is busy following, ignoring, or
Hope College
compromising all of the other pieces
of advice.
Finally, even if you manage to deal
successfully with the preceding prob- Dear President Bloom,
lems, you are likely to encounter diffi­
For me as a student 40 years ago,
culties with the third barrier to colle­ Swarthmore was first of all a commu­
MAY 1992

nity of intelligent p eople w ho cared
deeply about learning. Before going to
Swarthmore, I had not experienced
such intensity about learning, and I
h a ve n ot fou n d it in m an y p la ce s
since. In one respect the College was
quite homogeneous. Yet Swarthmore
was also a place where a wonderfully
diverse group of people contributed
to each o th er’s education b y being
who they were and by being articulate
about their ideas and commitments.
The faculty was superb, though it
w as s o m e y e a rs a fte r g ra d u a tio n
before I fully appreciated how good it
really was. But I have always thought
that it was the students them selves
who provided much of what was real­
ly special about a Swarthmore educa­
tion. Some of my fellow students were
ch ild ren of fam ous parents. Som e
w ere international students w h ose
formative experiences and education
w e re v e r y d iffe re n t from m y own.
Som e b ro u g h t th e s o p h is tic a tio n
gained from living in one or another of
the w o rld ’s great cities. Others, like
myself, came from small towns. The
differences in background among stu­
dents, and among faculty members as
well, w ere essential to the quality of
intellectual life at Swarthmore.
Swarthmore gave its students the
opportunity to experience first-rate
minds in face-to-face conversation.
Th at o p p o rtu n ity cam e in H onors
seminars, in classes and post-class
discussions, in faculty offices, in the
dining hall, and in many other con­
texts. That opportunity is at the core
of what Swarthmore meant to me.
Swarthm ore stood for som ething
fine and noble. Swarthmore stood for
love of learning, for intellectual curios­
ity, for moral values, and for a con­
cern for social justice. Individual facul­
ty members, administrators, and stu­
dents made important contributions
to my own spiritual growth.
One of the important tasks facing
the president of a healthy college is to
preserve and strengthen the underly­
ing valu es o f the in stitu tion w h ile
reaching out to new constituencies
that will sustain its vitality in genera­
tions to come. A great tradition can­
not be preserved without growth find
change. Your wisdom is greatly need­
ed to secure a future that m atches
Swarthmore’s past.
John H. Jacobson, Jr., ’54
Hope College
17

/

t is hard to say

what presidents do
that matters most ,
but high on my list

would be to ask good
questions and to
listen carefully to the
answers. Since we
rarely really listen to
each other ; if you do
listen, you will have a
remarkable effect
on people.
— Judith Aitken Ramaley ’63
Portland State University
Dear President Bloom,
It isn’t easy to be a president. The
only person on campus who is expect­
ed to think about everyth in g is the
president. Everybody else has a par­
ticular point of view or responsibili­
ties, but the president tries to make
sense of it all. It is hard to say what
presidents do that matters most, but
high on my list would be to ask good
questions and to listen carefully to the
answers. Since w e rarely really listen
to each other, if you do listen, you will
have a remarkable effect on people.
T h e re are m any w ays to recru it
people to a shared view, to sort out
18

the many possibilities that an institu­
tion can pursue and to give everyone
a sense of belonging to a shared enter­
prise. The most powerful way is to use
carefully crafted questions to focus
attention on what matters to the insti­
tution and to encourage its faculty,
staff, students, and friends to discover
th e a n sw ers th at a re th e r e ju st
beneath the surface. Y ou r first big
question, regarding educating for civic
responsibility in a multicultural soci­
ety, is a v e ry good one. You should
ask only a few questions, and each
should be as thoughtful as your inau­
gural theme.
A second w ay that presidents cre­
ate community is by being the chief
adm irers o f th eir institutions. T h e
most precious resource you have is
your own time and attention. You will
be tem pted to spend you r tim e to o
freely, esp ecia lly in you r first year.
There are so many people to meet, so
many things to learn about the histo­
ry, tra d itio n s, and p o s s ib ilitie s of
Swarthmore College. Your own curios­
ity, y o u r co m m itm en t to this new
group of p eople you have cast your
fo rtu n e s w ith , and y o u r se n s e o f
r e s p o n s ib ilit y w ill lu re y o u in to
overexten d in g you rself. I hope you
resist the tem ptation to say yes to
e v e r y invitation, to m eet ev ery o n e
who wants to see you, to fly to every
city with an active alumni group— all
in your first year. Take your time. Give
you rself the op portu n ity to absorb
what you are learning and to reflect
on what it means.
There is nothing more exhilarating
than a p r e s id e n c y , n o th in g m o re
demanding. No other role in society
requires so much or offers a greater
challenge. M y favorite image of warn­
in g is th e ta le o f th e W o g g le b u g ,
T.E.H.M., a ch aracter in one of the
W izard of Oz books by Frank Baum.
Th e W oggleb u g lived in the schoolhouse floor and one day got project­
ed, larger than life, onto the schoolhouse wall. He began to b e liev e he
was v e ry important, so he began to
travel about, billing himself as “Thor­
oughly Educated and Highly Magnified
(T.E.H.M.).”
It is v e r y ea sy to b e lie v e all the
things projected on you for good or ill
by your friends and critics. Do remem­
ber this, and don’t accept too quickly
either the criticism or the praise you

are bound to receive. A dose of humil­
ity will protect your sense of propor­
tion and preserve your ability to help
Swarthm ore C ollege hold fast to its
co re iden tity and purpose. What is
n e e d e d in th is era o f ch a n g e is a
steady hand on the tiller. Th e best
way to preserve your steadiness is to
ch erish y ou r tim e w ith fam ily and
friends. T h ey w ill su pport you and
offer you time to be fully yourself.
As a graduate of Swarthmore Col­
le g e , I h a v e lo n g a p p r e c ia te d the
unfathomable value of an excellent lib­
eral ed u cation . I am glad that you
have accepted the call to serve a fine
institution. May your presidency bring
you joy and fulfillment.
Judith Aitken Ramaley ’63
Portland State University

r

o engage talented
people in an

enterprise so
essential to our
culture and well-being
is exceptionally
rewarding.
— Neil R. Grabois ’57
Colgate University
Dear Al,
In one of his regular epiphanies—
o r is it a p o s ta s ie s ? — Y o g i Berra
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

rem inds us: “W hen you co m e to a
crossroads, take it!” As so often hap­
pens w ith Y o g i’ s sta te m e n ts , th e
apparent w isdom of this advice dis­
solves u nder scru tiny. But in this
case, you have found an im portant
crossroads and made the right choice
for Swarthmore and for yourself.
There will be many moments of joy
as you lead our great college into the
21st century, but if m y experience is
any guide, there may be som e infre­
quent moments when you wish you’d
taken the other road. I can assure you
that they will pass, because both you
and the community share a commit­
ment that ensures eventual consen­
sus. What a wonderful decision proce­
dure— sure to reach a resolution, if
only you wait long enough.
There is no more exciting responsi­
bility than the presidency of a great
college. T o be able to engage talented
people in an enterprise so essential to
our culture and well-being is excep­
tionally rewarding intellectually, emo­
tionally, and even sp iritu ally. Th e
tough decisions will have to be made
without perfect information, but, after
all, that’s what makes them difficult.
All those wonderfully articulate, smart
p e o p le w ill, h o w e v e r , be d a rtin g
around you like moths around a can­
dle, pulling you in m ore directions
than a body can move.
As I look back on m y Swarthmore
experience and ask myself how it con­
tributed to who I am, I can tease out
som e p a rticu la rly im portan t influ­
ences. T o Monroe Beardsley I ow e a
sense of personal responsibility for
critical judgment, and to the College a
sense of civic responsibility. Finally, I
owe to Swarthmore the opportunity it
provided to m eet m y w ife. She has
advised me, guided me, and provided
a vantage point from w hich to see
both p ro b le m s and m y p e rh a p s
idiosyncratic reactions to them, all
the w h ile h e lp in g m e n ot to take
myself too seriously. You are fortu­
nate to have Peggi for balance, per­
spective, companionship, and love.
As you complete the first of many
distinguished years as Swarthmore’s
president, I wish you good fortune,
with the knowledge that you will make
a difference to what the C ollege is,
ought to be, and will be.
Neil R. Grabois ’57
Colgate University
MAY 1992

warthmore’s
most significant
attribute is quality.
Put quality fírst at
all times.
— J. Robert S. Prichard ’71
University of Toronto
Dear President Bloom,
First, congratulations. Y ou have
assumed the presidency of the finest
coeducational liberal arts college in
the world. It is an enormous force for
good. It has shaped the lives of all
who have had the privilege of attend­
ing. My years at Swarthmore were the
most significant time of change in my
life. I will always be grateful. You have
inherited a great trust and responsi­
bility. It now falls upon you to build
on the stunning record of innovation,
accomplishment, and contribution of
the College’s past while reinterpreting
the College’s traditions to accomm o­
date and advance the future.
S econ d , so m e a d v ic e . S w a rth ­
m ore’s most significant attribute is
quality. Put quality first at all times. So
many forces work against quality, and
so much courage and commitment is
required to reinforce and reinterpret
it. Swarthmore must set the standards
for all others.
Third, the challenge. I w rite from
w hat is argu ably the w o r ld ’s m ost
multicultural city. Educating for civic
responsibility in this context presents
tremendous challenges. At the same

time, I believe success in this chal­
lenge will be one of the hallmarks of
academ ic and intellectu al strength
into the next century. Seize it.
W e can all continue to learn much
from Swarthmore. I look forw ard to
w atch in g the C olleg e th riv e under
your leadership.
J. Robert S. Prichard ’71
University of Toronto

/

know that healthy

and animated
debate will flourish
and that commitment
to diversity will

feed the College’s
inveterate appetite
for self-examination
and intellectual
dialogue.
— David H. Porter ’58
Skidmore College
Dear President Bloom,
Enhancing cultural diversity is on
the agenda of Swarthmore, Skidmore,
and most institutions of higher educa­
tion today. There are many good rea­
sons fo r this co m m itm en t— m oral,
societal, personal— but one especially
relevant to the academy, and one too
o fte n o v e r lo o k e d , is th e fa ct that
diversity has always been a powerful,
Please turn to page 61
19

g COLLEGE
Students’ appeal halts
exploitation of
a national forest
By turning their fined proj­
ect for Associate Professor
Jacob Weiner’s ecology
course into a legal appeal
to the United States Forest
Service, three Swarthmore
students have blocked cur­
rent management policies
that they felt endangered
the ecosystem of West Vir­
ginia’s Monongahela
National Forest.
“W e decided to confront
the ecological crises of our
times directly,” said Bren-

dan Kelly ’92, a political sci­
ence major. Kelly, along
with another political sci­
ence major, B.J. Chisholm
’93, and biological anthro­
pology major David Tecklin
’92, filed a legal appeal on
two issues affecting the
Monongahela’s ecosystem.
The students combined
their ecological knowledge
with provisions of the
National Environmental
Protection Act and the
National Forest Manage­
ment Act to make their
case. They objected to a
plan for the Monongahela
MACARTHUR MCBURNEY '93

Brendan Kelly ’92, B.J. Chisholm ’93, and David Tecklin ’92 used a
Forest Service appeal process to save hundreds o f acres o f timber.
20

that would allow oil and
gas wells to be drilled in
the next 10 to 15 years and
would call for the construc­
tion of new roadways.
They also appealed the
sale plan for timber, which
grants the highest-bidding
private timber company
access to over 1,700 acres
of the forest. The winning
company would be allowed
to clear-cut 1,000 acres.
In addition to destroying
the “biological integrity” of
the forest, the students
said, the propositions
would sacrifice the envi­
ronment to business inter­
ests. “The taxpayers’
money pays for the assess­
ments and the drawing up
of the plans, and private
companies reap the prof­
its,” said Kelly. “The Forest
Service is creating econom ­
ic markets that are
destroying the forests.”
As a result of their suc­
cessful appeals, the stu­
dents were invited by the
grass-roots environmental
group Preserve Appalachi­
an Wilderness to testify
before the House Interior
Appropriations Subcom­
mittee against Forest Ser­
vice management policies
and to lobby members of
Congress to encourage
support for the Ancient
Forest Protection Act and
the Forest Biodiversity Pro­
tection and Clear-cutting
Prohibition Act.
“I was told a number of
times by congressional
aides that it was very
refreshing not to be sitting
with a professional lobby­
ist but to talk with some­
one who was more invest­
ed in the issue,” said
Chisholm.
“As students, w e have
access to a lot of informa­
tion and technical skills,”
Tecklin said. “Our role is to
provide them to concerned

citizen groups to facilitate
their own efforts.”
Known as the Eastern
Forests and Mountains
Conservation Project, the
campus group has expand­
ed this semester to more
than 20 from the original
three Swarthmore stu­
dents, Tecklin said, allow­
ing them to review in detail
policies affecting other
national forests. They plan
to organize a course on
conservation biology and
applied ecology that will
monitor forest manage­
ment using current envi­
ronmental research.
— Sara Shay ’92

Long-awaited
Intercultural Center
opens in Clothier
After years of student inter­
est and more than six
months of formed planning,
Swarthmore’s new Intercul­
tural Center opened on
April 4. The center, which
occupies three former
offices and the old Board of
Managers room in Clothier
cloisters, will initially pro­
vide space for the Hispanic
Organization for Latino
Awareness (HOLA), the
Swarthmore Asian Organi­
zation (SAO), and Action
Les-B-Gay, the bisexual,
gay, and lesbian alliance.
President Al Bloom
praised the “extraordinary
energy, thought, and sensi­
tivity” of the students who
worked to translate long­
standing interest in such a
center into spaces and pro­
grams that will “provide
support for individual
groups to explore and gain
comfort in their own identi­
ties while creating an envi­
ronment in which people
from different backgrounds
can come together to learn
from and delight in each
other.”
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

E

Provost Jim England
named to Temple post
James W. England, Swarthmore’s provost since 1984,
has been appointed
provost of Temple Univer­
sity. He will oversee a facul­
ty that, at 1,700 members,
is 30 percent larger than
Swarthmore’s entire stu­
dent body. As the universi­
ty’s chief academic officer,
he will be responsible for
its curriculum, library,
scholarly press, and
branch campuses in Rome
and Tokyo.
England said he was
looking forward to the
challenge of working at a
major urban university
that serves a wide spec­
trum of «people. “If higher
education doesn’t work at
schools like Temple, then

America is not going to
work,” he told The Philadel­
phia Inquirer.
Temple, with 33,000 stu­
dents, is not without its
challenges. It has suffered
from ongoing disputes
between its faculty and
administration, leading to
two bitter faculty strikes in
the last decade. Yet
according to the Inquirer,
England was the first
choice of Tem ple’s faculty,
one of whom said he would
bring a much-needed
“sense of civility” to the
university.
England will assume his
new duties in June. Presi­
dent A1 Bloom has stated
that England’s successor
will be appointed from
among Swarthmore’s cur­
rent tenured faculty.

A portrait honoring former Dean Janet
Dickerson was unveiled March 21 in cere­
monies attended by Dickerson, who is currently
vice president o f student affairs at Duke Univer­
sity. Among guests at the unveiling were Maurice
Eldridge ’62, director o f development (left), and
Simmie Knox, the Washington, D.C., artist who
created the portrait. A gift o f the Class o f 1991
and Walter and Marge Pearlman Scheuer, both
’48, the idea for the portrait grew out o f last
year s Parrish walls dialogue, sparked by the
question o f why “no person o f co lo r” was repreMAY 1992

E

C

Garnet Sages
audit classes;
program extended
to all ’40s alumni
“Try it,” say these pioneers
in the College’s new audit­
ing program for Garnet
Sages about their novel

sented among the paintings near the Admissions
Office. After several months o f almost daily post­
ing o f communications centering on the issues o f
diversity, race, opportunity, and strained rela­
tions at Swarthmore, a portrait o f Malcolm X
was hung and subsequently removed and
slashed. When the Class o f 1991 was asked by
their officers to select their senior gift to the Col­
lege, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor o f
the portrait because o f Dickerson’s importance
to the life o f the College. The portrait now hangs
in the place where the dialogue occurred.

G

E

experience.
Walter Steuber ’41
(Introductory Biology):
“Biology had been a
blank spot m y whole
life. Every time I
picked up a newspa­
per, I would find a
story on molecular
biology, and I never
knew what they were
talking about. This
course has changed my
life, and I have a whole new
vocabulary to help me read
the newspapers.”
George McKeag ’27
(Introductory Astronomy):
“It’s great! A real privilege!
And the instruction is
superb.”
Carolyn Hogeland Herting ’38 (Opera): “I love it! I
come away refreshed from
each class. The students
are so bright— they are all
my friends.”
Catharine Wilson Wright
’24 (Th e International
Economy): “It’s great expe­
rience just being with all
these nice, bright kids. The
course is something to sink
your teeth into.”
Interaction with stu­
dents varies from class to
class. Steuber says, “95
percent of them are scared
of the old guy and keep
their distance, but 5 per­
cent are very cordial.”
Herting tells this story
about how she broke the
ice in her class: “In the first
class, Jim [Professor Free­
man] said that when Verdi
composed Othello, he was
an old man of 73 and had
been in retirement for 10
years.
“At the second class
meeting, I decided to raise
my hand to ask if I could
say something. I intro­
duced myself as a Garnet
Sage auditor and said I
wanted them to know that I
am a year older than Verdi
was when he composed
21

E

Othello. Everybody
laughed.”
Herting ended up solv­
ing a casting problem for
one group of students in
the class who w ere produc­
ing a segment of Mozart’s
The M agic Flute, by recruit­
ing a grandchild and two of
his friends.
Because of the enthusi­
asm of the participating
faculty and these auditors,
and because there were
only four Garnet Sages who
took advantage of this
opportunity to audit class­
es, the College this fall will
extend the program to all
alumni in classes in the
’40s. This summer Garnet
Sages and other ’40s alum­
ni in the greater Philadel­
phia area will receive an
invitation and information
about classes open to
them.

President appoints
special assistant for
women’s concerns
President A1 Bloom has
appointed Patricia Whit­
man, the College’s equal
opportunity officer, as his
special assistant for
wom en’s concerns. In an
April 3 letter to the campus
community, Bloom said
Whitman would assist him
by “working with students
and by supporting commu­
nity efforts to ensure a safe
and hospitable environ­
ment for women.” Her parttime position was
increased to full time so
that she could expand her
responsibilities.
Whitman cited “the per­
ception that the current
[College] judicial system is
not meeting the needs of
women who feel that they
have a grievance. There is
a campus dynamic causing
women to feel insecure and
unable to give voice to
their grievances.” Height­
22

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C

ened concern over these
issues during the past year
led the Dean’s Office in
February to publish a
brochure detailing the Col­
lege’s policy on sexual
assault and harassment.
The brochure was “a
good first step,” said Whit­
man. She defined her goal
as “helping to create an
atmosphere where no one
need question the College’s
position on harassment,
assault, or intimidation. It’s
important that the College
be unequivocal on these
issues, that there be clear
sanctions against such

behavior, support for vic­
tims, and, when appropri­
ate, education for men and
women alike.”

Scott Arboretum
offers video tour
A 17-minute videotape
highlighting the collections
and gardens throughout
the campus has been pro­
duced by the Scott Arbore­
tum.
Produced by William
Pinder ’78, the video com­
bines still and moving
footage to give the viewer a
tour of the College’s horti­
cultural beauty in all sea­

G

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sons: the magnolia collec­
tion in full flower in spring,
the rose garden in summer
bloom, oaks and maples in I
flaming fall colors, and hol­
lies loaded with berries in
the winter.
The video is available at
the College bookstore for
$7 or may be purchased
through the mail. Checks
for $9 ($7 for the video plus
$2 shipping) should be
made payable to the Scott
Arboretum, Swarthmore
College, 500 College Ave., J
Swarthmore, PA 19081.

Three named to
Board of Managers
At its December meeting,
Swarthmore’s Board of
Managers elected three
new members: David K.
Arthur ’89, Christopher B.
Leinberger ’72, and Wilma
A. Lewis ’78.
Arthur, a research assis­
tant with the environmen­
tal consulting firm ICF, Inc.,
was named a Young Alum­
ni Manager. After receiving
a B.A. in environmental
studies from Swarthmore,
he attended Balliol College
at Oxford University,
where he received a B.A. in !
philosophy, politics, and
economics.
Leinberger is a manag­
ing partner with the
Metropolitan Futures
Group and with Robert
Charles Lesser & Co. in
Santa Fe. A real-estate and
metropolitan development
consultant, he holds an
M.B.A. in strategic planning
from Harvard Business
School.
Lewis is assistant chief
in the civil division of the
U.S. Attorney’s Office for
the District of Columbia.
After graduating with dis­
tinction from Swarthmore,
she earned a J.D. from Har­
vard Law School in 1981.
Both Leinberger and
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

E

Christopher Leinberger ’72

David Arthur ’89

Lewis were nominated by
the Alumni Association and
are known as Alumni Man­
agers. All three are serving
four-year terms.

C

the Board of Managers
from 1956 to 1976 and an
Emeritus Manager since
then, died in January of
heart failure. He was 86.
Clothier graduated from
Swarthmore with Honors
in English and membership
in Phi Beta Kappa. He
received an LL.B. degree
from Harvard Law School
and for more than 50 years
practiced law with the firm
of Edmonds, Obermayer &
Rebmann (now Obermay­
er, Rebmann, Maxwell &
Hippel), specializing in
real-estate law. Clothier
was a director of and coun­
sel to the Philadelphia Art
Museum and an officer of
the First Unitarian Church
and of the Pennsylvania
Bar Association.
He is survived by his
wife, Dorothy, three daugh­
ters, a son, and 11 grand­
children.
Reisner, who served on
the Board as an Alumni
Manager from 1950 to 1954,
died in November. Until
her retirement in October,
she had been assistant to
the president of Bryn Mawr
College.
After graduating Phi
Beta Kappa from Swarth­
more, Reisner received an
M.A. in history from Bryn
Mawr, where she worked
most of her life. She served
as vice president of the
Alumni Association and
was a class secretary and
reunion gift chair.
She is survived by her
two sons and three grand­
children.

Two former
Managers die

Williams Club of
New York open for
membership

Two former members of
the Board of Managers,
George Ball Clothier ’26
and Ellen Fernon Reisner
’31, have died.
Clothier, a member of

Swarthmore College is an
affiliate member of the
Williams Club in New York
City. Swarthmore alumni
can join the club with full
membership privileges.

MAY 1992

With rates for both local
and out-of-town members,
the Williams Club offers
dining facilities, meeting
rooms, and overnight
accommodations at prices
well below the major
hotels. If you would like
more information, please
send your request to:
Williams Club Info, Alumni
Office, Swarthmore Col­
lege, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore, PA 19081.

Antonia Hamilton

Hamilton named to
Foundation and
Corporation post
Antonia (Toni) W. Hamil­
ton has been named direc­
tor of Foundation and Cor­
porate Relations. She
replaces Karen Hoover,
who has becom e associate
director of major gifts for
the Colorado School of
Mines.
Hamilton previously was
director of Corporate and
Foundation Relations at
the University of Iowa
Foundation. Prior to that
she served as director of
public relations in the Iowa
City office of Hansen Lind
Meyer, an architectural/
engineering firm.
A 1962 graduate of
Smith College, Hamilton
holds master’s degrees
from the University of Vir­
ginia and the University of
Michigan.

Birdie swatters
undefeated in
winter season
Badminton (12-0): The var­
sity “Swatters” had the
best overall record of any
of the Garnet winter sports
teams, finishing the season
without a loss in dual
match competition. Cap­
tain Leslie Bell ’92 led the
squad all season from her
number-one singles spot
and captured the PAIAW
singles crown. Elizabeth
Grossman ’92 and Rosie
McCauley ’93 proved to be
a formidable doubles team
and made the semifinals of
the Northeast Collegiate
Tournament at Swarth­
more, thus earning all­
region honors. The women
combined with the men’s
club team to finish third
overall in the regionals.
Men’s Basketball (11-14,
6-4 MACSE): The 1991-92
campaign can only be
described as a roller-coast­
er ride for head coach Lee
Wimberly and the men’s
varsity basketball squad.
The team dropped their
first nine games of the sea­
son (including losses to
Division I opponents Yale
and Lafayette and to a
nationally ranked Franklin
and Marshall squad) and
then won their next seven
in a row. The seven-game
winning streak included
two wins in the Skidmore
College Invitational as the
Garnet captured their first
tournament crown in
recent history. The squad
then proceeded to lose
four more in a row before
bouncing back with a 4-1
record in their last five
games, including tw o wins
over archrival Haverford.
Senior Scott Gibbons
became the all-time leading
scorer in College history as
he finished his career with
1,563 points, eclipsing the
23

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old mark of 1,507 by Jim
Reilly ’50. Gibbons racked
up an impressive collection
of seasonal honors as well:
He was named to the all­
tournament teams at both
the Scotty W ood and Skid­
more tourneys; he was
named both PhiladelphiaArea Small College and
Middle Atlantic Conference
Player of the Week; he led
the MAC Southern Division
in scoring with 21.4 points
per game; and he was
named to the MAC South­
east League All-Star Team
find to the National Associ­
ation of Basketball Coach­
es All-Middle Atlantic Dis­
trict Second Team.
W om en’s Basketball (616,1-11 MACSE): The Lady
Garnet improved dramati-

C

cally on their one-win sea­
son of 1990-91, upping
their season wins to six
and winning their first
league game in two years.
Sophomore Kerry Laufer
led the squad with 15
points per game before an
ankle injury sidelined her
late in the season, and she
was named to the postsea­
son MAC All-Academic
Team. Head coach Karen
Yohannan will have her
hands full next year— grad­
uation will claim senior co­
captains Robin Tanabe and
Martha Wofford, and
starters Laufer and Jenny
Willis ’94 will be studying
abroad.
Indoor Track: Both the
men’s and wom en’s squads
enjoyed success during the
MACARTHUR MCBURNEY ’93

Scott Gibbons ’92 (#30 above) set the all-time College record for
points scored in a Swarthmore basketball career. His season-end
1,563 points eclipsed the old mark o f 1,507 set by Jim Reilly ’50.
24

E

indoor campaign, as the
women captured the Cen­
tennial Conference Invita­
tional, finished second at
the PAIAW meet, and
earned third place in the
MAC championship (only
one point out of second). A
total of 12 school records
were broken, and junior Liz
Dempsey won the MAC
championship in the 55meter hurdles. In addition,
three athletes were named
to the MAC All-Academic
Team: sophomores Am y
Iwan, Tina Shepardson,
and Joanna Vondrasek.
The men’s team finished
second in the centennial
meet and had several out­
standing performances,
including winning the dis­
tance medley relay events
at the prestigious Yale Invi­
tational and the MACs.
Tw o members of the men’s
squad, sophomore John
Edgar and senior Guian
McKee, made the MAC AllAcademic Team.
W om en’s Swimming (57): Britta Fink ’93 recorded
Swarthmore’s highest fin­
ish ever in the NCAA Divi­
sion III Swimming Champi­
onships in Buffalo, N.Y., on
March 13-15, when she fin­
ished ninth in the 200-yard
breaststroke event. Fink
became Swarthmore’s only
All-American of the winter
season for her efforts. Fink
also is the only Swarthmore swimmer ever to
hold a Middle Atlantic Con­
ference record, with her
time of 2:26.39 for the
event. Sophomore Kate
Moran also qualified for
the nationals in the 100yard backstroke and fin­
ished in 23rd place in her
specialty. The wom en’s
team finished with a record
of 5-7 for the season.
Men’s Swimming (3-9):
Senior Adam Browning
became the first Swarth-

G

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more swimmer, male or
female, and only the fourth
in the MAC’S 42-year histo­
ry, to win his or her event
for four straight years in
the MAC championships,
as he won the 100-yard but­
terfly. Peter Keleher ’93
W e t s the Garnet’s other
MAC champ, as he cap­
tured the 200-yard butter­
fly crown. Despite out­
standing individual perfor­
mances, the team as a
whole struggled, finishing
with a 3-9 dual meet record
for the season.
W restling (2-14):
Despite their rather dismal
dual match record, the
1991-92 season contained
many individual highlights
and W e t s a fitting tribute to
the 50th anniversary of
wrestling at the College.
Senior Dennis Jorgensen
became the first Garnet
wrestler to win a MAC
crown in 14 years when he
won the 177-pound class at
the conference champion­
ships at Swarthmore. By
virtue of his win, Jorgensen
received a bid to the NCAA
Division III Championships
at Trenton State on March
6-7, but he was eliminated
in the first two rounds. In
addition to Jorgensen’s
accolades on the mat, he
and teammates Kevin Wil­
son ’92 (w ho finished
fourth at 190 at the MACs)
and Wes Rochette ’94
(sixth at 158) were named
Scholar All-Americans by
the NCAA Division III Wres­
tling Coaches Association.
H ood Trophy Update:
At the conclusion of the
winter sports season,
Swarthmore led Haverford
eight points to four in the
quest for the Hood Trophy.
Swarthmore bested the
’Fords in men’s and
wom en’s swimming and
swept both basketball
games during the winter.
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

Giving the Hom eless a Voice
Joan S eaver McAllister '51 publishes a newsletter
with crucial help from hom eless families.
he headline reads: “Back
and Forth.” What follows
is the first-person story of
Andrea Williams, who lost
her house in 1986 as the
result of an electrical fire.
She, her husband, and their
three children were left with
nothing, and they have not
been able to find a satisfacto­
ry home since. They have
had to deal with living
among drug addicts and with
school problems for the chil­
dren as they moved from the
New York City shelter sys­
tem to dirty and and danger­
ous apartments and back
again. Andrea is still deter­
mined to find a decent place
to live and writes from her
own knowledge: “Never turn
your nose up at anyone
because the same thing can
happen to you.”
This story is from
How... When... Where, a
monthly newsletter for
homeless families put togeth­
er by journalist and writer
Joan Seaver McAllister ’51
and an associate, Barbara
Lippman, who does layout
and editing. It goes out in
both English and Spanish
versions to the almost 5,000
families who live in the New
York City shelter system at
any one time.
“Our best-read stories are
the insider stories [like
Andrea Williams’], written by
people in the shelter system
who are part of families that
have become homeless,”
declares McAllister, speaking
rapidly and with enthusiasm.
“The insider stories give fam­
ilies in trouble the sense that
other people are dealing with
the same problems, are man­
aging somehow or other to
get out of this pickle.
“And then we also give
them the hard information
about subjects that concern
them, like subsidized hous­
ing programs, health issues,

T

40

job training, and their legal
rights in the shelter system,”
she continues. In February
and March, for instance, the
newsletter featured basic
health information for preg­
nant women, and April’s
issue contained a questionand-answer article about
finding and furnishing an
apartment.
What makes McAllister’s
enterprise special is that her
readers are also her co-work­
ers in producing the newslet­
ter and getting it out to the
people who need it. Integral
to the newsletter is a chang­
ing corps of distributors,
who are members of home­
less families living in the
shelter system. They hand
out the newsletter in the
shelters and let McAllister
know what kind of stories
and information it should
contain.
For the help they give, the
distributors are paid $15 a
month. Certainly the money
is useful, but according to
McAllister, that’s not the
biggest benefit. “It’s impor­
tant that they have their own
sources of information and
have a sense that they can
do something for them­

selves. If you have no home,
no job, no future, it is very
nice to have somebody and
something counting on you,
respecting your intelligence,
asking for your opinion.”
And McAllister does
count on them, respect
them, and rely on their opin­
ions. She meets monthly
with the distributors who are
close by, mostly in Manhat­
tan and the Bronx, and semi­
annually with distributors
from all over the New York
City area. “They talk about
what concerns them, and I
sit and take notes,” McAllis­
ter explains. “That’s mainly
how I find out what they
need, and I get a lot of infor­
mation from them because
they’re good reporters.”
She bristles when she
thinks about popular stereo­
types of the homeless. “Con­
trary to the public image,
just about everybody wants
to get back into some kind of
educational program or get
job training, but it’s virtually
impossible to work while
you’re in a shelter trying to
find permanent housing and
don’t know where you’re
going to live next month,”
McAllister maintains vigor­

ously. “They have the prob­
lems of poverty, like lack of
education and health prob­
lems. But in almost five
years, I can’t remember any
of the people in the shelter
system I’ve worked with who
couldn’t function as well or
better than anyone I know
personally— if they had
money.”
McAllister started the
newsletter in 1987 after
becoming interested in the
problems facing homeless
families through her involve­
ment in the Citizens Commit­
tee for Children, which did
some of the earliest studies
of welfare hotels and the
housing problems of families
in New York. She was on a
task force studying these
hotels and became intrigued
by the problems of children
being raised in that atmo­
sphere.
Her first idea was to plan
programs for these children.
“But I discovered that there
were services being run by
people better qualified than
I, like athletic programs. The
problem that became evi­
dent to me was that the fami­
lies didn’t know about them.
I figured, my background is
journalism, this I could do.”
Thus How... When... Where
was* born, sponsored by the
Citizens Committee for Chil­
dren and supported by vari­
ous foundations. Currently,
the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the
Drexel Burnham Lambert
Foundation, and the Seaver
Institute are supplying funds
for the newsletter— “and I’m
looking for more!” McAllister
adds quickly.
Of all the jobs she’s done
in her life, this is the one she
“loves the best,” says McAl­
lister. But still, she wouldn’t
mind being put out of busi­
ness. “I started the newslet­
ter in 1987 and couldn’t be
more surprised that it’s still
needed. Like everybody who
works with homeless fami­
lies, w e’re saying, ‘What are
we still doing here?’ ”
—Rebecca Aim

S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

Building a Constitution
Without Shared Values
South Africans can ’t agree on uniforms for their
Olym pic team. Can they write a viable
constitution that is a radical break from the past?
By Tom ’65 and Bevra Brown Krattenmaker ’65
uring the first week of
May 1991, Bevra took
final examinations in three
courses at the University of
the District of Columbia and
Tom graded 125 antitrust
exams written by his stu­
dents at Georgetown law
school; then we crossed our
fingers while handing over
care of the house to our 19year-old son and boarded a
plane for South Africa.
For the next 13 weeks, our
home was the city of Durban
in the province of Natal.
There, supported by a Fulbright grant, Tom was visit­
ing professor of constitution­
al law at the University of
Natal’s Howard College of
Law.
What we saw in South
Africa was alternately beauti­
ful and brutal. Durban is a
gorgeous city of lush green
hills stretching away from
sparkling clean beaches
washed by the Indian Ocean.
It is also ringed by squatters’
camps, the “townships”
where Durban’s black popu­
lation resides. These consist
of plywood or tin shacks
crammed together as far as
the eye can see, with no toi­
lets, streets, play areas, or
electricity and, at most, one
tap of running water for thou­
sands of people to share.
Similarly stark contrasts
exist throughout the country.
For example, the Drakens­
berg Mountains run through
the center of the country,
which is largely rural. These
mountains are as beautiful as
James Michener ’29
described them in The
Covenant. But close by the
Drakensbergs, black South
African farmers are trapped

D

44

in hopeless poverty. They
live in mud huts without run­
ning water or electricity, till­
ing thin soil that can barely
sustain plant life. These
indigenous farmers usually
speak neither English nor
Afrikaans (the languages of
the white ruling class) and
are governed by a feudal sys­
tem in which hereditary
chiefs exercise extraordinary
discretion and women have
almost no power.
Why did we go? Tom has
been teaching constitutional
law for 23 years. To him, from
a professional standpoint,
South Africa is the most inter-

esting place in the world.
Bevra, a mathematics teach­
er, observed classrooms in a
rural elementary school and
conducted review sessions in
math for black youngsters
preparing to take the national
test for high-school gradua­
tion. Tom taught undergradu­
ate and graduate law classes
at the University of Natal,
conducted faculty seminars
at other law schools, consult­
ed with political and academ­
ic groups on constitutional
reform, and generally made
himself available as a speaker
for any group that would pro­
vide a free meal.

South Africa is just as enigmatic up close as it is from a
detached distance. Seventyfive percent of its inhabitants
are black, and no black person has ever been permitted
to vote. Though the all-white
governing Nationalist Party
(NP) has repealed the most
visible and ugliest forms of
apartheid and permitted
black political liberation parties (especially the African
National Congress, or ANC)
to operate inside the country,
black South Africans still do
not have voting rights.
The NP and the ANC have
commenced negotiations to
establish a new constitution
for South Africa, and in a
recent referendum, white voters supported this initiative.
Yet as events in Eastern
Europe reveal, one does not
make a country by writing a
constitution. Rather, for a
constitution to be durable, it
must be built upon some
common interests, values, or
goals among the citizenry.
For »example, the present
South African constitution
was cemented by a common
desire among whites to
exclude and oppress the
black majority.
What might bind together
a multiracial, democratic
South Africa? Certainly not
language; in South Africa no
single language is spoken by
as fnuch as two-fifths of the
people. Nor is religion a common bond; while most people
in most racial groups in South
Africa would probably
describe themselves as Christian, Afrikaners and Xhosa
find very different lessons in
the same Bible.
Sometimes cohesive
nations are built upon common fears, but black and
white South Africans do not
fear a common enemy. Quite
the contrary, they fear each
other.
If the NP and the ANC do
in fact each speak for a large
constituency, then there is littie in shared economic goals
to build on, either. The NP
practices what we call
“quaint fascism.” Under its

S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

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Recent Books by Alumni
We welcome review copies of
books by alumni. The books
are donated to the Swarthmoreana section o f McCabe Library
after they have been noted for
this column.
Jacqueline Carey 76, Good
Gossip, Random House, 1992.
Eleven interlocking stories
make up this comedy of mod­
ern manners about a group of
“almost hip, nearly glamorous
urbanites” in Manhattan.
David Chalmers ’49, And the
Crooked Places Made Straight:
The Struggle for Social Change
in the 1960s, The Johns Hop­
kins University Press, 1991.
This social history, a compre­
hensive guide to one of Ameri­
ca’s most evocative decades,
describes the ways in which
the civil-rights movement
touched off a widening chal­
lenge to traditional values and
social arrangements.
Walter W. Powell and Paul J.
DiMaggio 71 (eds.), The New
Institutionalism in Organiza­
tional Analysis, University of
Chicago Press, 1991. This vol­
ume offers, for the first time,
both often-cited foundation
works and the latest writings
of scholars associated with
the institutional approach to
organizational analysis.
Jonathan Franzen ’81, Strong
Motion, Farrar Straus Giroux,
1992. Offering a timely and
compelling vision of an ailing
society, Franzen’s second
novel follows young Louis Hol­
land in a tale about earth­
quakes, love, the environment,
and growing up.
Marjorie Garber ’66, Vested
Interests: Cross-Dressing & Cul­
tural Anxiety, Routledge, 1992.
The author explores the
nature and significance of
cross-dressing in Western cul­
ture, drawing on history, liter­
ature, film, photography, and
popular and mass culture and
concluding that there can be
no culture without the
transvestite.

50

Richard E. Goodkin 75,
Around Proust, Princeton Uni­
versity Press, 1991. In this
study, the author places
“around Proust” a variety of
things: other literary texts,
other (nonliterary) artistic
forms, and other (nonartistic)
modes of intellectual pursuit.
The Tragic Middle: Racine, Aris­
totle, Euripides, The University
of Wisconsin Press, 1991. This
book links the philosophical
texts of Aristotle with the trag­
ic dramas of Racine and
Euripides to show that tragic
heroism results from a conflict
between two ways of
approaching a problem: a
practical approach based on
compromise and a theoretical
approach that admits only
mutually exclusive solutions.
Deborah Hitchcock Jessup
’56, Waste Management Guide:
Laws, Issues & Solutions, The
Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.,
1992. This book is a pragmatic
guide through the morass of
regulations and issues affect­
ing solid waste management,
including laws, municipal
waste recycling policies and
issues, pollution prevention,
disposed technologies, and
more.
Madeleine Kahn 77, Narrative
Transvestism: Rhetoric and
Gender in the Eighteenth-Centu­
ry English Novel, Cornell Uni­
versity Press, 1991. Kahn cre­
ates her term “narrative
transvestism” to describe the
device through which male
authors assume the first-per­
son narrative voice of women,
and she analyzes in detail nov­
els by Defoe and Richardson
in this context.
Milton Moskowitz, Robert Lev­
ering ’66, and Michael Katz,
Everybody’s Business: A Field
Guide to the 400 Leading Com­
panies in America, Doubleday,
1990. This book looks at the
country’s 400 most influential
companies in terms of global
presence, consumer brands,
industry and product rank­
ings, number of employees,

profits or losses, and more.
Bryan D. Mangrum ’60 and
Giuseppe Scavizzi, A Reforma­
tion Debate: Karlstadt, Emser,
and Eck on Sacred Images,
Three Treatises in Translation,
Dovehouse Editions Inc., 1991.
These treatises, translated
here for the first time in
English, established the terms
of reference for one of the
most important debates of the
Reformation: religious imagery
seen as fostering superstition
vs. its helpfulness in promot­
ing devotion.
Daniel Marcus ’80, Roar: The
Paper Tiger Television Guide to
Media Activism, Paper Tiger
Television Collective, 1991.
This graphic-laden book
details the history, and need
for alternative media projects
and contains a guide to do-ityourself video production and
distribution, as well as
resource lists.
John K. McNulty ’56, Federal
Income Taxation ofS Corpora­
tions, The Foundation Press,
Inc., 1992. Intended for law stu­
dents, lawyers, and scholars
from other legal systems, this
book is designed to explain
the U.S. federal income tax law
of those corporations elected
to be taxed under Subchapter
S of the U.S. Internal Revenue
Code.
Glen O. Gabbard and Roy W.
Menninger ’47 (eds.), Medical
Marriages, American Psychi­
atric Press, Inc., 1988. Featur­
ing first-person accounts and
case vignettes, this book looks
at the inner workings of the
physician’s marriage—the
psychological issues and
sources of conflict that
emerge in the various stages of
marriage and family.
Christopher Morris ’66, Mod­
els o f Misrepresentation: On the
Fiction ofE.L. Doctorow, Uni­
versity Press of Mississippi,
1991. In this reading of Doctorow’s work, the author con­
siders the theme of the strug­

gle for representation in art
from a philosophical stand­
point: How can the writer
depict America, or how can
the reader interpret its values,
when the capacity of language
to represent is put in doubt?
Howard N. Rabinowitz ’64,
The First New South, 1865-1920,
Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1992. In
the aftermath of the Civil War,
white Southerners clung to the
hope that a “New South”
would arise from the ashes of
the old. This book examines
the myth and the reality of the
period in which the South
sought to adjust to the politi­
cal, economic, and social
upheavals of the post-Civil
War years.
Jon Van Til ’61 and Associ­
ates, Critical Issues in American
Philanthropy: Strengthening
Theory and Practice, JosseyBass Publishers, 1990. In this
book, leading authorities in
nonprofit research and prac­
tice provide fresh insights into
the basic issues confronting
philanthropy—legal, ethical,
financial, social, and manageri­
al— as more is demanded of
philanthropy than ever before.
Howard C. Westwood ’31,
Black Troops, White Comman­
ders, and Freedmen During the
Civil War, Southern Illinois
University Press, 1992.
Recounted in this collection of
essays Eire the often bitter
experiences of blacks who
were admitted to military ser­
vice in the Civil War but sub­
jected to blatant forms of dis­
crimination by their white
commanders.
Julie (Biddle) Zimmerman ’68
and Kimiaki Tokumasu, Wish­
ing on Daruma, Biddle Publish­
ing Co., 1992. The Daruma is a
Japanese doll that is consid­
ered lucky for granting wishes.
This story of correspondence
between the two authors
begins in their childhood and
follows their wish on Daruma
that someday they might
meet.
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

N

MIRROR, MIRROR
Continued from page 6
hensive about what lay in store when
she presented her theory to a much
larger audience. Would the responses
in the packed auditorium ech o the
Women’s Studies seminars’?
Yes and no. W hile her 50-minute
talk was prim arily a restatem ent of
the theories outlined in The Beauty
Myth [s e e e x c e r p ts , p a g e 6], h er
charismatic, no-nonsense style enter­
tained and amused even those w ho
would later stand up to question her
ideas. Some seminar students contin­
ued to p re ss W o lf w ith p o in te d
remarks about the exclusiveness of
her theory, but others asked ques­
tions like, “How can w e make fem i­
nism more attractive?”
“I thought it was great how she
made feminism seem so strong and
sexy,” rem arked one young wom an
who said she felt “ e m p o w e re d ” by
Wolf’s message, though she was still
hesitant to be q u o te d b y nam e
because o f th e d iffe rin g o p in io n s

DEAR A L...
Continued from page 19
even a necessary, catalyst for intellec­
tual progress.
What would the literature of fifthcentury Athens, that glory of Western
civilization, have been had not Thucyd­
ides, Socrates, Euripides, and their
compatriots been obliged to confront
the different voices— and customs— of
the “barbarians”? W here w ould the
music of our own century be had not
composers like Gershwin, Stravinsky,
Milhaud, and Ravel encountered jazz?
The canon itself, if it is to remain vital,
requires the constant infusion of new
voices, each in vigorou s (can on ic!)
counterpoint with its earlier voices.
This th em e seem s p a r tic u la r ly
appropriate to Swarthm ore College,
with its long tradition of encouraging
diversity and stimulating debate. One
of my first courses at Swarthmore was
with a p h ilo s o p h y p r o fe s s o r w h o
seemed p e r v e r s e ly d e te rm in ed to
antagonize us all. H er a p p ro a c h
worked: I became so angry that I took
MAY 1992

among her peers about W olf’s brand
of feminism.
“The first-year men and women stu­
dents on m y hall w e re e x c ite d b y
what W olf had to say. Th ey’v e been
talking about it all week,” Suzy Wang
’92, an RA at Mary Lyon dorm itory,
reported later.
The debate over W olf’s theory con­
tinued for weeks in The Phoenix, at
Sharpies Dining Hall, in the halls, and
in seminar discussions. W hile som e
students remain angry that their own
experien ces are in visible in W o lf’s
book, others feel more inspired about
fem inism than e v e r b e fo re . Elaine
Metherall reports that W olf’s message
seems to have been an em powering
point of connection for many women
on campus who suffer from eating dis­
orders.
The whole debate has raised larger
questions about feminism in general.
W e have learned that w e are never
g oin g to agree on e v e ry su b je ct—
including our bodies— just because
w e are w om en. It is im p ossib le to
know how all women on campus feel
the beauty myth affects their lives, if
in d eed th e y fe el th ey fit in to that

framework at all. Looking around the
auditorium during W o lf’s talk, one
saw only a few wom en of color in a
sea of w hite faces. W o lf’s book had
le ft m an y out, and m any o f th o s e
many had chosen not to include her
talk in their daily schedules. W e are
left to w onder how w e can acknowl­
edge our differences as w om en and
still com e togeth er for an effe ctiv e
feminist movement.
N aom i W o lf’s v is it rem in d ed us
that, in many ways, w e are a divided
community, unaware and unsupportive of each oth er’s differences. The
black lesbian fem inist Audre Lorde
writes, “W e do not have to be identi­
cal to be unified.” Women at Swarthmore com e from many different back­
g ro u n d s and h o ld m any d iffe re n t
political views. They continue to dis­
co v e r that there are many different
branches of feminism. Learning how
th e b ra n c h e s can b e p a rt o f o n e
enduring tree is the part w e ’re still
working on.

her course more seriously than I had
ever taken anything before. In retro­
spect, I realize that she knew precisely
what she was doing— and I have been
profoundly grateful ever since for the
intellectual growth her confrontation­
al approach evoked.
In a gentler vein, I recall my classics
p rofessors rep ortin g new d e v e lo p ­
ments in their field— the first applica­
tio n o f co m p u ters to th e te x t o f
Homer, a papyrus discovery that gave
us for the first time a complete play of
Menander, the recognition that anoth­
er papyrus apparently controverted
the traditional dating of A eschylus’
Suppliants, a dating upon which rested
ou r w h o le u n derstanding of e a rly
Greek tragedy. I recall their ex cite­
m ent o v e r the fact that th ese new
d e ve lo p m en ts w ou ld u n d ou b ted ly
necessitate comprehensive re-evaluations of accepted theories.
I encountered the same openness
in Edward Steuermann, a pianist with
whom I was studying in Philadelphia
(the Swarthmore curriculum was less
accommodating in the 1950s than it is
today to the diverse ways of perform­
ing musicians). Steuermann had pre­

miered many of the works of Schoen­
berg and his school. He assumed, and
taught, that “music is always music of
the future”— that just as one’s knowl­
e d g e o f B e e th o v e n sh ou ld in form
o n e ’s playin g of Schoenberg, so in
turn one’s encounter with Schoenberg
and other contem porary com posers
should enrich on e’s perform ance of
Beethoven.
I know that healthy and animated
d eb a te w ill flourish at Sw arthm ore
and that commitment to diversity will
feed the College’s inveterate appetite
for self-examination and intellectual
dialogue. If th ere are tim es in you r
p r e s id e n c y , A1 B loom , w h en y o u
secretly wish your college might be a
bit less contentious, a bit more pacific
(a w ord I w ould not use of Swarth­
more, despite its Quaker heritage), I
know that you of all people will recog­
nize in the debate swirling around you
one of the pre-eminent virtues of the
College, one of the keys to its extraor­
dinary intellectual vitality— and w ill
relish your part in the fray. May both
you and Swarthmore flourish.
David H. Porter ’58
Skidmore College

Katherine Cook ’92 is an English m ajor
from Cincinnati, Ohio. She is planning
a career in journalism.

61

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WOVEN WORLD

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A m O P e t © r S is a contemporary German cartographer who has quiet­
ly changed the world. He observed that the universally accepted Mercator
map (at top) is in fact inaccurate in that it shows a blatant bias toward the
northern hemisphere.
Not long after Columbus failed to find India, the Flemish cartographer
Mercator was reflecting the fledgling concept of Eurocentrism in his maps.
Studying a Mercator map, one notices that the equator is off-center in a
southerly direction. This gives the map reader the impression that the
northern half of the planet, specifically Europe and North America, is
physically larger than the southern half.
Peters depicted the size of the continents as they actually are (bottom ),
not as Europeans five centuries ago might have liked them to appear.
Thus, each continent is in proportion to the others strictly according to
land mass, and the equator is in the exact center. The difference between
the two interpretations is startling.
— J. V.

62

in point. If you w ere to ask anyone
w hat m aterial was quintessentially
American, the answer you would get
again and again would be “blue jeans”
or “Levi’s.” But if you research the ori­
gin of blue jeans, you w ill discover
that denim is a French invention and
that Levi Strauss was a German Jew.
A lre a d y y o u ’re in trouble, and you
haven’t even begun exploring Native
American textiles or their representa­
tive significance.
Says Brill: “The real debate for me
was between a native textile and blue
jeans, but blue jeans seemed like the
u n ifyin g fa c to r in this; everyb od y
wears blue jeans. There was also an
elem ent of w h im sy that was really
important. There are a lot of serious
points being made in this map; there’s
a lot to be learned from the way it’s
constructed, but it’s in a children’s
lunchroom and kids are going to get
more excited seeing a back pocket, a
Levi’s tag, and a fly than a beautifully
crafted Native American piece.”
T h e r a p id ly d is u n ify in g Soviet
Union presen ted a sim ilar Gordian
knot. Brill elected to wrap it in a floral
p rin te d babu shka, e x c e p t fo r the
Baltic Republics, w hich w ere repre­
sented individually. Brill is often asked
if th e fo rm e r S o v ie t U nion w ill be
changed to reflect the new political
rea lities, but she thinks not. “Any
map,” she says, “is a frozen moment in
time. This is the w ay it was in the sumtn ero fl9 9 1 .”
Faced w ith these dilemmas, Brill
found herself in an extremely power­
ful and burdensome position, that of
determining “world textile policy.” Is it
possible to resolve these issues equi­
tably? Brill’s answer: “I don’t think you
could do the project if you tried to
deal fully with that question.” No, not
without stepping on the toes of one
undervalued civilization or another.
Parallels with the pitfalls of interna­
tional politics beg to be drawn, and, as
Brill admits, “The map is rife with con­
tradictions. I constantly had to make
e x e c u tiv e d e c is io n s . I had to just
decide that the map was going to rep­
resent folk culture in one country and
contem porary design in another and
s o m e th in g w h im s ic a l in another.
S W A R TH M O R E COLLEGE BULLETIN

Sc.

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rone
ially
|get
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sori)ver
and
Jew.
you
itive
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blue
: the
ody
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There are pieces of all these different
aspects throughout the map.
“I had to liv e w ith th e stru g g le
because I really couldn’t resolve it. I
hope these inconsistencies get people
to look at individual situations in the
world and not to draw universal con­
clusions.”
Sometimes expediency became the
deciding factor. Because many coun­
tries co n ta in s e v e r a l— so m e tim e s
even d o ze n s o f— d is tin c t e th n ic
groups, Brill’s choices for the most
representative textile w ere based on
demographic proportions or, in the
case of less a c c e s s ib le co u n tries,
availability of material. One of Brill’s
less serious dilemmas was how best
to represent Antarctica: “Antarctica
was kind of a challenge— it was either
Gore-Tex or seal fur.” (Brill settled on
imitation seal fur.)
Once the textiles had been gath­
ered, they had to be cut and fitted,
but not before an accurate outline of
the world had been made with all the
boundaries in place. This presented a
host of new obstacles. T o begin with,

ny map is a
frozen moment
in time. This is the
way it was in the
summer of 1991.

A

viet
dian
loral
the
presked
1 be
tical
Any
ntin
sumBrill
werat of
’ Is it
squi:you
d to
, not
one
:her,
;rnad, as
connake
just
rep■and
and Student interns Ronnell Boyd, 13, and Lyn Mackiewicz, 16, piece
her. together Antarctica. Assembling the map took three months.
.LETINi

MAY 1992

there aren’t to o many 13-by-20-foot
maps around, so tracing an original
was out of the question. Even if there
w ere such maps, which was the right
one to copy? The traditional Mercator
projection map is tried and true, but
the new Peters projection more accu­
rately depicts the proportional size of
land m asses. Since a c c u ra c y and
authenticity w ere priorities from the
start, Brill chose to co p y the Peters
projection map.
Having chosen her map, Brill then
had to enlarge and copy it, a painstak­
ing task that she accomplished with
the help of tw o high-school interns
and an overhead projector. First, they
traced the countries onto construc­
tion paper and cut them out. Then,
using the p aper as a pattern, th ey
traced and cut out the fabric. The final
s te p w as fittin g th e h u ge p u z zle
together and gluing it in place on the
canvas.
For those of us (and that’s most of
u s) w h o are used to the top-heavy
M ercator projection map, the Peters
map com es as a shock. Th e conti­
n en ts lo o k as if th e y h a ve b een
grasped at their northern and south­
ern extremities and pulled like taffy.
The result is a narrowing and length­
ening of the world as w e thought w e
knew it. It takes some getting used to
(Europe looks truly diminutive), but
Claire Brill’s Textile W orld Map is a
good w ay to start.
The Textile W orld Map is on view in
the U n iversity M u seu m ’s c h ild re n ’s
lunchroom at 33rd and Spruce Streets,
P h ila d e lp h ia . The m useum is open
Tuesdays through Saturdays 10:00-4:00
and Sundays 1:00-5:00. A u th or John
Vaillant is a free-lance writer and musi­
cian who is working on a first novel.
63

deprive us, along
with gay men, of our
few and miscella­
neous civil rights.
Rather, it is because
A - f i f l a B B f l f t *
w e recognize that it
is not only our plea­
TJ2ÊWZZz
sure but our respon­
sibility to work for
the life of our com­
munity, and that
Make AIDS a priority now,
only in this way can w e survive.
not years from now
Both gay men and lesbians have
T o the Editor:
organized to find ways to keep our
It was with mixed feelings that I
community strong and supportive, to
read the February B ulletin’s request
insist on respectful legislation and bet­
for information about the impact of
ter health care, and to find construc­
AIDS on the lives of Swarthmoreans
tive avenues for both our anger and
[Letters, Feb. 1992]. I’m pleased at the
our love. The NAMES Project quilt is
prospect. What troubles me is an
one. Another amusing but telling
omission or mistaken assumption that
example of the creativity involved: In
may underlie the admittedly brief
over 400 years, nobody managed (or
request. What is missing is this: AIDS
bothered) to eroticize the use of con­
has already had an impact on all of us.
doms as much as gay men have in the
Every one of us already has stories to
last 10. This is a lifesaving effort, wor­
tell, even if we don’t yet know it.
thy of emulation.
As an astute friend pointed out to
The community at large also needs
me recently, we are all AIDS-affected.
to create strategies for coping with
Yes, I know and work with and am
this disease. Gay men are no longer
the fastest-growing risk population.
friends with people who are HIV posi­
tive. But even before the disease
Not only will other groups’ incidence
entered my life in these personal,
of AIDS continue to grow as the dis­
anecdotal ways, I was (and all of us
ease spreads, but as w e learn more
were), in a very real sense, living with
about AIDS, we will find that many
AIDS. I didn’t know it yet, but AIDS had
more people are already infected (and
already changed my life. I mean by
affected) than w e now know. When
this not only that in the future people I the Centers for Disease Control’s clini­
loved would becom e ill or die, and not
cal criteria are expanded to include
only that the character of gay life
the symptoms and disease constella­
would be affected, but that as a nation
tions by which AIDS is typically mani­
and as a world w e would need to think
fested in women, for example, there
hard about what it means to be a com­ will be a sudden jump, not in AIDS
munity and how best a community
cases, but in AIDS cases w e recognize.
can serve its members.
Unfortunately* some of us are going to
I know the gay community best,
recognize ourselves.
and I think that w e are approaching
AIDS needs to be a priority for all of
this crisis in some useful and essential
us, now, not years from now. I cannot
ways. I know that it isn’t realistic to
stress it strongly enough: Everyone is
speak of a unified, singular “gay com­
affected, and the nature of our society
munity.” Nonetheless, the gay people I
is affected. Justice, respect, compas­
know have already had a few years to
sion, and community need to be prior­
think about and deal with AIDS. Most
ities for everyone. Years from now,
striking to me (and I freely admit my
you will probably need your energy to
bias) is that lesbians, the group whose
create, and comfort, and mourn, and
sexual behavior is least likely to lead
live. You will have urgent emotional
to infection, participate energetically
needs and will not feel like writing a
and consistently in the political
letter to a politician whose election
action, writing and speaking, and the
you didn’t oppose, or arguing with an
mental and physical health care that
insurance company representative, or
AIDS makes necessary and urgent. I
fighting for your eroded civil rights.
don’t think that this is just because we
W e all need to be generous and neigh­
borly now.
fear that homophobic legislation will

1iiyylri'

iPPrall

64

I don’t want to be unduly pes­
simistic or alarmist. I do want people
to understand that when they hear
anyone’s story about AIDS, they hear
their own as well. I don’t want to write
about my own experiences with AIDS
just yet. They are central to my life
these days, and acute, as I learn of still
more friends, acquaintances, class­
mates, co-workers, clients, friends of
friends, and others who are testing
positive or becoming symptomatic, or
who have just lost someone dear to
them. In time I will tell my stories.
But for now, to write about my own
complicated emotions, and for you to
read, seems a little too insular,
removed from the larger context in
which these tragedies occur, almost a
little too cozy. Instead, for now, my
wish is that everyone think about his
or her own life, the impact AIDS has
already had on it, and the implications
of the present for our mutual future.
No one will lack a story to tell when,
after reflection, we speak. I hope all of
us will know what w e are hearing.
SHOSHANA KEREWSKY ’83
Providence, R.I.
Editor’s Note: Ms. Kerewsky’s eloquent
letter is the only response so far to our
call for m aterial for an article on AIDS
and Swarthmoreans. We would appreci­
ate hearing further from readers whose
lives have been impacted by the dis­
ease, o r who have particular insights
about AIDS and the community.

Threats and insults only
increase enem y’s hatred
To the Editor:
The Swarthmore students who
made a Croatian nationalist rap song
[Feb. 1992] are ingenious, committed,
and angry. They end their song with
an obscenity directed at the Serbian
leader.
In the Discourses (11,26) Machiavelli
writes, “I hold it to be a proof of great
prudence for men to abstain from
threats and insulting words toward
any one, for neither the one nor the
other in any w ay diminishes the
strength of the enemy; but the one
makes him more cautious, and the
other increases his hatred of you, and
makes him more persevering in his
efforts to injure you.”
DUNCAN WRIGHT 72
New York
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ALUMNI COUNCIL
ar
rite

)s

Maralyn Gillespie ’49
Honored on Retirement

sonal attention and involvement.
The excellent staff currently work­
ing in the Alumni Office provides addi­
still
tional evidence of her leadership and
^
A 37-year era en ded February 28
organizational skills. David Allgeier ’86
fA w it h Maralyn Orbison Gillespie’s will serve as acting director of alumni
, or
retirement from the position of associ- affairs until the C ollege appoints a
> [ ate v ic e p resid en t fo r alumni rela ­ n ew a s s o c ia te v ic e p r e s id e n t fo r
tions, publications, and public rela­ external affairs. Applications for the
wn
tions. W e shall miss Maralyn in many t p o sition h ave been r e c e iv e d from
to
ways. Her gracious style, personality,
many well-qualified individuals. The
College hopes to name Maralyn’s suc­
loyalty, d e d ic a tio n , and a b ility to
interact effectively with all kinds of
cessor by Alumni Weekend.
M aralyn G illes p ie’s ou tstan d in g
ta
people have benefited the College and
its alumni for nearly four decades,
service has been recognized by the
is
Most individuals have found it vir- College in several ways. M ore than
;
tually im possible to say no to Mara- 200 friends attended an all-campus
recep tion for her in T a rb le on the
ons
lyn. Her incredible knowledge of the
afternoon of February 28. That same
alumni b o d y and the interests and
evening the Board of Managers hon­
i,
strengths of individuals within it have
of
allowed her to enlist the help of tal­ ored Maralyn at a dinner held at Ash­
ented alumni to assist the College in ton House. T h e C ollege has esta b ­
lished tw o funds to honor Maralyn.
’83 » many ways over the years. In addition
R.I.
to her nationally recognized leader­ N eil Austrian ’61 announced at the
reception that members of the Board
ship of this magazine, she has been
ent
closely involved with the Alumni Col- of Managers will contribute $10,000 to
initiate the Maralyn Orbison Gillespie
ir
lege A b roa d , Sw arthm ore C on n ec­
’49 Faculty Travel Fund, w hich w ill
ts
tions, Alumni Weekend, Homecoming,
provide financial assistance for facul­
eci- ! and numerous oth er program s and
ty travel for research purposes or for
ise
events. Each of these activities has
benefited from Maralyn’s close per­ attendance at alumni events or pro­

«
id,
i
i

;lli
at

nd

’72
ork

ETIN

fessional meetings. A second fund will
benefit the Scott Arboretum in recog­
nition of Maralyn’s love of gardening.
Alumni are encouraged to contribute
to either of these efforts.
he Alum ni Council fu rth ered its
efforts to educate students about
its a c tiv itie s w hen it s p o n s o re d a
bru n ch fo r th e s e n io r class. A lan
Symonette ’76, one of our two Council
vice presidents, spoke to the seniors
about what it means to be a graduate
of the College and how a continuing
association can benefit both the Col­
lege and its graduates. More than half
of the class attended.
Tom Simkin ’55, chairman of the
Committee on Athletics, invited Neil
A u stria n to be th e sp ea k er at the
annual spring sports banquet. Austri­
an excelled in athletics at Swarthmore
and has contin ued to a ch ie ve in a
superior manner since graduation. He
currently serves the College as chair­
man of the Board of Managers and is
p re sid e n t of the N ation al F ootb a ll
League.
Frank M. Jeunes ’57, president,
Swarthmore College
Alumni Association

T

till a few cabins
left for the next
Alumni College Abroad

S

Sept. 11-27,1992
Cruise the Rhine and Mosel
rivers with Professor
Constance Cain Hungerford and
Centennial Professor Emerita
of Classics Helen F. North
aboard the 90-passenger Swan
Hellenic Rembrandt van Rijn.
Side trips will explore the
culturally rich cities of Zurich,
Basel, and Amsterdam.
Call the Alumni Office for details
at (215) 328-8402.