Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1993-08-01

and friends was
the order o f the day
for the 316 mem bers of
the Class o f 1993. The
seniors reached out and
touched President Alfred
H. Bloom with phone
books—a parting shot a t
the fact that all students
will have telephones in
their dorm itory rooms this
fall. See page 22 for more
on Commencement.
PHOTOGRAPHS SY StEVgN QOLDBIATT‘67

SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE BULLETIN

•

AUGUST 1993

4
O rganic A bstraction
Sydney Carpenter, assistant professor o f studio arts, creates
massive works in fired clay. Here’s a sample of her sculpture,
which draws references from both the animate and the
inanimate worlds.
By Kate Downing

8
H e ’s the Top
As editor of the entertainment newspaper Variety, Peter Bart
’54 is in the enviable position of being a journalist whose calls
are returned, quickly. A call from the controversial editor can
be among the best—or worst—things that happen to you.
By Bill Kent

Editor.
Jeffrey Lott
Associate Editor
Rebecca Aim
Assistant Editor
Kate Downing
Class Notes Editor
Nancy Lehman ’87
Desktop Publishing:
Audree Penner
Designer
Bob Wood
Editor Emerita:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49

12 One Dollar, One Vote
“Whenever you spend money on a product, you are voting for
the business practices o f the producer of that product, ”says
Zachary Lyons ’85. In two boycott publications, he gives
consumers information to help them cast their votes wisely.

m

By Jeffrey Lott

18 P lus p a Change
Returning to campus after a 54-year absence, Molly Gordon ’39
wonders whether she’ll find the College much the same or
much changed. Both, it turns out—but most profound is her
impression of the “deep continuity between past and present. ”

111
Associate Vice President
for External Affairs:

By Molly Grinnell Gordon ’39

Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59
Cover “In Reserve II,” a

52”x36”x7” fired clay sculpture by
Assistant Professor of Studio Arts
Sydney Carpenter, is one of the
artist’s typically massive works.
Photograph by Sydney Carpenter.
Story on page 4.

r

iMMiraTW 1 ¡ I

By Jeff Hildebrand ’92

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The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
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number 6, is published in September,
October, November, February, May, and
August by Swarthmore College, 500 Col■ ■ i «L V
lege Avenue, Swarthmore PA 190811397. Second class postage paid at
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Swarthmore PA and additional mailing r n n H
offices. Postmaster: Send address
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changes to Swarthmore College Bul­
letin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore
PA 19081-1397.

64 Endings
From Du Pont to Crum woods, Beardsley, Parrish, Wharton,
Crum meadow, Mary Lyon, the field house, Sharpies, and the
Friends Meeting House—join Jeff Hildebrand ’92 in a goodbye
tour of campus as he prepares to leave for good.

_ ■j /

O B
rtfH
tHH

D epartm ents
2 Letters
22 The College
28 Alumni Digest
30 Class Notes
34 Deaths
46 Recent Books by Alumni

wear garments touched by hands from all over the world,”
wrote songwriter and cultural historian Bernice Johnson
Reagon. “35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Cen­
tral America /In the cotton fields of El Salvador /In a province
soaked by blood, pesticide-sprayed workers toiling in a broiling sun
/Pulling cotton for two dollars a day....”
Reagon, best known as leader of the African American a cappella
group Sweet Honey in the Rock, is a remarkable woman. Her hon­
orary degree from Swarthmore this year (page 23) was part recogni­
tion of her dedication to the advancement of freedom and part cele­
bration of her extraordinary talent. In his citation, President Bloom
lauded her “enormous courage and spirit” in the cause of human
rights at home and around the world.
At last fall’s Sweet Honey concert in the Lang Performing Arts
Center, the overflow crowd hung on every word, cheering and sigh­
ing as four majestic black women
traced a trail of exploitation from El
Salvador to Venezuela to South Caroli­
na to Haiti to. the corner store. Along
the way they named names: Exxon,
Du Pont, Burlington Mills, Sears.
“Are My Hands Clean?” is the title
of Reagon’s song quoted above*. Its
message is responsibility—our
responsibility. Zachary Lyons ’85, cre­
ator of a magazine called The Boycott Quarterly (page 12), asserts
that none of our hands are clean. He urges us to consider the social
impact of every purchase. Our dollars are like votes, he says.
Can we really feed, clothe, or house ourselves without participat­
ing in some sort of oppression, some sort of exploitation of workers
or the natural world? Of course not. Bernice Reagon admits as much
in the first line of her song: “I wear garments....” she says. We all do,
though most of us have boycotted at some time in our lives.
Professor Tom Bradley told me he hasn’t eaten a grape for nearly
30 years. I stopped buying Exxon gas for a while after the Prince
William Sound oil spill, and we didn’t eat a Nestlé bar in our family
for a very long time. Consumer boycotts—whether they work or
not—are a satisfying form of self-expression, but I wonder whether
the social behavior of corporations should be the primary focus of
our politics. If we don’t exercise control in the voting booth, is “vot­
ing” at the supermarket an effective substitute? And in the “econom­
ic democracy” envisioned by Lyons, do people with the most dollars
get the most votes?
Swarthmore and Swarthmoreans are constantly challenging us
with questions like these. It’s one of the reasons that working on this
campus—and editing this magazine—is so rewarding.
—Jeffrey Lott

I

A

L

e

■

On Norman Rush
and “Serious Reading”

To the Editor:
I suppose you could look upon this
letter as fan mail. At least, I was
inspired to write by the most inter­
esting May issue of the Bulletin. Sci­
ence, puffery, women baring their
bellies, and above all, the essay by '
Norman Rush ’56. What a man! Are i
you familiar with Hendrick van
Loon’s observation, “Once you take
the human race too seriously, you
will either lose your sense of humor
or turn pious, and in either case,
you’d be better off dead”?
At any rate, Rush intrigued me,
not only with his fixations but with
his dense, jargon-laced, “intellects j
al” prose. How, I wondered, can
such a writer win a prize for a
novel? To satisfy myself, I obtained
Mating and read it. Quite a book.
If I hadn’t read Mr. Rush’s article
in the Bulletin I would have sworn
that Mating was a marvelously con- '
trived satire of the liberal establish­
ment. Since it was clear from the
article in the Bulletin that this is not
the case, I can only suggest that Mr.
Rush is doing the liberal establish- '
ment a distinct disservice. On the
other hand, the book was, in its
way, fascinating. There were re­
markable passages suggesting the
author is more comfortable with sex
than with his intellectual message.
I agree in toto with Mr. Rush’s
proposition that the world is being I
seduced away from “serious” read­
ing by TV etc. etc. But I wonder how
he defines serious reading. Subject?
Content? Style? Insights? Use of long
words? Correct attitude (politically !
id est)l
So thank you for exposing me to
Mr. Rush and for the opportunity to
read Mating. I would have missed
this magnum opus had it not been |
for your magazine.
W.R. TYSON ’31
Aiken, S.C.
Benefits for “Spousal
Equivalents” Invade Privacy

To the Editor:
Providing nonmonetary benefits to
an employee or his designee unac­
ceptably invades the employee’s
privacy unless the employee need
give no explanation as to why the

* © SONGTALK PUBLISHING CO.. 1985
SW A RTH M O RE COLLEGE BULLETIN

AU

IT E R S

designee has been chosen, such as
that the designee is a “spousal
equivalent.” Swarthmore should
lis avoid the impossible task of definI ing “spousal equivalent.” Does an
ix- employee get a “spousal equivalent”
ici- by going through a “wedding equivr
alent”? Does the ceremony have to
>y ' be conducted in a “church equivare | lent”?
Federal and state laws favor marike riage over other types of relationu
ships, and this is both unfair and
lor discriminatory. The solution is to
' eliminate financial subsidies such as
I employee spouse benefits. Expandi,
ing the benefited class to include
th “spousal equivalents” only makes
:u- the wrong more widespread. The
only moral and rational position is
for the employer to pay the employ­
ed ee with money and let the employee
decide how to spend that money—
cle without any need to explain to the
n employer.
m- 1
KRISTIN BELKO 72
shVenice, Calif.

lo t

“Political Correctness”

Mr. Threatens College’s Mission
h- I To the Editor:
e | The recent articles and news items
in the Bulletin on various controver­
sial matters, and the corresponie
dence that these have engendered,
sex have been most interesting—and
e. yet also seem to me to present
some cause for concern,
ng ! The Swarthmore I knew in the
id- ’50s and recognize in what I see
today is a community seeking truth
iow
:ct? (“Mind the Light”) and committed
ong to a free and open exchange of
lly ideas. The portrait of a Chaucer
seminar and its lively exchanges
to [February 1993] seems to me the
/ to ideal of what we should be about.
1
My concern is that the the Col­
in ! lege could lose its breadth of vision
through over-involvement in immei ’31 diate issues, could it sell its
S.C. birthright for a mess of “political
correctness”—and at that a “politi­
cal correctness” that is remarkably
shallow, short-sighted, and doctri­
naire. This is surely a problem elseto where in society too, where “multiic- culturalism,” a distorted “feminism,”
; I and various other “isms” of narrow
:d
view are beginning to exercise the

e

riN

Please turn to page 62
AUGUST 1993

■

he thick, wet, hot blanket of sum­
mer has descended on Swarth­
more. Painting, pruning, and
overall sprucing-up of the campus con­
tinue steadily, though the frenzy that
preceded Commencement and Alumni
Weekend has abated. Surges of people
have come and gone for dance recitals
in the Eugene M. and Theresa Lang
Performing Arts Center, the Strath
Haven High School graduation in the
Scott Outdoor Auditorium, and scores
of weddings and wedding party photo
ops. Most undergraduates are gone,
but those who remain devel­
op an intimacy with the cam­
pus and an ownership of its
spaces that most students
never realize they lack.
So what does happen at
Swarthmore College during
the summer? Plenty. There
are adult and junior tennis
camps in residence for eight
weeks during the summer, as
well as baseball, basketball,
field hockey, and soccer
camps. On any given week,
there may be 200 to 500 sport
camp participants here.
Upward Bound, a yearround program that brings
high school students from
nearby Chester to campus for
tutoring, funs an intensive
six-week residential program
in June and July with 50 stu­
dents and eight staff mem­
bers. Eight more local high
school students and two of
their teachers are here as
part of the Howard Hughes
Science Laboratory Summer
Research Program collaborat­
ing with eight Swarthmore
professors on areas of mutual
interest—like how better to
use computers in teaching physics.
Other faculty members are busy
with research projects, and many have
students assisting them. Administra­
tive offices are going full tilt too; some
are busier during the summer than
during the school year. They also
employ some of the 140 students who
kept their post office boxes because of
summer jobs at the College.
A stroll around campus one sun­
drenched July day during a particular­
ly brutal heat wave reveals even more
activity:
•It’s sweltering in the shade. Pat
Thompkins of the grounds crew is
pulling ivy off the trees. “It’s too hot to

plant anything,” she says. “But all our
work is outside. So we try to find jobs
in the shade on days like this—and
keep lots of drinking water close at
hand.” On the athletic fields, the red
and white caps of the boys playing
baseball seem too vibrant for a day so
oppressive.
•In Pearson Hall, Associate Profes­
sor of Education Lisa Smulyan 76 is
working with Beth Maloney ’95 on case
studies of female elementary school
principals. They are implementing a
new computer program to code and
analyze the qualitative data
that Smulyan has collected.
•A group of visitors is tak­
ing one of two daily tours for
prospective students. There
are only 30 in this batch, but
som etim es th e re are as
many as 70. Those who have
dressed up for interviews
look particularly uncomfort­
able on this stifling day. The
Admissions Office does 600
to 700 interviews just during
the summer months.
•A lab in Du Pont smells
faintly of toluene as Ben
Vigoda ’96 and B ernhard
Sturm ’93 help Peter Collings, professor of physics,
study the basic properties of
liquid crystals using lasers
and other forms of light.
•Down at Ware pool, 20
kids from United Cerebral
Palsy are splashing happily,
and noisily, in the water.
•Two Swarthm ore stu ­
dents are living in Roberts
dormitory while participat­
ing in President Clinton’s
new Summer of Service pro­
gram. They’re educating kids
in Chester about health and
immunization.
•At 5 p.m. faculty, staff, and stu­
dents of all abilities meet at Du Pont
field for a pickup game of softball. The
group tries to play every Monday and
Thursday, but the 98-degree tempera­
ture may have something to do with
today’s low turnout.
Swarthmore’s summer ends official­
ly on Aug. 18 with the arrival of the fall
sports teams for practice and the resi­
dent assistants for a warm-up of their
own before the 410 members of the
Class of 1997 show up for orientation
on the 28th. Maybe it’ll be a little cool­
er then.
—Nancy Lehman ’87

P

0

S
T

1

N
G
S

3

SYDNEY
CARPENTER

ORGANIC
ABSTRACTION
She describes her work as organic abstrac­
tion, drawing references from the animate and
inanimate to create ceramic sculpture. She is
Sydney Carpenter, an assistant professor of
studio arts, who joined the faculty in 1991 and
last year was awarded a grant from the Pew
Charitable Trusts to free her this coming aca­
demic year to work and travel. She returned
last month from Indonesia, where she was
introduced to that country’s craft traditions in
wood, fabric, and architectural sculpture. She
will spend much of her leave developing a
I series of sculptures in her Philadelphia studio.
Left: "Deep Roots” (50”x20”x l 2 ”),
held in a private collection in New York,
refers, says Carpenter, "to misjudgment of
strengths, often presuming inadequacy where,
in truth, there are resiliency and reserves.”
Right: Carpenter with one section of a 12-foot,
three-part piece commissioned by Bell Atlantic
for its new Philadelphia offices.
Inset: Currently hanging in provost Jennie
Keith’s office, "A Part of a Chain” measures
60”x32”x7”. All of Carpenter’s works are in
fired clay with layers of transparent ceramic
stains applied to the surfaces.

■

O
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<
cc
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1o

SYDNEY CARPENTER

Left: The contradictory nature of
“Neutral Persistence” (44”x36”x20”)
is that its energy is anonymous. “It is
incessant,” says Carpenter. “You cannot
conquer it— it’s always going to persist,
but it has no stake in the results.”
Above: “Tool” (42”x24”x6”) is based on a
corkscrew, “an actual tool but one that
takes on biomorphic form.”

Right: "How Fragile Is It?” is nearly six
feet tall. The piece, says Carpenter,
"deals with unknown breaking points. It’s
wise to ‘test’ before you proceed.”
Below: Carpenter works on her Bell Atlantic
commission. Below right: One of her earliest
pieces,"Sheltered Life” (51”x40”x7”),
presents a full figure surrounded by natural
and architectural forms, giving a sense of
being protected.

by Bill Kent

RE'S THE TOP

f you make movies or TV shows, if
you dream them up or merely star
in them, if you make the deals that
get the movies in the theaters, a call
from Peter Bart ’54, perhaps the most
controversial entertainment journalist
in America, can be among the best—
or worst—things that happen to you.
As editor in chief of both daily Vari­
ety and weekly Variety, th e lively,
slang-laced entertainm ent industry
newspapers, Bart is much more than a
busy shepherd of articles about movie
stars and multimillion-dollar deals.
In addition to editing stories before
they see print and managing a staff of
75 reporters and editors in Los Ange­
les, New York, London, Paris, Rome,
and Moscow, Peter Bart also writes a
weekly industry analysis column. It
stands out from the torrent of Holly­
wood media swill for its dry wit, lack
of hype, and gleeful disrespect for
sacred cows.
Lamenting the decline of that old
Hollywood staple, the biopic (Varietyspeak for a biographical film), Bart
speared director Spike Lee for his por­
trayal of Malcolm X: “In three hours
and 21 m inutes of screen time, he
seemed determ ined to shoehorn in
[Malcolm’s] every pronouncem ent,
then end the film with testimonials,
like an awards banquet.” Bart went on
to criticize Sir Richard Attenborough’s
Chaplin and David Mamet’s screen­
play for Hoffa, concluding th a t “it
would be tragic if a combination of
ideological zeal and just plain flatu­
lence prevented the biopic from being n o nfiction book, Fade Out: The
hapded on to future generations.”
Calamitous Final Days o f MGM, a
Before assuming the editorship of scathing account of how Hollywood’s
weekly Variety in 1989 and daily Vari­ most prestigious studio perished at
ety a year and a half later, Peter Bart the hands of Las Vegas casino mogul
was a m em ber in reasonably good Kirk Kerkorian.
standing of the industry he covers.
New York journalist Aaron Latham
For 20 years he worked as a movie called Fade Out, published in 1990, “a
p ro d u c e r and stu d io h o n ch o at Hollywood story scarier than Friday
Paramount, Lorimar, and MGM/UA.
the 13th." The book established Bart
Before that Bart was a reporter for as the ultimate insider who had the
The New York Times, The Wall Street gumption to name names, fix blame,
Journal, and the Chicago Sun-Times. and celebrate ugly truths, a policy he
He’d also written two novels and one has continued as editor of Variety.

I

Bart Boffo as Variety Helmer

8

Because so much money is made,
spent, and lost in Hollywood on repu­
tation alone, access to the agents, stu-1
dio heads, stars, and financiers is cru­
cial to a reporter covering the enter- j
tainment industry. Peter Bart is in the |
enviable—if not downright astonish-1
ing—position of being a journalist
whose calls are returned, quickly.

M

r. Scorsese returning your call.”
Bart thanks his secretary, begs |
your pardon, leans back in his chair in
his Manhattan office, gazes skyward,
SW A RTH M O RE COLLEGE BULLETIN

and assumes the schmooze position.
There is no need to explain that the
man calling him is director Martin
Scorsese.
First comes the small talk: a round
of how-are-you’s, how-is-he, she, it,
etc. They exchange some buzz about
films in the works. Bart, a trim, slightly
built man in a gray tweed jacket and
lavender painted tie, wears a charac­
teristic poker face: You can’t tell what
he’s thinking under his tightly curled
hair, though his eyes hint amusement.
“How’d you like to speak at this
meeting?” Bart says suddenly. “Beatty
will be there. And Goldman, and the
inevitable Guber, and the even more
inevitable Valenti.”
Beatty is the actor/director Warren
Beatty. William Goldman is a novelist,
screenwriter, and movie script doctor.
Peter Guber is the immensely power­
ful head of Sony Pictures, which con­
trols both Columbia and Tri-Star. And
Jack Valenti is the president of the
Motion Picture Association of Ameri­
ca, which puts the ratings on movies.
The “m eeting” is th e Variety/
Wertheim Schroder conference of 700
Hollywood ty p es and Wall S treet
financiers at the Pierre Hotel. The
yearly event was cooked up by Bart
and Davia Temin ’74, vice president
and marketing director at Wertheim
Schroder, a New York investm ent
banking firm that handles a good deal
of entertainment industry business.
Scorsese says no because he’s edit­
ing his next movie, The Age o f Inno­
cence. Still, they schm ooze a while
longer and hang up. Bart stares at the
phone for a second, m ysteriously
amused.
“Everybody talks to me,” he says
simply.
What about that other Italian Amer­
ican director, Francis Ford Coppola?
“He and I are good friends. When I
was at Paramount, I fought to keep
him on The Godfather when people at
the studio w anted to replace him.
After he lost his shirt with One from
the Heart, I helped get one of his credi­
AUGUST 1993

wrote that the best way to prepare for
tors to simmer down.”
a career in show business was to “get
Marlon Brando?
“I talked to Brando not long ago. the most out of your education. Par­
You forget, I was responsible for turn­ ticipate in extracurriculars. I found my
ing his career around with The Godfa­ work on the College newspaper and
ther. Paramount didn’t want him in radio station very rewarding.”
B art’s te n u re as ed ito r of The
that picture. I did.”
Phoenix, which he took over from Vic­
Frank Sinatra?
Bart’s eyes turn cold. “Sinatra and I tor Navasky ’54, now editor of The
Nation, is legendary for an incident in
do not talk.”
which he ordered another student to
he son of New York schoolteach­ rep o rt on th e Board of M anagers’
ers, Peter Bart chose Swarthmore m eetings by hiding in an air duct
because he had attended New York’s beneath the Managers’ meeting room.
“It was a tim e of c o n sid era b le
Quaker schools. “The Quaker style of
education is service-oriented, and that change at the College,” recalls Bart,
had a great effect on me. It w asn’t who majored in political science and
enough to be ed u cated . We w ere minored in English literature. “The
made to ask what we would do with paper was being kept out of matters
what we learned. Swarthmore, with its that were important, not just to the
Quaker background, was a logical con­ students, but to the faculty and every­
body else involved at the College.”
tinuation of that.”
After several published revelations,
Bart says one of the reasons he
hired Paul Young ’92 as his personal Bart says the reporter was discovered
assistant in his Los Angeles office was by an “elderly lady on the Board of
“that one odd bond, a Swarthmore Managers who looked down and saw
education. He’s also very bright and a face between her legs. Our reporter
was hiding behind th e grate, right
very eager to learn.”
Working with Bart, Young says, “is under her.”
A Ford Foundation Fellowship sent
a great experience for me. He has
both a strong analytical understand­ Bart to th e London School of Eco­
ing of the industry and a lot of street nomics for a year. He came back to
New York and landed a general assign­
smarts.”
Responding to a 1980 Swarthmore ment reporting job at The Wall Street
alumni survey, Bart, then president of Journal. After two years at the Journal
film production at Lorimar (oversee­ and a brief stint at the Chicago Suning Being There and the steamy Jack Times, Bart moved to The New York
Nicholson-Jessica Lange remake of Times, where he spent the next eight
The Postman Always Rings Twice), years.
Bart was both curious and wary of
the entertainment industry when The
New York Times sent him to Los Ange­
Scorsese,
les in 1963 as a cu ltu ral affairs
reporter. “I started to meet people
Coppola,
and found m yself pulled into th e
Brando—
mechanism. I figured that the worst
that
could happen would be that I’d
“Everybody talks
stay for two years and come out with
a terrific book. I stayed a little longer.”
to me,”
In 1967 one of his first Hollywood
says Bart.
friends, actor/producer Robert Evans,
asked Bart if he w anted to be his
Except Sinatra.
assistant at Paramount. Bart agreed.

T

9

;'a^usP**'

The slanguage of

n more than 80 years of covering
the world of showbiz, the editors
of Variety have never found them­
selves at a loss for words. If they
couldn’t find a word for what they
wanted to say, they made one up
(and some words took on lives of
their own, like “sex appeal,” “sit­
com,” or “soap opera”). If they
thought a straightforward English
word was too long or just too pedes­
trian, they made their own version
(like “kidvid” for children’s video
programming or “orbiter” for
telecommunication satellite). They
raised headline writing to an art of
compression and wit—for example,
the famous Variety headline “Sticks
Nix Hick Pix” (rural and small town
audiences reject corny “country”
films). Here’s a small sample of “the
slanguage of Variety."

I

Socko: Big hit (not quite as big as

boffo)
Boffo: Box office hit (not as big as
whammo)
Whammo: A sensation (bigger than
boffo)
Passion pit: A drive-in movie (also
called “ozoner”)
Hardtop: A regular indoor theater
Terp: A dancer, a chorine
Chirp: A female singer
Thesp: An actor or actress
Praiser: A publicist
Crix: Critics
Exex: Executives
Diskeries: Record companies
Leerics: Sexually suggestive song
lyrics
Telepic: A feature-length film funded
by a network for first exposure on
television
They-went-thatawayer: a Western
movie (also called “oater”)
Chopsocky: a martial arts film
COURTESY VARIETY INC., ‘THE SLANGUAGE OF VARIETY"

10

“It was a great time to be making pic­
tures,” he recalls. “Pictures weren’t
nearly as expensive to make as they
are now. Unless you were part of the
industry, you didn’t hear people talk­
ing about how much it cost to make a
picture. When people did talk, it was
ab o u t th e way th e movie affected
them. They were seeing things like
2001: A Space Odyssey and going,
‘Wow, did you see that?’ And if you
had a commercial hit, you could get
away with making pictures that you
really wanted to make.”
Bart received no specific instruc­
tions from Evans, or anyone else, in
the art of being a Hollywood mogul. “It
didn’t take long to learn what was
wrong with a lot of the pictures that
were losing money. For one thing, I
actually read the scripts. Bob and I
had a rule—we would never make a
picture unless we both really loved
the script. Another thing was, if you
looked at the really big failures at that
time, they were star-driven pictures
th a t were m ade because th e stars
wanted them made. We decided we
would make pictures that we believed
in and then go looking for stars to be
in them. None of us thought Goodbye
Columbus would be a hit. We ju st
thought it would be a good movie.
And Chinatown. How could we know
that would go over so well?”
Bart and Evans also scored with
The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby, Love
Story, True Grit, Paper Moon, and
Harold and M aude—a film w hose
script was sold to him, Bart remem­
bers, by his swimming pool cleaner.
Bart left Paramount in 1974 when,
he says, “Frank Yablans, the president
of P aram ount, was ab o u t to be
replaced, and a whole new regime was
about to move in.”
From there Bart became head of an
independent production com pany
founded by industrialist Max Palevsky, making Fun with Dick and Jane
and Islands in the Stream. After two
years, he wanted to focus on writing,
so he left the studio to finish his first
novel, Destinies, a saga surrounding
the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba that
Bart had covered as a journalist in
1961. The novel, co-w ritten w ith
Denne Bart Petitclerc, was optioned
by Lorimar, which eventually hired
Bart as president of film production.
Ironically, Bart couldn’t get his own
book made into a movie.

“The script didn’t work,” he says,
adding that he didn’t write it.
Bart left Lorimar to write a second
novel, Thy Kingdom Come, about the
Mormon faith. “I had good friends
who were Mormons who provided
insights into understanding a very
misunderstood people.”
In 1983 he had an uneasy feeling
w hen Frank Yablans hired him as
senior vice president of production at
MGM/UA. “The installation of a new
regime at a movie studio is reminis­
cent, in nuance and ritual, of the trans­
fer of power within a powerful Mafia
clan,” Bart writes in.Fade Out. “As a
young studio executive supervising

Goodbye
Columbus,
Chinatown,
The Godfather,
Rosem ary's Baby,
True Grit,
Paper Moon,
Harold and
Maude—
Bart says the
films he
worked on were
hits because
“we made pictures
we believed in.”
th e production of The Godfather, I
spent many hours in the company of
‘the family,’ schooling myself in the rit­
uals of Mafia power. Now, moving
through the corridors of MGM at the
side of Frank Yablans, I was overtaken
with a curious feeling of déjà vu.”
Bart sp e n t only tw o years at
MGM/UA, overseeing such films as
Teachers, 2010, and Youngblood, a riteof-passage formula film starring Rob
Lowe and p re-Dirty Dancing Patrick
Swayze. When he left, he began work­
ing on Fade Out, supporting himself by
taking consulting jobs with companies
involved in mergers and acquisitions.
SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

9? cr
Beyond th at controversy, Temin
me, news is news. Every editor of
every newspaper is always suspected adds, there is no question that Bart
of doing favors and protecting his has done what he was hired to do:
friends and trying to do in his ene­ improve the journalistic content of
mies,” Bart says, the subject bringing the daily and weekly editions. “Variety
weariness to his voice. “For anyone to has always been written about play­
do that is simply wrong because it’s ers. But its focus had gotten a little bit
ou learn to develop a thick skin,” self-defeating. What amuses me about lost. What Peter has done is sharpen
Peter Bart says offhandedly. “It all of this is that nobody has it right. its acuity, hone in on subjects that are
The people they say are my enemies very important to the industry, and
goes with the territory.”
He remembers during his years as are not my enemies, and the people cover them as an insider would cover
a studio honcho seeing an entire table I’m supposed to be protecting are not them.”
She adds, “The entertainment com­
of people at a Hollywood eatery get up the people I’d want to protect. But I
munity
is very much like the Washing­
don’t
protect
anyone.
Everybody’s
fair
and leave because he walked in the
to n com m unity: It’s clo sed, w ith
door. He got his first death threat six game.”
As an example, Variety under Bart entrenched interests and big egos. To
months after signing on at Paramount.
did
publish a positive article on pro­ report on something, you become a
But Bart has almost come to enjoy
ducer
(and Bart’s old friend) Robert player in it. Peter sees past an enor­
being a bad boy. He delights in assign­
ing his staff articles that “tweak” Holly­ Evans’ return to Paramount. But the m ous pile of bull. T hat p ro b ab ly
newspaper joined other critics nation­ doesn’t make him that easy to work
wood’s elite.
wide
in panning Sliver, a thriller star­ with all the time.”
One recent story was a list of stars
ring
Sharon
Stone that was supposed
who could “o p en ” a m ovie—stars
n February Peter Bart decided to
whose a p p ea ran ce in a movie is to be Evans’ comeback film.
settle—permanently—in Los Ange­
“Almost everything Peter does at
enough to fill a th e a te r during a
les.
Until then, he and his wife, Leslie,
Variety
is
a
judgment
call,”
says
Davia
movie’s crucial opening weekend,
an
actress,
had lived in a Manhattan
Temin
of
Wertheim
Schroder.
“There
regardless of what it’s about.
Gossip columnists were delighted are always going to be people who are town house that once belonged to
Please turn to page 63
when the list named Eddie Murphy, going to question that judgment.”
whose career is considered to be on
DENG-JENG LEE
the wane, as the biggest opening star
over Arnold Schwarzenegger, usually
regarded as the top box-office draw in
America, especially since Schwar­
zenegger’s fee is higher th an
Murphy’s. And th e list in furiated
agents w hose s ta rs w eren ’t m en­
tioned.
mm
:
For Bart, this was an example of
exactly what Variety should be doing:
reporting insider information in a way
that’s also entertaining to the people
outside.
Controversy about Bart extends
beyond the story ideas he dreams up.
7 m cnm n
Articles in New York magazine, GQ,
JECWHCflt & CRAFT OSCARS
The Los Angeles Times, and The Wash­
ington Post have suggested that he is
using Variety to influence the industry,
Mso
punish his enemies, and protect his
IjwSSi‘
powerful friends. The sources of most
of these accusations are former Vari­
ety staffers, m ost of them quoted
Peter Bart, right, with
anonymously.
recording industry
“It’s no surprise to me that this sort
executive Eric
Kronfeld ’62 and
¿»Sid,!;“;*21'¡I¡ /f¡¡¡g¡¡
of thing would come up,” Bart says. “I
Davia Temin ’74 of
««»
«
fired 21 people when I came in here,
Wertheim Schroder at
and others have resigned since in
pÜ“ *»*»Áinufi|
I
ISSS"' 5 5 Ithe Variety/Wertheim
protest against the cultural change
Schroder media
that has happened. You can’t change
conference this year.
an institution that goes back to 1906
CIS® 0*»i r ------------ — without some people feeling ill-used.”
1 »• • • • ■ '■ u u n n i i H i » . . I
He denies playing favorites. “To

While Fade Out was being edited,
he was approached by a headhunter
to “fix” Variety, whose circulation had
sunk from a 1980 high of 50,000 to
around 25,000. Would he take it on?
Bart said yes.

Y

I

r

toschlock

AUGUST 1993

¡¡¡g f HOW,
¡1 1 1

im .

Boycotts are booming, and Zachary Lyons ’85 thinks we should
count each purchase as a vote in an “economic democracy. ”

UULLAK
ONE

VOTE

t all started with the Boston Tea
Party. “Don’t like the tea tax?”
said the Sons of Liberty. “Then
don’t drink the tea!” In ports from
South Carolina to Massachusetts, the
by Jeffrey Lott
East India Company’s tea was refused
and its agents ostracized. And when
British authorities tried to force the spreading the gospel of “one dollar,
issue in late 1773, more than 90,000 one v o te .” Lyons thinks th a t con­
p ounds of te a was dum ped into sumers express their personal values
Boston harbor. It sent a message that whenever they decide what to pur­
ch ase, and his p u b licatio n s are
sparked a revolution.
Americans are still sending mes­ designed to help them make those
sages. The East India Company may decisions.
“Whenever you spend money on a
have been replaced by Nestlé, General
Electric, or Du Pont and the tea tax by product,” says Lyons, “you are in fact
an infant form ula co n tro v e rsy , a voting for the business practices of
nuclear w eapons program , or th e the producer of that product. Once
manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons, people become aware of this, it puts a
but 220 years after the Tea Party, boy­ responsibility on their shoulders.” He
com pares b oycotts to th e Quaker
cotts are booming.
No one is m ore pleased by this principle of bearing witness: “If you
than Zachary Lyons ’85, creator of The w itness an injustice, you have the
Boycott Monthly and The Boycott Quar­ resp o n sib ility to do som ething to
terly', two publications devoted to right that injustice.”

I

12

The Boycott Monthly, a broadsheet
that is reproduced in more than 60
food co-op new sletters nationwide,
carries an in-depth examination of a
single boycott in each issue. Lyons
presents the position of the organiza­
tion calling the boycott, then inter­
views company spokespersons to get
the other side of the story: “I give
com panies the opportunity to say,
‘But we’re not doing those things.’ Or
‘We’re doing th o se things, but we
don’t think th e re ’s a problem, and
here’s why.’ I leave it up to the individ­
ual consumer to decide, based on his
or her own values, whether to join the
boycott.” Recent issues of The Boycott
M onthly have exam ined protests
against “stone-w ashed” blue jeans
(alleged environmental damage from
pum ice mining in New Mexico),
Chateau Ste. Michelle wines (labor
dispute), and Green Giant foods (shift­
ing of processing jobs to Mexico).
Lyons, who lives in Olympia,
SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Wash., launched the Monthly in 1991
and the Quarterly this spring. He’s
been an activist since his Swarthmore
days, when he was a media coordina­
tor for the movement to get the Col­
lege to divest from South Africa. Since
then h e ’s been involved w ith th e
Washington Public Interest Research
Group, Greenpeace, and another boy­
cott publication, the National Boycott
News in Seattle. Supporting himself
until recently with various “day jobs,”
Lyons now devotes himself full time
to his boycott publications.
The 32-page Boycott Quarterly,
which contains more extensive arti­
cles and listings than the Monthly, is
aimed directly at the informed con­
sumer. The inaugural issue names as
boycott targets more than 800 brandname consumer products made by
70-plus manufacturers.
Lyons sees the burgeoning boycott
movement as a prim e exam ple of
“economic democracy.” He’s started a
one-man think tank called the Center
for Economic Democracy to research
and publicize not only boycotts, but
also other ways “to make our econo­
my more responsive to consum ers’
values.” To this end he favors grocery
cooperatives, community sustained
agriculture, farmers’ markets, socially
responsible investing, even alterna­
tives to currency. But boycotts are his
main stock-in-trade.
Not all of the boycotts listed by
Lyons are called by liberals, either. In
1988 the Noxell and Estee Lauder cosmetjc companies contributed to anti­
handgun campaigns in Maryland and
California, and The Boycott Monthly
has publicized a b o y co tt called
against them by the pro-gun Second
Amendment Foundation. As long as a
boycott meets his minumum criteria,
Lyons will list it—even if he personal­
ly disagrees with its purpose. “It’s not
a journal for the politically correct,”
he says. “Boycotts can come from
anywhere along the social and politi­
cal spectrum.”
Before Lyons will list a boycott in
his publications, he requires that the
organization calling it provide a histo­
ry of the problem, specific allegations
against the target company, and spe­
cific demands that, if met, will lead to
the lifting of the boycott. He always
publishes the name and address of
both the boycotting group and the
AUGUST 1993

target company so consumers may
contact either for further information.
When he writes an article about a
boycott, he sends the target company
copies of all the allegations against it
and invites—sometimes by registered
letter—a response. Most companies
do respond, and Lyons has on occa­
sion refused to list a boycott because
the company convinced him that the
charges were unfounded. But mostly,
he says, “I just present both sides and
let people figure it out for th e m ­
selves.”
o b o y co tts work? A bsolutely,
says Lyons. He po in ts to th e
recent sale by General Electric of its
nuclear weapons business. A boycott
of GE was called in 1986 by INFACT,
the Boston-based group that had suc­
cessfully pressured the Nestlé Compa­
ny and others into agreeing to restric­
tions on the marketing of infant for­
mula in developing countries. (Nestlé
has re tu rn e d to th e b o y co tt list
because several groups charge it has
not followed the World Health Organi­
zation’s code, which it agreed to in
1984.)
“The GE action was probably the
largest boycott the world has ever
seen,” exults Lyons. “Petitions were
signed by thousands of people world­
wide. Hundreds of organizations and
religious groups joined the boycott,
and it led to the loss of sales of medi­
cal equipment in the tens of millions
of dollars.”
But a GE spokesman said that the
boycott “didn’t have anything to do
with the sale,” calling the decision
“strictly business.” Lyons counters
that although GE’s action may have
been prompted by the end of the Cold
War, “they didn’t just close those divi­
sions, they sold them. They decided
to cut their losses.”
Is this just wishful thinking? Maybe
not. Boycotts “can be successful with­
out being effective,” says business
economist N. Craig Smith, author of a
comprehensive study of what he calls
“ethical purchasing behavior.” Smith
writes that even symbolic boycotts
“are sometimes successful because of
th eir im pact on co rp o rate image,
morale, and in distracting corporate
attention.” Corporations are subject
to social control not just through the
workings of th e m arketplace, but

D

Perrier

It’s not well-known,
but Perrier was
recently acquired
by Nestlé, a
perennial boycott
target. (See below.)

Nestlé Candy
A corporate responsibility
group charges that Nestlé has
not abided by World Health
Organization rules on
marketing infant formula.

Columbia Crest Wine
Farm workers are
locked in a labor dis­
pute with the Columbia
Crest and Chateau Ste.
Michelle wineries.

Gfêcit
V io tti
¡» » B i HI
G o ld e P r
C orn

Tropicana Juice
A Delaware student
environmental
group says not to
buy Seagram
products. Seagram
is the largest share­
holder in Du Pont,
which is the world’s
largest producer of
ozone-threatening
chemicals.

100% Pure
Florida Squeezed
ORANGE JUICE
Pasteurized
NET M F l. OZ. (2 QUARTS)

through moral obligation, says Smith.
He also argues th a t ethical pur­
chase behavior is a logical and essen­
tial p a rt of capitalism . C onsum er
sovereignty, which he calls the “ratio­
nale for capitalism,” drives economic
decision-making in a market economy.
And, says Smith, consum ers d o n ’t
merely choose on the basis of price
and quality. They often make deci­
sions based on ethical considerations,
and these decisions can be influenced
by information provided by pressure
groups.
Zach Lyons sees his mission as pro­
viding that information. To him, boy­
cotts are an extension of the demo­
cratic process. “People don’t think
that the [political] system is address­
ing their needs,” he says, “so they
decide to take the direct approach.
Large corporations are major players
in the political process, so why not
take the fight directly to them? Politi­
cians stay in office with money and
votes, but corporations stay in busi­
ness only with money.”
But is “one dollar, one vote” truly
democratic? Won’t people with more
dollars get more votes in a “economic
democracy”? Lyons says, “Yes, that’s
the way it is now. But when you add
up all the people who don’t have a lot
of money, they can have a significant
impact on the few who do. If the aver­
age person doesn’t like the way corpo­
rations and the rich use their money,
then he or she can stop giving them
so much of it. Even people on welfare
or food stam ps can choose how to
spend their money.”
Sometimes, says Lyons, economic
and political democracy work togeth­
er and a corporate decision will actu­
ally lead to legislation. “You didn’t see
a bill in Congress about labeling of
tuna cans for dolphin safety until after
Heinz [producers of StarKist, the best­
selling brand of canned tuna] had
agreed to the Earth Island Institute’s
boycott demands. A major player in
the industry settled with a boycotter,
which led to government action.”
But c o rp o ra tio n s can also get
caught in the middle, especially with
their philanthropy. In 1990 Minne­
s o ta ’s Dayton-Hudson departm ent
store withdrew its long-standing sup­
port of Planned Parenthood after a
boycott th re a t from th e C hristian
A ction Council, an an ti-ab o rtio n
14

Boycotts can come from
anywhere along the political
spectrum—from labor and
the left to the Christian right.

Zachary Lyons’
non-shopping
list for
the politically
conscious
consum er
SOURCE: THE BOYCOTT QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993.
BOYCOTT INFORMATION CURRENT AS OF JULY 8,1993.
PRODUCTS PURCHASED WERE DONATED TO THE
BREAD AND ROSES SOUP KITCHEN, OLYMPIA, WASH.

Fritos
A Canadian consumer group is
boycotting Frito-Lay, a division
of PepsiCo, because of the par­
ent company’s investments in
Burma, which has a repressive
military government.
Toilet Duck
S.C. Johnson Wax, says Chris­
tian Leaders for Responsible
Television, is a leading spon­
sor of TV sex, violence, and
profanity.
SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

*
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. . . f ó

;

."' " ‘V :. :

i:‘:

Dole Pineapple

The United Food and Commer­
cial Workers accuses Castle &
Cook, parent company of Dole,
of unfair labor practices.
Celestial Seasonings Tea
A Colorado company with a
progressive reputation, Celes­
tial Seasonings has been one
of many targets of the boycott
over antigay legislation.
Noxzema Skin Cream

The Noxell Co. is accused by
the Second Amendment Foun­
dation of supporting a ban on
handguns through corporate
contributions in Maryland.
Beef

The Oregon Natural Desert
Association says not to buy
beef because grazing on public
lands damages critical animal
and plant habitats.
Oreo Cookies/Entenmann’s

Oreos (RJR/Nabisco) and
Entenmann’s (Philip Morris)
are targets of an anti-smoking
group that opposes tobacco
industry marketing practices.
Budweiser Beer

The Fund for Animals boycotts
Anheuser-Busch because of the
company’s ownership of Sea
World marine parks, where
marine mammals are held in
captivity.
Advil Pain Reliever

American Home Products,
maker of Advil, is the second
largest marketer of infant
formula and is subject to the
same boycott as Nestlé.
Dixon Ticonderoga Pencils
STEVE VENTO PHOTOGRAPHY

Special K Cereal

Coca-Cola

Educators Against Racism and
Apartheid opposes Kellogg’s
continued business involve­
ment in South Africa.

The American Friends Service
Committee of Atlanta boycotts
Coke because the company
does business in South Africa.

ScotTowels
A Nova Scotia environmental
group is concerned about Scott
Paper Co. ’s forestry practices.

Trolls

Jif Peanut Butter

In Defense of Animals is boy­
cotting all Procter & Gamble
products over animal testing.
AUGUST 1993

The Toycott Coalition/Support
Democracy in China says not
to buy Chinese-made toys
because of human rights
violations in China and Tibet.

Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen crossed picket
lines and brought in a non­
union stage crew at a
concert in Seattle last fall. A
local union says not to listen.
Colorado
Boycott Colorado Inc. urges
tourists and consumers to shun
the state and its products
because of an amendment ban­
ning local gay-rights laws.

The Rainforest Action Network
charges Dixon Ticonderoga
uses endangered rain forest
wood in some of its pencils.
California Table Grapes

Continuing labor disputes with
growers have prompted a
renewal of the grape boycott by
the United Farm Workers.
Diamond Walnuts

The Teamsters Union charges
that Diamond Walnut Growers
has hired permanent replace­
ments for striking workers.

group. But the company then found
itself the target of an even stronger
counterboycott by abortion rights
advocates. H undreds of sh o p p ers
closed their charge accounts or can­
celed orders at the store, and DaytonHudson finally restored funding for
Planned Parenthood.
San Francisco-based Levi Strauss
found itself in a similar position when
it w ithdrew s u p p o rt for th e Boy
Scouts of America because of that
organization’s ban on homosexuals.
Gay rights grou p s ap p lau d ed th e
action, but the Christian right was out­
raged. Zach Lyons sees it as a perfect
example of the consum er’s right to
choose: “If you have a problem with
Levi Strauss’ actions, don’t buy their
products. If you agree with Levi’s
actions, you’ll probably also support
the boycott of the United Way, the sin­
gle largest funding source for the Boy
Scouts.”
he politicization of th e m arket­
place w orries som e ob serv ers.
“Boycotts are powerful tools in the
hands of noisy m in o rities,” w rote
Michael Kinsley in The New Republic,
expressing his concern that “politiciz­
ing every economic decision down to
which brand of cereal to buy can gum
up the gears of com merce, poison
social relations, reduce toleration, and
generally strain the national sense of
humor.”
It can also lead to corporate back­
lash. In 1990 Boston’s WHDH-TV ran a
30-second paid ad that urged viewers
to boycott Folgers coffee because it
contained beans grown in El Salvador.
The ad, produced by the peace group
Neighbor to Neighbor and starring
actor Ed Asner, showed blood seeping
from an overturned coffee mug. In
retaliation, Procter & Gamble pulled
from the station not only its Folgers
ads but also ads for all of its other
products—a potential loss of nearly
$1 million. An essay in Business Week
sh arp ly criticized th e co m p an y ’s
actions, asking, “Is it up to advertisers
to judge w hether all o ther ads are
acceptable?”
The role of advertisers also comes
into question when the content of TV
programs is challenged. The Rev. Don­
ald Wildmon’s American Family Asso­
ciation has called numerous boycotts
Please turn to page 62

UPI/BETTMANN

The unintended
legacy of
Capt. Charles Boycott

T

hen American revolutionists
refused to buy British-taxed tea
W
in the 1770s, they were participating

Clockwise from above: A contemporary
caricature of Capt. Charles Boycott
(1832-1897). Mahatma Gandhi at the spin­
ning wheel, a symbol of his campaign to
end Indian reliance on British-made cloth.
Rosa Parks on a Montgomery, Ala., city
bus after the 1955-56 boycott victory. The
late Cesar Chavez leads a United Farm
Workers demonstration. Safe use of infant
formula requires clean water; this Sudan­
ese woman must carry it from a central
station because of pollution in the Nile.

in a boycott, but the practice didn’t
get its name until more than a century
later. In 1880 when Capt. Charles Cun­
ningham Boycott was sent by Lord
Erne into County Mayo to manage
unruly tenants, he and his family
became conspicuous victims of the
Irish Land League’s practice of com­
plete economic and social ostracism.
Within just a few years, his name had
become familiar to English-speaking
people around the world.
The boycott was quickly adopted
by the American labor movement and
became a much-feared weapon in
strikes and organizing drives. It was
so effective that at the turn of the cen­
tury, business interests mounted a
successful legal campaign to outlaw
the practice. A grand jury of the time
described the boycott as a “hydra­
headed monster, dragging its loath­
some length across the continent,
sucking the very life blood from our
trade and commerce.”
Two court decisions struck at the
heart of the movement. A boycott of
the Buck Stove and Range Company
of St. Louis by the American Federa­
tion of Labor led to a 1907 court
injunction declaring that the A.F. of L.
“unfair list” constituted a conspiracy
SW A RTH M O RE COLLEGE BULLETIN

UPI/BETTMANN

declaring the segregation of public
to destroy the company. And in the
transportation to be unconstitutional.
celebrated United Hatters case of
The Montgomery victory first gave
1908, the Supreme Court ruled that a
national prominence to the Rev. Mar­
boycott of the Daniel Loewe Hat Co.
tin Luther King Jr. and led directly to
of Danbury, Conn., was punishable
the civil rights movement of the
under the Sherman Antitrust Act,
1960s.
[ ordering the union to pay three times
Workers’ rights were on the mind
the damages sustained by the compa­
of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm
ny. For the first time, the court said
Workers in 1965. A national boycott
that unions were monopolies subject
of table grapes—and later lettuce and
to the Sherman Act and that any
certain wines—ultimately led to the
action by them in restraint of trade
unionization of many growers. The
was an illegal conspiracy. It was a
blow from which the labor movement California Agricultural Labor Rela­
tions Act, passed in 1975, guaranteed
would not recover for a quarter-cen­
the right to organize in the fields and
tury, and the law still prohibits sec­
vineyards of the nation’s most impor­
ondary boycotts in labor disputes.
tant agricultural state. When Chavez
Nonetheless, the boycott spread
died in May of this year, grapes were
well beyond the labor movement.
still being boycotted, this time to
Mahatma Gandhi used it as a weapon
of nonviolent direct action against the protest lack of enforcement of the
Labor Relations Act and to force
British Empire in India. In 1930 he led
growers to ban dangerous pesticides
a march 240 miles across India to the
sea, where he took salt from seawater from the vineyards.
A worldwide boycott of the Nestlé
in violation of the British monopoly
on salt. An estimated 60,000 people— Co. and other infant formula manufac­
turers spanned nearly 10 years in the
including Gandhi himself—were
late 1970s and early ’80s before
arrested by the British in the mass
violation of the salt laws that followed achieving limited success. In 1981 the
World Health Organization adopted
Gandhi’s action.
Twenty-five years later, Rosa Parks strict guidelines to prevent marketing
practices that had led to the decline
of Montgomery, Ala., was also arrest­
ed. She had refused to vacate her seat of breastfeeding and the deaths of
millions of babies since World War II.
on a bus to a white man, and her act
IBFAN, the International Baby Foods
of civil disobedience started perhaps
the most influential boycott in Ameri­ Action Network, orchestrated a highcan history. For 13 months the blacks ly successful publicity campaign and
boycott that forced Nestlé and many
of Montgomery stayed away from the
smaller manufacturers to agree to
public transit system, an action that
change their practices.
—J.L
led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision
AUGUST 1993

z
f

ËQ
C
|

u
jü
|
|

P Iu s Q i
Change
After 54 years, a visit to
Swarthmore reveals
many changes. But change,
says Molly Gordon ’39,
is the law of survival.
by Molly Grinnell Gordon ’39

arly on a mid-April Monday, I set
out from my roost in the frozen
Berkshires and lurched south­
ward on Amtrak in response to an
invitation from the Bulletin. I was to
rev isit my alm a m ater after an
ab sence of 54 years to reco rd my
impressions, and with every passing
mile I grew m ore u n easy ab o u t
whether I could fulfill this assignment.
From 1939 to 1993 is a long time; what
would be my reaction? The haunting
sensation of déjà vu or the feeling
(more appropriate to my 75 years)
that you can’t go home again? And
how could I, now so out of touch with
the contemporary world, even begin
to comprehend, much less digest, the
many changes I was sure to see—all
within 24 hours?
It was “déjà vu all over again” when
I arrived, still bundled in my winter
woollies, and was instantly dum b­
struck by the beauty all around me. I
had fo rg o tten th a t in sp rin g tim e
Swarthmore College is a paradise. The

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air was warm and full of bird song.
The forsythia, bridal w reath, and
Japanese cherries were fountains of
blossom. And the magnolias, catalpas,
and chestnuts were at full candlepower. My winter-starved senses could
hardly take in this assault of son et
lumière, warmth, and color. Monet
would have gone out of his mind.
The first event on my schedule was
a tour of the campus. As a thoughtful
concession to my advanced years, the
management had provided student
escorts and the use of a motorized
golf cart for the duration of my visit.
We started at Parrish, which from the
front facade seemed unchanged. But
the dining room, scene of my unfor­
gettable introduction to scrapple and
many a roll fight, was gone. I declined
a visit to my old room on Third East,
partly because it involved climbing
stairs, but mostly because I had an
uncom fortable recollection of th e
heartless way my roommate and I had
giggled in ’36, when some doddering

crock of an alumna of ’21 had come
around to look at her old room.
I was reassured that the Post Office
was still there. How well I remember
the student postal clerk delivering an
open carton containing a cake from
w hich a n eat w edge had been
removed, explaining solemnly, “This
got damaged in the mail.” The Phoenix
offices w ere also still in Parrish,
reminding me of my ignominious dis­
m issal from its staff by the editor
because of my cavalier disregard of
headline letter-counting. Well, I got
even with him later; I married him.
From Parrish we trundled around
the campus to view stately Clothier
(looking the same from the outside
but changed beyond recognition with­
in), the timeless am phitheater, and
th e stu n n in g new Eugene M. and
Theresa Lang Performing Arts Center.
The old football field, scene of so
many “moral victories” for the Swarth­
more team, was still there. So was
Trotter Hall, which, just as it had been
SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

in my day, was “about to undergo ren­ because I could always rely on the
grinding of the striking mechanism to
ovation.”
With a su itab le sen se of awe, I wake me up every 15 minutes. But to
viewed the new com puter center, balance this loss, there was still the
which enables students to tap into stand of immemorial copper beeches
libraries all over the country as well near what used to be the women’s
as into many other esoteric informa­ gym; they looked even larger and
tion services. I felt a pang of retro­ more stately than they had when my
spective envy as I recalled all those roommate and I together could not
hours I drudged away, copying get our arms around any one of them.
It was then time for dinner in the
Chaucer in longhand.
The old d o rm ito ries w ere still new [1965] S harpies Dining Hall,
standing but are now all coed, a major which I shall describe only briefly as a
change from the time when the segre­ unique experience in cacophony and
gation of the sexes and parietal super­
vision by the College was just a fact of
he strongest
life. Such was the innocence of those
days that when two senior students
impression I
sneaked out and actually got married
(!), it created a major campus scan­
had w as of the
dal. They almost lost their degrees
and very nearly got expelled.
deep continuity
I was saddened to see that the old
between past
library had burned down. That little
room under the clock in the tower
and present.
was my favorite place to stu d y

T

AUGUST 1993

It was a perfect April day on Parrish lawn.
Students there looked larger and healthier,
and were infinitely more diverse in phys­
iognomy, than in her day, says Gordon.
c la u stro p h o b ia , follow ed by an
evening lecture in Bond by a noted
lesbian Chicana poet. Bond looked
just the same as it did when I tottered
out of it almost 54 years ago to the
day, after my last Honors exam. The
room was filled to capacity, but unfor­
tunately I was too deaf to hear the lec­
ture, which, as my stu d en t esco rt
later explained to me, was about the
restrictions placed on the creative
artist today by outdated racial and
sexual stereotyping.
It was far past my usual bedtime
when she carted me back to my very
com fortable room in Ashton guest
house (another improvement since
my time), through streets that were
just as I rem em bered them, silent,
dark, and somnolent under a heavy
canopy of leaves.
19

t w a s fa r

I

past m y usual
bedtim e w hen
she ca rte d m e
b ack to m y
room th ro u gh
s tre e ts th a t
w e re ju s t as I
re m em bered
th e m — sile n t,
dark, and
som n o len t
under a h e a vy
ca n o p y o f le a ve s.
Th e n e xt m orning
m y re q u e st to
v is it so m e cla sse s
w a s gra n ted .

20

The next morning my request to
visit some classes was granted, so I
sat in on an 8:30 course called Modern
America: Culture, Society, and State,
which I found fascinating not only for
the content but also because almost
all of th e stu d en ts w ere eating or
drinking something. It didn’t seem to
b o th er Robin Wagner-Pacifici, the
young sociology professor who led
the discussion, but it would not have
occurred in the ’30s. Our only source
of snack food was the “Druggie” in the
Ville, where, in that blissful era before
the onset of universal morbid healthconsciousness, we gorged on cherry
cokes and cinnamon buns grilled in
leftover hamburger fat.
After a second class, this time in art
history, we repaired to Essie Mae’s,
the snack bar in Clothier, for lunch. It
was here I found one of the most strik­
ing changes: Clothier no longer serves
as the meeting place of the entire stu­
dent body. The regular daily gathering
we called Collection is a thing of the
past. As we entered the building, I
remembered vividly my Commence­
ment ceremony when President Aydelotte escorted th e speaker Edvard
Benes, president of Czechoslovakia,
through that self-same door. What an
ironic juxtaposition of past and pres­
ent! Things now are even w orse in
that ill-fated region than they were in
1939.
The day was half over, and it was
time to catch my train. I departed
from W ilmington, Del., my mind a
seething turmoil of crowded impres­
sions and fleeting images. In order to
fulfill my assignment, I had to bring
some order out of this chaos, or, to
fracture Wordsworth, “recollect com­
motion in tranquillity,” so I’ve decided
to cite a few statistics to encapsulate
the more obvious changes.
Our Class of 1939 contained virtual­
ly no minority students; one saw no
Asian, Latino, or black faces on cam­
pus except one Anglo-Indian and one
Japanese exchange student. Racial
attitudes were then so ingrained that
an eminent black scholar who visited
campus dined privately at the home
of th e p re sid e n t ra th e r th an risk
offending students’ sensibilities by the

customary public dinner in Parrish.
This social compromise did not pass
u n n o ticed by th e ed ito r of The
Phoenix, who made it the subject of a
first-page editorial. I am proud to say
that President Aydelotte apologized.
In contrast to the near-zero minori­
ty count of 1939, the College in 1993
has a total of 307 Asian, Latino, and
African American students, almost a
q u arte r of th e to tal .enrollm ent of
1,270. In 1939 th e graduating class
numbered 198; this year it was 316.
Charges in 1939 were: tuition, $400;
room and board, $500; and an activi­
ties fee of $75, which covered laundry,
books (!), telephone, and breakage.
The co rresp o n d in g num bers for
1992-93 were: tuition, $17,450; room
and board, $4,584; and activities fee,
$186. Books, of course, are extra.
But most of the evidence of change
I got from impressions, not cold facts.
The stu d e n ts looked larger and
healthier than my contemporaries did
(better nutrition) and were infinitely
more diverse in physiognomy. In chat­
ting with students, I discovered that
the curriculum was much broader and
m ore cross-disciplinary than mine
had been. The 1992-93 catalogue
offers courses and programs unheard
of in 1939: The Political History of Art;
Asian Studies; Ecology; The Urban
Underclass; Historical and Compara­
tive Linguistics; Gender, Culture, and
Society; Latin American Urbanization.
All this diversity reflects the enor­
m ous so cietal changes th a t have
come about in America during the last
half-century.
Change of course is the law of sur­
vived, and it involves losses as well as
gains. I sensed a certain loss of the old
warmth and intimacy between stu­
dents and faculty. We used to vie to
invite our professors to dinner in Par­
rish, and a lot of us took the Honors
Program just because the seminars
were held in faculty homes. I felt too
the loss of institutional cohesiveness,
which was reinforced by such rituals
as Collection and communal meals at
fixed times. I wondered whether such
academic and social diversity might
ultimately have a divisive effect.
But the strongest impression I had
SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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“We used to vie to invite our professors
to dinner, ”remembers Gordon. Here
she chats with Robin Wagner-Pacifici,
associate professor of sociology.

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throughout my visit was of the deep
co n tin u ity and in te rre la tio n sh ip
between past and present. I remem­
ber my delight, arriving fresh from a
Midwestern high school, to learn that
at Swarthmore it was socially accept­
able, even commendable, for girls to
have ideas and opinions; how much
more so today! According to one stu­
dent, “We’re all just a bunch of com­
pulsive overachievers.” That certainly
hasn’t changed.
The old sense of social responsibili­
ty has greatly expanded; all the bul­
letin b o ard s w ere cro w ded w ith
appeals to participate in labor dis­
putes, political issues, urban renewal
projects, and multicultural programs.
From all this diversity, Swarthmore
hopes, as President Bloom so elo­
quently put it in the last issue of this
magazine, to produce society’s future
leaders, women and men who can
“define the purposes of a technologi­
cally advanced society in ways that
put human values in the forefront.”
Hurrah!
So after I had had time to sort out
this tangle of the past and the present,
I decided that my reaction was not
primarily that of déjà vu or that you
can’t go home again. It was really a
combination of the two into a power­
ful feeling that “Plus ça change, plus
c ’est (more or less) la même chose,”
or, to q u o te from an anonym ous
eig h th -cen tu ry so u rce, ilTempora
mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.”
And I think that the most poignant
reminders of the connection between
past and present were when I realized
that all that territory I covered in the
golf cart I once traversed on my own
two feet, and when I received a check
for my train fare from the College,
made out in my maiden name. ■
Mary “M olly” Grinnell Gordon ’39
writes a biweekly op-ed column for The
Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass. She
lives in nearby Lenox. She is the widow
ofKermit Gordon ’38, who died in 1976.

mm
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ’67

AUGUST 1993

21

5COLLEGE
Speakers call for
social action at
121st Commencement
Urging new graduates to
“resist the seduction of
simplifying solutions” to
complex problems, Presi­
dent Alfred H. Bloom pre­
sided over the College’s
121st Commencement,
awarding 301 bachelor of
arts degrees, 21 bachelor of
science degrees, and five
honorary degrees.
“We are often tempted,”
he said, “to accept too
readily a simple picture of
things. At times because
the simplicity is in itself
appealing, particularly
when it takes the form of
aesthetically elegant,
parsimonious, and easily
generalizable theoretical
models of the way the
world might be.
“Whether in the physi­
cal, psychological, or bio­
logical worlds or in the
worlds of individuals, insti­
tutions, and societies, set
yourself to imagining more
complex conceptualiza­
tions and more complex
responses than have yet
been tried. In so doing you
will open up for yourselves
and for society new realms
of knowledge and new
realms of possibility and
carry on an essential
Swarthmore tradition.”
Honorary degree recipi­
ents included Jonathan
Fine ’54, an internationally
renowned physician and
human rights activist, who
was awarded the Doctor of
Science; Arlie Russell Hochschild ’62, sociologist and
author, who received the
Doctor of Humane Letters;
musician and cultural his­
22

torian Bernice Johnson
Reagon of the singing
group Sweet Honey in the
Rock, who wets awarded
the Doctor of Humane Let­
ters; Father Jon Sobrino, a
philosopher and theologian
from El Salvador, who
received the Doctor of
Humane Letters; and Sen.
Harris Wofford (D-Pa.),
who was awarded the Doc­
tor of Laws.
In related commence­
ment activities, Tu Weiming, professor of Chinese
history and philosophy at
Harvard University, deliv­
ered the Baccalaureate
address. Alexandra Juhasz,
assistant professor of En­
glish literature at Swarth­
more, spoke at Last Collec­
tion. Following are ex­
cerpts from honorary
degree recipients’ charges
to the seniors.
Jonathan E. Fine ’54

Jonathan Fine ’54 is the
founder of Physicians for
Human Rights, an interna­
tional organization dedicat­
ed to researching and reliev­
ing human rights violations.
“I am guided by an abid­
ing optimism that with the
application of intelligence
and effort, even the most
intractable situations can
be improved. But for con­
sistent results, humanitarianism must become an
imperative in foreign and
domestic policies. For it is
naive to think that we can
have a peaceful world
based on what has in the
past been called ‘national’
or even ‘international’ se­
curity. We can only attain a
peaceful world when the
dignity of every human

being is taken seriously,
when majority populations
accept that minorities
should be treated with the
same consideration, the
same deference, that each
member of the majority
wants for himself or her­
self. That is the essence of
the Los Angeles riots or
ethnic disputes every­
where, of the revulsion
from greed and megaloma­
nia, conditions that are
rampant in so many cor­
ners of the globe. To effect
these changes will take

Jonathan E. Fine 54
Doctor of Science

PHOTOS BY STEVEN GOLDBLATT '67

Bernice Johnson Reagon
Doctor of Humane Letters

Jon Sobrino
Doctor of Humane Letters
bring about the necessary
change. Each of us is the
key to the creation of a just
and peaceful world.”
Arlie Russell
Hochschild ’62

Arlie Russell Hochschild ’62
Doctor of Humane Letters
more than individual initia­
tives—a collective will of
nations. Yet each of us by
personal example and by
bringing pressure to bear
on our governments can

Arlie Russell Hochschild ’62
is professor of sociology at
the University of California
at Berkeley and author of
the best-selling book The
Second Shift: Working Par­
ents and the Revolution at
Home.
“This last fall I had the
privilege of being a Lang
Visiting Professor in the
Sociology Department.
Since during that fall I lived
on Walnut Lane, right
across the street from
Woolman House, where 30
SW A RTH M O RE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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years ago I had roomed as
a senior, for me this was a
resonant time. It was a time
to remember my youth
here—talking politics on
long walks and much else.
It was a time to revisit that
youth, not as I had at the
time experienced it—in
some combination of fierce
determination and utter
uncertainty—but from the
viewpoint of a teacher, a
knower of how some things
come out later on. It was a
time to see what Swarthmore students are like
these days: They’re bubbly
and they’re smart.
“As fretful, insecure, or
restless as Swarthmore can
make us feel, the place
does something to us. It
leaves its imprint. It be­
comes part of who we are,
even if we’re not aware it’s
doing this. Swarthmore has
picked lively, committed
students and helped you
grow into your liveliness
and commitment. It makes
you better able to make
good things happen and
last.”
Bernice Johnson Reagon

Bernice Johnson Reagon is
the founder and artistic
director of the a cappella
folk group Sweet Honey in
the Rock and has been a
major contributor to the civil
rights movement as a singer,
composer, and historian of
African American culture.
“My first introduction to
the Quaker community had
to do with stories about
groups of white people
who came to this country
who believed in peace and
sometimes had problems
with slavery. Sufficiently so
that sometimes when they
built their houses, they
built secret places to hide
us if we ever got to their
houses when we were es­
caping slavery.
AUGUST 1993

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“I remember being in
one of those houses in
upstate New York and
being inside of this little
space trying to think about
what it would have been
like to be in that space if I
were trying to get to Cana­
da. It was a Quaker house.
And then I tried to think
about the man who built
the house, because you
have to be really clear
about who you a r e ... dur­
ing the 19th century if
you’re building your home
for your family and you
build a secret space to hide
black people escaping from
slavery. You have to have
that as your work equal to
sheltering your family.
“It was stretching for me
to think about Americans
of that commitment, and I
thought, ‘I wonder when I
was taught 19th-century
American history. These
people were not the stars
of the 19th century.’ After
all, during the 19th century
these people, led by Afri­
can Americans escaping
from slavery, ripped slav­
ery as an institution out of
the structure of society.
Why isn’t that the center
post of what is great about
what happened in the 19th
century? And why aren’t
these people, black and
white, at the top and on the
front of the tongues of all of
those who studied the cen­
tury?”
Jon Sobrino

Father Jon Sobrino, profes­
sor of philosophy and theol­
ogy at the Universidad Jose
Simeon Canas in El Salva­
dor, is an internationally
renowned practitioner of lib­
eration theology.
“Living in the recil world
and demonstrating a sin­
cere commitment to the
victims of its injustices are
the two basic criteria for a

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university that wishes to
call itself humane. We can­
not allow the university to
become an island for the
privileged who, whether in
the short or long run, only
reinforce the inequities of
an unjust world. Again, the
university must place its
knowledge at the service of
overcoming such injustice
and the falsehoods that dis­
guise it.
“This, then, is what I
offer to the members of
this college community
and, in particular, to you,
today’s graduates. You are
about to enter a world of
real possibilities for truth,
justice, and life, but it is
also one with a strong ten­
dency for deceit, selfish­
ness, and the violent elimi­
nation of the poor. I also
offer you this legacy of our
martyrs as ‘the good news,’
even though today’s soci­
ety does not normally pro­
claim it. Jesus of Nazareth
said: ‘It is better to give
than to receive.’ What I am
asking is that you not only
sustain your level of sup­
port for the poor, but that
you increase it. And in this
way, all of us together, by
mutually helping one
another, will one day suc­
ceed in finally becoming
truly human.”
Harris L. Wofford Jr.

Sen. Harris L. Wofford Jr. is
noted for his political activ­
ism in civil rights. The for­
mer president of Bryn Mawr
College, he served as Penn­
sylvania’s secretary of labor
and industry and as Demo­
cratic State Committee chair­
man.
“So it’s time for the Class
of ’93. It’s time for you to
pursue happiness in the
wider world. Yes, there is
life after Swarthmore, and I
wish you the best of luck in
it. And for your sakes and

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for our country’s sake, I
hope that in your pursuit of
happiness you will enjoy
what Thomas Jefferson and
John Adams called the pub­
lic happiness. That is the
joy felt by citizens who par­
ticipate in self-government
and who make a difference
for the better in their com­
munities. Many of you in
this college of Quaker tradi­
tion committed to service
have learned that it is bet­
ter to serve than to be
served, whether you’ve
done that building a home
with low-income people or
tutoring in Holmesburg or

Harris L. Wofford Jr.
Doctor of Laws

climbing on the fire wagon
to fight fires.
“So now you’ve heard
from us all. We’ve all been
saying somewhat the same
thing, the perennial com­
mencement charge.
There’s really only one
throughout history: An
elder of the tribe comes
and tells you that you are
young and beautiful and
that the world is complicat­
ed and full of dangers and
opportunities. Well, you
are all beautiful and the
world is complicated. But
don’t let complexity be an
excuse for doing nothing.
23

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The world is waiting, so go
out in it and build, go out in
it and clean it up. Don’t be
afraid of anything. Go for
it.”
Senior class speaker
Quoc Tran Trang

STEVEN GOLDBLATT ’67

“Our country is like the Ark
of Noah. Aboard this boat
are the people of the world.
In the Ark of America, there
are, as Walt Whitman once
said, ‘a farmer, mechanic,
artist, gentleman, sailor,
Quaker... Chinese, Irish,
[and] German.’ Aboard the
Ark of America there are
the ‘great mass of people—
the vast, surging, hopeful
army of workers.’ The Ark

Quoc Tran Trang ’92
Senior Class Speaker
of America is now entering
the new ocean of the 21st
century, but it is leaking
and the storm will last
more than 40 days and 40
nights.
“And in the new ocean
of the 21st century, the
strength of the nation will
not be determined by how
many prisons we can build;
it will be determined by
how many productive
workers we can produce.
“In the new ocean of the
21st century, the strength
of a nation will not be
determined by how many
talented athletes we have
who are willing to perform;
24

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it will be determined by
how many visionary pro­
fessors we have who are
willing to train.
“In the new ocean of the
21st century, the strength
of a nation will not be de­
termined by how many
armed soldiers we have; it
will be determined by how
many educated citizens we
can produce.”
New director of
admissions aboard;
two are promoted
A new director of admis­
sions began work last
month and two College vet­
erans have been promoted
to new duties.
Carl Wartenburg, former
assistant to the president
at Princeton, is the director
of admissions, a post he
will hold during this com­
ing academic year. He will
become dean of admis­
sions in the fall of 1994
when Robert A. Barr Jr. ’56
retires as dean.
Wartenburg has worked
at Princeton as a senior
admissions officer and as
an assistant dean of stu­
dent affairs, in which posi­
tion he gained a national
reputation for his work
with alcohol abuse issues.
He is a graduate of Davis
and Elkins College and
earned a master of divinity
degree from Princeton The­
ological Seminary.
Maurice G. Eldridge ’61
has been promoted from
director of development to
associate vice president
and executive assistant to
the president. In his new
role, he will support the
president's communica­
tions with alumni, parents,
and donors as well as coor­
dinate Commencement and
other major campus
events.
Eldridge joined the Col­
lege staff in 1989 after serv­

ing as principal of the Duke
Ellington School of the Arts
in Washington, D.C.
Mark Jacobs, Centennial
Professor of Biology, has
been named associate
provost for a three-year

Carl Wartenburg
Director of Admissions

Maurice Eldridge ’61
Associate Vice President

Mark Jacobs
Associate Provost

term. He joined the faculty
in 1975 after receiving a
doctorate from Stanford
University.
As associate provost,
Jacobs will serve on a half­
time basis as liaison be­
tween the Provost’s Office
and the faculty on activities
that include budgeting for
academic departments,
preparation of grants to
support faqjlty research
and the curriculum, and
curricular planning and
innovation.
Foreign Study
Office opens
The College has expanded
its commitment to interna­
tional study by opening the
Foreign Study Office, which
will help students find ap­
propriate programs for
international study and
coordinate study abroad.
Anthropology Professor
Steven Piker heads the new
office as foreign study
adviser.
“Study abroad is not
separate from the Swarthmore program but rather is
integral to it,” said Piker.
Thus, a major focus of the
office will be “to encourage
and help some depart­
ments to become more
involved in foreign study as
one of the ways in which
the academic mission can
be fulfilled.”
In addition, the office
will work to evaluate the
quality of programs of
study and to develop stan­
dards for work done
abroad that will provide
the basis for ensuring cred­
it when the students re­
turn. Students will get help
in integrating work done
abroad with their continu­
ing studies on campus and
in planning their foreign
study so that they will be
able to graduate with their
original class.
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To enable the College to
fulfill this new commit­
ment, beginning next
spring full tuition and fees
will be charged for all cred­
its received for foreign
study. Financial aid will
also be applied to study
abroad.
“At the sound
of the tone...”
Beginning in late August,
callers to the College will
have their incoming calls
answered by a personal­
ized voice mail system
when no one is available to
answer the call.
Swarthmore marked
another technological mile­
stone this summer with the
completion of an all-cam­
pus computer and tele­
phone network. When stu­
dents return for the fall
semester, they will find pri­
vate telephones and com­
puter hookups in every
dormitory room. The fiber­
optic system will give
them—and the faculty and
staff of the College—on-line
access to an extensive
menu of library and data
base resources, specialized
software applications, elec­
tronic mail, and voice mail
services.
Students will be
charged $175 per year for
the computer hookup and
local/campus telephone
service. Long distance ser­
vice will be bought by the
College and “resold” to stu­
dents at discount rates.

AUGUST 1993

More than 1,100 alumni and guests attended this year’s Alumni Weekend, June 4-6.
Student worker Maura Volkmer ’93 transports some precious cargo.

Only Apple Macintosh
computers will work on the
network, but the College’s
own computer store sells
those at substantial dis­
counts for students. Stu­
dents who do not have
their own personal com­
puters will still have access
to College-provided ma­
chines at public areas in
Beardsley, Du Pont, and
Trotter halls, and in
McCabe and Cornell
libraries.
Three faculty members
retire, four get
endowed chairs
Three faculty members
retired this year, and four
were appointed to en­
dowed chairs to begin fall
semester.
Harrison M. Wright has
retired. He will become
Isaac H. Clothier Professor
Emeritus of History and
International Relations and

Provost Emeritus. A spe­
cialist in African history,
Wright joined the faculty in
1958. He served as chair­
man of the History Depart­
ment from 1968 until 1979,
when he became provost.
During his term as provost,
he served as acting presi­
dent of the College from
July until November of
1982.
Professor of Anthropolo­
gy Asmarom Legesse took
early retirement from the
College in order to return
to his native Eritrea. He
had two stints at Swarth­
more, from 1968 to 1970
and again from 1976 to
1993. A self-described “hu­
man ecologist,” Legesse
had been active in the
Eritrean independence
movement and will be a
research adviser to the
new government on mat­
ters ranging from health
practices to land reform.

Susan Snyder, a Shake­
speare scholar who joined
the faculty in 1963, be­
comes the Gil and Frank
Mustin Professor Emerita
of English Literature. She
served as department chair
from 1975 to 1980 and as
Eugene M. Lang Research
Professor from 1982 to
1987.
Kenneth Gergen replac­
es Snyder in the chair as Gil
and Frank Mustin Professor
of Psychology. Gergen has
been a member of the fac­
ulty since 1967, and his
research on the American
personality and the impact
of communications tech­
nology on cultural life has
brought him wide national
attention and numerous
grants, including a Fulbright, a Guggenheim, and
several from the National
Science Foundation.
Peter Collings is the new
Morris L. Clothier Profes25

E
sor of Physics, replacing
Mark Heald, who retired
last year from the Depart­
ment of Physics and As­
tronomy. A member of the
faculty since 1990, Collings
has been the principal
investigator under grants
for liquid crystal research
from the National Science
Foundation and Research
Corporation. He was a
National Academy of Sci­
ences Exchange Scientist to
the former Soviet Union in
1991 and is an associate
editor of the American Jour­
nal of Physics.
Amy-Jill Levine is the
new Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Associate Professor of
Religion, and Tyrene White
is the new Mari S. Michener
Associate Professor of
Political Science. They are
the first recipients of two
new endowed associate
professorships, which were
made possible by the gift of
James Michener ’29. Levine
has been a member of the
faculty since 1985 and spe­
cializes in Jewish and
Christian Biblical tradi­
tions, feminist interpreta­
tions of scripture, and the
historical relationship
between Judaism and
Christianity. White has
done research in the Peo­
ple’s Republic of China on
political change and institu­
tional development in rural
China, child-bearing policy,
and women. She has been a
member of the faculty
since 1986.
North campus plans
include new building
This summer a team of
architects and landscape
designers has been draw­
ing detailed plans for the
construction of a new aca­
demic building north of
Parrish Hall and the com­
plete renovation of Trotter
Hall. The Board of Man­
26

C

agers gave its approval in
May to a proposed plan to
erect the new building on a
site between Beardsley Hall
and the Eugene M. and
Theresa Lang Performing
Arts Center. Parrish Annex
will be demolished as part
of this project.
The new classroom
building is expected to
house the departments of
economics, modern lan­
guages and literatures, and
sociology/anthropology. In
addition to a centrally
located commons for the
north campus with limited
food service, there will be a
faculty lounge and the
North Campus Forum, a
multipurpose lecture/meeting space. Changes to cam­
pus roads, particularly a
proposal to convert the
road between Beardsley
and the new building to a
pedestrian walkway, are
being considered as part of
a long-range plan for the
north campus.
The renovated Trotter
Hall will likely include the
departments of classics,
history, and political sci­
ence. Both buildings will
have faculty offices, seminar/resource rooms, and
classrooms with up-to-date
communications and com­
puter hookups. Interdisci­
plinary programs will also
have increased space with­
in Trotter.
On June 21 the College
steering committee that is
overseeing the project saw
three preliminary designs
for the new building. The
committee has encouraged
the architects to pursue
solutions that will vary the
roofline of the expected
three-story structure to
complement the design of
neighboring buildings.
The architects and the
steering committee will
continue work over the

E
summer on the design and
internal layout of the two
buildings. The Board of
Managers will then review
the plans and their estimat­
ed cost at its October meet­
ing. The College currently
hopes to raise funds for the
entire project from a small
number of interested
donors.

Two publications
win national awards
Two Swarthmore publica­
tions were honored by the
Council for the Advance­
ment and Support of Edu­
cation (CASE) in its 1993
Recognition Program.
The Swarthmore College
Bulletin received a silver
medal in the category “Peri­
odicals Resources Manage­
ment,” one of only four
medals awarded. Since
1991 the average produc­
tion cost per issue of the
magazine has dropped by
17 percent. At the same
time, the usual number of
pages has increased from
56 to 64, and additional
color photography has
been added where needed.
Major savings have been
achieved in the cost of
typesetting, paper, and
printing. The Bulletin is
now composed entirely on
Apple computers at the
College and is printed on
recycled paper at The Lane

G

E

Press in Burlington, Vt.
The 1991-92 President’s
Report, issued in December
of last year, won a bronze
medal as an individual
institutional relations publi­
cation. The redesigned
report, President Alfred H.
Bloom’s first, was honored
for the way it presented
Swarthmore’s identity and
for its content, organiza­
tion, and graphics. It was
designed by Landesberg
Design Associates of Pitts­
burgh. Of more than 225
entries, it was one of just 20
honored by CASE.
Many moral victories
for Swarthmore
teams this spring
Baseball (10-14): The 1993
nine got off to a poor start
but turned the season
around when they opened
MAC play, winning three of
four games in doublehead­
ers with Washington Col­
lege and Ursinus. In one of
the most competitive MAC
Southeast seasons ever,
the Garnet split a pair of
one-run games with archri­
val Haverford, setting up a
season-ending doublehead­
er with Johns Hopkins for
the division title and a
berth in the MAC playoffs.
Behind the pitching of Jeff
Johnson ’93, the Garnet
won the opening game 5-3
but lost the second 7-6,
stranding the tying run in
the last inning. Though the
offense struggled early in
the year, it picked up
enough to bring Swarth­
more home with a 10—14
record overall, 6-4 in the
MAC Southeast. Seniors Art
Selverian, John Crawford,
and Ben Montenegro led
the Garnet offense, with
Selverian finishing among
the MAC leaders in RBIs
and slugging percentage.
The pitching staff was led
by Johnson and two senior
SW A RTH M O RE COLLEGE BULLETIN

E
additions to the team, Chip
C h e v a l i e r and Erik DeLue.
Todd Kim ’94 and Gene
Lam ’94 w i l l form the back­
bone of next year’s pitch­
ing staff.
Golf: The men’s golf
team, under coach Lee
Wimberly, had another
successful spring cam­
paign. Its numbers were
diminished by injuries to
key players, and only three
- golfers qualified for the
MAC tournament. Thus,
Swarthmore was ineligible
for the team competition,
the team was led by
Andres Zuluaga, who has
been a key player for the
last three years and will be
looked to for senior leader­
ship in the 1994 campaign.
Women’s lacrosse (6-9):
1993 marked the inaugural
campaign of coach Karen
Yohannan, a former stand­
out player for the U.S.
World Cup team. Attack
player Julie Noyes ’95 led
the team with 75 goals and
was named to the MAC AllStar team and All MidAtlantic Region. Noyes
received crucial support
from co-captain Hadley Wil­
son ’93. With Noyes on the
attack for the upcoming
season, a good crop of
young players, and coach
Yohannan’s knowledge,
experience, and recruiting
ability, the women’s la­
crosse program looks to be
on the rise.
Men’s lacrosse (7-7):
Under the tutelage of coach
Jim Noyes, the men’s
lacrosse team finished 7-7
against the best lacrosse
competition in the region.
With an attack led by
senior captains Kevin Bewley, Greg Ferguson, and
Sandy Watkins, the team
jumped out to a 5-1 record,
including two one-goal vic­
tories. They then lost to
fifth-ranked Washington
AUGUST 1993

C

College before falling to
Haverford 17-11 in a slop­
py, rain-drenched game.
The Garnet added late-season wins against Fairleigh
Dickinson-Madison and
Widener, finishing 3-2 in
the MAC East. Bewley was
named to the All-MAC sec­
ond team. He also received
the Avery Blake Award as
the team’s most valuable
player. The team’s outlook
for next year is strong, with
the return of standout
goalie Tim Gasperoni ’96
and a strong defense.
Softball (2-20): The softball team struggled in 1993,
despite the return of sever­
al key players from last
year’s strong team. The
enthusiasm surrounding
the arrival of Cheri Goetcheus, in her first year as
head coach at Swarthmore,
was dampened by the
team’s disappointing
record. One highlight for
the team was the develop­
ment of Margy Pierce ’95,
who hit .300 for the season
and led the team in slug­
ging percentage and RBIs.
Women’s tennis (11-6):

O

L

L

E

Though a second consecu­
tive NCAA tournament
berth eluded the Garnet
women, they didn’t miss by
much. They are a young
team showing great prom­
ise for the future, compiling
a 3-1 mark in the MAC
Southeast. Leaders on the
court were sophomores
Becca Kolasky, Ayanda
Nteta, and Kim Crusey.
While Crusey, the 1992
MAC singles champion,
Weis sidelined throughout
much of the season with
ankle injuries, Kolasky and
Nteta provided the Garnet
with strong play through­
out the season, most
notably in a hard-fought
5-4 win over Haverford.
They came close to their
second consecutive MAC
doubles title before losing
in the finals. The team’s
development under firstyear coach Mary Hudson
should make Swarthmore a
continual contender in the
MAC and on the national
scene.
Men’s tennis (4-12): The
Garnet’s appearance at the
NCAA Championships was

G

E

a surprise to many in the
tennis world, given its
rather poor record. The
strength of the team’s
schedule, however, gave it
the berth in the tourna­
ment, where it finished a
respectable 10th. Leading
the team throughout the
season was senior captain
Phil Rosenstrach ’93.
Rosenstrach won his sec­
ond Rolex Small College
Eastern Regional Tourna­
ment and compiled a 16-10
record in singles for the
season. Rosenstrach and
sophomore standout Jere­
my Shweder both qualified
for the NCAA Divison II sin­
gles championships.
Men’s and women’s
track and field: The high­
light of the track and field
season was its finale, as
Swarthmore hosted the
1993 MAC track and field
championships. Though
the Garnet was not in the
running for any team
titles—with the women fin­
ishing seventh and the men
14th—there were some
exciting moments for the
Garnet fans in attendance.
Kate Dempsey ’95 won the
women’s 400-meter dash,
and her sister Liz ’93
placed third in the 400meter hurdles. Tina Shepardson ’94 and Jennell Ives
’93 both placed in the triple
jump, and the women’s
team set a school record in
the 4x100-meter relay. For
the men, the highlights
were in the distance
events, as Scott Reents ’95
placed sixth in the 1,500
and special student Guian
McKee ’92 charged home
with a second-place finish
in the 5,000-meter run.
Hood Trophy: This
year’s head-to-head compe­
tition with Haverford
ended in a tie, with each
college gaining 7.5 points.
— Willie Young ’94
27

ALUMNI
ALUM N I C OU

m

n response to last spring’s ballot for
election to the Alumni Council, we
received the following letter:

I

Dear Alum Friends:
I’d like to explain why I didn’t
vote in the recent polls for members
of the Alumni Council.
It’s not because I don’t care.
It’s not because I think it doesn’t
matter.
It’s simply because I have no rele­
vant knowledge of the tasks before
the Council and no knowledge of
what the candidates would do or
how they’d do it.
All I could do would have been to
distinguish those candidates I know
(hardly any) from those I don’t or
those candidates who attended the
College when I did (a few) from
those who didn’t. That didn’t seem
relevant.
I considered falling back on age
or gender as my voting guide, but
that seemed silly.
Having no rational basis for mak­
ing a decision, it seemed better not
to vote than to fill a ballot at ran­
dom.
Sincerely,
Paul Berry ’55
Palo Alto, Calif.

Since the percentage of alumni vot­
ing in the seven geographical regions
ranged from 20 percent to 31 percent,
this sentiment was not shared by all,
but it reflects a problem that we’d like
to overcome. Unfortunately, those of
us who’ve been connected with the
Council have come up with no quick
fix, nor did our correspondent offer a
solution. But we’d be interested in
hearing suggestions as to how we can
improve the election process—or any
o th e r a sp e c t of Council activity.
Please send them to me c/o the Alum­
ni Office. (See coupon, opposite page.)
According to “The First Hundred
Y ears,” a history com piled for the
Alumni Association’s 100th anniver­
sary, the Alumni Council dates back to
1875, when members of Swarthmore’s
first two graduating classes (which
28

together totaled 13 alumni) met at the
home of President Edward Magill to
organize the Alumni Association. The
Association was incorporated in 1882
“to promote union and good feelings
among the Alumni, and to advance in
all p ro p e r ways th e in te re s ts of
Swarthmore College.”
The official history reports that the
1930s saw changes in th e Alumni
Association. The Alumni Council was
formed to serve as the Association’s
central agency and to select an alumni
representative on the Board of Man­
agers. An executive secretary (the

Gretchen Mann Handwerker 56
President, Alumni Association
precursor to the Alumni Office) was
ap p o in ted , and The Garnet Letter
began p u b licatio n as an alum ni
newsletter.
The first Alumni Fund drive in 1941
raised $17,481 and began a tradition
that in the past year added $1.98 mil­
lion to the College’s coffers. In past
years additional sum s were raised
through the sale of commemorative
china and an album of Swarthmore
songs. Early on, how ever, it was
decid ed to keep fund-raising and
friend-raising separate, and the Coun­
cil concentrated on the latter.
The Alumni Council has done much

of its w ork th ro u g h com m ittees,
which have changed in response to
differing needs. Early com m ittees
focused on vocational guidance and
placement (now professionally recast
as the Career Planning and Placement
Office) and admissions. Other Council
work has included women’s athletic
facilities, engineering, continuing edu­
cation, class reunions, health facili­
ties, Alumni College, the Extern Pro­
gram, Somerville Day, the teacher
education program, and the Alumni
Association structure.
In addition, Council representatives
have participated in College commit­
tees concerned with curriculum, ath­
letics, chem istry, th e Honors Pro­
gram, and the hiring of college person­
nel. Considerable effort has also been
expended to make the Council more
representative of alumni and more
responsive to their concerns.
As a new slate of Council officers
begins its two-year term, a number of
earlier concerns remain: its relation­
ship to other College constituencies,
com m ittee functions, alumni pro­
grams, and the role and makeup of the
Council itself. Other concerns are rela­
tively new, such as the Council’s rela­
tionship to other alumni groups and
its involvement with the non-Swarthmore world. And overriding all this, as
Paul Berry has reminded us, is the
need to ensure that all alumni are kept
informed of Council goals and activi­
ties. That is the purpose of this sec­
tion of the Bulletin and especially of
this column.
More than 30 years ago, an Alumni
Council member asked: “What is, or
should be, th e role of th e Alumni
Council and, for th at m atter, of all
alumni collectively? W hat are the
needs of the College (other than finan­
cial) that alumni might help fill? What
are th e special c h a ra c te ristic s of
Swarthmore alumni that would enable
them to assist the College (again, in
other than a purely financial sense)?”
The response then was that “the ques­
tions are valid and worthy of further
probing.” The same is true today, and
we on the Council welcome the help
of all alumni in examining them.
Gretchen Mann Handwerger ’56
President, Alumni Association
SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Alumni Elect New Council Members

Recent Events
Philadelphia: A record num ber of
alumni, parents, and seniors attended
the May 25 Philadelphia Phillies game
against the New York Mets. Bob Hay­
den ’81 engineered th e evening in
which 90 seniors joined 80 Connection
members to see the best team in base­
ball (at least at that time!) take on the
lowly New York M ets. W hen th e
Swarthmore name came up on the
scoreboard, the roar could almost be
heard back on campus.

New York: Though he’s not an alum­
nus, Robert Mondavi got center stage
at the NYC C o nnectio n ’s May 11
event. “The Swarthmore Symposium
VII: Mondaviganza” featured the Cali­
fornia winemaker’s vintages and had
its New York area manager as guest
speaker. Fifty-five alumni and parents
attended th e evening arranged by
David Wright ’69 and Don Fujihira ’69.
The annual outing by the New York
Connection to Ike Schambelan’s [’61]
Theater By The Blind was held June
23. The show, Whattaya Blind?, includ­
ed works by several blind playwrights.
Boston: The B oston C onnection
repeated its popular summer jazz con­
cert and picnic at th e DeCordova
Museum and Sculpture Park in Lin­
coln, Mass., op July 26 with the help of
Ted Jensen ’67. On Aug. 28 the Con­
nection is planning an outing on the
Essex River to view som e of th e
wildlife areas inaccessible by car or
on foot.
Upcoming Events
The Class of 1963 had so much fun at
its reunion that class members are
expanding it to the Classes of 1960 to
1965 in the D.C./Baltimore/ Philadel­
phia corridor. Ben Cooper ’63 is work­
ing on the October mini-reunion. If
you’re interested, contact him at
work, (202) 224-5360.

AUGUST 1993

Fourteen new members were elected
to Alumni Council in balloting this
spring. Members are elected from
seven geographic areas for three-year
term s. They join 28 o th er elected
m em bers serving on th e Council,
w hich m eets at th e College th re e
tim es each year. More th an 3,500
alumni cast ballots in the election.
Zone A
Lucille Handwerk Cusano ’50
West Chester, Pa.
Charles C. Martin ’42
Wilmington, Del.
Zone B
Elizabeth Dun Colten ’54
Upper Saddle River, N.J.
Elizabeth Helen Scheuer ’75
Bronx, N.Y.
Zone C
C. Russell de Burlo Jr. ’47
Belmont, Mass.

Sherryl Browne Graves ’69
Greenwich, Conn.
Zone D
Janet Hostetter Doehlert ’50
Arlington, Va.
John A. Riggs ’64
Washington, D.C.
Zone E
Lou Ann Matossian ’77
Minneapolis, Minn.
Lawrence Jean Richardson ’78
St. Louis, Mo.
Zone F
Barton W. Rope ’37
Columbus, N.C.
Tracey Werner Sherry ’77
New Orleans, La.
Zone G
Margaret Morgan Capron ’42
Mountain View, Calif.
Don Mizell ’71
Los Angeles, Calif.

The Alumni Association and the Alumni Council want to hear from you!
Please write to Gretchen Mann Handwerger ’56, president, Swarthmore College
Alumni Association, in care of the Alumni Office, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore
PA 19081-1397.
Good candidates for Alumni Council: _________________________________
Good candidates for Alumni Managers: ________________________________
Good candidates for Nominating Committee:____________________________
I’d like to serve as a resource for the Career Planning and Placement Office.
I’m willing to:
_serve as an extern sponsor
_ talk to students or alumni about career opportunities in my field
_provide leads for summer jobs
_participate in a career panel on campus
Your job/career description: _____________________________________ ____

I wish Alumni Council would do something about:

Name: ________ ___________ ._____________________ Class:

29

LETTERS

continued from page 3

tyranny of the loudest voice.
A liberal arts community exists to
provide balance and dialogue, a sense of
history, and an opportunity for genuine
exchange. It exists also to bring young
people into a wider world, not to con­
firm them in the shallow thought pat­
terns of the immediate culture.
Instead I am afraid I see signs of an
emerging culture where only the mis­
named “liberal” views and nontraditional lifestyles are acceptable, and signs
also of a fragmentation into isolated and
wrangling subcultures rather than a
community in dialogue. This seems to
me a sad betrayal of the College’s mis­
sion. It is much to be hoped that Presi­
dent Bloom, the Board of Managers, and
all responsible for the direction of the
College—surely themselves all people of
breadth, depth, and vision—will not
lose that vision for the excitement of
immediate “relevance,” fashion, and
“correctness.”
MOTHER MARY JEAN, CSM
(Jean Manninen ’59)
Peekskill, N.Y.
Remembering the
Boys in the Band
To the Editor:
It was delightful to read Ken Hechler’s
[’35] piece in the May “Our Back Pages.”
I knew all the “boys in the band,” espe­
cially the late Ward Fowler ’37, who sat
next to me in premed classes (Eves,
Fowler). I myself played violin at
Danville High School and at George
School, but I consider it a boon to the
band that coeds were not invited. Inci­
dentally, the young man with the tuba is
Camill “Buddy” Peter ’37, not his broth­
er Paul ’36.
ELEANOR EVES COGSHALL ’37
Doylestown, Pa.
To the Editor:
Thank you for printing Ken Hechler’s
article about the band. The animal in
the photo is not, however, a bear, but a
lion. It came from the Hamburg Show
song: “Oh, we’re going to see the lion
and the wild kangaroo.” I can’t remem­
ber a kangaroo costume, but the lion
was always there, skipping beside the
band. During my years at college, many
different men wore that costume, so I
will not venture a wild guess at the iden­
tity of this one.
ANNE BROOKE SMITH’37
Warrenton, Va.
62

sen d me speak for them selves. If
¡ng
they’ve done their homework, it can
se<
be very compelling. We have a society ¡ we
th a t believes th a t if you don’t get
Ai
mentioned a lot on the national news,
stc
you somehow lack credibility. I don’t
on
agree.”
ne
Another concern about boycotts is
de]
that they can hurt innocent workers.
is t
W hat ab o u t th e tru ck driver who
Continued from page 16
delivers Budweiser beer? If he loses
do
me
of companies that sponsor shows the his job because of a boycott, is that
group finds objectionable, and a num­ fair? Lyons says he hates to be callous l ciz
col
ber have withdrawn their ads. Pepsi about it, but “whether you are a truck
the
dropped its corporate link with rock driver for Budweiser or a member of
ad
video star Madonna after a boycott the Busch family, you are still profit-gfo
th re a t, and B urger King, a m ajor ing from th e business practices of
advertiser on many shows considered Anheuser-Busch, and you need to be i ed
an
offensive by Wildmon, took out full- held acco u n tab le for that. I know
page newspaper ads pledging to sup­ that’s going to upset people, but they
wil
port “traditional American family val­ want to hold me accountable for what
th
ues on television.” The Boycott Quar­ I do, so why shouldn’t I hold them
aft
terly lists an ongoing boycott of S.C. accountable too? Where do we draw
in
Jo h n so n Wax p ro d u c ts called by the line?”
me
CLear-TV, another Wildmon organiza­
here indeed? Even if boycotts
a]
tion, because the company “is and
do work, a re n ’t th e re tactics
op
has been a leading sponsor of TV sex,
that are inappropriate? Kinsley of The | fur
violence, and profanity.”
m
Censorship, cry the watchdogs of New Republic suggests several rules
pr:
free speech, but Wildmon told Time that might civilize the boycott boom:
•Don’t use a boycott to deny other
magazine, “I’m not infringing on any­
ep
body’s rights. I have as much right as people their rights. Economic preswc
any other individual... to try to shape sure is inappropriate when it leads to
no
society.” And his American Family censorship or punishes political decior
Association is just one of hundreds of sions made in a democratic manner,
se
pressure groups that have sprung up
in th e past 20 y ears—all trying to
orporations
*
shape society. Many are large, but
you don’t need a fancy office in Wash­
can get caught
J
ington to start a boycott.
“It doesn’t take a big organization
in the middle,
to make a boycott work,” says Zach
especially with
■!!
Lyons. “A group of 15 or 20 high
school students from West Milford,
their philanthropy.
N.J., galvanized the boycott of McDon­
va
ald ’s over polystyrene packaging.
m
They cre a te d a c h a ra c te r called such as the boycott of Arizona after
nc
Ronald McToxic for an Earth Day its citizens voted against a holiday in
dc
demonstration in New York, and they honor of Martin Luther King Jr. “The
dc
became the straw that broke Ronald purpose of the holiday is to honor a
is
McDonald’s back. In another case, a great man. But you shouldn’t try to
bs
small group of environmentalists has ram honor down people’s throats,”
le:
taken on giant Mellon Bank because says Kinsley.
•“A boycott is more compelling if it
bi
of the way the bank, as trustee for an
th
estate, has managed a wildlife sanctu­ is aimed at th e item th a t actually
causes the offense.” Kinsley probably
up
ary in upstate New York.”
Companies often com plain th a t wouldn’t agree with the current boy­
T1
these groups lack status, but, says co tt of Seagram p ro d u c ts, called
$2
Lyons, “You don’t have to be a super­ because Seagram owns a significant
D<
group like Greenpeace or People for share of Du Pont, which still produces
$
the Ethical Treatment of Animals to ozone-destroying CFCs.
•Target the “real nemesis” by makT1
have credibility. The materials people

ONE
DOLLAR
ONE
VOTE

W

C

SW ARTHM ORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

AU

ing a distinction between primary and
secondary boycotts: “A refusal to
[
wear
a fur coat is a primary boycott.
y
Arefusal to shop in a departm ent
t
store that sells fur coats is a sec­
ondary boycott. A refusal to buy a
X
newspaper th a t runs ads from a
department store that sells fur coats
s
is too much, too much.”
5.
•“A boycott shouldn’t be a shake0
down. The more selfless its goal, the
s
more appealing it will be.” He criti­
it
cizes the 1990 Operation PUSH boy­
s
cott of Nike shoes because although
k
the stated purpose was to protest the
)f
advertising of $125 sneakers to poor
t"ghetto kids, the demands also includ­
)f
ed hiring a black advertising agency
e
N
and putting blacks on the Nike board.
Zach Lyons isn’t sure he agrees
y
with Kinsley: “There are times when
it
n
there’s no prim ary pro d u ct to go
1
after. Seagram plays a significant role
in decision-making at Du Pont, so
many activists believe that Seagram is
S
a primary target. The groups th at
:s
oppose furs are trying to stop sales of
\e | furs, not just get people to stop buy­
is
ing them, so they think the stores are
primary targets.
ir
“As for Arizona, to me that was the
sepitome of economic democracy. It
o
was a grass-roots boycott called by
:ino particular group. Individuals and
r,
organizations took it upon th em ­
selves to say, ‘If this is the way the
state of Arizona feels about one of the
greatest heroes to African Americans,
then we can’t see ourselves giving
them our business.’”
To Lyons, it’s a matter of individual
freedom within the economic system,
j “If you went around and asked every­
one, ‘Do you think you should do the
right thing? Do you think that your
values should be respected?’ I believe
most people w ould say yes. I’m
in
nowhere near perfect. I certain ly
le
don’t boycott everything I list—and I
a
do stuff that deep in my heart I know
to
is wrong—but I try very hard to shop
based on my values. If I have a prob­
lem with the way a com pany does
it
business, I tell them. And you know,
they listen. It works because I speak
iy
up.” ■
ly
i
id
The Boycott Quarterly is available at
nt
$20/year from the Center for Economic
ss
Democracy, P.O. Box 64, Olympia WA
985074)064. For nonprofits and co-ops,
ikThe Boycott Monthly is $35/year.

riN

AUGUST 1993

DENG-JENG LEE

f
n

‘We’re living in a time of great change in the TV and film
industries,”says Peter Bart ’54, editor o f 'Variety.
“The film industry goes in cycles,
and we’re in a relatively pedestrian
period right now of unoriginal, insipid
remakes and even more unoriginal
Continued from page 11
remakes of those remakes. Filmmak­
Cole Porter. (Bart has two daughters, ing has always been an exercise in
Colby, a Hollywood costume designer, risk-taking. But with costs as high as
and Dilys, who has just finished medi­ $40 million now for an average pic­
cal school, intending to be an eye sur­ ture, risk-taking is itself a high risk. In
geon.) Though Bart still spends some general, American pop culture, which
time every m onth in Variety's New still dominates the world, is in a down­
York office, he calls Los Angeles turn. But then along comes something
home.
as successful as Jurassic Park, and it
“The pace is different in Los Ange­ redefines the business.”
les,” Bart says. “They work harder,
Bart, now 61, has no thought of
but it’s less intellectually demanding. retiring. “I’ve been very, very fortu­
In New York I feel that I’m never doing nate to be able to get involved and
enough or seeing enough. In L.A. I can then leave the film industry at the
play ten n is and not feel as if I’ve right times. I see journalism as part of
missed something.”
the entertainment industry on a par
He also travels to Variety's bureaus with movies, theater, and fiction writ­
abroad, attends the Cannes Film Festi­ ing. To be in the catbird seat, to watch
val, and has been spending more time the ebb and flow of popular culture—
in Tokyo, which each year becomes even if the culture isn’t that great—is
m ore influential in th e A m erican very, very entertaining.” ■
entertainment business.
“We’re living in a tim e of great Bill Kent is a free-lance writer and a reg­
change in the TV and film industries,” ular contributor to the Bulletin. His sec­
Bart says. “They’re becoming melded ond novel, Down by the Sea, was pub­
to a global infotainment business.
lished in June by St. Martin’s Press.
63

II

Endings
by Je ff Hildebrand ’92
oming out of Banana House, I take
a deep breath. It’s finally stopped
raining; all around insects buzz and
chirp the unmistakable sounds of late
summer. Everyone else here is think­
ing about starting the academic year.
I’m not. I still have a pile of things to
pack before I leave, essentially for
good. I’m sick of it right now, so,
crossing the street, I head onto cam­
pus. The summer field hockey camp
finished last week and the College ath­
letes and RAs d o n ’t show up until
tomorrow. So tonight as I walk, it’s my
campus, left to me and my memories.
The memories flow thick and fast. I
could almost be on my way to class in
Du Pont. Something’s missing, though;
I should have my backpack on.
Since it’s fairly late in the evening,
all the buildings are locked, but being
outside is enough. Cutting across the
grass, I sit on the steps in front of the
fishbowl, a windowed seminar room
in Du Pont. Inside, the table and chairs
are all in their usual position, where
we sat staring at the board trying to
understand some proof and where we
clustered around munching seminar
break goodies. Looking in this way, I
realize what it must have looked like
from the outside when Benj Thomas
crawled under the table and took a
nap one seminar.
F urther back in time, th e re are
more memories. Memories of crazy
spring Wednesday nights when sever­
al of us g ath ered in [Prof.] Gene
Klotz’s lab for pizza, then invaded the
fishbowl to play cards. That w asn’t
th a t crazy in itself. But th e social
dynamics that were happening behind
all of it were crazy. It was a whole new
world for me; I was drawn in emotion­
ally, took some risks, forgot about
planning what I would do in advance,
and ju st lived from m om ent to
moment, enjoying the thrill of it.
A short walk takes me to the edge
of the woods. It’s too dark to actually

C

64

go down into the Crum, so I go no fur­
ther. What comes to mind is not any
specific event but general feelings—
feelings of going into the woods upset
or stressed and of coming out more
relaxed.
Heading back th e o th e r way, I
notice that the grass is so thick and
damp that I left footprints in it where I
walked up to the steps. Leaving my
impression on Swarthmore.
Across the road and suddenly I’m
heading to Beardsley to check my Email. But I can’t; everything’s locked
up. So I swing around, look at Slide
Rock, realizing I’m from the last class
that remembers when the sculpture
was put there. A glance at Hicks, and
then back the way I came.
Over to Cornell Library, staring
into the stacks of books. The hours
spent there working on problems for
seminar, often talking with other folks

in the seminar instead. Or the times
when the shelves of science fiction
would be too much temptation and I
would spend an hour browsing.
On down the walk to Parrish. Going I
to check my mail before going on
down to Sharpies. Four years ago was
th e re really a hole in th e ground
where the Lang Performing Arts Center is? It seems hard to imagine it any
other way than what it is now.
As I come around the circle, more ,
old habits come to mind. I remember
coming by as Asa Packer played his
bagpipes in the amphitheater. I veer
off the walk and head in there. Lean­
ing ag ain st a tre e , starin g at the
grassy stage, I remember the evenings
a few years back when I came here.
My social life was in shambles at the
time and I was worried that I couldn’t
cut it academ ically, leaving me to |
wonder just what the hell I was doing.
SW A RTH M O RE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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In retrospect I have to smile; I didn’t
do too badly after all. I need to
remember to ju st keep on going;
things will turn around eventually.
Coming out of the amphitheater, I
reach the most dangerous emotional
ground of the trip. Walking down the
sidewalk, I could be heading to Whar­
ton—to see Deb. Outside D section I
kneel down and let it all wash over
" me. A sudden smile. There was the
day I was walking past and said, “I
wonder if Deb can hear m e” right
under her window. She could and
bounded down to see what was going
on. Standing up, I walk through the
archway and go up to the door. The
levels of nostalgia and wistfulness
arising from just standing there tell
me how much that meant.
This is a good-bye to u r for me.
Time to let go. So after a m inute I
move on. Back through the arch and
on toward Dana and Hallowell. I look
up at Dana. Second floor, window just
to the left of center. Nope, no lights.
Eric must not be home. Even three
years later, I can find the window of
my first room. I’m now the person I
used to enjoy watching, sitting com­
fortably in my room, looking at people
wandering through this pleasant little
corner of th e w orld. The cin d er
blocks inside may be ugly, but this littie pocket right outside is a place that
feels good, feels safe.
My mind takes me up to the door,
then down the stairs. Through the
winding hallway into the lounge. To
the couches, chairs, and tables. I actu­
ally head behind the building and look
in through the glass doors. As remem­
bered. Where I sat having deeper and
closer conversations that I had ever
had before. Where I paced when I was
unhappy, restless, or pensive. By
now the room itself is an old friend.
But one I must leave behind.
Back around to the front, down the
path, turn, and walk across the bridge
over the railroad tracks. Shortly I
reach the path th at leads to Crum
meadow. I want to go down there, but
it’s already late and very dark. In the
distance I can clearly hear the hum of
the Blue Route. That noise is not part

K

of th e meadow I know, so I go on,
remembering my meadow. Sitting on
the stones of Crumhenge, listening to
the wind whisper through the leaves
and the water ripple in the Crum as I
watch the outline of the trees blowing
against the sky lit by a spring moon.
Down behind Ware pool, heading
toward Mary Lyon via the back way. I
look up, looking for geese flying over­
head. Out to Harvard Avenue. Around
the curve, down the hill, and there in
front of me is ML. I glance over my
shoulder to see if the shuttle is going
to pass me as I head toward the door.

What I’m going
to miss are
the rhythms of
Swarthmore.
The comfort of the
routines, the feeling
that this is my
home. It’s everyday
life that I’ve
enjoyed most.
Sitting on the stonework outside
th e front door, I can im agine th e
crowd of people gathered in the TV
lounge to watch Twin Peaks or Letterman. I can count th e steps as I go
upstairs to see if anyone wants to play
cards. It strikes me th a t w hat I’m
going to miss more than anything are
the rhythms of Swarthmore. The com­
fort of the routines, the feeling that
this is my home, where I belong. It’s
everyday life that I’ve enjoyed most.
There’s a feeling of completeness, a
feeling that this tour is nearing its end.
Another routine, the walk to campus
from ML. Coming back, passing the
field house. More sudden memories,
more routines. The nights inside keep­
ing stats for the basketball games;
th a t crazy stre a k 18 m onths ago
where we fell inches short of making

G

the NCAA tournament.
Before I p ass u n d er th e train
tracks, I get a jarring reminder that
things continue to go on and change.
The area near the tunnel is all dug up;
things are not frozen in time.
Up the hill, past Sharpies. Looking
in, I know I won’t miss the food there,
but I will miss eating there. Knowing
that I can come in and find friends.
Finally up the long, steep slope to
Parrish. A little thought conjures up
the crowds leaving lunch, headed to
labs or to classes. It’s too late for the
bells to chime, though.
The long walk in front of Parrish.
There are some people who will run
screaming from this building when
th ey are done, p eo p le for whom
Swarthmore was a horrible place. But
I am not one of them. I came here a
sm art b u t very young, innocent,
incomplete person. In four years I dis­
covered, I grew. I learned what it was
like to deal with people I felt I fit in
with. I discovered far stronger feelings
of love, anger, and hurt than I had
ever im agined before. I found out
what it was like to be intellectually
challenged. I confronted the challenge
of learning things that didn’t come as
second nature to me, and I learned
w hat it m eant to have th e very
assumptions I base my life on chal­
lenged. I came out of it all intact and
immensely enriched. The experiences
I have had are a part of me forever.
By now I’ve reached the Friends
Meeting House. One last stop. I now
really have com e full circle. Four
y ears ago I sat in h ere on a hot,
sweaty afternoon listening to David
Fraser welcome us to Swarthmore. I
have no idea w hat he said, b u t I
remember sitting there, scared and
nervous yet at the same time excited,
thinking that I was about to embark
on som e great adventure. W hat a
strange and wonderful adventure it
was.
It’s late and I still have much pack­
ing to do before I leave. There’s a tear
in my eye for all th a t I’m leaving
behind, but a smile on my face for all
that I’m taking with me. Tear, smile,
and all, I head back to Banana House. ■

CAN You 56U6V& IT? —
Trtey US&P LtNNON'S
NWStc To se u NllteS...

Was Elvis Presley “the greatest
cultural force in the 20th century?”
T h at’s w hat Leonard Bernstein once called him. And if th at d o esn ’t make
you think abo u t th e influence of pop culture on society, consider this:
•Time Inc. is testing a new celebrity photo magazine—its second stab at a
periodical for “read ers” w ho find People magazine too cerebral.
•W hen Bill Clinton was elected president, he gave his first interview not to
Peter Jennings o r Tom Brokaw—b ut to Tabitha Soren of MTV.
•An entire generation is growing up convinced th at Raphael, Donatello,
Leonardo, and Michelangelo are only Teenage M utant Ninja Turtles.
•A survey of 10-year-olds found th at they could nam e m ore brands of beer
than presidents of th e United States.
“Pop! Goes th e Culture” will be th e them e of a lively program Saturday,
Oct. 9, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. highlighting Fall W eekend at Swarthmore.
Faculty m em bers, students, parents, and alumni will look at aspects of pop
culture in th e ’90s. Also scheduled are Homecoming sp o rts events and a
Saturday evening perform ance by th e award-winning San Francisco Mime
Troupe. Plan to be at Sw arthm ore for this special O ctober weekend.

SWARTHMORE

FALL WEEKEND
OCTOBER 8, 9,10