Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1993-12-01

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COLLEGE BULLETIN

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DECEMBER 1993

SPECIAL ISSUE

THE COLLEGE TODAY
4
ESSAYS THAT WORKED
Four first-year students share the essays they wrote on their applications to Swarthmore.
8

THE BUSIEST PEOPLE • By Krysia Kubiak ’94
Working your way through school does more than pay the bills. It prepares you for life.
14
CLASSROOM VOICES, CURRICULUM CHOICES • By Rebecca Aim
From Shakespeare to computer science, faculty members are developing better ways to teach.
22
JOIN THE CLUB • By Rosemary Smith
Club sports offer a chance to compete—and to run the team too.
26
IN MY ROOM • Photographs by Deng-Jeng Lee
Parrish, Wharton, Dana, Hallowell. There’s a world where I can go....
32
STEAM HEAT • By Jeffrey Lott
The temperature is dropping, but don’t worry. Here comes 80 million pounds of steam.
36
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S STAFF • By Jeffrey Lott
The view from Parrish is a broad one. It has to be for five key College administrators.
DEPARTMENTS
Letters 2 • The College 42 • Alumni Digest 48 • Class Notes 50
Deaths 57 • Books 70 • Our Back Pages 88
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
Associate Vice President for External Affairs: Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59
Cover: Swarthmore College on October 14, 1993. Photograph by Steven Goldblatt ’67.

ur cover shows the beauty of Swarthmore College’s c
location for what really makes the College special—its peo
administrators, staff members, and students—all appear i
College Bulletin. We hope you enjoy meeting them individ

ge’s campus, yet its buildings, trees, and lawns are merely a
I

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ts people. Those who appear on this page—faculty members,
ear in or helped produce this special issue of the Swarthmore
II • , '<••' ;

idividually inside this magazine. — The Editors

e’ve been saving up for this one. For more than a year
ita L E I
we’ve been hoarding ideas and dollars in order to
bring you this special picture of Swarthmore. Like any
Computer Network
a “Closed Shop?”
picture it merely captures a moment in time, but from
To the Editor:
j
the boiler room to the classroom to the sky above, this is our viewIt was rather shocking to read in the
August issue of the Bulletin, page 25,
of the College today. We hope you enjoy it.
that Swarthmore College is operat- j
Alumni will recognize many things. You will see that Swarthmore
ing a “closed shop” with respect to [
students are as bright, hardworking, and involved as ever. That the
the computers that students may j
use on the new fiber-optic network
faculty is still brilliant, dedicated to teaching, and searching for the
that has been installed at great cost [
best ways to educate today’s undergraduates. That the College’s
in all the dormitories.
Only Apple Macintosh comput- !
staff remains caught up in the enterprise and dedicated to excel­
ers
are acceptable, per your article. [
lence. And the campus? Well, it’s probably more beautiful than ever.
What clones, what competitors
You will also notice change. Mary Ellen Grafflin Chijioke ’67, cura­
does Apple have? None. Why is the 1
College data processing operation
tor of the Friends Historical Library, observes that many alumni are
taking this position?
stuck in their own era. “Anything before is quaint,” she says. “Any­
In the world of commerce and •
thing after, heresy.” Rather than look
industry, we have finally entered the j
era of “open systems,” where all
|
for heresy in these pages, we urge you
computer manufacturers emphasize |
to look for continuity. Chijioke’s arti­
“connectivity.” So why is Swarth- '
more College requiring all students
cle on Swarthmore’s Quaker heritage
to use Apple?
(page 88) illuminates the powerful
Have you—rather the manager of
intellectual, moral, and spiritual lega­
your network—given any thought to
the probability that freshmen may
cy that informs many of the College’s
have purchased in their high school
ideas and programs today.
days an IBM or one of the many
I
The things that have changed at
clones known as “PCs” at a significant cost?
Swarthmore are mostly things that
The enclosed [IBM] advertisehave changed in society as well. There are more students and facul­
ment from a recent issue of Business
Week should help to alert your netty members of color, and minorities have taken their place not only
work manager that the Apple
J
in the classroom but in the curriculum. The curriculum itself is more
“straightjacket” need not be imcomplex, reflecting the many scientific, literary, historical, and social
posed on your students, who are
already
burdened with college
advances that have swept the world in the past few decades. It
tuition and room and board fees
seems even the definition of culture itself has been transformed.
that are among the highest in the
nation.
We hope you will learn more about the College in these pages
HENRY R. RICHARDS ’47
and that you will see how thoughtfully it has moved with the times.
Amesbury, Mass.
While this magazine reflects a frozen moment, a great college can­
Editor’s Note: According to Judy
not. “We mirror society,” says Bill Spock ’51, vice president for busi­
Downing, director of Computing and
ness and finance. “And in many ways we’re on the leading edge.”
Communication Services, the College’s decision to give preference to
Special thanks go to all whose lives we disrupted to create this
Macintosh computers stems from
unique issue. We’ve been interviewing and photographing them
tfyeir ease of use. Macintosh comalmost nonstop since August. Their enthusiasm for the project is
puters historically take far fewer
____________ _ ____________I
much appreciated by the staff of the Bulletin and its principal pho­
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
tographers, Steven Goldblatt ’67 and Deng-Jeng Lee.
0888-2126), o f which this is volume XCI,
\
num ber 2, is published in September, Dec- 1
This is Swarthmore College in the fall of 1993. It’s diverse, excit­
ember, January, February, May, and August
ing, concerned, and committed. It’s beautiful, friendly, smart, and
by Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave- |
nue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397. Second
energetic. And while sometimes it can be cranky, contentious, and
class postage paid at Swarthmore PA and
additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530difficult, we have no doubt that it is one of the very best colleges in
620. Postmaster: Send address changes to
the world.
—Jeffrey Lott
S w a r th m o r e C o lle g e B u lle tin , 500 College

■

Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397.
2

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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technical people to support, she
says, and therefore cost the College
less in computing staff salaries,
Downing added that interfacing the
network software with non-Apple
computers is already possible and
will become even easier in the near
future.
No One Is Minding the
Store in Academia

e. [

To the Editor:
I have read in the August Bulletin
the comments of the speakers at the
le 1 last Commencement, all from the
liberal, far left of the political spec­
1
trum. Not one spoke of individual or
family responsibility, only such
:he
tripe as “the privileged who,
whether in the short or long run,
ize
only reinforce the inequities of an
unjust world.” Look around Swarthts
more’s campus, I would advise this
radical priest [Jon Sobrino, S.J.],
■of
and see what the privileged have
to
done for this college. It wouldn’t be
/
here without them.
>ol
Why not consider honoring
someone from the real world of
- ' industry who could describe the tra­
vail caused by taxes, regulations,
unions, and the general interference
sss
caused by various levels of govern:t- . ment? Probably the most privileged
class in America today is academia,
with high compensation, tenure,
student and peer adulation, all in a
lovely setting. They should learn
what it takes to run a business, the
wellspring of our free market econo­
my.
’47
Over the last year, alumni have
iss.
written letters to the Bulletin pro­
testing the College’s political cor­
rectness (I would call it political perind
fection) without any apparent effect
upon the College or the magazine’s
to
editorial policies. Your August 1992
[
article on cross-dressing was totally
inane. Such perverse practices may
be chic and titillating in exalted
academia, but I think you must be
straining if you have to use such
stuff to fill up an alumni magazine.
c- |
Swarthmore has many dozens of
ust
graduates who have done wonder­
ful and truly remarkable things in
^ I science, literature, commerce and
toindustry, and yes, even academia—
)
so why not have more articles
\e \ about them?
Please turn to page 82
N I

DECEMBER 1993

H

ampus tour guides wanted: Must he has the same posters and is playing
have positive attitude, be able to the same music.”
speak to parents considering spending “And has the exact same size
thousands of dollars on children’s educa­ wardrobe,” the father of a fashionably
tion, and possess ability to walk back­ clad daughter adds with a laugh.
Room with a view
ward.
College brochures will tell you about
Many students and parents note the
Swarthmore’s prestigious history and Lang Performing Arts Center and the
academic curriculum, but there are Lang Concert Hall on their response
some “facts” you can learn only from forms. They appreciate the view of
taking a tour. Did you hear that an alum Crum woods from the Concert Hall win­
created an endowment specifically to dow. However, some just note the
provide ice cream in Sharpies? Or so wood products. “Look, look at the
the legend goes.
floor,” said a man to his wife on a tour.
“It looks like cherry, I think.” This same
Tour leaders Matt Hurford
Rachel Loble ’93 walked back­
man then turned to his
ward much of the summer as
daughter and said: “It’s prob­
they guided approximately
ably a rule—no rap CDs in
5,000 visitors around campus
the music library.” (Actually,
over 14 weeks. But what were
there is one—Croatia’s Gotta
they telling our guests? And
Be Free, recorded by Swarth­
what influence do the tours
more students in 1991.)
have on prospectives and
There is also great interest
their parents? For some
in the residence halls. While
insights into the image
few questions are asked
Swarthmore tours convey, we
about the dormitory accom­
looked at some tour response
modations, one visitor over­
forms and listened to the
heard a parent tell her child,
guides’ comments on the
“Get used to it.”
tours.
Please accept me!
The tension, oh the tension
Taking a tour of the cam­
“Looks like an excellent
pus can indeed affect a stu­
institution, but the rumors of
dent’s opinion about the Col­
stress and the like remain,” a
lege. One anonymous re­
guest wrote.
spondent wrote in large let­
Loble says the question of
ters: PLEASE ACCEPT ME!
academic intensity is the
The summer tour guides
most frequently asked. “It’s
received lavish praise for
not the hell on earth people
their knowledge, sense of
make it out to be,” she tells
humor, and ability to answer
one group. She believes the
tough questions. Here are
college guidebooks play up
just a few of the responses to
the image and don’t present
the questionnaire :
the full spectrum of life at
“Guides seem too perfect
Swarthmore.
to be real. Are all your stu­
Hurford answers one par­
dents this involved?” “The
ent’s question this way: “It is
tour guide was very intel­
a hard school. I’ve never
ligent, spoke clearly, ex­
worked so hard in my life. What you plained things well, was open and
typically will find here is a person with friendly.” “After touring Ivy [League
a 4.0, trying to save the world and hav­ schools], the sense of pride in Swarth­
ing a good time.”
more seemed more from the heart.”
Soul Asylum meets Stokowski
Many prospectives said the tour had
The intense academic program is influenced their decision about where
something that the College is proud of, they would apply.
but little do prospectives realize that You can’t win ’em all
the testing begins before they ever set
With thousands of people touring
foot on campus as students.
each summer, and with each tour being
“I think my application for housing somewhat unique because guides are
was more comprehensive than the not required to follow a set walking
admissions application,” Hurford tells a path or speech, there are bound to be
group of 28. “It’s good to meet someone buildings or areas overlooked.
a little different from yourself. Imagine
One visitor wanted to see more of
what it would be like to have a room­ the library. “It is, after all, the College’s
-Audree Penner
mate just like yourself. You walk in and chapel!”

3

TH E C O L L E G E

T O D A Y

Alec Zimmer, planning life as a civil engineer, is a
Swarthmore legacy (father William ’68, and grandmother
Cynthia Swartley Zimmer ’42). Alec plays the F horn in
the College’s wind ensemble and hopes to join the
debate and cross country teams next semester. He is
from Danville, in central Pennsylvania.

Essays That Worked
Meet
fourmembers of the Class of 1997
through the essays they wrote on their
applications to Swarthmore.
ou’ve filled out pages of personal information and
activity lists, you’ve subm itted the transcripts and
the SAT results, and now it’s time to write The Essay.
Your application wouldn’t be complete without it.
Trouble is, every college asks a different question.
Swarthmore’s is really open-ended: “Please write
something that will tell us more about you. You may
want to write about people who have influenced you,
difficulties or conflicts with which you have struggled,
goals and hopes you have for the future, or something
else you consider significant.”
“We used to ask more specific questions,” says Wal­
lace Cruciger Ayres ’64, associate dean of admissions.
“But the more specific we were in the question, the
more the same all the answers were. One previous
question was, ‘If you were alive 100 years ago, whom
would you m ost like to meet and why?’ We soon had a
serious overdose of Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud.”
With 3,500 applications to read each year, the Admis­
sions Office wanted something different from each
applicant, not merely a writing sample but an opportu­
nity to get to know the person better.
Ayres says that unless there are mechanical or writ­
ing problems, the essay “generally counts only in favor
of the applicant. It doesn’t outweigh other things in the
application, but it can be a tiebreaker if we need one.
While many are predictable, some really stand out.”
A year ago the Bulletin asked Ayres to save some of
those standouts. From the dozen she gave us, we
chose the following four. Meet Alec Zimmer, Shithi
Kamal, Martin Carrillo, and Andrea Gibbons, members
of the Class of 1997—and their essays that worked.

Y

Photographs by Deng-Jeng Lee

Team. Afraid that the project would monopolize my pre­
cious free time, I considered burning my draft card. Then
I saw the light: This was the perfect chance for me to get
a taste of what a career in engineering might be like.
With my eyes still drooping, I dragged myself into the
first team meeting on that fateful morning. Our assign­
ment, the adviser explained, would be to design some
type of device that would retrieve a variety of household
objects that were “just out of reach.” Additionally, the
machine would have to be something a handicapped
individual could potentially use in his or her home. With
this in mind, we split into committees to define various
aspects of the problem, but almost immediately the com­
mittees evolved into rival warring factions with definite
ideas about how this machine would operate.
Somehow I managed to convince our group that suck­
ing up the objects with a large-capacity shop vacuum
attached to a wooden arm would be a much easier ap­
proach than trying to build a
A IA f*
robotic hand to retrieve them.
fc lllllllw i
After many trials and tribula­
tions, we tested my flimsy wood­
en arm one morning a week before the competition—it
failed miserably. Luck was with us, though, and before
noon we had managed to rebuild it. As we stood back to
admire our handiwork, it became increasingly clear that
it was not pretty. In fact, it was so ugly that only we could
ever love it. But it was ours and it worked! The entire
competition routine was more like a marketing presenta­
tion than a demonstration of our hard work and creativi­
S3MBSM
ty, as the information packet suggested. Of the six teams
competing, ours was the only one that didn’t have an
attractive test lab, business suits with red “power ties,” a
well-thought-out, rehearsed “performance,” or a robotic
claw device for retrieving the objects. It was just us and
the mighty shop vac.
Somehow we managed to pull together onstage. I even
regained enough control over my various bodily func­
ne hundred pairs of eyes burrowed into the
tions to present my speech. Just when it seemed as if
back of my head. My stomach was set on the
everything was going our way, “technical difficulties” set
“spin cycle,” and I felt as though I was about to
in with our machine operator. Almost mercifully, the
lose control over virtually all of my bodily func­
timekeeper announced that our time was up, saving us
tions. I must have looked wretched standing there on­from ourselves. Needless to say, our team finished dead
last.
stage with my four cohorts. I had reason to be nervous,
though. For Danville (Pa.) High School students, going to
Although we were disappointed, we realized that we
a competition like this one was a first. None of us had
had not totally failed. After all, in less than a week we had
any idea what to expect from the National Engineering
created our Rube Goldberg contraption, learned how to
Design Challenge. Although we were originally supplied
work in a crunch, and most important, learned how to
with a packet of papers that attempted to inform us what
work together to reach a common goal. In fact, after it
it would be like, it must have been written by a nonwas all over, a professional engineer approached our
English-speaking person. The actual competition was a
group to compliment us on our creativity. I knew that
far cry from what the information packet promised us.
next year I would be back with the team and that victory
The preceding October my chemistry teacher drafted
would be ours. Now all I had to do was explain to the
me onto the National Engineering Design Challenge
school board why the team spent $300 on the project.

O

DECEMBER 1993

5

uring Ramadan vacation when I was 7 years
old, I traveled with my parents to a town
eight hours’ drive from our home in Dhaka,
Bangladesh. On the way we had to cross a
huge river. By the time we reached the port, it was
pitch-dark. We boarded an
ancient steamer and set off into
the darkness. Other than the
sound of the motor, the gentle
noise of the water slapping against the boat, and the
Hindi songs floating from the radios in the trucks, there
was no other sound. The hills on the shoreline blended
with the darkness completely. The little lights from the
lamps in the distant villages disappeared now and then.
My father took me to the deck, where I met a man in
charge of a great big wheel. He let me have a go at the
wheel. He showed me a tall iron rod fixed to the front of
the steamer and a point of light far in the distance. I was
to keep the two in line. Struck with fear that so much
depended on my ability to align the huge steamer with a
single speck of light, I stood rooted to my spot. When the
ferry driver relieved me of my burden, I remember the
awe I felt for what was truly extraordinary about his
seemingly ordinary life—for the way he handled the
great responsibility he had to carry.
By the age of 8 ,1had ventured into the world of Indian
writers such as Tagore, Ray, and Guha (just to speak of a
few), who like me were drawn to the lives and experi­
ences of everyday people. I began to keep a diary where I
recorded my own reflections on what seemed extraordi­
nary about the lives of the ordinary people I saw on the
streets. That was my hobby. I never grew out of it, but
rather it grew into me. At school my report cards were
slightly above the average but not exceptional. I didn’t
care for school at the time, for it never gave me the op­
portunity to express what I really cared about. Instead,
the formalities of writing sapped any desire to create as I
wished to—before reaching the third paragraph, I would
run out of fuel and give up. The force and intensity of my
real interests and private writing were so satisfying com­
pared to the laborious task of writing at school that for
years my most important writing occurred outside the
classroom.
Steering the ferry boat through the river in the black
of night so many years ago left a lasting impression on
me—the kind I try to capture in my writing. To me writ­
ing should convey what is unique about everyday life. I
once wrote about a shoemaker who would often come to
our house to polish my father’s shoes and fix our san­
dals. I knew the scents of the polishing liquids by heart.
The shoemaker would examine the shoes and like a
physician prescribing medicine would pick out a particu­
lar strap of leather, a knife, and a bottle of liquid. He
would smoothly cut the piece of leather as if he were slic­
ing a piece of butter. My mouth would water. I could
almost taste it. Even the little nails he gently tapped into
the soles of the shoes seemed delicious. I craved to be
like him. I wanted to do what he was doing so flawlessly,
so wonderfully.
Ten years later in a subway in Paris my craving came
back when I saw a young French man gluing huge

D

Kamal

6

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posters of Euro Disney on the subway walls. But I
was not his only admirer. Even the busiest-looking
humans, those wearing ties and carrying briefcas­
es, stopped and peered through their steel-rimmed
spectacles. The worker rolled his wooden rollers rhyth­
mically and swished his brush up and down. There was
no music. No jokes. Only movement. An expert exhibiting
his skills. Many of the little kids took no pains to hide
their desire and asked to have a go at the rollers. With a
proud smile the expert let them try. By now he was the
most important person around. And this took place in
Paris, the city of the Louvre, Versailles, and the Eiffel
Tower. There were countless similar events that took
place during my family’s travels in Europe, in Thailand,
and in Singapore.
In the course of my university education, one of my
most important goals is to develop further my ability to
capture what is extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary
aspects of life.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

t was twilight when I became a real human being.
Transition can be so grand, and in its own way dis­
gusting. Walking the streets with my parents in Santi­
ago, Chile, in 1985,1thought of Christmas, the gifts,
the love.
Music was our pilgrimage that evening. My parents felt
the excitement of their home city, an excite­
ment I had no care about. I was on the
threshold of awareness. They longed for
the sounds—a thirst for the past dream
of 1970 when things were changing, reju­
venating, and caressing the year.
Day retreated a few more
steps into the shadows.
■” ^ * l M i l \ # ^ 1 I I I I I \ J
From out of nowhere, the
shouts began. My father
asked a man what had happened. The man
told him that the concert we were to attend
had been canceled; it would have been too
“communist.”
I wondered why they were so mad, the peo­
ple shouting. What was so horrible? It was a
question I would ask my father. Not until then
would I understand how much that music
meant to people who worked for pennies an
hour, but I was beginning to see.
From my place at my mother’s side, I could
see everything that occurred. This is a blur to me
now, but it’s there, ever present, haunting me.
The tanks rolled in. It all happened in maybe 30
seconds. As I found out later, they were called
“camels” for the water they held and spat. From
their throats, the torrent raged out at those daring
to throw rocks, or even shout, at injustice. Trucks
came to take some away. Would they be seen again?
Would their voices have to leave the world with­
out remembrance? I had heard the stories of the
“desaparecidos” (disappeared ones), but it is so differ­
ent when you watch one, hear one, smell one—
dragged from the earth, like Persephone into hell.
I turned and watched my father’s face curl in rage.
These were still his people—unchanged—still grasping
for justice and freedom. They were bleeding, and so my
father shouted out the rage that had formed with the
beads of sweat on his face.
A rush came on as all of my faculties froze. How I want­
ed to cry out with him, and if only our cries were ham­
mers. If only they were doves to rise up through the air
and liberate all the world, but they were only memories.
We were only 200 or so people that day. We shouted,
and we went home. Our only power lies in whether my
friends and I can remember that story to tell our children
and maybe wipe it away....

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DECEMBER 1993

Please turn to page 87

7

In thereal world, there’s no summer vacation
vacation either for students who work to help
TH E C O L L E G E

T O D A Y

By Krysia Kubiak ’94
hey are the busiest people on campus,
and everyone knows it. Darius Tandon
’94, Heidi Walls ’95, and Mei-Ling
McWorter ’94 are three of those stu­
dents who juggle the normal four courses,
extracurricular activities, and a social life, but
with an added burden—working on campus to
help finance the increasingly expensive col­
lege bill. Last year 963 Swarthmore students
earned $650,000 by doing work at the College.
About half of those were financial aid recipi­
ents, who had chosen the work-study compo­
nent of the financial aid package in lieu of
more loans.
I’m a student who chooses to work.
Throughout my time at Swarthmore, I have
always held at least one job. I’m now in my last
semester, carrying five credits and working
with the Annual Funds Office as editor of the
Parents Newsletter. I was planning on relaxing
and enjoying my senior year. Then I got a let­
ter from the editors of the Bulletin, asking if I’d
write this story. So while I was trying to assign
stories and photos for my newsletter, trying to
keep up on my class reading, and attending
flag football for my final physical education
credit, I found and talked to three students on
campus who are even busier than I am.

T

get Darius Tandon excited and talking all
needed to do was bring up pool tables
TandoI Saturday
night parties. Darius has taken
on the responsibility of organizing much of the
social life for Swarthmore College students. He
is a Tarble co-director (alternatively called the
Tarble social director) with Ron Groenendaal
’94. They are in charge of coordinating many
social and campus activities. They supervise
the Old Club, the game room, and the nonfood
aspect of Paces (a space behind Essie Mae’s
snack bar that is the site of many parties, in
addition to being a coffeehouse for three
hours every weeknight). He and Groenendaal
have only been in the job since April, but
already they have big plans—a talent show in
November, a pool tournament in the game
room, theme parties, renovating the game
room, etc. Once Darius begins talking, ideas
seem to inspire more ideas—he wants to cre8

says one student with a job. There’s no
finance their Swarthmore educations.
ate a space for hanging out and socializing;
he’d like to put couches in the game room;
he’d like to host more nonparty social activi­
ties, like performances by comedians; and
what do you think about...?
Darius is paid for 14 hours a week, but
those hours are just the hands-on time—time
spent making phone calls, balancing the
books, organizing parties and events.
“The most valuable time I spend on
this job has nothing to do with that,”
said Darius. “I spend a lot of time in
brainstorming sessions, trying to think
of creative things for the students to do.
I need to get ideas from other students
so that we are sponsoring the kinds of
activities they want.”
In the past, Darius claims, the social life
on campus had been limited to parties.
He’s intent on changing that. He’s hoping
to expand his job’s definition, so that stu­
dents who come after him will continue to
work on different and exciting social activi­
ties. “Being a senior, studying for the GRE,
applying to grad school—I don’t have time to
do all I want to do. Not to mention that I have
four classes.”
Darius has had other campus jobs during
his time at Swarthmore. Last year he was a
research assistant in the Adult Perception Lab
in the Psychology Department. He was also a
waitron (Swarthmorese for waitress or waiter)
for Served Meal. “My parents and I have an
agreement. We each do what we can. They
know that I can’t work 30 hours a week. But
I’m trying to work along with my parents to
finance the bill and to keep the loans down,”
said Darius.
Darius has also worked summers. After his
first year and his sophomore year, he worked
in Chester and was paid through the Motiva­
tion and Growth in Chester (MAGIC) program.
He worked in a six-week summer camp for 60
kids. “My senior thesis stems from things I
observed during those summers,” said Darius,
a psychology and education special major. He
is writing his thesis on the relation of motiva­
tion to academic achievement in urban educa­
tion. This past summer Darius worked for six
weeks with a pre-college program for minority
students in Platteville, Wis., then with a leader­
ship camp in Tennessee, and then with a Wis­
consin camp for kids with HIV or with a family
Part of senior Darius Tandon’s duties as Tarble co­
director is to supervise Paces, the site of on-cam­
pus parties and a coffeehouse (and of this mural).
9

unior Sampriti Ganguli is familiar
to many alumni, for she works as
the events intern in the Alumni
Office. She helps the assistant
director with alumni events, which
include Alumni Weekend, Fall Week­
end, and Alumni Council. “This is my
first paid job,” said Sampriti. “I
wasn’t allowed to work in the Philip­
pines [her home]. There weren’t
many job opportunities because of
the unemployment. Although my
parents don’t give me any pressure
to work, I want to learn how to man­
age my own finances.”

J

member with HIV. “I worked at the for all who are admitted to attend.
last camp as a volunteer. Luckily, I About 48 percent of the College’s stu­
made enough at the first camp to pay dent body currently receives financial
my bills.”
aid, which usually comes as a combi­
Darius kept relating stories about nation of scholarships, loans, and
the camps, all of them positive. He’d employment.
In search of an understanding of
like to continue working at camps in
the future, when he plans to attend student employment on campus, I
graduate school in clinical psychology stopped at the Financial Aid Office
and work with children with clinical and talked to the director of financial
problems. “I love working with kids of aid, Laura Talbot. She explained that
all ages, with all kinds of problems. In work-study is an optional part of the
Chester I was helping to give the kids financial aid package. The College
motivation. I see my job as social does not want students’ work to inter­
director as helping also. The job is fere with their studies or other activi­
ties, so most of the financial aid offer
very natural for me,” said Darius.
Darius was puzzled when I asked is usually scholarship, the remaining
him if he thought working during col­ part being a combination of loans and
lege was a positive or a negative thing. work. The work component typically
He had never considered the question comes to about seven hours a week,
before. After a pause he said, “I think but if students can work more, they’ll
that one of the things I have learned be able to borrow less.
Roughly a quarter of students on
from college is budgeting my time and
getting my priorities straight. Studying financial aid stick to this limit, another
is my first priority, so that I can do quarter work more, and another quar­
what I want to with my life. Now I have ter work less. The remainder choose
to study for the GRE, and the position not to work at all, instead earning
as Tarble director has to be fit into my more over the summer or taking out
schedule. I believe I can do my best in additional loans.
Talbot also explained that students
all aspects of my life—grad school
applications, thesis, classes. It would are expected to contribute some of
be easier if I didn’t have to worry their summer earnings toward their
about my campus job, but it’s teach­ books and personal expenses while at
ing me what life is going to be like in Swarthmore. The financial aid pack­
graduate school and in the workplace. age stipulates a student contri­
I see Swarthmore as the least hectic bution that is the same for every
place I’m going to spend time at dur­ student. She sees working, in
ing my life. There will just be more moderation, as a very valuable
and more work as I get older. My cam­ part of the college experience.
pus job is helping me balance things.”
found Heidi Walls, a junior
Darius’ work ethic became even
English literature major who is
clearer when I asked him how he
working on getting a certification
planned to pay for graduate school.
to teach high school English,
He said he was hoping to be a teach­
ing assistant or a research assistant: “I deep in a book when I walked
would rather have an assistant’s job into her dorm room. Currently
than a scholarship. I enjoy doing the Heidi spends between eight and
extra work. Although I wouldn’t turn 12 hours a week baby-sitting 9- H
down the scholarship money, I feel month-old Ava Lindenmaier in
like I’d learn so much working with my Swarthmore. But Heidi’s favorite
job at school is as one of the
professors, from teaching.”
After talking with me for an hour in managers for the men’s wrestling
Parrish Parlors, Darius glanced down team. She attends their matches
at his watch. He excused himself from one or two days a week and
our conversation. He had another stays anywhere from two to 10
hours keeping statistics on the
meeting in three minutes.
wrestlers. In season, Heidi works
warthmore College’s policy is to
admit qualified students regard­ One ofjunior Heidi Walls’jobs this
less of their financial need and to year is baby-sitting for 9-month-old
strive to make it possible financially Ava Lindenmaier of Swarthmore.

I

S

10

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

an average of 15 hours a week.
“I would have loved to work more,
but I was editor in chief of the Hal­
cyon. In addition to that, I started a Big
Sister Mentor program with the princi­
pal of the Swarthmore-Rutledge Ele­
mentary School,” said Heidi. “Working

work-study was part of the financial
aid package, and I needed the money.
During the summer most of the
money I earn goes toward tuition, and
during the school year, I’m responsi­
ble for all my expenses,” she said.
“Money is tight. I’ve always borrowed
as much as the Financial Aid Office
would let me borrow.”
see Swarthmore as
To keep up her end of the tuition
bill, Heidi has worked various jobs
the least hectic
over the summers. For two years she
place I’m going to
interned with the Chamber of Com­
merce in her hometown of Monspend time at during
toursville in north-central Pennsylva­
nia. This past summer Heidi was an
my life.”
assistant crew leader for eight disad­
— Darius Tandon ’94
vantaged high school youths who
spent the summer working at a non­
during college is a good idea, but it is profit retreat and conference center in
very difficult here. There is a lot of a Youth Service Corps project. They
pressure to participate in activities. worked every day painting and build­
People look at you and say, ‘I want ing ramps for the handicapped and a
you to do all these wonderful things.’ volleyball court—all the while devel­
Although I don’t mind working, I wish I oping teamwork and individual initia­
didn’t have to worry about it.”
tive. One of her crew members suf­
Heidi has also worked at the fered from attention deficit disorder,
library’s reserve desk and at the Lang two were high school dropouts, and
Performing Arts Center as an usher. one had moved from Philadelphia to
She rem em bers that beginning to escape gangs and drug wars. “This is
work on campus was intimidating at the age group I want to work with,”
first because it was a new experience. said Heidi, “and I’m glad I had this
“I was never allowed to have a job in chance to find out more about them.
high school. But when I got to college, This was truly the best summer—I

I

DECEMBER 1993

than Klemperer is a senior from
Manhattan who works eight
hours a week as a peer career advis­
er. He counsels students in the
Career Planning and Placement
Office, which entails helping with
resumes and cover letters and talk­
ing with students who are stressed
out about their uncertain futures
and pointing them toward the right
resources. “I think that this job is
really worthwhile for me and for the
people I counsel. Because I comfort
other people about the real world, it
doesn’t seem so scary to me,” said
Ethan.

E

11

Senior theatre major MeiLing McWorter works as a
master electrician and super­
visor in the scene shop at the
Lang Performing Arts Center.

ichard Tchen is a junior who is a
writing associate in training. He
reads and comments on student
papers and then discusses with the
students how to improve the organi­
zation and expression of their ideas.
This semester is a training semes­
ter, which includes a three-hour
Writing Process course. In addition
to taking the course, he works
about 10 hours a week, although
writing associates are paid a flat
salary for the semester. In the past
Richard has worked at the Scott
Arboretum and at the School in
Rose Valley. “If the employment is
fulfilling, any work during the col­
lege years is a ‘positive thing,’” said
Richard.

R

didn’t want to come back to
school. It proved to me that
I want to be a high school
teacher.”
Heidi also has a long list
of part-time jobs she has
taken over the summers to
make extra money. Every
paycheck from the Youth
Service Corps project
except one went into the
bank toward school costs.
Through baby-sitting, help­
ing her dad in his private
planning consulting busi­
ness, working for the Cham­
ber of Commerce on week­
ends, doing computer work
with a foundation, and dog­
sitting, Heidi has also been
able to earn spending P I K
money over the years.
When I asked Heidi if Wi
working to help pay for col- £
lege was a positive or nega­
tive experience for her, she was divid­ scene shop. As a supervisor she
ed. “I’m glad I work. It’s good to get knows how to work every tool from
job experience, which is important for the table saw to the power sander,
career plans. Yet it’s frustrating know­ helping students build set pieces and
ing that I sometimes have to take watching over the operation of the
stupid jobs just to make ends meet, as shop. She is also a master electrician
opposed to working on other volun­ for the department, and she’s often
teer jobs that would give me good hired when they need assistance on
experience...” Heidi ended the inter­ productions.
This may seem like plenty of work,
view with a thought that applied to
but
it’s only her “minor.” Mei-Ling’s
many areas of her life: “...but for
major job is as Student Employment
which I don’t have the time.”
Office (SEO) co-director, with Maieaching Mei-Ling McWorter was
almost impossible, and finding a
hen people in
time for us to meet was harder. Finally
I met her while she was working in the
the administra­
scene shop of the Eugene M. and
Theresa Lang Performing Arts Center.
tion call you 'Busy
When I walked into the room, I
Woman,’ you know
noticed the sawdust covering MeiLing’s Malcolm X T-shirt, on which
you work a lot.”
was written in four languages: “Radi­
— Mei-Ling McWorter ’94
cal Tradition and a Legacy of Strug­
gle.” The senior theatre major from
Chicago stood at a work table with 2by-4s in her hands, her safety goggles Phuong Bui ’94. They juggle students,
temporarily pushed to the top of her employers, and payroll while holding
head. Mei-Ling works four hours a office hours to help students fill out
week in the Theatre Department’s their first W-4 forms. Mei-Ling works

R

W

SWARTHM0RE COLLEGE BULLETIN

its,
ing
)Ut
fks

friend. Before classes started in
August, the RAs took time out for a
canoe trip, but Mei-Ling couldn’t go;
she had to plan for student employ­
ment orientation.
“I don’t pay for my tuition, but I do
pay for my books, design equipment,
laundry, pizza, etc. I also help with
transportation back home to Chicago.
Last summer I lived in Los Angeles
and worked as a legal intern for HBO.
The experience turned out to be much
more expensive than I had expected; I
went into debt and am still paying it
off.”
Mei-Ling works for money, but she
also works to get experience in the­
atre—her dream career—whether it
pays or not. This past summer she got
paid working with the Joseph Holmes
Chicago Dance Theater as an adminis­
trative assistant. At night she volun­
teered as a stage manager for a new
theatre company called MPAACT—
Ma’at Production Association for
African Centered Theater.
Mei-Ling’s friends tell her that she
works too much. “When people in the
administration call you ‘Busy Woman,’
you know you work a lot,” said MeiLing. But she also says that work has
an average of 15 hours a week at her prepared her for life after graduation,
SEO job.
when she might need to get extra jobs
“I’ve always had at least two jobs,” to pay the bills, especially if she pur­
she said nonchalantly. “I’ve never con- sues a career in theatre. This summer
sidered working just one. But I enjoy she had two days off between the end
my jobs. I enjoy working in theatre, of her job and the start of RA training.
and I like having a voice in student Mei-Ling said, “I’m already prepared
employment issues such as job oppor­ for the way the real world works when
tunities and pay raises.” I was amazed there’s no summer vacation.”
as I added up what she had been
telling me—she could be working
or seniors looking for work for
more than 20 hours a week. She half
after graduation, jobs are plans for
smiled, clearly not glad she has to next year. For Mei-Ling, Heidi, and
work that much, but accepting the sit­ Darius, working isn’t something they
uation. “Over the past four years, I’ve are planning on doing. It is something
worked an average of 10 hours a they are doing and worrying about
week, unless there was a show going now. They’ve found ways to create
on, when I would work more hours, interesting experiences out of the
not always for pay,” said Mei-Ling, necessity of work, although perhaps
who has also worked for the Annual at some cost to their studies or sanity.
Funds Office and the Black Cultural
Speaking of costs to studies, I need
Center.
to get back to Emily Dickinson, whom
Those are her jobs that pay cash. I have been neglecting. I probably
The compensation for being a resi­ shouldn’t have agreed to take time out
dent adviser in Wharton is that the to write this story, but then again, I
cost of her room is deducted from her needed the money. ■
College bill. As an RA, Mei-Ling is on
the hall as much as possible, serving Krysia Kubiak is a senior English major
as a social coordinator, a link with the from Erie, Pa. She plans to attend law
adm inistration, a listener, and a school next year.

:t in

DECEMBER 1993

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F

allas Brennan is a senior from
Monroe, Maine, whose main job
is as one of two Paces Café direc­
tors. (The other is Sanda Balaban
’94.) Paces Café is a small coffeeshop that serves students coffee
and small meals cheaply from 9 p.m.
to midnight during the week. “We
are trying to create a weeknight
home for intellectual conversation,
personal indulgence, social interac­
tion, and plenty of coffee consump­
tion,” said Dallas. As director, Dallas
staffs and organizes the café, keeps
budget and payrolls, and secures
the kitchen, in addition to trying to
create a new look for the café. She
works 20 hours a week there,
although she’s salaried for 10, and
also works about 21/ hours a week
as a writing associate. “The school
pretends that all activity and com­
mitment beyond the classroom is a
quaint little addendum to one’s
memories at Swarthmore,” Dallas
said. “I just wonder what people
think will happen after Swarth­
more.”

D

13

TH E C O LLE G E

T O D A Y

CLASSROOM
VOICES
CURRICULUM
CHOICES
By Rebecca Aim
t’s a cool, rainy September day,
and 25 or so Shakespeare stu­
dents sit, th eir desks in an
approxim ate half-circle, in a
bright new classroom in the Lang
Performing Arts Center. Their books
are open to Act I, Scene I of A Midsum­
mer Night’s Dream. Associate Profes­
sor Abbe Blum sits on the desk in
front of the room and asks, “If you had
to cast this play, whom would you
choose for Hippolyta?”
The room is quiet for a moment
while the students digest the unex­
pected question. “Sigourney Weaver?”
one student suggests finally. “OK,
good,” says Blum. “What would make
her a good Hippolyta?” The student
thinks. “She’s a female warrior type,
tall.”
A couple of other students are
encouraged to volunteer their ideas:
Grace Jones and Cher. “What’s behind
th ese choices?” Blum asks. “Is it
important that Hippolyta be tall?” It
turns out that it is—convention sug­
gests that a powerful woman is a tall
woman.
“What about Madonna?” Blum asks.
Several nos and some laughter greet
the suggestion. “Is Hippolyta sexual at
all?” After some discussion Blum asks
another unexpected question. “What’s
going on in the pauses, when no one is
speaking?”
To illustrate the importance of the
question and the possibilities it raises,
Blum shows two versions of the scene
on video, the 1968 Peter Hall version

I

ew courses, new programs, new ways
o f teaching established courses — there’s
a lot happening in teaching and curriculum
at Swarthmore. Faculty members are talking
about new ideas both in the classroom and
outside it, and they are earnestly debating
choices to be m ade at the College’s heart—
its educational program .

N

14

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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and the more recent BBC version. In
the first, there’s an almost cloying
sense of intimacy between Hippolyta
and Theseus; in the second, resent­
ment is palpable. Blum leads the stu­
dents to discuss such things as physi­
cal distance, setting, costuming, ges­
ture, and yes, what’s going on when
no one is speaking.
“Using the videos is one graphic,
and also visual, way of showing what
kinds of transitions can be made from
literary texts to playscripts to differ­
ent kinds of media,” Blum explains
later. “It gives the students a sense of
what very different productions can
do and what kinds of choices there
are to be made in matters that seem
less tangible when you’re reading.”
Blum emphasizes to the class that
video is not equivalent to live perfor­
mance, and so she also works with
the Theatre Program and brings per­
formances to the class, hoping to give
students an idea of what it’s like to act
in the plays. One evening professional
actors demonstrate sword fighting on
the main stage of the Lang Performing
Arts Center in a scene from Henry IV,
Part 1. They show a half-dozen or so
ways to die in a sword fight, then take
suggestions and replay parts of the
scene in different ways, giving the stu­
dents an idea of what are good, or fea­
sible, choices and what are not. On
another evening, students see the bal­
cony scene from Romeo and Juliet
acted out in two different locations in
Clothier Hall. Close to the end of the
semester, they hope to take a trip to
see a complete performance of a play.
“One of the preoccupations for me
in teaching this course is the way in
which the plays are alive and speak to
different issues and qualities that are
ongoing,” Blum explains. And so she
also emphasizes for students some
newer perspectives on Shakespeare’s
plays, such as gendered notions of
love and power and questions of class
and race. “Because this is Shake­
speare in the 1990s, the plays don’t
exist in the same seemingly timeless,
hermetically sealed condition in
which they might have seemed to
exist at some times in the past. I want
students to be aware of how the rele­
vance of Shakespeare to each genera­
tion has changed. I don’t think there’s
any way of making the plays really
come alive if we don’t have a sense
DECEMBER 1993

not only of what the acting, perfor­ new critical approaches but also by
mance, and textual conditions were in new subject matters. Assistant Profes­
the 16th and 17th centuries but also sor Alexandra Juhasz, for example,
what they are now.”
came to Swarthmore in 1992 as the
On the one hand, the name Shake­ first specialist in film that the depart­
speare suggest to many an unchang­ ment has had; her courses on women
ing literary tradition. But on the other and film have been very popular. This
hand, alternative ways of studying fall Associate Professor Woon-Ping
Chin began as the first Asian Ameri­
can literature specialist in the depart­
ment; she’s teaching an upper-level
course on Asian American literature
and an introductory course called
The Postcolonial Condition.
“Why teach this literature?” Chin
asks rhetorically. “My answ er is
because it’s good literature. It’s not
just for political reasons. The other
reason is that it is an integral part, a
missing part, of the American experi­
ence. It’s another chip being added to
the American mosaic.
“What’s exciting to me is to be here
and to be part of a national momen­
tum. It’s not as if we are doing some­
he curriculum is
thing freakish or radical; it’s national
and global. When you look at global
on the one hand a
art movements and global resources,
thing, the em bodimentyou see the channels opening up in
the Pacific Rim. Asians will be some of
of courses that are
the dominant voices in the 21st centu­
ry in art and politics.”
described in the
But exciting as they are, additions
catalogue. But on a
are not made to the curriculum, or to
the “canon” of what English literature
deeper level, it is an
students read, without thought and
embodiment of the
struggle. Some ask what will be lost as
new works and writers and types of
College's best ideas.
literature get taken in. “What we want
And ideas change.
to avoid,” says Professor Craig
Williamson,
the department’s chair,
Humans change.
“is the idea that we have to choose
Knowledge changes. ”
one set of writers over another. We
don’t feel that we need to choose
—Philip Weinstein
between traditional and new writers
English Literature
but that we can do both, often inte­
grated into the same course.”
Associate Professor of English Lit­
and understanding Shakespeare are erature Nathalie Anderson sees the
possible, both through newer technol­ department going through “a recon­
ogy (VCRs and the accessibility of sideration of what we are able to
videotapes, for example) and through cover. In the past the idea was that a
the paths scholarship has followed few exemplary writers represented
(taking up political, social, ideological, the best of a period, but choosing
and gender issues, for example). The only a few has disenfranchised many
possibilities bring new excitement to people. Now a number of courses
the study of Shakespeare, and to make an effort not to reject Haw­
other studies in the Department of thorne or Faulkner but to complicate
English Literature as well.
that vision with the works of women
The department has been invigo­ and people of color.” She points to a
rated not only by new technology and course in which Faulkner and recent

r

15

Nobel prize-winner Toni Morrison
were taught together: “As humane, as
broad as Faulkner’s vision may have
been, when you put it together with
Morrison’s, you see that Faulkner’s is
not broad enough.”
“Somehow in the shuffle maybe
some venerated w riters will get
pushed out,” acknowledges WoonPing Chin. “The optimist in me says
that the good writers will remain, that
we won’t stop teaching Shakespeare
or Melville just because we’re teach­
ing Maxine Hong Kingston. I believe
that the canon can be expanded to
accommodate more rather than be
rarefied and restricted to only a few
giants.”

riculum in several other ways, Moskos
suggests. In order to follow the inter­
ests of students and faculty members
and the direction in which the profes­
sion is going, the departm ent has
broadened its mission. For many
years language departments taught
language first “and then as a reward

Associate Professor Brigitte Lane, the
first person the department has hired
specifically to teach culture.
The departm ent has also been
teaching more courses on the litera­
ture and culture of other countries in
translation. “We have the feeling that
we, having bathed in a language and
culture, are very well-placed to do it in
English, knowing the nuances of
everything we are teaching from the
original language,” says George
Moskos. Another “hinge role” the
department can play in multicultural­
ism is in the study of the language and
literature of segments within the Unit­
ed States—like the study of Hispanic
writers in America.

t ’s not just in the English Depart­
ment that such issues are being dis­
cussed and worked through on cam­
pus. Across the curriculum, there
have been earnest and sometimes
contentious discussions around the
hy teach this
idea of multiculturalism, an idea that
President Alfred H. Bloom made a cen­
literature?
terpiece of his inaugural address in
May 1992. Certainly the topic is much
Because it’s good
on the minds of mem bers of the
literature. It’s not just
Department of Modern Languages and
Literatures, which Russian Professor
for political reasons.
Thompson Bradley describes as “a
It is an integral part, a
department of five cultures” in itself.
How does this group see multicul­
missing part, o f the
turalism? “It’s not a given that we’re
American experience.
all trying to achieve,” says Bradley.
“It’s the other way around. We’re
It’s another chip
going to spend the next couple of
being added to the
decades trying to figure out the ways
in which education has to change, and
American mosaic. ”
rather seriously, to reach the popula­
— Woon-Ping Chin
tion of a changing world.”
“The way I heard it,” contributes
English Literature
Marion Faber, professor of German,
“is that students should be educated
to be in a class where they’re both in students were allowed to read the lit­
and outside the culture at certain erature of the country,” as Assistant
times, so that there’s more than one Professor of German Hans-Juerg
cultural grounding going on at the Rindisbacher puts it. Now the depart­
same time.”
ment explicitly includes what is called
George Moskos, professor of “cultural studies” in all its courses.
“Studying culture has always been
French and chair of the department,
jumps in: “To our mind language an implicit part of our curriculum—
teaching is the perfect intercultural you can’t really teach language or lit­
experience. You’re both within the erature without it. The change has
language and without it at the same been a more explicit recognition of
time, and there’s a real complication that,” Moskos explains. He points to
specific courses that take a cultural
of cultures.”
Modern Languages and Literatures studies approach, such as Contempo­
can contribute to a multicultural cur­ rary French Rituals, taught by new

he forces behind multiculturalism
are an increasingly international
world and greater diversity at home,
says Provost Jennie Keith. That’s why
multiculturalism, however you define
it, has becom e a h o t—and hotly
debated—topic at Swarthmore. “The
question is, ‘So what for Swarth­
more?”’ she explains. “How should we
respond?”
Last year a group of faculty mem­
bers took up that question in the CEP
(Council on Educational Policy) Task
Force on Curriculum, originally set up
last year by the College Planning Com­
mittee. How multiculturalism should
be reflected in the curriculum was
only one of the items on the task
force’s agenda, but it ended up taking
most of the year. “In our naïveté we
thought we could get that worked out
in eight or 10 weeks,” says the chair of
the task force, English Professor Philip
Weinstein, with a smile. “We spent the
year generating ideas, with a lot of
anxiety around us as to whether we
would just wholesale try to remake
the curriculum.”
Jennie Keith explains some of the
resistance faculty members have
expressed. “Some people feel it’s
trendy; they worry we’re going to do
something superficial, like just stick in
a couple of multicultural courses.
There are deeper worries that we’ll
end up with some kind of ‘political
correctness’ police looking at what
people are teaching and saying,
‘You’re sticking to the old canon.
That’s not permitted anymore.’ So
some worry that they’ll lose control
over their own areas. But I don’t think

I

16

T

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

either of those things is going to hap­
pen at Swarthmore—certainly not if ^
can help it.”
One result of the discussion so far
is an adjustment of terminology—
some prefer to talk about “interculturalism” rather than “multiculturalism”
because it implies an encounter
across a culture into another rather
than a simple multiplication of cul­
tures. Another result is that a series of
seminars, funded by a Mellon Founda­
tion grant for curricular innovation,
will be held over the next spring and
fall for faculty members to discuss
issues surrounding multiculturalism.
Jennie Keith, who will coordinate the
seminars, envisions them as a kind of
“faculty honors.” “We need to get our
faculty to address questions of multi­
culturalism in a very serious way,”
she says, “asking broad questions like
‘Does multiculturalism imply moral
and ethical relativism?’ as well as
exploring specific topics, such as
human rights, from various cultural
perspectives.
“I want to hear all the voices, and I
want to talk and work at this long
enough so that we can look at all the
hard questions,” says Keith. “We’re
doing things the way we always do
them at Swarthmore. We’re taking our
time and using our brains. We’re not
going to buy somebody else’s solu­
tion.”

Years of Hope, Days of Rage. The
teachers, Assistant Professor Meta
Mendel-Reyes of the Political Science
Department and Associate Professor
Marjorie Murphy of the History
Department, remember the ’60s as
part of their lives. The stu d en ts
hadn’t been born yet.
Mendel-Reyes asks for a volunteer.
She hands the woman who responds
a worn red, white, and black flag.
“Carry it as though you’re picketing,”
Mendel-Reyes instructs the student,
who marches in a circle in the front of
the room a little self-consciously. Next
Mendel-Reyes asks her to hold the
flag up so everyone can see—it’s a
United Farm Workers flag with
the words “Boycott Grapes of
Wrath” handwritten across the
top in faded black capital let­
ters.
“What did you notice about
the flag when you were walking
around with it?” Mendel-Reyes
asks.
“It was heavier than you’d
think,” the student replies.
“Why was it so heavy?” MendelReyes asks. Then she demonstrates,
holding the long, thick board that
serves as its pole horizontally in
front of her chest with both hands.
“It’s a self-defense flag,” she explains.
“This was a period when it took a lot
of courage, not only mental and moral
courage but also physical courage, to
s students file into the protest.”
Hicks Mural Room, talking
The topic for the day is the New
and finding seats, some Left. The slogans on the board are
eyes are attracted to the from student p ro test movements
chalkboard in front of the around the world, and Mendel-Reyes
cavernous room. Like graffitti,explains
sloganstheir significance, pointing to
are splattered across the board: “The them one by one with the rolled-up
general will against the will of the Gen­ flag.
eral”; “We want light! We want to
The lecture is punctuated by fre­
study!”; “Mankind will not live free quent questions from students and
until the last capitalist has been stran­ comments and additions by Professor
gled with the entrails of the last Murphy, who is sitting at a desk in the
bureaucrat!” Apparently the students front row. At one point a student asks
are accustomed to the murals that cir­ w hether p ro testers took time to
cle the room above eye level, for they reflect on what they were doing. Mur­
don’t rate a glance. They depict phy responds by telling the class how
images dignifying work—smoke­ she felt when she heard that a group
stacks, farmers, a scientist bent over a she was involved in as a student
microscope, a shovel and pick. Along
one side is a painting of two hands, “A preoccupation for me in teaching
f
one dark brown and one unnaturally Shakespeare is the way in which the plays §
white, gripping each other over are alive and speak to issues and qualities §
earth’s horizon.
that are ongoing, ”says Abbe Blum of the i
The class is called The Sixties: English Literature Department.

A

DECEMBER 1993

protester in the ’60s had bombed a
church. That’s when she began to
think more seriously about what she
was doing, she tells them.
“A lot of the issues of the ’60s are
issues we are still wrestling with,”
Mendel-Reyes says later. She gives as
an example the issue of race, which
was the subject of a class discussion
of Black Power in the ’60s: “It became
clear that a lot of students in the class
were using Black Power as a synonym
for violence. They had no sense that it
was a much broader concept having
to do with self-determination, selfidentity, and empowerment. After that
class, some black students were say­
ing that they were frustrated because
they were constantly being required
to teach other students about what it
was like to be black. Some white stu­
dents were frustrated because they
wanted to be able to get past position­
taking and be able to really talk. I find
that these issues come up a lot in
class, and I think it’s good that people
start to talk and to wrestle with them.”
Mendel-Reyes also believes that the
’60s can give students new perspec­
tives on politics. “We have a real ten­
dency to associate politics with great
leaders. An important lesson of the
’60s is that students and ordinary peo­
ple got involved, trying to make deci­
sions about their lives in ways we
don’t think of now. Students are
attuned to the very passive version of
politics that we have today, so they
don’t know that.”
What is it like to teach about a peri­
od you’ve lived through? “I suppose
you could say there would be a lack of
objectivity,” says Mendel-Reyes, “and
that might be true. But I very much
believe in making connections
between the intellect and experience,
so I think it’s an asset that we can
both draw on our experiences.” Mur­
phy adds: “You can’t help your politi­
cal point of view, w hether you’re
studying the ’60s or the Progressive
Era or the Depression. To hide it
behind other authors is less educa­
tional than to be very open about
your political perspective and then
remind students that this is a particu“An important lesson of the ’60s is that
students and ordinary people got involved, ”
says Meta Mendel-Reyes, who teaches in
a course on the decade.

lar take on a particular event.”
“This is a course that’s really excit­
ing to teach because we’re two differ­
ent people from two different disci­
plines,” says Mendel-Reyes. Team
teaching is not less work, she says,
since the two professors spend a lot
of time coordinating and preparing
together. But the rewards, for both
students and professors, can be great.
cross campus, team-taught cours­
es are becoming more popular;
this semester’s course schedule lists
six of them, including Health Policy,
taught by Professor Robinson Hollis­
ter of the Economics Department and
Professor Emeritus David Smith of the
Political Science Department, and
From Revolution to Capitalism: Criti­
cal Issues in Contemporary Russia,
taught by Assistant Professor Robert
Weinberg in the History Department
and Thompson Bradley in Modern
Languages and Literatures. Bradley,
who has team taught several courses,
says interdisciplinary teaching can
productively change the way a profes­
sor looks at his or her own field: “We
get a chance to work with one another
and learn from one another, and out
of that comes interesting work of our
own. There’s a tendency to look at the
benefits for students, but the reality is
our sanity, our learning, and our
development.”
Provost Jennie Keith sees the
breakdown of some disciplinary
boundaries as a response to what
contemporary scholars want to know.
“We’re discovering more areas like
biochemistry or bioanthropology or
women’s studies where what we want
to know doesn’t fall neatly into the old
disciplinary categories.”
Team teaching isn’t the only way
that the faculty has been making con­
nections between disciplines. Last
year the College introduced three new
interdisciplinary concentrations,
Environmental Studies, Interpretation
Theory, and Peace and Conflict Stud­
ies, which were added to eight
already existing concentrations.
(Twenty years ago there were only
three.) Though this may seem like a
departure from Swarthmore’s strong
departmental tradition, Jennie Keith
sees a kind of continuity: “It’s the fac­
ulty that always shapes our program.
We don’t have a bunch of administra-

A

DECEMBER 1993

y its very nature,
the field of
environmental studies
is interdisciplinary
Different people from
different fields bring
their tools and their
perspectives to bear
upon the problem. ”
—Arthur McGarity
Engineering

interested in the technical or scientif­
ic side, they may have a major in engi­
neering or biology. If they’re interest­
ed in the policy side, they could have
a political science major. If they’re
interested in environmental ethics,
they could be philosophy majors. All
these fields have something to say
about environmental problems.”
McGarity gives an example from
last year’s Capstone Seminar, which is
required of all senior concentrators.
The three students, who majored in
engineering, math, and psychology,
looked at considerations of energy
use in the planning process for Trot­
ter Hall and Swarthmore’s north cam­
pus. What could a psychologist con­
tribute? In illustration McGarity says,
“One question we studied was
whether air conditioning was really
necessary. So the psychologist looked
into the psychology of the need for air
conditioning—is this something peo­
ple become addicted to?”
he Interpretation Theory concen­
tration, coordinated by Psycholo­
gy Professor Kenneth Gergen, was a
more difficult sell to the faculty. “This
concentration barely scraped
through,” Gergen says. “It took four
faculty meetings, two years, and end­
less hours of discussion, and even
then it almost failed to pass. For a lot
of people, even at Swarthmore, this is
an explosive kind of study, threaten­
ing.”
Interpretation Studies is threaten­
ing perhaps because it questions not
only what we know but the way we
know things in general. “Whatever
knowledge is,” Gergen says, “it is gen­
erally presented to us in linguistic
form. In the past it has generally been
believed that there is a close relation­
ship between the linguistic interpreta­
tion and the thing itself, so that a
good text is going to have some kind
of mirrorlike relationship with the
object. In the last 20 years, there have
been a number of strong critiques of
that view of language. We more or
less presume that we’re reading about
the thing itself when in fact we’re get­
ting processes that intercede.”
Across many disciplines scholars
have become interested in what Ger­
gen calls “the constraints built into
language.” Social theorists are con­
cerned about why some representa-

T

tors or a state legislature that decides
what we’re going to teach and what
we’re going to require. Groups of fac­
ulty members want to do things for
intellectual reasons, and they make
proposals that are discussed in facul­
ty meetings and voted on.”
The Environmental Studies concen­
tration was approved by the faculty in
1991 and had a successful first year
last year. Three students graduated
with the concentration, and around 10
will graduate this year. Engineering
Professor Arthur McGarity and Biolo­
gy Professor Jacob Weiner are coordi­
nators, and the committee includes
faculty members from Psychology,
Philosophy, Economics, and Religion
as well. “By its very nature, the field of
environmental studies is interdisci­
plinary,” says McGarity. “Different
people from different fields bring their
tools and their perspectives to bear
upon the problem.
“This is something students from
any major could do. If they’re more

19

tions are privileged over others in
communities; scholars of the history
of science study the ways in which
scientific theories get to be champi­
oned as true; feminists and others
who are concerned with value posi­
tions examine the kinds of ideological
biases that are built into language.
“It’s a set of concerns that emerge in a
variety of disciplines,” Gergen says,
“each of which has a piece of the
problem and a slightly different
emphasis.”
Gergen gives an example from the
sciences, where most people might
think interpretation is less biased.
“When explaining human fertilization,
biology texts p resent as neutral,
objective, unbiased fact a picture of a
rather stable and unmoving egg and
very active sperm. The sperm are
given the credit for all the activity, and
the egg is pretty much passive. But
feminist critics point out that you
could easily take the same ‘facts’ and
give another interpretation. You could
look at those sperm as pulled in by
the liquid surrounding the egg. Giving
the sperm the active role carries with
it certain sorts of cultural biases
about the active male.
“I’m not saying to get rid of all the
biology texts or other texts,” Gergen

20

continues. “The point is not to some­
he Women’s Studies Program,
which has existed at Swarthmore
how ‘get it right,’ to make sure we’ve
got all the biases taken away. The since 1986, provides an example of
point is to be aware of the ways in how interdisciplinary concentrations
which interpretation is limited—to be can grow and reach out across cam­
humbled by the problem of objectivi­ pus. The catalogue lists courses that
can count toward the concentration in
ty or truth.”
These aren’t just Swarthmore dis­ 16 departments and programs, includ­
cussions, Gergen em phasizes— ing Biology, English, History, Music
“They’re teeming across the country and Dance, Psychology, and Religion.
find across all of Western civilization. “A couple of years ago we did a sur­
This is an attempt to get some of this vey of what departments offer courses
excitement, this ferment, into Swarth- tow ard the co n cen tratio n ,” says
more’s undergraduate curriculum in English Professor Nathalie Anderson,
the current coordinator of the pro­
some organized fashion.”
Peace and Conflict Studies, the gram. “There were several depart­
third concentration that began last ments that didn’t have courses, so we
year, is one that builds on the Col­ began to make bridges to them.” As a
lege’s Quaker roots and resources, result, some faculty members began
according to Professor and Friends devising courses th at related to
Historical Library director J.W. Frost, women’s or gender issues, and others
the concentration’s convenor. “We are considering doing so. The number
can’t all agree on exactly what the of concentrators has increased from
Quaker tradition is,” he says, “but cer­ around five in the first few years to
tainly we know that it involves peace. around 25 now, with many more stu­
And we have one of the prem iere dents taking significant numbers of
libraries on peace in the world; the the courses without concentrating.
While some W omen’s Studies
curriculum should take advantage of
that.” At the same time, Frost sees courses are specifically about women
peace studies as a vital and changing (such as Women in Classical Litera­
field today. “During the Cold War,” he ture), more frequently the courses
says, “we talked as though the prob­ look at representations of gender or
lem for peace was preventing nuclear the way that gender can be defined.
m war between the United The Women’s Studies Program is also
States and the U.S.S.R. the main place where gay and lesbian
5 Now we see that the prob- studies have appeared on campus.
| lems for peace are what “Gender is such a central, vital, com­
Qth e y ’ve always been: pelling topic—what constitutes the
racism, inequality, ethnici­ difference between the genders and
ty.” All concentrators take how that is circumscribed by histori­
Introduction to Peace cal and cultural circum stances,”
Studies, and courses to Anderson says earnestly. “These
fulfill the concentration’s issues are so pressing for everyone
requirements are offered that it’s no surprise that virtually
at Swarthm ore, Bryn every department already incorpo­
Mawr, and Haverford in rates something to do with gender in
history, philosophy, politi­ some of its courses.”
Anderson looks back on her own
cal science, religion, and
sociology/anthropology. education, when there were no cours­
Frost would like to see es offered in women’s concerns, when
courses on the literature it was possible “for both women and
of war, ecology, and men to suppose that women did noth­
w eapons developm ent ing, women wrote nothing, women
offered in the future as thought nothing, and the women in
the class studying what women didn’t
well.
do were not going to do anything
either.” She’s happy to report that “a
Meta Mendel-Reyes of the
young woman coming to school now
Political Science Department
has a much better opportunity to see
and Marjorie Murphy of the
the complexity of the world than she
History Department team
did even five or 10 years ago.”
teach a course on the ’60s.

T

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

C

lick click. Click. Click click.
Over the quiet and steady
hum of 13 computers, you
can hear the insistent
rhythm of clicks and double
clicks as 14 students in CS 10, Great
Ideas in Computer Science, work on
creating a simple spreadsheet. Min­
gled with that sound is the more
steady pace of tapping on the key­
boards punctuated by an occasional
decisive swipe at the return button.
In the computer classroom on the
second floor of Beardsley, there are
human sounds too—the murmur of
voices and occasional quiet laughter.
A hand goes up, and Charles Kelemen,
professor of computer science, comes
from across the room to squat next to
the student. She points to her screen,
asking about som ething she sees
there; “That’s strange,” says Kelemen.
He asks her some questions and fid­
dles a bit. “It must be kind of con­
fused, I’ll tell you that,” he continues.
After a while he moves on, bending
to look over students’ shoulders to
their screens. The directions for the
day’s activities begin: “Hi. Just like last
time, the purpose of this class is to
learn lots and have some fun. Relax.
Do not hesitate to ask questions.”
After a brief discussion with one
student, he stands up straight and
puts on a “classroom voice”: “If you
learn one thing in this class, it should
be this—Don’t believe something just
because your com puter says it.
Always check to see if the numbers
make sense.” Other than a few intro­
ductory remarks, that seems to be the
lecture for the day.
This is the second year that CS 10
and CS 20, the next course in the pro­
gram, have been offered. Before that,
there was only CS 15. “In CS 15, which
was the introductory course for
everybody,” Kelemen says, “a third of
the students were lost and a third
were bored, so the middle third were
the only ones being served.”
And that wasn’t the only problem.
For some time Kelemen, the director
of the Computer Science Program,
had been concerned about the small
number of women and minority stu­
dents in computer science in general
and at Swarthmore in particular. “A
couple of things combined to make
me start thinking about this,” Kele­
men explains. “Swarthmore had a vis­
DECEMBER 1993

iting professor, Uri Treisman, come a
few years ago, and he was doing work
on attracting minorities into mathe­
matics. Around the same time, my
fifth-grade daughter, who had always
liked science and still seemed inter­
ested in it at home, came home from
school one day and said, ‘Science is

L

anguage teaching
is the perfect
intercultural
experience. You’re
both within the
language and without
it at the sam e time,
and there’s a real
complication of
cultures.”
— George Moskos
Modem Languages
and Literatures

boring.’” Kelemen started to read and
talk to others about how women and
minorities could be encouraged to
take science courses and computer
science in particular.
“For a while I went along with the
idea that science is neutral, not gen­
der or race biased, but then I came to
understand that even if the material is
nonsexist and nonracist, the milieu in
which it is taught might not be,” Kele­
men says. One problem that particu­
larly afflicted CS 15, he realized, was
“hidden prerequisites.” Although the
course did not officially require previ­

ous com puter experience, in fact
teenage boys were more likely to have
played with computers than girls, and
so they had an advantage. In addition,
Kelemen discovered, studies have
shown that women are more likely
than men to dislike the perceived
competitiveness of the sciences and
that across the curriculum women are
more likely to be interrupted when
they’re talking.
To address some of these prob­
lems, Kelemen created two courses
where there used to be one. CS 10 is a
course for beginners; no previous
computer experience is assumed and
programming is not em phasized,
though some is included. Students
with significant computer experience,
as well as those who have completed
CS 10 and want to continue in com­
puter science, take CS 20, which con­
centrates more on programming.
Kelemen minimizes competition in
CS 10 by making assignm ents in
groups, trying to “remove elements of
individual competition.” Groups of
three work on a final project, which is
presented to the class at the end of
the semester.
The problem of women being inter­
rupted in class proved to be perhaps
the most insidious, Kelemen found.
Before the students chose groups for
their final project, he pointed out this
danger to them, hoping they’d keep it
in mind as they chose and worked in
their groups. “I was dismayed,” he
relates, “when one group, two men
and one woman, gave a presentation
that I thought was good, and a few
women students on their evaluations
said that the men interrupted too
much. I and most of the class hadn’t
noticed it, but when I thought back on
it, I realized that they did."
ther departments and programs
at Swarthmore have begun look­
ing at their introductory courses as
well. Provost Jennie Keith sees this as
an attempt to open up more disci­
plines to more people. “Anybody
here,” she says, “is probably capable
of being introduced to any subject
that we teach. Some faculty members
are making great efforts to counteract
the feeling some have that they can’t
learn some subjects, and Charles
Kelemen is a great example.”
Please turn to page 84

O

21

.£

TH E C O LLE G E

T O D A Y

By Rosemary Smith

In Swarthmore’s
club sports,
the emphasis
is on
meeting people,
making friends,
and having fun.

In addition to 22 varsity sports on
campus, there are eight active club
teams, including men’s badminton.

22

ome on out and play.” For many of us, the phrase
is reminiscent of childhood, yet it also applies to
club sports at the College. Most of the students at
Swarthmore who actively participate in club sports
became involved through a similar open-ended invitation
to come out, learn a new sport, and, most of all, have fun.
In addition to Swarthmore’s 22 varsity sports (in which
more than 30 percent of students participate), there are
currently eight active club teams on campus—men’s bad­
minton, cheerleading, sailing, men’s and women’s rugby,
ultimate frisbee, squash, and men’s volleyball. Unlike
club sports at most institutions, Swarthmore’s club
sports fall under the administrative umbrella of the Ath­
letic Department. According to athletic director Robert E.
Williams, the members of club sports teams receive the
same benefits and attention as do varsity athletes. Club
athletes are insured by the College, they are treated and
cared for by members of the athletic training staff, and
they are fit into the overall scheme of things for use of
facilities and fields. But despite the backing by the Athlet­
ic Department, club sports at Swarthmore are basically
student-run. And those students who have chosen to ini­
tiate and organize club sports are wearing many different
hats: They are administrators, secretaries, coordinators,
managers, coaches, players—and still students.
Only two clubs have the direct support of members of
the Athletic Department. Squash has the assistance of
men’s tennis coach Mike Mullan, while women’s varsity
badminton coach Eleanor “Pete” Hess has taken the
men’s badminton team under her wing. When asked
about how men’s badminton evolved from what has been
a women’s varsity sport here since before World War II,
Hess explained that as years went by, men began coming
to Swarthmore who knew how to play the sport or
whowere interested in learning. Rather than squelching
this interest, the women invited men to join them at their

C

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

STEVEN GOLDBLATT ’67

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idby,

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practices and at open tournaments. Hess notes that it is
typical of Swarthmore to present opportunities for stu­
dents to meet their skill and/or interest levels. For exam­
ple, Jeff Switzer ’94, who had been a junior national
champion before coming to the College, has twice repre­
sented Swarthmore at the badminton Nationals. Hess
says, “It’s students like Jeff whom we want to include in
programs and give the opportunity for competition at a
higher level.”
Although the other club sports on campus do not
have staff coaches who provide direct support, the atti­
tude that clubs should meet students’ various interests
appears to have been at the heart of their creation. For
example, women’s rugby was organized six years after
men’s rugby began. When women saw the sport being
played and became interested in playing themselves,
they initiated a new club. With the help of Alex Curtis ’89
and David Pope ’89, who were injured men’s team mem­
bers in 1986, the women were able to learn the funda­
mentals of this rough-and-tumble sport. Today, if you
pass Du Pont Field in the late afternoon, you can see the
result: This fall women’s rugby has the largest roster of

TIN

DECEMBER 1993

iiy

ni;nt
rs,

Go team ! Cheerleaders ( back row) Gena Merliss
’97, Janine Sperm an ’95, Julie Suh ’97, Tanisha
Little ’97, (front row ) D ionne D rum m ond ’97,
A n n ika Rockw ell ’95, Elizabeth Hirshfield ’96,
a n d Suzannah Cole ’94.

23

Janine Sperm an ’95 was recruited to help
revive the cheerleading squad, which was
dying out a t the en d o f the last school year.

all club sports, drawing between 30
and 40 women.
Likewise, cheerleading has been
rejuvenated because of the energy
and interest of students. Co-captain
Annika Rockwell ’95 says that cheer­
leading was dying out at the end of
the 1992-93 school year. But through
word-of-mouth she was able to attract
the attention of other women on cam­
pus, and the squad is back on its feet.
In addition to finding enough other
students to create a squad, Rockwell
also found a co-captain in Elizabeth
Hirshfield ’96. For many of the team’s
members, including Hirshfield, cheer­
ing is a new endeavor. “I’ve just
always wanted to cheer,” she says.
The student leaders of these clubs
have similar feelings about not having
the direct supervision of a coach.
Paula Garrett ’95, president of the
women’s rugby club, said, “We’d do
better with a coach, but something
would be lost too.” Many of the teams
do from time to time get outside assis­
tance from interested alumni, former
players, and other coaches. These
outside participants help the teams
perfect their fundamentals and learn
new skills. But on most days, the team
members are taught by their peers.
The fact that the teams do not have
coaches allows for a more flexible and
casual atmosphere at practices.
But because these club sports are
student-run, many of the administra-

B ecause club sports are student-run,
m any o f the organizational duties fall to
the team s ’ presidents and captains.
24

j|§

tive and organizational duties fall on
the shoulders of the teams’ presidents
and captains. Matt Schenk ’95, co-cap­
tain of the men’s volleyball club, says
that he has gotten most of the infor­
mation he has about how to run the
team from “the notebook,” which is
passed down from captain to captain
each year. Both men’s and women’s
rugby fall under the jurisdiction of a
governing body called the Eastern
Pennsylvania Rugby Union, which sets
standards and maintains rules. For
example, the Union requires that each
team have a president, treasurer, and
match secretary, and it imposes a
$500 fine on any team that does not
show up for a scheduled match. Like
rugby, ultimate frisbee has a govern­
ing body—the Ultimate Players Asso­
ciation.
Although outside programs exist to
assist with organization and legisla­
tion, the legwork for making club
sports efficient, successful, and fun is
still left up to the students. Before the
start of each season, the groups must
come up with a schedule of games.
For rugby this responsibility falls with
the match secretaries. According to
Darin Friess ’95, co-captain of the
men’s rugby team, match secretaries
spend a good deed of time during the
summer telephoning other match sec­
retaries in order to get the team s’
schedule set for the fall. Both rugby
teams play six or seven games in the
fall and in the spring. Volleyball and
ultimate frisbee have captain’s meet­
ings before the start of their seasons
to schedule matches. Although both
Schenk and Willie Young ’94, captain
of the ultimate frisbee team, admit
th a t these meetings can be a bit
chaotic, they both feel that they serve
their purpose well. Men’s volleyball
plays approximately 12 matches dur­
ing the winter season, while ultimate
frisbee schedules about 16 games
(four games at each of four weekend
tournaments) for both the fall and
spring seasons.
Coaching and teaching their team­
mates is another duty of the student
leaders of the these clubs. Rockwell
and Hirshfield usually talk on the
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

DE

:t in

STEVEN GOLDBLATT '67

m uH ni

inning isn’t
everything
for students
who take part in
club sports.
Instead, the focus
is more on the
social aspects
of the game.

W

DECEMBER 1993

phone before practice,
discussing what cheers
to teach and how to go
about it. Rockwell says,
“I spend a lot of time
worrying about what I’m
going to do at my next
p ractice.” Friess also
points out that “not only
do you have to teach
everyone else, but you
also have to worry about
what you’re doing your­
self.” Another coaching
responsibility that these
students must consider
is playing time. Garrett
says that because you
can’t make substitutions
in rugby, “What deter­
mines who plays is tal­
ent—and who’s always
at p ractice.” She and
Friess noted that both
the men’s and women’s
rugby teams field both A
and B side team s in
order to ensure that
everyone gets to play.
With ultim ate frisbee,
which has unlimited substitutions,
the problem is the number of players
allowed to be on the field at one time.
Young says, “It becomes difficult
when you can only play seven people
at a time and you have 23 people
there.” Nevertheless, he makes an
effort to have everyone play as much
as possible.
In terms of success, each team has
its own story. Friess emphasized the
improvement that has occurred with
men’s rugby. After continually losing
to Princeton, the Swarthmore Evil
Buzzards decided to analyze what it
was that Princeton was doing in order
to win and to try to incorporate that
into their own game plan. This fall
Swarthmore defeated Princeton for
the first time. Garrett and Young also
stressed the improvement that their
respective teams have shown. Garrett
says, “We’ve gotten a lot better. We
finally beat Bryn Mawr this season.
There’s a better understanding of
what we’re supposed to be doing.”

She pointed to the assistance of Tobin
Piker ’92, a former men’s rugby play­
er, as having had a positive effect on
the team’s performance. Young says
of his Swarming Earthworms, “We
used to get beaten 12 or 13 to 1 and
go home. This year we’re more com­
petitive.” Although the team has won
th ree games this season, Young
admits that “we’re still not a power­
house.” Two goals for the men’s vol­
leyball club in the upcoming season
are to beat Haverford and to win at
least one game against Villanova.
Yet when it comes right down to it,
winning is not everything for the
members of club sports. Instead, they
focus more on the social aspects of
the game—meeting people, making
friends, and having fun. Garrett cap­
tures this philosophy when she says,
“We just lost really badly to Prince­
ton, but we had a lot of fun.” In fact,
rugby parties are usually scheduled
right along with the games and tour­
naments. Friess went so far as to say
that the visiting team tends to feel
guilty if only a few people can stay for
the after-game party. The social
aspect of volleyball is carried over to
the outdoor courts th at dot the
Swarthmore campus, while ultimate
frisbee enthusiasts engage in frisbee
golf when they want to have a com­
pletely social atmosphere. And even
though cheerleading is not a competi­
tive sport, the social aspect of club
teams still exists. Rockwell says of her
freshman and sophomore years in
particular, “The women who were on
the squad were my closest friends.”
For these students-players-coaches-administrators-coordinators-andmanagers, the reward is the cama­
raderie and opportunity for competi­
tion that their clubs provide. With fun
and friendship as the underlying fac­
tors to the success of club sports at
Swarthmore, it seems that the ques­
tion “Will you come out and play?”
will continue to be answered with a
resounding “Yes!” ■
Rosemary Smith is a 1993 graduate of
Hartwick College. She is Swarthmore
College’s director of sports information.
25

THE COLLEGE

T O D A Y

In My Room
hey are spare rooms,
cluttered rooms, rooms
with a view, small rooms,
ample rooms, shared
rooms, rooms of one’s
own. They are dorm
rooms, rooms that reflect
better than any statistics
the diversity of Swarthmore students.
We found the rooms for
this photo essay by send­
ing a message to all the res­
ident advisers (RAs) asking
them for nominations. We
were looking for rooms
that were interesting or
unique and, most impor­
tant, that reflected the per­
sonalities of their occu­
pants. The response was
great, and we saw more
wonderful rooms than we
had space to feature.
It’s no coincidence that
five of the seven rooms we
chose belonged to seniors.
Students’ dorm rooms do
reflect what’s going on in
their lives. A first-year stu­
dent’s room often is char­
acterized by reminders of
home—postcards from
friends, high school or
hometown memorabilia. As
the years progress, it
becomes evident in the
rooms that this is home,
and the individuality
expressed therein mirrors
the maturation that has
taken place.

T

SHANNON BRIGMAN ’94
Hallowed 211
When Shannon Brigman was
assigned to Hallowell as a
senior resident adviser, she
kn ew she had a decorating
challenge a head o ther, “and
posters alone ju st w eren’t
going to do. ”So she attacked
the white cinderblock walls
with indoor/outdoor paint,
purchased in prim ary colors
and m ixed for browns and
greens, and created a new

friend. “She m a kes m e feel
calm and peaceful, ”says
Shannon. “I w anted her to
look friendly a n d w elcom ing —
th a t’s w hy her arms are out­
stretched— but I also w anted
her face to look a little sad,
like she had a past. ”Shannon
is an English/biology double
m ajor with a concentration in
w o m e n ’s studies, a n d yes, she
did prom ise to repaint the
wall a t the en d o f the school
year.

— Nancy L. T. Lehman ’87

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

What does yo u r room do for
you? “It’s a good place to keep
m y computer, ” says Will Buttram ’94. A n d w hat does your
com puter do for you? “Every­
thing. ” Will Buttram can reach
his whole electronic world
from one sw ivel chair in
Wharton. His electric guitar,
television, refrigerator,
microwave, keyboard synthe­
sizer, computer, CD player,

lilll

riN

WILL BUTTRAM ’94
Wharton C-101

DECEMBER 1993

and telephone are all within a
few feet. This yea r the senior
m usic m ajor plays in three
bands (last y e a r there were
five or six), sings in the Col­
lege chorus, and does “som e
solo stuff. ”His m usical taste
ranges from Louis Armstrong
to Eric Clapton to Igor Stravin­
sk y to the rap group Extreme.
The future? “Performance, pro­
duction, com posing— all o f
this. I realize now that every­
thing I have is here. ”

KELLEY BORG ’97
SARA JANSSON ’97
EMILY MARSTON ’97
VIRGINIA TENT ’97
Wharton B-204
A s each o f these first-year stu­
dents show ed up for the photo
shoot, she explained how well
the room m ates had gelled by
describing their m ethod o f dec­
orating the shared living room.
“For exam ple, ” they all start­
ed, “w e took the postcards
w e ’d all brought and p u t them
in a big pile in the center o f
the room and chose the ones
we all liked, then m ixed them
together in collections around

the room. ” When Kelley, the
last to arrive, started the story,
it was m e t with peals o f laugh­
ter from the other three.
“W e’ve all told h er already!”
A n d peals o f laughter filled the
room often as K elley Borg
from Vermont, Sara Jansson
from Japan and Sweden, Emily
Marston from Westchester,
N. Y., and Virginia Tent from
Birmingham, Ala., p layed
cards, took a long-distance,
trilingual call from S a ra ’s
mother, and told stories about
their first m onths a t Swarthmore. One gets the feeling that
this quad is o ff to a good start.

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

om orrow I pu rpose to regulate m y room . — S am uel Jo h n so n

DEREK LUMPKINS ’96
Dana 08
The new “substance-free h a ll”
in Dana attracted Derek
Lumpkins, a sophom ore plan­
ning to m ajor in English litera­
ture. “I d o n ’t care if people
want to drink, ” he says, “but if
they throw up in the bath­
room, I d o n ’t like that. ” The
hall has seven w om en and six
men, all o f w hom have
pledged to eschew alcohol,
smoking, and drugs while liv­
ing there. Lum pkins decorated
the hall outside his room with
favorite musicians, pictures o f
hom etown Boston, and a few
political statements. “It repre­
sents w hat I think and how I
feel about images and words, ”
he says.

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jh e r e ’s a world where
I can go
And tell m y secrets to,
In m y room, in m y room.
—The Beach Boys

CAITLIN MURDOCK ’94
EMILY MAGUIRE ’94
Parrish 314 and 316
Former room m ates Caitlin
Murdock and Em ily Maguire
chose singles across the hall
from one another in Parrish
for their senior year, and in
m any ways they seem like
room m ates still. Both room s
are decorated with their
favorite art and rem inders o f
their travels —Emily, a sociology/anthropology a nd Spanish
double major, spent last y e a r
in Madrid; and Caitlin, m ajor­
ing in history and m inoring in
German, spent a sem ester
near Hamburg. “I like a lot o f
color and light, ” Caitlin says,
as both w om en laugh, pointing
to the num ber o f lam ps aug­
m enting the huge w indow in
her room. “I like color and tex­
ture, ”Em ily adds, “but spare­
ness. I need clean spaces. ”It
was only after an “intense cus­
tody battle ” that they m anaged
to divide their two jo in t pur­
chases— Em ily got the refriger­
ator in exchange for the covet­
ed Persian rug, purchased for
$20 at the Presbyterian church
in the Ville.

30

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ZACH KRON ’94
Parrish 321
“I f I ’m going to live here, I m ight
as w ell m a ke it som ething
good, ” explains senior Zach
Kron about his room on the
third floor o f Parrish. A n d
“good, ” a t least to start, m ea n t
the construction a n d installation
o f a n ew door. Fortunately this
senior art m ajor h a d access to
the necessary space a n d tools in
the w ood shop in the basem ent
o f Beardsley, where the door

took shape. He started with
m easurem ents a n d drawings,
then built the w ood fram e and
poured the plaster. “I got five
friends to help m e haul it up
here, then I fit it in with a p o w er
grinder. ”
Since building the door, Kron
has filled his room with objects,
including his own abstract
sculpture (left). There is no
com puter here— and no huge
sh e lf o f books. This is the room
o f an artist. ■

THE COLLEGE

T O D A Y

i t ’s fall and the temperature
is dropping, but don’t
worry. Here comes 80 million
pounds of steam
aturday, October 9, was a glori­ rolling basis to keep the overall
ous autum n day at Swarth- demand within our limits.”
“It’s tough,” agrees Ralph
more, perfect for the Fall
Thayer, director of the College’s
Weekend activities that drew several
hundred alumni and parents to the maintenance operations. “By
campus. The trees along Magill Walk this afternoon the temperature
were just beginning to turn, and the will reach 60 degrees, which is
thermometer hit 78 as the Garnet bat­ above our cutoff point for most
tled Muhlenberg at sun-drenched Cun­ buildings. This is the hardest
time of year to keep everyone
ningham Fields.
By Sunday night, however, the com fortable, and we get our
alumni and the sunshine were gone— share of complaints.”
The HVAC utility crew, led by Tom
and the temperature had dropped to
the raw low 40s. As he walked the 50 Cochrane, includes Kelly, Graham,
yards from his campus house to the Jaquith, and utility tradesmen Gus
heating plant before sunrise on Mon­ Agostinelli and Warren “Gator” John­
day morning, maintenance man Rick son. They take the complaints serious­
Kelly didn’t need to be told that it was ly. Each one is investigated, and if
time to make more steam. He thought there’s a problem, it’s fixed as quickly
about which boiler was already fired as possible. Tradesmen by choice,
they know th at their work has as
up and ready to deliver.
At the heating plant, Kelly and Herb much to do with accomplishing the
Graham, who together run the Col­ educational mission of Swarthmore
lege’s four boilers, talked with Jeff College as that of the loftiest Ph.D.
Jaquith, who programs the College’s
eeping Swarthmore warm in win­
computerized energy management
te r and cool in sum m er—and
system (EMS). They had hoped to
turn on the heat October 15, but it doing it at the lowest cost—is the
goal. Thayer, who came to the College
was too cold to wait.
The residence halls went on first, at in 1989 from Westminster Choir Col­
about 6 a.m., followed by classroom lege in Princeton, N.J., supervises the
and office buildings about an hour system and buys the energy. In sum­
later. By 8 a.m. every building that mer electricity does most of the job,
needed heat was on line, but it was running huge “chillers” in the more
tricky to keep up with the demand, m odern centrally air-conditioned
says Jaquith. “To save energy we try buildings and scores of room units in
to run the smallest boiler possible, other places. But in winter the College
and we don’t have much steam capac­ turns to two other sources of enerity this early in the season. So I try to
program the system to cycle buildings
By Jeffrey Lott
on and off, shedding the load on a

S

K

32

gy—natural gas and No. 6 fuel oil.
Depending on the demand for heat—
and the best available price—Thayer
decides which to burn. The boilers
are configured for dual fuel use and
are easily converted from gas to oil
and back.
This allows Thayer to purchase fuel
from month to month on the spot
market, where competition is fierce.
“It’s amazing how many pennies can
get shaved off the price when the
word ‘competitor’ is mentioned,” he
smiles. Gas is purchased at the lowest
rate from either the Philadelphia Elec­
tric Co. or one or two other suppliers
under an interruptible contract that
allows PECO to cut the College off at
times of the utility’s peak demand. Oil
comes from a variety of vendors
(“They call me at the end of the
month,” says Thayer. “They’re anx­
ious to sell their low-sulphur No. 6.”)
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

.letin

DENG-JENG LEE

Rick Kelly (left) and Herb Graham run the College’s heating plant. The steam generated here warms 31 buildings.

and is delivered hot in 6,500-gallon
tank trucks—heated to 130 degrees
because this oil is so thick it won’t
flow at normal temperatures. Thayer
stores up to 30,000 gallons in heated
underground tanks near the railroad
tracks—a week’s supply in the coldest
winter weather.
It takes a lot of fuel to heat the 31
buildings connected to the College’s
steam plant. In 1992-93 the College
burned more than 42 billion cubic feet
of gas and nearly 250,000 gallons of oil
in order to convert 2.1 million gallons
of water into 81.3 million pounds of
steam. When it leaves the boilers, the
high-pressure steam (70-90 psi) is
about 320 degrees. Inside insulated 6inch mains it ducks under the tracks
and climbs past Sharpies Dining Hall
to Parrish Hall in a 1,100-foot-long
underground tunnel, branching along
the way to other destinations.
The steam serves several func­
tions. It heats, either directly or con­
verted through heat exchangers for
pumped hot-water systems; it makes
domestic hot water; and in Sharpies
De c e m b e r 1993

Dining Hall, it helps to cook more than
half a million student meals each aca­
demic year. In the future, steam will
actually provide cooling in a new cen­
tral chilled water loop being planned
for McCabe Library and several other
buildings. The College will soon
replace its aging CFC-based chiller in
McCabe with an absorption chiller
that uses heat from steam to evapo­
rate and distill a lithium-bromide salt
solution to provide cold water for air
conditioning.

reporting to his terminal.
“It’s 64 in the dance studio in the
PAC,” he says. “[Dance Program
Director] Sharon Friedler isn’t going
to like that, but I’ve explained the sys­
tem to her and she p retty much
understands.” He’s referring to the
fact that the Lang Performing Arts
Center, like most campus buildings,
has an “either-or” system—you can
either have air conditioning or heat,
and once you make the switch it’s
tough to go back.
Yet in fact, the LPAC has been
uesday morning, October 19. The switched twice in the past 10 days. It
cold snap is a memory and the needed heat a week ago, but then the
weather has been more normal, with Scott Arboretum had a big conference
cool nights and days up in the 60s. in the theater and the horticulturalists
Back in what they call the “war room,” would have been in a hothouse had
Jeff Jaquith sits at one of two comput­ the AC not been revived. “It took me
er terminals. Though he’s less than 30 nearly three days to get the water
feet from the boilers, it’s relatively cooled off to the point where I could
quiet in this windowless space. If you switch over to the chiller,” says
listen carefully, you can hear the rum­ Jaquith. “And now we have to turn
ble of the boilers as the steam mus­ around and heat it.”
cles its way into the mains, but
He punches a few keys, looks at the
Jaquith is absorbed in the numbers. screen again, and scrolls down to
Dozens of sensors across campus are another set of numbers. “Let’s see if

T

we can shut Rick’s boilers down by
bringing up the heat all at once,” he
jokes. Jaquith is often ironic, using
humor to soften the seriousness of his
work. A former machinist with an elec­
tronics background, he’s been at the
College four years, and he likes the
place. Beardsley Hall is on the screen
as Ralph Thayer wanders in to take a
look.
“Beardsley’s doing well,” smiles
Jaquith. “They’re cooking.”
“Seems like they’re always cooking
downstairs,” observes the plainspoken Thayer. He’s thinking of the criti­
cal mass of computers in Beardsley’s
basement, where the College’s central
computers crank out both
bytes and BTUs.
“It depends on who you
talk to down th e re —
whether they’re cooking or
not,” says Jaquith.
“Oh, you mean some
actually like it?”
“Yes. For the others I’m
going to issue ice packs.
It’s a lot easier than balanc­
ing the heat in that place.”
ver in the boiler room,
Herb Graham looks at
O
a recording instrum ent.
Three pens track colored
lines like an electrocardio­
gram on a circle of paper,
monitoring steam flow, flue
temperature, and oxygen
levels in the boilers.
“It always varies,” says
Graham, who saw his first big boiler in
the belly of a Navy cruiser in 1944.
“Anytime anyone takes a shower in
Wharton or they open up a steam ket­
tle in Sharpies, you see this go up and
down.”
Graham is exaggerating a little, but
the changes in demand on a system
like this are quite real. The crew has
to be attuned to the daily lives of
everyone on campus. Morning show­
ers, meal preparation, a swim meet at
Ware Pool, a night class in Trotter
Hall—everything takes a chunk of
energy. The energy management sys­
tem is like a throttle that seeks to
match the load to the capacity of the
boilers and the College’s energy con­
servation goals.
“We read every piece of literature
we can get our hands on to find out
what’s going on,” explains Jaquith.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENG-JENG LEE

Top: Gus Agostinelli (standing) and
Warren “Gator”Johnson in the 1,100-foot
underground tunnel that connects Parrish
Hall with the College’s steam plant.
Bottom: Jeff Jaquith points to the screen
as he and Director o f M aintenance Ralph
Thayer discuss the College’s com puterized
energy m anagem ent system.

And while they get schedules from
several official sources, even
impromptu parties or special events
rarely escape their notice. All go into
the computerized schedule and are
balanced with other heating needs in
order to tame the overall demand.
Parrish Hall, for instance, gets heat
in 32-minute cycles when the outside
temperature drops below 62 degrees.
(As the season progresses, this setpoint is reduced to 55.) The heat
exchanger is then “locked out” by the
EMS for 14 minutes when the outside

f you listen
carefully, you
can hear the
rumble of the
boilers as the
steam muscles
its way into
the mains, but
Jeff Jaquith is
absorbed in
the numbers.

I

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

air is 60 degrees and for shorter peri­
ods as the weather gets colder. “It’s
rare that anyone notices the subtle
control we exercise,” says Thayer.
Parrish Hall’s recently replaced
windows have reduced the need for
heat in the past year, but it’s still a big
load. McCabe Library, on the other
hand, gets virtually no steam until
December. It’s built like a fortress,
sealed up like a pickle jar, and full of
hot lights and busy people until all
hours of the night.
More typical are the residence
halls. In the daytime Dana/Hallowell
gets heat 52 minutes of every hour.
Except in the coldest weather, it is
throttled back to a lower temperature
from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m. on the (as yet
unproven) theory that students are
sleeping then. “We do get heat calls
from the dorms in the middle of the
night,” Jaquith says, smiling again.
“When we catch up with the student,
he says, ‘I was sitting there at 1 in the
morning....’ Well, at 1 in the morning
it’s not going to be quite as warm in
there.”
An alarm message flashes on the
screen, indicating that the campus is
calling for more steam than Jaquith
has available. They are still firing only
the smaller boiler, sending out about
7,000 pounds of steam per hour. In a
week or two, they’ll need to start up
one of the big boys, but meanwhile
Jaquith concentrates on shedding
demand where it’s not absolutely nec­
essary.
here’s a lot more to turning up the
heat than just starting a fire. All
T
year round, routine preventive main­
tenance has to be done on the hun­
dreds of pumps, valves, heat exchang­
ers, air handlers, and hot-water sys­
tems. Up on the north campus,
“Gator” Johnson and Gus Agostinelli
look at a computer printout—their
schedule for the day.
The first stop is Du Pont, where
they remove a ceiling panel in room
240, Professor Robert Pasternack’s
research lab. Working quickly, they
lubricate the motor and fan bearings
of a ventilator, checking the fan belts,
fasteners, and ductwork. There are
five ventilation units in this living
room-sized lab, and the two men are
careful not to disturb the delicate
glassware on the benches as they
move about with ladder, grease gun,
letin

De c e m b e r 1993

and rags. “We’ve got to leave a place
the way we find it,” says Johnson,
who started working in the College’s
kitchens at age 19. Now 32, he’s done
just about every job on the mainte­
nance crew, from painting to tele­
phone repair.
Agostinelli has worked on campus
for more than 30 years, first with the
Bartol Institute (in what is now
Papazian Hall) and for the last 18
years with the College. He enjoys the
variety in his job and the challenges
of learning new system s. “Every­
thing’s so high tech these days. Even
the grounds people get special train­
ing,” he observes.
As they are finishing up in Paster­
nack’s lab, Johnson and Agostinelli
get a radio call. There’s a problem in
the heat exchanger in the basement of
Sharpies, says Tom Cochrane,
mechanical foreman. They’ll have to
go back to the preventive mainte­
nance list a little later. The two men
climb into their green golf cart and
buzz down the hill.
There Cochrane meets them and
shows them the trouble: One of the
30-year-old coils that makes hot water
from steam has broken. They confer
briefly, and Cochrane hops in his van
to go get a replacement. Luckily, this
is one they can purchase, but that’s
not always the case. Sometimes they
have to improvise.
Cochrane remembers the time the
water pipe to the cooling tow er
cracked under the concrete floor of
the concert hall in the Lang Music
Building. “An outside contractor want­
ed an outrageous amount of money to
fix it,” he says. “Besides, we didn’t
want to tear up the floor. So we dug
down outside the building, cut off the
pipe, and slid a new pipe inside it with
a special wooden tool I designed. It
was a little like one of those balloon
catheters heart surgeons use. The
slightly smaller pipe works just fine,
and the job cost about a third of what
the contractor wanted.”
It’s not always possible to fix up
aging systems, though, and a gash
across the lower part of the campus
(visible across the middle of this mag­
azine’s cover) is a good example. A
new insulated steam line is being run
to Old Tarble, where it will branch off
to McCabe and several dormitories.
“It gets to the point,” says Ralph Thay­
er, “where it’s just not cost-effective—

or in some cases even possible—to
keep patching. We have to bite the
bullet and spend some bucks to get
something that is usable for the next
20 or 30 years.”
nside the door of the heating plant,
Herb Graham takes time to water
his geraniums. About 20 healthy spec­
imens are hanging in a warm, sunny
window. A boiler room seems a per­
fect place for their fiery red blossoms.
Rick Kelly checks a few gauges and
turns a valve to regulate the conden­
sate water that is returning to the sys­
tem from up the hill. Nearby is a huge
anvil, painted shiny black. There are
farrier’s tools tucked neatly into a
leather pocket on the side of its mas­
sive wood pedestal.
“They moved the anvil over here
from the barn in the 1940s, when they
stopped boarding horses,” says Kelly,
who has spent 11 years at the College.
“When we were putting in the energy
management system, we decided to
keep it here. My slogan was ‘From low
tech to high tech,’ and it’s kind of
hung on.” ■

I

STEVEN GOLDBLATT '67

tv-

Tom Cochrane show s o ff a tool he designed
to help repair a broken p ipe under the floor
o f Lang Music Building. His ingenuity saved
the College thousands o f dollars.
35

THE COLLEGE

T O D A Y

All the
President’s
Staff
By Jeffrey Lott
Photographs by
Steven Goldblatt ’67
i

m

m

m

President Alfred H. Bloom and the m em bers
o f his staff From left: Vice President William
T. Spock ’51, Provost Jennie Keith, Associate
Vice President Maurice G. Eldridge ’61,
President Bloom, Vice President Harry D.
Gotwals, D ean o f A dm issions Robert A. Barr
’56, and Dean o f the College Ngina Lythcott.

36

At Swarthmore, when you hear some­
one say “Parrish” it can mean two
things. First, of course, is Parrish Hall,
the great stone structure that stands atop Magill
Walk. But its other meaning is more nuanced,
more local. “Parrish” means the College’s adminis­
tration, especially the five top administrators who make
up President Alfred H. Bloom ’s senior staff. It’s a fitting
(though occasionally pejorative) term, especially because
Swarthmore’s oldest building—and its literal and figura­
tive center— is named for its first president, Edward Par­
rish. The men and women who serve President Bloom
today work in a place that has always been the College’s
hub, and the view from Parrish
m \
is the broadest view of all.
Maurice Eldridge ’61, associ­
ate vice president and execu­
Hi
tive assistant to President
Bloom, describes the work of
H the president’s staff: “By the
time you touch base with each
one of them, you’ve covered
m mm
every part of the College, and A1
Bloom touches them all. It’s a
m
staff that’s very much Al’s
group— a thinking and working
Hü
group that he listens to and
m m
responds to .”
With the exception of Robert Barr ’56, who becam e
dean of admissions in 1977, none has been in his or her
present position for more than four years. Yet they bring a
wealth of experience to their jobs, from both Swarthmore
and other fine institutions. On these pages, they reflect on
their careers, their work, and the College today.

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

DEC

,etin

Ngina Lythcott
Dean of the College
n a polished coffee table sur­
rounded by coipfortable
chairs are the symbols of
the work of a dean—a box of
tissues and a tin of chocolates. A lot
of different kinds of conversations
take place in this office. Sometimes
people cry in here, and often they feel
better.
“Sometimes it’s a young person try­
ing to sort out her identity, some­
times it’s an adjudication of serious
misbehavior, and sometimes it’s just
a student who wants to talk about his
vision, his dreams,” says Ngina Lyth­
cott, who became dean of the college
in September 1992.
In more than 20 years as a health
professional, educator, and communi­
ty activist, Lythcott has seen it all—
from both sides. She’s been a student
leader questioning authority, a daugh­
I have enormous
ter struggling with her parents’ imper­
fections, a single parent with a teen­
confidence that
age daughter of her own. Now, as the
change happens
chief counselor, disciplinarian, and
official friend to Swarthmore’s 1,387
largely through the
undergraduates, she says she often
courage and informed
finds herself on the other side of the
equation.
activities of individual
At Dartmouth College, where she
young people— and
was previously senior associate dean
of students, “I was once asked how I
that college is
felt most discriminated against in my
the time to learn how
life. Though I come from a multiracial
family, I self-identify as a black wom­
to do it. There are
an, and I’ve seen lots of racial discrim­
so many pressures
ination. But the place I have felt most
discriminated against is as a college
later in life that
administrator. Students make certain
make it harder to be
assumptions about us. They paint us
with a very broad brush instead of
a change agent.
being able to see us as individuals—
something they hunger for so much
themselves.”
in a year the dean was gone and
Lythcott remembers being presi­
dent of the graduate student body at
Smith’s graduate program had
changed direction.
Smith College, where she received a
“I see myself as an activist,” she
master’s degree in social work in
1970. She was leading a movement to
says, leaning forward and lowering
her voice in characteristically inti­
give students a voice on important
mate conversation. “I am very com­
college committees and encountered
a dean who would not consider a stu­ mitted to social change, and I want to
dent voice. “If he had simply said, ‘Let empower individuals to make a differ­
me take a year to think about it,’ there ence.”
Lythcott’s parents and grandpar­
would not have been a boycott, but as
it was we walked out of classes.” With- ents taught her well. During most of

O

De c e m b e r 1993

her childhood, she was raised by her
father, a U.S. Public Health Service
physician, who took his family all over
the country and the world as he
served others. Ngina is the oldest of
five children, and she recognized
early that she had a gift for listening
and helping. She’s modest about her
academic credentials (they include a
Ph.D. in health services administra­
tion from UCLA) but proud of what
she sees as her more natural talents
as a counselor.
As dean she daily confronts the dif­
ficulties young people have to face as
they grow into adulthood: “Anyone
who has a role like this knows that
students are trying to work through
basic, age-appropriate tasks. Some­
times they do it in ways that seem
inappropriate to adults. The most
important reason we’re here is to
focus on how they accomplish those
tasks, to help them grow in positive,
healthy ways.
“I believe that a secondary goal is
to help students address issues that
they think are unjust in a constructive
manner. I have enormous confidence
that change happens largely through
the courage and informed activities of
individual young people and that col­
lege is the time to learn how to do it.
There are so many pressures later in
life that make it harder to be a change
agent.”
The most difficult personal issues
facing college students today, Lyth­
cott says, have mostly to do with how
we get along with each other—and
with the responsible use of alcohol.
She lists four:
“First, the normal developmental
tasks of adolescence—establishing
identity, questioning authority, testing
boundaries.” These, she says, are con­
stant and predictable.
“Second, alcohol. It provides the
perfect medium for adolescent rebel­
lion and therefore for students to get
involved in so much misbehavior.”
She criticizes new federal guidelines
that make responsible adult/student
social events illegal. “I learned to
drink in moderation in college,” she
says, “but academic institutions have
been forced to drive drinking under­
ground, where it leads to a lot of trou­
ble.” Lythcott’s staff is currently work­
ing with the faculty and students to
Please turn to page 82
37

William T. Spock ’51
Vice President for Business and Finance
Mutual Insurance Co. and later helped
obody likes to think of
to manage a large independent insur­
Swarthmore College as a
ance agency.
business, but it is. It has
Swarthmore President David Fraser
income, expenses, manage­
talked to Spock for several months
ment, labor, and a product—a very
before persuading him to join the Col­
special, very expensive product. In
lege’s senior staff in 1989. Spock had
classes and labs, it’s easy to forget
what makes academic excellence pos­
sible, but William T. Spock ’51, vice
president for business and finance,
Alumni should not
knows that fulfilling the mission of the
College depends on good invest­
criticize what the
ments, sound business practices, and
College is doing
a host of unsung heroes on the staff.
This year it will cost $50.4 million
without learning
to educate Swarthmore’s 1,387 stu­
more about it. If
dents—more than $36,000 each. With
charges for tuition, room, and board
things seem to be
at $24,782, it takes some pretty
going in a direction
sophisticated management to make
up the difference.
that doesn’t agree
Bill Spock is such a manager. As
one of two Quakers on the president’s
with their values,
staff (the other is Provost Jennie
they should make
Keith), he’s not a hard-charging,
order-barking supervisor but a softsure they find
spoken, self-effacing team builder. A
out why. We mirror
math and physics major at Swarth­
more, he began his business career as
society, and in
an actuary and in the late 1950s
many w ays w e ’re on
helped pioneer the use of computers
in the insurance industry. He rose to
the leading edge.
executive vice president of the Penn

N

been a member of the Board of Man­
agers since 1982, but he was reluctant
to join the administration unless he
was able to manage things the way he
thought they ought to be managed.
His years in the insurance business—
and his association with the Society of
Friends—had taught him that people
came first.
Everyone on campus says that Bill
Spock hires great people, and he’s
proud of those he has brought to the
College or has promoted from within.
Among them are Sue Welsh, treasurer
of the College; Larry Schall ’75, associ­
ate vice president for facilities and
services; Linda Fox, director of per­
sonnel; Judy Downing, director of
computing and communication ser­
vices; and Claire Sawyers, director of
the Scott Arboretum.
Spock says he isn’t looking for
expertise but for attitude and intelli­
gence. He asks, “Are they positive,
enthusiastic, energetic? Do they have
strong intellectual ability? This is
much more important than what they
know. Never hire people because they
know something; hire them for what
they can do.”
After hiring the best people, Spock
believes in creating good procedures
and policies: “You work them out with
the staff. If you have good people and
good procedures, everything else will
fall into place.”
The third part of his management
philosophy (he’s thought of writing a
book but is more interested in reading
history) is what he calls “organization­
al development, making the whole
entity work better. It’s communicating
well and trying to get everyone going
in the same direction.” This wasn’t
easy in the business world, but Spock
has found that it can be even more dif­
ficult in an academic institution.
“It’s harder to get people to work
together because of the independence
of departments. Professors are natu­
rally focused on their classes and
what they are trying to teach. They
don’t care as much about about ath­
letic facilities or the debate team or
the health center. I’ve had to learn
how the roles of the different con­
stituencies on campus impact on the
way we do things. I have to be careful
about saying, ‘This is the way I’ve
always done it, and this is the way it
Please turn to page 82
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

DE

Jennie Keith

directed with Christine L. Fry of Loy­
professor in the fall of 1970. These
ola University of Chicago. Drawing on
days as provost, she thinks a lot
fieldwork in Hong Kong, the United
Provost
about what it’s like to be a young fac­
States, Ireland, and Africa, the project
ulty member, up for review every
t’s hard to know where to start in
sought to discover how different com­ three years, facing tenure decisions,
describing provost Jpnnie Keith.
munity characteristics influence the
honing teaching skills, and trying to fit
Do you write about the nationally
well-being of older residents.
into Swarthmore’s high-powered aca­
respected anthropologist and
Keith joined Swarthmore’s faculty
demic community.
expert on aging? The popular teacher as a lecturer in the spring of 1969 and
“I meet with faculty members and
and former chair of the Department of was invited to return as an assistant
department chairs frequently, and I
Sociology and Anthropology? The
try to pay attention to the person as
wife and mother of four children? The
well as the CV. We need to be as good
committed Quaker? Or the new chief
at cultivating the human side of our
We need to be as
academic officer of Swarthmore Col­
faculty members as we are at support­
good at cultivating
lege?
ing their academic interests. This
Jennie Keith is all of these things,
place is not just a pen for brains, it’s a
the human side of
but we should probably begin at the
human community.”
our faculty members
beginning in her native Carmel, Calif.
Her own human side, and that of
“My grandfather taught me to read
her family, is of paramount impor­
as
we
are
at
before I went to school,” she remem­
tance. Balancing professional and fam­
bers. “He taught me to read and to
supporting their
ily life was “the biggest issue for me in
make tea. It’s hard to think of two
taking
this job. I’ve always been home
academic interests.
more enduring traits of an academic,
when my kids got home from school. I
so I think I began this very early.”
This place is not just
could arrange that as a faculty mem­
Keith also remembers when she
ber, but I can’t do that now.” Three of
a pen for brains, it’s a
first got excited about anthropology.
Keith’s four children have gone on to
As a student at Pomona College, she
human community.
college, and 12-year-old Kate often
had the chance to spend a summer
Please turn to page 83
working in rural Kenya with the Cross­
roads Africa program. “I was fascinat­
ed. I could see that there was a pat­
tern in why these people lived the
way they did, in whose house faced
which way, in when there was drum­
ming or which hand they ate with, but
I couldn’t grasp it. It was a combina­
tion of a powerful personal experi­
ence and an intellectual puzzle.”
When she returned to Pomona, she
changed her major to anthropology in
her senior year and then headed east
for graduate work at Northwestern
University.
“It was at that time [in the mid1960s] that retirement communities
began popping up all over the place. I
saw signs that said, ‘Retirement Vil­
lage’ or ‘Leisure World,’ and I was
intrigued by the possibility that these
places might become distinct commu­
nities. I decided to do research on
them.”
Since then Keith has studied not
only issues of community among
older people but of cultural and social
influences on the meaning of old age
itself. She has published four books
and is struggling to find time to finish
another, which will present the
results of Project AGE (Age, Genera­
tion, Experience), which she co­

I

DECEMBER 1993

39

best of relationships between a bene­
factor and the College, there’s often
no dramatic moment,” he says. “It’s an
Vice President for
evolution of understanding over a
Alumni, Development, and
period of time, a coming together of
Public Relations
the interests of the donor and the Col­
lege’s needs. The best part of helping
someone make a special gift is looking
hat attracted me to
back four or five years later to see the
Swarthmore was the
sense that this is a can-do impact that it’s had.”
Gotwals came to Swarthmore after
place,” says Harry Got­
wals. “There are a lot of very smart
people here who come up with a lot of
good ideas. The assumption is that if
Swarthmoreans
something is really important, then
it’s possible.”
recognize that their
This attitude creates many oppor­
time here significant­
tunities for 46-year-old Gotwals, who
became vice president for alumni,
ly altered their lives.
development, and public relations in
When they contribute
August 1990. But it also presents huge
challenges, like the current $25 million
to the College or
project to renovate Trotter Hall and
build a new academic building on the
volunteer their time
north campus. It means making a case
and expertise,
for the College and asking people for
money—sometimes big money.
Swarthmore wins
What’s it like to ask someone for a
and they win.
million or more dollars? “Hard,” says
Gotwals. “But if you believe in the
What we do here is
institution, if you believe in what
not only of value to
you’re asking for, it can be very excit­
ing. You know that the outcome will
the individual who
have a significant impact on the Col­
attends but to society
lege and its future.”
Very few “asks” are unexpected by
in general.
the potential donor, however. “In the

Harry D. Gotwals

W

five years as associate vice president
and director of university develop­
ment at Duke University. There he had
coordinated the expansion of a $200
million campaign for arts and sciences
into a $400 million universitywide
campaign. Prior to Duke he had
served in development and public
relations positions at his alma mater,
Johns Hopkins University, and at the
Gilman School and Goucher College,
all in Baltimore.
“This isn’t a job that one aspires to
in high school. No one says, ‘I’m going
to be a fund-raiser,”’ says Gotwals.
After college he taught math and
spelling to fifth and sixth graders and
coached wrestling—a sport he had
enjoyed as a student. But when a
chance to go back to Johns Hopkins
to work in annual funds presented
itself, he said yes.
Coming to Swarthmore was a big
change for Gotwals. The culture of a
small liberal arts college is quite different from that of a big university, but
he liked the idea that he could have a
personal, institutionwide impact. “The
opportunity to work closely with a lot
of key people in many ways parallels
the reason that students choose a college like Swarthmore,” he says. He
likes the direct contact he has with
faculty members and with his peers in
the administration.
The close-knit culture of Swarthmore is one of its great assets, and
part of Gotwals’ job is to spread the
word about the College’s strengths. In
December 1992 the Board of Man­
agers initiated an ad hoc study of publie perceptions of the College. Gotwals
avoids the word “image” in describing
the work of the Board committee,
which is chaired by Samuel Hayes III
’57. “It isn’t that we’re trying to create
something that we aren’t. We want to
be sure that what we are is accurately
perceived. We’ll probably never be a
household name, but we aren’t as
well-known in certain areas and
among certain people as we’d like to
be.” The committee is expected to
make recommendations in early 1994.
A fiscal conservative himself, Gotwals is particularly proud of Swarthmore’s reputation for first-rate financial management. Measured on a perstudent basis, the College’s endowment on June 30,1992, was the eighth

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Please turn to page 83

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SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

DEC

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Robert A. Barr Jr. ’56

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Dean of Admissions

tith
e83

s Swarthmore’s chief admis­
sions officer, Robert A. Barr
Jr. ’56 does a lot more than
compare test scores, grades,
and high school class ranks. “Admis­
l
\ , [
sions work is an art,” he says, “not
merely a quantitative exercise. The
m
m
art comes in drawing from people
enough of themselves—of who they
are and who they want to be—to be
able to work out a decent match
between them and the educational
community here.
“One of my standard questions in
an interview is, ‘Who do you think
you are?’ It’s a surprising question to
many adolescents, some of whom
prefer not to pursue that train of
thought very far. But we have a very
short time to figure out who they
are—whether they know themselves
or not.”
Fifty-nine-year-old Bob Barr has
served on the College’s senior staff
longer than all of its other members
combined. As dean of men from 1961
ulty members rarely interview candi­
to 1970 and dean of admissions since
dates these days, and the Admis­
1977, he has counseled four Swarthsions Office has grown from Barr and
more presidents—and countless
a secretary to 12 full-time profession­
young people. This will be his last
al and support staff members, plus
year as dean, but he plans to continue several part-time staff members and
his service to the College for several
more than 500 alumni admissions
more years after being succeeded by
representatives around the world.
the current director of admissions,
“We used to sit here and select
Carl Wartenburg, next July.
from those applicants who found us,
Barr joined the Swarthmore admin­ but now we are involved in extensive
istration a year after his graduation.
travel and direct mail programs to
Until 1957, he recalls, admissions had
spread the word about Swarthmore
been handled “out of the hip pocket
and to attract a class that represents
of the dean’s office. A faculty commit­ a wide variety of talents, interests,
tee read all of the applications and
and backgrounds. We’re looking for a
made most of the admissions deci­
kind of chemistry in each class, a
sions.” Then President Courtney
potential for self-education, for relat­
Smith decided to formalize admis­
ing well to Swarthmore’s program
sions procedures and appointed an
and to our faculty’s expectations.”
admissions assistant to each of the
He characterizes today’s students
deans. (There were separate posts for as a “focused, preprofessional group.
men and women in those days.) Tall,
Many of them have what they think of
boyish, immensely likable Bob Barr
as fairly clear routes to ends.” This
got the job on the men’s side and, for
worries Barr, who sees a liberal arts
a year or two, combined it with grad­
education as “an end in itself.” But he
uate work in American Studies at the
understands the pressures that have
University of Pennsylvania.
made students more single-minded
“We’ve gone from 900 applications
about career paths and have attract­
for a freshman class of 200 to more
ed them to narrower courses of
than 3,000 applications for a class of
study.
between 350 and 400,” says Barr. Fac­
“It’s partly a shift in the economy,”

.ETIN

DECEMBER 1993

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One of my standard
questions is, “Who
do you think you
a re?” It’s a surprising
question to many
adolescents, some of
whom prefer not to
pursue that train of
thought very far.
.'.o

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■1

says Barr. “Parents are very open
with their kids about the sacrifices
they must make to afford a college
education, and they want some yard­
sticks for success—progress toward
a degree, grade point averages, gradu­
ate school plans.
“Frankly,” he says, “as an adviser
to students, I think of my job as trying
to get them to think more about the
pleasures of intellectual exploration
in areas that have little to do with
what they thought they were here for.
Life is going to get more specialized
the longer they lead it, and Swarth­
more may be the last shot they’ve got
at breadth of study.”
As the most senior of the senior
staff, Barr has seen a lot of change
since he arrived as a freshman in the
fall of 1952—including witnessing, as
dean of men, the painful upheavals of
1968-69. He left Swarthmore in 1970
for stints in the administration of
Chatham and Dickinson colleges,
returning in 1977. Yet after more than
40 years, what stands out for him is
not the change in the College. “What
is clearer to me,” he says, “are the
things that are the same. I don’t think
the College has changed its focus or
Please turn to page 83
41

I

I COLLEGE
Board approves
new building and
Trotter renovations
At its October meeting, the
Board of Managers ap­
proved final designs for the
construction of a new aca­
demic building north of
Parrish Hall and the com­
plete renovation of historic
Trotter Hall. It authorized
the creation of construc­
tion documents in anticipa­
tion of groundbreaking in
June 1994 for the $25 mil­
lion project.
The design team of Mar­
garet Helfand Architects,
Ehrenkrantz and Eckstut
Architects, landscape
architects Coe Lee Robin­
son Roesch, and artist
Mary Miss presented
Board members with a
detailed conceptual plan
for each of the buildings
and for proposed changes
in roads and walkways that
will transform the area
between Du Pont Hall and
Parrish into a pedestrian
campus.
The new structure, a
three-story stone-faced
building, will occupy the
site between Trotter Hall
and the Eugene M. and
Theresa Lang Performing
Arts Center. Parrish Annex
will be demolished and a
paved courtyard will be
created between the new
building and the north por­
tico of Parrish Hall. The
building is designed to be
open to both the Parrish
courtyard and to new walk­
ways leading to other
buildings on the north cam­
pus, making it a hub for the
entire academic area of the
College. The ground floor
will feature a new “north
campus commons”—a
large open lounge area that
42

will serve as an informal
meeting place for students
and faculty members. It will
also have three large class­
rooms, a multi-use meeting
space, and a faculty lounge.
The second floor will
house two classrooms, four
seminar rooms, and offices
for the departments of Eco­
nomics and Sociology/
Anthropology. On the third
floor, facing Du Pont Sci­
ence Building, will be a
large language lab sur­
rounded by offices and
classrooms for the Depart­
ment of Modern Languages
and Literatures. It is
planned that the building
will be ready for occupancy
in the fall of 1995, after
which the renovation of
Trotter Hall will be under­
taken.
Trotter will be totally
renovated within its exteri­
or stone walls and reconfig­
ured with three full floors
of classrooms, seminar
rooms, and faculty offices.
Interdisciplinary programs
and the Classics Depart­
ment will occupy a new
first floor at ground level,
to be created by regrading
the earth around the front
of the building and instal­
ling full-size windows in the
current basement. The
grade change and a new
elevator will allow easy
access to all parts of the
building for the disabled.
The History Department
will have its departmental
and individual faculty of­
fices on the second floor,
along with seminar rooms
and two spacious class­
rooms. The Department of
Political Science will occu­
py similar space on the
third floor.
A central feature of the

renovated Trotter will be
the conversion of the
entrance and stairwell on
the north side of the build­
ing (facing Hicks Hall) into
a skylit “vertical lounge”
spanning all three floors.
Hallways will be widened,
and entirely new heating,
air conditioning, and elec­
tronic communications
systems will be installed.
For more than a year,
the planning process has
involved a campus steering
committee of faculty mem­
bers, staff members, and

students, co-chaired by
r
Provost Jennie Keith and
f
Associate Vice President
a
Larry Schall ’75. Keith told I t
Board members that facult
ty members are “cautious,
r
excited, and optimistic all
a
at once. They are being
g
asked, perhaps for the first
time, what an ideal teachv
ing space is like.”
Board of Managers
chairman Neil Austrian ’61,
in remarks on Oct. 1, re­
counted the history of
efforts to renovate Trotter
Hall. He told fellow Board

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLET! DECE

E

id
it
old
cul­
ms,
all
r
first

H

members that “this project
has been on the agenda for
a long time, and it’s incum­
bent on us to make sure ,
that it gets done. We’ve
made the commitment,
and we have a moral obli­
gation to see it through.”
Fund-raising efforts are
well under way with a

small number of key sup­
porters of the College.
Nearly half of the funds
needed had been pledged
by Nov. 1, according to
Harry Gotwals, vice presi­
dent for alumni, develop­
ment, and public relations.
Gotwals was confident that
the rest of the funding

would be found. “This proj­
ect is our highest priority,”
he said, “and people who
love this college, and who
know that the intellectual
exchanges that go on in
these buildings are at its
heart, are coming forward
to help us realize this excit­
ing plan.”

tter
ird

New Collection
hears from McKibben
on “Desire & Nature”

buildiborth of Parrish Hall. Trotter Hall will undergo m ajor renovations.

3ULLETI DECEMBER 1993

Environmental theorist
and writer Bill McKibben
linked America’s material
culture to potentially dis­
astrous effects on the
Earth’s ecosystem in an
address to the College
community on Sept. 21. In
a talk titled “Desire and
Nature,” he asked the
question, “What is it that
human beings really
want?” He argued that con­
sumer values propagated
by television create false
desires, alienating people
from each other and from
nature—and precipitating
an unprecedented global

G

E

Swarthmore ranked
third in U.S. N ews
For the 10th straight year,
Swarthmore College has
been named one of the top
three liberal arts colleges
in the U.S. News & World
Report annual rankings of
America’s best colleges
and universities.
In the No. 3 spot for the
second year in a row,
Swarthmore was again
edged out by Amherst and
Williams colleges, which
were named No. 1 and No.
2 respectively. Rounding
out the rest of the top 10
were Wellesley, Pomona,
Bowdoin, Haverford, Middlebury, Smith, and Wes­
leyan. Bryn Mawr came in
15th.
The survey covered
1,371 accredited higher
education institutions. It
combined reputational
rankings with data provid­
ed by the colleges, includ­
ing information on student
selectivity, faculty re­
sources, financial re­
sources, graduation rate,
and alumni satisfaction.

environmental crisis.
The lecture, billed as a
special all-College Collec­
tion, was designed to bring
the entire Swarthmore
community together to
share a common intellec­
tual experience at the
beginning of the academic
year. Introducing McKib­
ben to about 500 faculty
members, staff members,
and students in the Pearson-Hall Theatre, Associ­
ate Provost Mark Jacobs
expressed the hope that
the Collection would
become an annual event
that would “prod us, chal­
lenge us, and get us think­
ing in ways that we don’t
usually experience.”
43

STEVEN GOLDBLATT '67

Writer Bill McKibben (right) urged a Swarthm ore audience to “discriminate betw een real desires and
illusory o n e s” in order to save the Earth from environm ental disaster.

A former New Yorker
staff writer and author of
two books, The End of
Nature and The Age o f Miss­
ing Information, McKibben
asserted that because of
television, “for the first
time in human history,
active, primary experience
of the world is becoming
less important than sec­
ondary, pre-chewed experi­
ence.”
For The Age of Missing
Information, McKibben
studied the broadcast and
cable offerings available in
a 24-hour period to the res­
idents of Fairfax, Va., a 100channel market. He asked a
sample of viewers to re­
cord the kinds of moods
they were in as they
watched various programs,
then viewed the entire
2,400 hours of videotape
himself. One conclusion he
drew was that “we use TV
to regulate the emotional
barometer of our lives.” In
the case of the program
44

Cheers, “instead of going to
an actual barroom, we sit
at home and watch a bar­
room on an appliance at
the end of a darkened
room. At least in a real bar­
room there’s a chance for
actual human contact.”
America’s most influen­
tial export, he said, is not
material goods but the con­
sumer culture itself. “The
global village we are creat­
ing around the planet is a
sort of Southern California
suburban nowhere. It’s a
place that seems like it
ought to be a paradise, but
it turns out to be unsatisfy­
ing and boring.” Our desire
for the lifestyle promoted
by television is depriving
us of the ability to concen­
trate on “the key task of liv­
ing—learning to discrimi­
nate between real desires
and illusory ones.”
And, said McKibben,
these illusory desires are
at the root of worldwide
environmental degrada­

tion. Increased carbon
dioxide emissions from
automobiles—and the
resulting global warming—
are one of the dangerous
consequences of these
skewed values. “At bottom,
our desires are responsible
for the environmental cri­
sis. We stand at the thresh­
old of altering the most
basic systems on the plan­
et through our addiction to
the internal combustion
engine. And we continue to
spread this idea of the
‘good life’ around the
world.”
He concluded by calling
for “a deep and thoughtful
selfishness” in which we
concentrate on our “real,
actual human desires—for
physical work, for commu­
nity, for connection with
the natural world, for the
divine and the sacred.
These seem to me to be
the substance of a satisfied
life and the hope of a belea­
guered planet.”

Class of ’97 is
largest ever

(

By design the College has
enrolled 413 first-year stu­
dents—the largest incom­
ing class ever—to meet a
target student population
of 1,325.
The official fall enroll­
ment of 1,387 for 1993-94,
according to the Admis­
sions Office, is due to fewer
students than usual study­
ing abroad or taking leaves
of absence.
The new students were
chosen from 3,239 applica­
tions, with a larger than
normal yield from Middle
Atlantic states. The median
SAT score is 1310, and 81
percent were in the top 10
percent of their high
school graduating class.

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Sorry...the number
you have reached....
Because of the heavy cus­
tomer demand for tele­
phone numbers in the
Philadelphia area, Bell of
Pennsylvania is assigning
Delaware County (and
hence the College) a new
area code.
Beginning Jan. 1 and
throughout 1994, College
numbers can be reached
using the current 215 area

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code or the new code, 610.
On Jan. 1,1995, the 610
code will become official, 1
and, warns Ma Bell, calls
not dialed correctly will
not be completed.
As current College sta­
tionery and other printed
materials are replenished
during the upcoming year, ! Pai
84
the new code will be
added. If you are a frequent off
caller to the College, please Grt
make note of the changes. res

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETtf °ECEI

Chester coalition
reports progress

wer
yes
ca-

Swarthmore alumni had an
opportunity Fall Weekend
to learn how the College’s
longtime relationship with
Chester has produced an
innovative new coalition
with great promise for the
future.
Salem D. Shuchman ’84,
chair of the Alumni Coun­
cil’s Social Action Commit­
tee, assembled a panel
from the Chester-Swarthmore College Community
Coalition (CSCCC) board.
They described an enter­
prise that will benefit both
the people of Chester and
the academic mission of
the College.
According to moderator
Maurice Eldridge ’61, an
associate vice president of
the College, “The Chester
community must decide
what’s important. We don’t
want to set the agenda—
we want to respond to it.”
Philosophy Professor Hugh
Lacey of the CSCCC steer­
ing committee said the Col­
lege is integrating relevant
academic courses into “the

transformation of Chester”
by focusing on urban prob­
lems and community
empowerment.
The coalition is working
to expand educational
resources and social ser­
vices for residents of
Chester’s public housing.
Programs include tutoring
children, adult literacy
classes, drug and alcohol
abuse programs, health
care, job training, and lead­
ership development.
The board members
reported that funding has
come from the Ford Foun­
dation, Pew Charitable
Trusts, and the state of
Pennsylvania. Eugene M.
Lang’s [’38] “I Have A
Dream” program has been
brought to the William
Penn Housing Develop­
ment, where Swarthmore
students (and two alumni)
help tutor 30 to 40 chil­
dren.
The coalition has
attracted attention in other
cities, and HUD officials see
it as a unique model that
could inspire rewarding
partnerships elsewhere.

STEVEN GOLDBLATT ’67

Music and mayhem... M embers o f Orchestra 2001, directed by
Jam es Freeman, professor o f m usic (right), ventured to Russia for
a series o f concerts in October and were caught up in the events
surrounding the battle betw een opponents and supporters o f Presi­
d ent Boris Yeltsin. Although m em bers o f the Philadelphia contem ­
porary cham ber m usic group were a 20-minute w alk aw ay from
the em battled parliam ent building, the violence delayed their per­
formances. In the en d the three concerts— plus two m aster classes
taught by George Crumb, Hon. ’89, and three lectures by Free­
m an— were held. Pictured here with Freeman as they were about
to depart for Russia are stage m anager Seth B renzel ’94, percus­
sionist Glenn Steele, a n d clarinetist Allison Herz.

¡ 10.

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Participants in the Chester coalition panel were Salem Shuchman
’84 (at podium ); Cynthia Jetter 74, formerly o f Chester, a regional
official o f the U.S. D epartm ent o f Housing and Urban Development;
Greg Hammond, a Georgetown Law Center graduate and Chester
resident who is the CSCCC executive director; Maurice Eldridge ’61,

an associate vice president o f Swarthmore and executive assistant
to the president, Ella Thompson, president o f the William Penn
Housing D evelopm ent residents’council, which helps set the coali­
tion agenda, and Hugh Lacey, the Eugene M. Lang Research Profes­
sor o f Philosophy, a m em b er o f the CSCCC steering committee.

De c em b e r 1993
45

E

E

C

G

E

they couldn’t with a car
engine running; an offender j
can’t anticipate an officer’s
approach; and the cost of
maintaining several bicy­
cles is certainly less than
maintaining a car.
The new patrol has also
produced one other bene­
fit. “Do you see one ounce
of flab on these guys?” Red­
grave asked.

Festschrift honors
Charles Gilbert

Public safety officers Stan Ruley and Robert Williams patrol in front
o f Parrish. They, plus officers Sam Ziuiello and Mark McGinnis, use
their bikes when possible. Both o f the College’s patrol cars m ust be
m anned on a shift before the bikes are used.

Putting the mettle
to the pedal

j the new program was to
“enhance police/community relations. The students
For a lot of good reasons,
stop and talk to the guys, a
four public safety officers
lot of times just to ask
on campus have shed their
questions about the bikes.
security uniforms in favor
Putting these officers in
of shorts and helmets to
uniforms different from our
form a new bicycle patrol.
usual paramilitary ones
Using 21-speed “basic
has been a good public
trail bikes” outfitted with
relations move.”
bright headlights, the offi­
Redgrave said there
cers began patrolling this
were other reasons for the
summer during the two
switch: It’s easier to patrol
shifts that run from 3 p.m.
interior areas of the cam­
to 7 a.m. each day.
pus that are inaccessible
Owen Redgrave, direc­
by car; the silence allows
tor of public safety, said
the officers to hear things
the biggest motivation for

46

A festschrift honoring
Charles Gilbert, Professor
Emeritus of Political Sci­
ence, has been produced
by former students and
colleagues with support
from the College.
One hundred copies of
Responsible Governance:
The Global Challenge, pub­
lished by the University
Press of America, are cur­
rently available in the Col­
lege bookstore. The price
is $34 at the bookstore or
$42.50 if ordered through
the University Press.
Contributors to the
effort include Eleanor
Duguid Craig ’60, David V.
Edwards ’62, Jonathan F.
Galloway ’61, John W.
Harbeson ’60, Richard W.
Mansbach ’64, Roger B.
Moore ’84, Jack H. Nagel
’66, Robert D. Putnam ’63,
Jon Van Til ’61, and Profes­
sor Gilbert’s colleagues
Raymond F. Hopkins, pro­
fessor of political science,
and J. Roland Pennock and
David G. Smith, Richter
Professors Emeriti of Politi­
cal Science.

Gender adviser
joins dean’s staff
Karen Henry ’87 has been
named to the newly creat­
ed position of gender edu­
cation adviser in the
Dean’s Office.
In making the announce­
ment, Ngina Lythcott, dean

Charles Gilbert, Professor
Emeritus o f Political Science,
was honored with a festschrift.

of the College, said Henry
will develop and provide
educational opportunities
to promote healthier gen­
der relationships among
students, provide nonjudgmental support to students
who feel they have been
victims of sexual miscon­
duct by other students,
identify and train interest­
ed faculty and staff mem­
bers to provide similar
support and advocacy, and
develop and distribute pro­
tocols and procedures to
improve access to services
for victims/survivors when
incidents of sexual miscon­
duct occur. Henry will also
be the liaison between the
Dean’s Office and the
Women’s Resource Center
and other student organi­
zations that focus their
attention on gender issues.
Henry was formerly a
case manager and family
outreach specialist with
ActionAIDS of Philadelphia.
She has also worked for
Blacks Educating Blacks
about Sexual Health Issues
and volunteered in the
areas of women’s health,
battered women, and Big
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

E

G

E

DENG-JENG LEE

Brothers/Big Sisters. She
recently completed a mas­
ter of social service degree
at Bryn Mawr.

terizations that read across
cultures.
Troupe members also
met with classes in politi­
cal science and Asian
Mime troupe performs,
American literature and
conducts workshop
with members of the InterThe award-winning San
cultural Center and the
Francisco Mime Troupe
Swarthmore Asian Organi­
performed to a full house
zation during their twoduring Fall Weekend in
week residency. On the
October. The troupe’s pro­
theatrical side, the troupe
duction of Offshore, which I conducted a three-day-long
premiered in San Francisco
workshop for theatre
this summer, satirized the
majors over the weekend.
politics of the Pacific Rim
Founded in 1959, the
and the North American
troupe is America’s oldest
Free Trade Agreement
political theatre company
(NAFTA) with a blend of
and has been expressly
the techniques of Italian
multicultural, in both the
commedia dell’arte, 19thsubject matters it deals
century melodrama, and
I with and in the composi­
musical comedy. This
tion of the group itself,
piece was a collaboration
since its beginning.
between the troupe’s resi­
— Sanda Balaban ’94
dent playwright and the­
atre artists from Hong
College drops ban
Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and
on South Africa
the Philippines. The Mime
investments
Troupe describes what it
Swarthmore’s investment
does as “popular theatre,
managers have been grant­
not high art,” in which the
ed the freedom to invest in
actors use a universal lan­
the stock of companies
guage of movement to
doing business in South
show their values through j Africa. The decision, ap­
physically defined characproved by the Board of
Managers and announced
by its Investment Commit­
tee on Nov. 15, was made
in response to a call by
African National Congress
leader Nelson Mandela for
the end of sanctions
against South Africa.
A reserve created to
cushion the impact of
divestment on the Col­
lege’s endowment will
remain intact for the time
being to allow for the sus­
pension of reinvestment “if
we feel morally obliged to
do so,” said President
Alfred H. Bloom, who rec­
ommended the change
after discussions on cam­
The San Francisco M ime
pus with faculty members
Troupe ’s K eiko Shim osato
and students.
“We believe this strateperforms in Offshöre.
;TIN

DECEMBER 1993

The Art o f Collecting Art... George H uber (above), the College’s
m usic librarian, ow ns a collection o f m ore than 150 antique and
fine-art kaleidoscopes. He is one o f a dozen m em bers o f the
Swarthm ore com m unity whose collections o f art and crafts were
represented in the exhibit “The A rt o f Collecting A rt’’ in the List
Gallery o f the Lang Performing Arts Center from Oct. 28 through
Nov. 21. The exhibit, h eld in conjunction with the Jam es A. Michener A rt M useum o f Doylestown, Pa., and dedicated to author
M ichener 29, explored patterns o f collecting am ong m em bers o f
the College community. It included objects ranging from African
m asks to Victorian bottles and from beaded handbags to Japanese
figurines. The show o p en ed with a sym posium on collecting that
attracted scholars a n d curators from Boston to Berkeley, Calif.
T. Kaori Kitao, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor o f Art History,
Maribeth Graybill, associate professor o f art history, and Jennifer
A. Carden, coordinator o f the List Gallery, were co-curators.

gy both expresses the
sense of the College com­
munity and responds with
appropriate balance to the
complexities of the present
political situation in South

Africa,” said Bloom.
The decision reverses a
divestment policy adopted
by the Board in March
1986 after long discussion
and debate on campus.
47

ALUMN1D
ALUM
his fall’s “America’s Best Colleges”
issue of U.S. News & World Report
ranked Swarthmore third (behind
Amherst and Williams) in the category
“Best National Liberal Arts Colleges.”
Swarthmore has always been one of
the top three colleges in this category
and was rated first in two of the 10
years the magazine has undertaken
this survey. The way the rankings are
determined is questionable, as is their
overall impact. Noting Swarthmore’s
first-place position several years ago,
President David Fraser observed,
“The methodology may be faulty, but
they got the answer right.” Those of
us who are alumni know that Swarth­
more remains the best liberal arts col­
lege in the country, and we don’t need
an outside source to either affirm or
repudiate our belief. The rankings do,
however, affect the public perception
of the College, and it is therefore dis­
turbing to see any slippage.*
One of the criteria used by US.
News is “alumni satisfaction,” mea­
sured, perhaps unfairly, by the per­
centage of alumni contributing finan­
cial resources to the college in a given
year. In this category, Swarthmore
ranks eighth this year, behind not
only Amherst and Williams but also
Hamilton, Bowdoin, and Holy Cross. In
the most recent Annual Fund drive,
the number of Swarthmore alumni
contributors dropped to 55 percent,
and the drop occurred principally
among donors who give $200 or less.
Others in the College community are
analyzing the reasons for and signifi­
cance of this decline (the recession,
Swarthmore’s overall wealth, etc.),
and the Alumni Association is most
fortunate in not having to concern
itself directly with this matter. We are
among the few alumni associations
that do not charge dues and among
the even fewer whose primary pur­
pose is not fund raising.
When the Swarthm ore Alumni
Association was first formed, the

T

* S w a r th m o r e w a s a ls o r a n k e d th ir d in

Money

m a g a z in e ’s s u r v e y o f B e st-V a lu e C o lle g e s , th is
tim e w e ll a b o v e b o th A m h e r s t a n d W illia m s.

bylaws specified that “no intoxicating
beverages shall be allowed in any
meeting of the Association” and that
the yearly dues of each member shall
be one dollar. (Happily, neither of
these stipulations still exists!) Prior to
1941 the only source of income from
alumni, except for special gifts and
bequests, was from the $1 dues. Alum­
ni who were in arrears would receive
a postcard reminder from the associa­
tion’s secretary-treasurer that said,
“Thee hasn’t paid thy dues.” Although
$1 was added to the amount owed for
each year that dues were not paid, the
total yield was never more than $800 a
year, barely enough to cover mailing
expenses of the postcard.
Although the Alumni Council no
longer has to involve itself in raising
money, it is interested in stimulating

War Years Reunion ’92
Photos Needed
Because there was no official
photographer at the June 1992
War Years Reunion, we are lack­
ing photos to accompany the
written summary of the three-day
event. If you have candid shots,
group pictures, or photos of pan­
els and panelists, would you
share them with us temporarily?
Please send them to Demmie
Affleck Carrell ’47,158 South
Prospect Street, Oberlin OH
44074. We promise to return
them!
support for the College. And if others
are going to judge us by the percent­
age who give to the Annual Fund, I
hope that this percentage will rise
considerably this year.
On another note: As I write this, the
Alumni Council has just concluded
the first of its three yearly meetings.
This was an organizing meeting
designed to introduce new Council
members to current members and to
each other, and to reacquaint them
with the College. There were opportu­
nities to meet with administrative staff
members, faculty members, and stu­
dents (including a student/faculty pre­
sentation on current happenings in

the former Soviet Union and sub-Saha­
ran Africa), to attend classes, and to |
tour the campus. There were two |
panel discussions, one on student life
and the other on the Swarthmore/ i
Chester coalition and the part the
Swarthmore community, including
nearby alums, can play in making this ,
cooperative effort a success.
The Alumni Council meeting was
deliberately scheduled to coincide
with Fall Weekend (an expanded
Homecoming involving the entire Col­
lege community as well as parents
and alumni). Council members were
able to take advantage of a forum on
pop culture and an appearance by the
San Francisco Mime Troupe as well as
an exhibit of Quaker tapestry, a retro­
spective of the art of Lois Mailou
Jones, and a variety of athletic events, i
President Bloom hosted a reception !
for Council members and other spe­
cial groups on campus that weekend,
and we had a chance to meet mem­
bers of the Parents Council. The num­
ber of activities cut into meeting time
for Council com m ittees. But the
Admissions, Career Planning and
Placement, Athletics, Student Life,
Social Responsibility, Connections,
and Long-Range Planning committees
all met long enough to regroup with
new members and organize them­
selves for the year’s work.
The weekend ended with a Council
brunch for members of the senior
class, otherwise known as pre-alums.
The large tu rn o u t was probably
attributable more to free food than to
the desire to learn about the Alumni
Association, but the Council overture
was well-received. The recent deci­
sion to make senior class presidents
members of the Alumni Council also
provides an opportunity to ascertain
the interests of our youngest con­
stituents.
This issue of the Swarthmore Col­
lege Bulletin features many alumni
who continue to be directly involved
with the College. The rest of us are
also stockholders, however, and I
hope we will use the Alumni Associa­
tion, the Alumni Council, and this col­
umn to express our support and con­
cerns.
!
Gretchen Mann Handwerger ’56
President, Alumni Association

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SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN i DEC
48

1D I G E S T
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life
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his j
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ition

and friends spent a
Sunday morning tour­
ing the Rosenbach
Swarthmore Gifts
Museum and Library.
for the Holidays
Following the tour,
ll alumni, parents, and friends of everyone met for
Look in your August 1993
Swarthmore College are invited to brunch at the Magno­
Bulletin for this four-page
participate in local College events lia Café. Peggy Maccatalogue featuring Swarth­
around the country. Look for Connec­ Laren ’49 organized
more clothing, furniture,
tion and regional event mailings and the event.
books, and many other
enjoy the company of Swarthmoreans
On Dec. 4 alumni
items—or call the College
at your area’s next gathering.
welcomed the holiday
Bookstore at (215) 328-7756 for a fresh copy.
season with a FairPrompt
shipping is available of in-stock items.
Recent Events
mount Park tour of
Boston: Lola Bogyo 73 arranged a seven historic houses
cruise aboard the Essex River Queen decorated in old-fash­
on Aug. 28.
ioned Christmas themes. Alida Zweid- at Washington College in Maryland,
A tour of the Scientific Institutions ler-McKay ’92 arranged the tour.
led the group around the grounds and
of Woods Hole was given on Sept. 18
Seattle: A potluck dinner was held gardens, and afterward the group
by Sandy Williams ’62, senior scientist at the home of Deborah Read Barnes toured the interior with cathedral
for the Department of Applied Ocean ’87 on Sept. 26. Everyone got to partic­ docents. Both Washington events
Physics and Engineering. Sandy and ipate in a salmon circle ritu al—a were organized by Dorita Sewell ’65.
Izzie Phillips Williams ’63, who orga­ Native American dance to celebrate
Hawaii: Don Swearer, Charles and
nized the event along with Betsey the autumnal equinox.
Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of
Wood ’62, said that more than 60
South Florida: Swarthmore alumni, Religion and Numata Visiting Profes­
alumni, parents, and friends turned out. joined by alumni from the University sor in Buddhist Studies at the Univer­
New York: Caren Glatt ’81 orga­ of Pennsylvania, got to see their new sity of Hawaii at Manoa, visited with
nized an afternoon that brought team in action when the Florida Mar­ local alumni on Nov. 21 and shared an
together alumni, parents, and friends lins played the Montreal Expos at Joe inside look at what’s happening on
for a pleasant visit to the Hammond Robbie Stadium on Sept. 29. Mark cam pus today. Tom Huang 73
Museum and its four-acre Japanese Shapiro ’88 worked with a representa­ planned and hosted the event at
Stroll Garden.
tive from Penn to plan the event.
Waialae Country Club.
With the help of Steve Hurly ’90,
Washington, D.C.: More than 160
Tennessee: An group of alumni,
New York Cares Day, a citywide volun- alumni, parents, and friends turned parents, and friends got together on
teer-a-thon, brought together an out to watch the Baltimore Orioles Sunday, Dec. 5, to share photographs,
enthusiastic group on Oct. 16 to paint play the Detroit Tigers at Camden plan upcoming events, and have lunch
and spruce up schools, parks, and gar­ Yards. Prior to the game, fans enjoyed at a mountaintop inn overlooking the
dens, as well as to deliver meals to a talk given by Dick Hall ’53, who Great Smoky Mountains. The evening
homebound seniors.
pitched in the majors for 16 seasons was arranged by Mary Evans, parent
Philadelphia: Pat ’83 and Mary and helped the Orioles win four pen­ of Wendy Williams ’97, and Andrea
Woolson Cronin ’83 arranged a guided nants in the late ’60s and early 70s.
Bixler ’91.
tour of the Philadelphia Zoo on Sept.
The Washington National Cathedral
19, which was followed by a picnic in Tour, held on Oct. 23, attracted more Upcoming Events
the zoo’s Victorian Picnic Grove.
than 60 alumni and friends. Emilie
Swarthmore Professor of History
On Nov. 7 about 35 alumni, parents, Amt ’82, assistant professor of history Bob Du Plessis will be visiting St.
Louis on Saturday, Dec. 11. Walter ’52
and Marie Lenfest Schmitz ’52 will be
Delta Upsilon Celebrates Centennial,
hosting the event.
The Philadelphia Connection is
Plans March 19 Banquet
working on a Swarthmore Update and
a People’s Light and Theatre outing.
The local Swarthmore chapter of Delta Upsilon has been
New York is planning a tour of the
working hard during the past two years in preparation
Modern
Museum of Art, a painting
for its 100th anniversary on the Swarthmore campus in March 1994.
exhibit,
and
the Swarthmore Sympo­
A committee of more than 100 alumni members was formed several
sium
VIII.
years ago to spearhead a fund-raising effort to create a permanent endow­
Plans are in the works for a Min­
ment for the local chapter. To date half of the goal of $300,000 has been
nesota
Twin Cities Connection, with
received in gifts and pledges.
its first event being a January recep­
A large coed banquet will be held on March 19 on campus to celebrate
tion. More details will follow.
the anniversary. All DU alumni are encouraged to attend.

SWARTHMORE
HAPPENINGS

A

H

LETIN 1 DECEMBER 1993

49

Working to Keep the Lines of Communication Open
Between the College and the Outside World
Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59 returns to head the external affairs operation.
hen she was a high
school student in
Akron, Ohio, Barbara Had­
dad Ryan had dreams of
becoming a foreign corre­
spondent. The journalism
part came true, but she’s
spent her professional life
solidly rooted within Ameri­
can shores.
A year into her appoint­
ment as the College’s associ­
ate vice president for exter­
nal affairs, Barbara says
she’s “come full circle,” but
there have been a lot of miles
in between.
Her adventures started
when history Professor Larry
Lafore ’38 recommended that
she apply for graduate
school in journalism at Co­
lumbia University. A year
later, armed with a master’s
degree (with honors), she
landed her first job at the

W

Adirondack Daily Enterprise
and Lake Placid News, “a typi­

cal entry-level job,” she says,
“covering the school board
and police department and
the colorful, lively event of
an international bobsled
competition.”
Tired of the “mud season”
in the mountains, she left
after several months for New
York City and work as an edi­
torial researcher at Lincoln
Center, which was then
under construction. Shortly
after, she became assistant
public relations manager at
New York Medical College
and Flower-Fifth Avenue hos­
pitals.
It was there that she re­
ceived a call from the D enver
Post. “It was still the era of
the traditional, old-fashioned
women’s pages—food, fash­
ion, social news—and the
Post wanted to start building
a solid features section
including social issues,
health and welfare, children,
poverty, education, and so
on.”
Although she didn’t want
66

Barbara H addad R yan ’59 returned after 30 years in D enver
to take charge o f operations in the College ’s Public Relations,
A lu m n i Relations, a n d Publications offices.

to leave New York, friends in
journalism urged her to take
the Denver job to gain experi­
ence on a major metropoli­
tan daily.
“So I found myself way
out West. I stayed with the
Post for 14 years, initially as a
feature writer and then as an
arts reviewer, reporter, and
critic.” After a stint on the
editorial page, marriage, two
children, and working as the
television critic, she left the
Post for the Rocky Mountain
News to cover arts and poli­
tics, including the two 1980
national conventions. Five
years later she was ap­
proached by an energy com­
pany to become its public
affairs director in Colorado
and Utah.
“I had spent my life in

journalism and I had never
thought about leaving it, but
it sounded like an interesting
opportunity to see the corpo­
rate world from the inside.”
But the company’s Rocky
Mountain project folded, and
she ended up at the Colora­
do School of Mines Founda­
tion as director of communi­
cations and research. From
there she moved on to the
state of Colorado energy con­
servation office as a public
affairs manager.
“So I had three jobs in a
row involving energy and
technology, in which I had no
experience, interest, or apti­
tude—but maybe that shows
the value of a Swarthmore
education.”
In 1988 she returned to
education as a faculty mem­

ber, then chair, of the Jour­
nalism Department at Met­
ropolitan State College of
Denver. It was there that
friends tracked her down to
apply for the Swarthmore
opening.
“I had never planned on
staying in the West, and I
never really became a West­
erner. To this day, when I
think I spent 30 years there,
it’s astonishing. Of course, in
my early career I went a lot
further and faster out West
than I would have facing all
of the competition here in
the East.”
During her absence from
the EastUoast, she main­
tained her ties with the Col­
lege. She was class secretary
from Commencement to well
into her early years in Den­
ver, served as an alumni
interviewer for Admissions,
helped host several alumni
events, and, of course, re­
turned for reunions.
Still “learning the ropes”
as a staff member, Barbara
oversees the College’s Public
Relations, Alumni Relations,
and Publications offices
while serving as liaison with
special committees of the
Board of Managers and other
outside constituencies. “The
‘external affairs’ part of the
title is to be taken literally,”
she says.
Delighted to be back on
campus, Barbara credits her
success in her circuitous
professional life to her under­
graduate Swarthmore experi­
ence. “I really learned how to
think for myself here. In jour­
nalism you have to be skepti­
cal without being cynical and
you have to be able to ana­
lyze what you’re being told
and decide what’s relatively
true and what isn’t. You gain
the ability to trust your own
decision-making after you
weigh all the evidence.
That’s the essence of the Col­
lege’s academic system.”
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Supporting the Academic Health of Students
Associate Dean Robert Gross ’62 is both educator and administrator.
or Bob Gross there’s a
thin and arbitrary line
F
that separates his role as a
dean from that of a teacher.
As associate dean in the
Dean’s Office, he oversees
academic advising and sup­
port services. Because of his
background in curriculum,
supervision, and social work,
he does “a lot of crisis work,
dealing with students with
emotional or family crises.
When I work with individual
students, I function as an
educator, and even when I
work as an administrator, 1
see myself creating contexts
in which education takes
place. To me it’s not an
either/or kind of thing. Work­
ing with students, faculty
members, and others, there’s
a web of connections that is
stimulating and supportive.”
Although review of the
College’s alcohol policy and
volunteer services also falls
in his purview, Bob sees his
primary role as supporting
the academic health of stu­
dents. Of particular concern
are the students who come
to Swarthmore with inade­
quate preparation in the writ­
ing process.
“Some of our students
come from high schools
where there are 40 students
in an English class,” he says,
“and no teacher is going to
be able to assign much writ­
ing. The other problem is the
continuing emphasis in some
schools on rote learning, cov­
ering material without
enough opportunity for anal­
ysis and reflection. So some
students come here thinking
that it’s simply a matter of
nors on selection of design
consultants and site selection
and also reviews conceptual
designs of major projects.
The Wilmington News Jour­
nal reported on former Dela­
ware secretary of state Glenn
Kenton’s 1992 holiday party
for 300 politicians, lawyers,
bankers, and other notables.

Bob Gross ’62 finds a stimulating and supportive web o f
connection working with students and with faculty members.

dealing with the volume of
material. They don’t under­
stand the kind of tasks that
faculty members are asking
of them. Fortunately, through
the Writing Associates Pro­
gram and the hard work of
the faculty, most of our stu­
dents catch up. The differ­
ence in preparation tends to
even out after two semes­
ters—but those two seGlenn, now a lawyer at Rich­
ards Layton & Finger, was
described as always having a
fondness for the theatrical,
favoring big cigars, and driv­
ing a red Ferrari and a 20-yearold Mercedes.
Anne Jones Femald, who
teaches psychology at Stan­
ford, sent word that Gavin

mesters can be painful.”
He says he’s hesitant to
make any “sweeping cultural
pronouncements” on the
state of today’s students, but
he says he does think these
are scarier times than when
he was in school. “There is a
sense that seems to hover
over all young people of
restricted opportunities, the
fear of falling off the earth
Wright is chair of the Eco­
nomics Dept, there.
Rod ’66 and I had two days
of sweet nostalgia while on
campus for our son Seth’s
[’93] graduation. We are ad­
justing to a new dimension in
our lives since we opened our
house as a bed-and-breakfast
in May. And we’ve already had

when they leave college.”
The associate dean posi­
tion is not Bob’s first with
the College. After receiving
an M.A.T. and an Ed.D. from
Harvard and serving a stint
as director of secondary
teacher education at SUNY at
Stony Brook, he joined the
Swarthmore faculty in 1977
as assistant professor of edu­
cation. After six years he left
to become head of the upper
school at Friends Select
School in Philadelphia.
“I had a wonderful time
there,” he says. “I decided
the part of it that I liked the
best was working with fami­
lies and individual students,
doing therapy. So I looked
around and thought about
what kind of training I’d
need, and it turned out to be
a degree in social work.”
Nearly three years ago, while
Bob was completing an
M.S.S. at Bryn Mawr and
teaching a course at Swarth­
more, the Dean’s Office job
opened up.
“The thing that’s exciting
about Swarthmore is that so
much is made of the life of
the mind. The reality is that
people here do take intellec­
tual pursuit much more seri­
ously than students at other
schools. As a rule students
here are less concerned
about the bottom line or
‘What’s in it for me?’ They’re
more excited by ideas and
processes, and that makes it
a unique environment.
“That probably ruins us
for life after Swarthmore,” he
adds, “which is why so many
of us have found our way
back.”
our first Swarthmore connec­
tion: Eliana Miller’s [’93] par­
ents stayed with us when they
brought her to the U. of Roch­
ester Medical School. If you
need to be in Rochester, give
us a call and we’ll do our best
for you and yours. Don’t for­
get to send me your holiday
newsletters.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

...and a R ecent B o o k A b o u t th e C o lle g e
G en tlem en a n d S c h o la rs:
College a n d C o m m u n ity in
th e “A ge o f th e U niversity, ”
1865-1917, by W. Bruce

Leslie, Penn State Press,
1992.
By Stephen B. Mauser ’67,
professor of mathematics
This is a comparative histori­
cal study of four MiddleAtlantic colleges: Bucknell,
Franklin and Marshall,
Princeton, and Swarthmore. I
learned of it from a review in
the Princeton A lum ni Weekly,
which basically said the
book was interesting, but
why did the author group us
with them ! Since I am an
alumnus of both Swarthmore
and Princeton (Ph.D. ’72),
and since 1taught at Prince­
ton before returning to
Swarthmore in 1979, my
curiosity was aroused.
The period between the
Civil War and World War I
was a seminal time for these
four institutions and for
American higher education.
In 1865 all four were small
(26 to 328 students); all were
closely tied to one religious
sect and drew most students
and financial support locally
and from that sect; all had an
ill-defined sense of educa­
tional scope, involving sec­
ondary programs as well as
what we now call undergrad­
uate. By 1917 all were larger
(319 to 1,555), all drew stu­
dents from what seemed
then a broad range—uppermiddle-class to upper-class
white Protestants of various
sects—and all were sending
graduates into business and
worldly professions more
than the ministry and
schools. All four had elimi­
nated precollege divisions
and delineated their other
roles (three undergraduate
colleges and one research
university), and Princeton
and Swarthmore had become
rather well-to-do, with
impressive physical plants
and the ability to draw stu­
dents from afar. This book
DECEMBER 1993

details these changes.
Note: Even at the end of
the story, Swarthmore is
quite unlike the college we
know, for the biggest
change—President Aydelotte, Honors, and selective
admissions based on intel­
lect—was yet to arrive.
The book is intriguing
because many things we take
for granted about collegiate
education only developed
during this period. It is odd
to think that there weren’t
always general studies with
electives in the first two
years and a major in the last
two, or that the undergradu­
ate years weren’t always
clearly differentiated from
high school studies or from
professional studies like
medicine and law. It feels
strange to be taken back to a
time when colleges set their
entrance requirements in
terms of their own narrow
examinations instead of
using units of study (such as
four years of English) or stan­
dardized exams. It’s hard to
imagine one’s religious
brethren being a more
W.

B R § 1 1

important source of annual
giving than alumni.
Yes, the book is intriguing
for these reasons, but it is
not the best source for col­
lege history, either for
Swarthmore or for American
higher education in general.
Leslie has written for his fel­
low scholars in the history of
education. Emphasis is on
the details, with the broad
picture not always kept in
view. Every page has an inch
or two of footnotes, and
many items are named with­
out explanation (e.g., the
“Yale report of 1828”). Fur­
thermore, this book arises
from a series of journal arti­
cles that are not quite seam­
lessly combined.
The author intends his
book as evidence against the
received wisdom among
scholars of higher education
that from 1865 to 1917, col­
leges were parochial and
classical and would have
remained so except for the
emergence of the research
university, which brought
fresh thinking to academia.
In other words, 1865-1917
I l; S I I E

BI

GENTLEM

SCHOLARS
C.OIJT'GÌTAND COMMUNITY IN :T-TLE.
• "AGE .OF THE- UNIVERSITY,"

was the Age of the University
of the title. Leslie’s coun­
terthesis, amply documented
by his book, is that colleges
made changes by them­
selves. For instance, Prince­
ton (under its President Wil­
son) and Swarthmore (under
President Swain) introduced
electives and majors before
any of the then-research uni­
versities did. Wilson got
national attention for this,
but Swain introduced these
ideas earlier. (Some other
colleges were earlier too.)
As a history layman, I
knew that research universi­
ties came into existence dur­
ing this period, but I had
never presumed they were
the source of all the period’s
postsecondary change. Con­
sequently, Leslie’s repeated
criticism of the received wis­
dom seemed like knocking
down a straw man.
I found the last few chap­
ters much more interesting
than the first few. Although
the book proceeds chrono­
logically, different topics are
emphasized in different peri­
ods. The first few chapters
concentrate on such things
as how the presidents relat­
ed to the trustees, the bene­
factors, and the sponsoring
church and on census data
about the social status of
professors. The nature of
education and college life
don’t get much direct atten­
tion until later chapters.
This book did inspire me
to want to read more—the
things I would recommend
others read first. On the gen­
eral level, I learned from
Leslie of (the received wis­
dom in) Frederick Rudolph’s
The American College and
University (1962) and Lau­
rence Veysey’s The Emer­
gence o f the Am erican Univer­
sity. For Swarthmore in par­

ticular I would read again,
but more closely, Richard
Walton’s Swarthmore College:
An Informal History (1986)
and Burton Clark’s The Dis­
tinctive College: Antioch, R eed
and Swarthmore (1970).

Balancing Research, Teaching, Family, and Community
Lisa Smulyan 7 6 keeps very busy as a faculty m em ber in the Education Program.
isa Smulyan clearly has
her hands full—as an
L
associate professor in
Swarthmore’s Education Pro­
gram, a researcher, a mem­
ber of the community, and
the mother of two young chil­
dren.
During this academic
year, however, she has been
awarded a Lang Faculty
Grant for a two-semester
leave of absence to continue
researching the lives and
work of women elementary
school principals.
“There c iré two bodies of
literature out there about
gender and school manage­
ment,” she says, “one on gen­
der differences in education­
al management and one on
what makes an effective
school principal. There has
been some work that sug­
gests that there are valid gen­
der differences in the way in
which women and men man­
age in education and the cor­
porate world. And there are
studies that look at why
fewer women than men enter
educational administration
that focus on issues of dis­
crimination and socialization
and so forth. But there aren’t
any case studies that look at
how complex this issue real­
ly is, how variables like gen­
der, race, class (and in some
cases, religion), school con­
text, and personal life histoLou Ann Matossian and
Tracey Werner Sherry for
their election to the Alumni
Council. Tracey writes that
she is taking an indefinite sab­
batical from her career as a
biologist to continue home­
schooling her children, Jenna,
8, and Jacob, 5. “It is a real
blast! I’m learning more than
ever before about everything
and anything!”
John Futterman is working
at Livermore Lab in California
and is in communication with
Swarthmore through E-mail.
Any other enthusiasts out
there? John is also busy with
74

dozen students student­
teaching in any given year.
That number is now around
18 to 20.
“The program has really
expanded; it’s definitely serv­
ing more students in more
varied ways. The introducto­
ry course draws a lot of peo­
ple. We figure that in each
graduating class about a
third have taken the intro ed
course. It helps students
reflect on their own experi­
ences and helps them think
about what they really want
to do, what’s realistic, and
what they’d be comfortable
doing. Students continue in
the Program as special
majors who combine educa­
tion with another field,
minors in education in the
Lisa Sm ulyan 7 6 has w atched student interest in the
External Examination Pro­
College’s Education Program grow o ver the years.
gram, and student teachers
who complete the certifica­
tainly interested in gender
ries fit together to make
tion program.”
issues in education and I
effective school leaders.”
In addition to her love of
have
a
growing
interest
in
Lisa joined the faculty in
teaching, an unabashed lik­
the sociology of education,
1985 after receiving an Ed.D.
ing for her colleagues, the
from Harvard (she also holds but in addition to courses in
College, and the town moti­
women and education and
an M.A.T. in education from
vates Lisa not to look beyond
Brown University) to work in school and society, I also
Swarthmore. “It’s hard some­
teach adolescent develop­
both the Education Program
times balancing my kids
ment, supervise student
and the Writing Associates
teachers, and teach our foun­ (Benjamin, 5, and Amanda,
Program.
2), my family, and my work
dation course, Introduction
“One of the reasons I was
here. The leave years are
to Education.”
hired to teach in Swarth­
wonderful. I find it tough to
She says she’s watched
more’s Education Program
do a lot of research and writ­
student interest in the Pro­
was that I’m a generalist. In a
ing during the academic year
program this small, you have gram grow over the past
and be the kind of teacher
to be able to teach a range of eight years. When she first
that I want to be.”
started, there were about a
things,” she says. “I’m cerhis writing hobby, working on
both articles and a book.
After 11 years at Intel (the
computer inside), M.L. Dymski has chosen to leave sunny
California for the cool but
urbane environs of Boston.
M.L. is now the vice president
of finance for Corporate Soft­
ware Inc., has bought a home
in Cambridge, and is looking
forward to visits from East
Coast friends. Speaking of East
Coast friends, Margaret McWethy had a successful show­
ing of some of her paintings in
Provincetown, Mass., in
August.

David Cohen was in the
news again last April. Not as a
high-powered lawyer, judicial
clerk, press secretary and
campaign manager to former
mayoral candidate (now
mayor) Rendell, or “one of the
most powerful people in Phil­
adelphia today” (although
that was mentioned), but as
“Superdave, from Joisey,” tire­
less father of two sons, Ben­
jamin, 8, and Joshua, 3, and
husband to patient lawyer
wife Rhonda Resnick Cohen
76.
Mike Ehrhardt is still a
professor at the College of

Business of the U. of Tenn.,
where he does a little teach­
ing, a lot of research, and “far
too much committee work.”
He and his wife, Sallie, stay
busy with their wonderful and
very active 5-year-old daugh­
ter, Katie, whom Mike accus­
es of contributing to his hair
graying and loss. (Couldn’t
just be that we’re getting
older, could it?)
Ralph Rosen was made
chair of the Dept, of Classical
Studies at the U. of Pa. last
spring.
Robert George was ap­
pointed to a six-year term on
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

V O IC E S
A N D C H O IC E S
Continued from page 21
A nother example can be found in
the Chemistry Department. According
to A s s o c ia te P ro fe s s o r T h o m a s
S tep h en so n , w ho ta u g h t a rev ise d
General Chemistry (Chem 10) course
for th e first tim e last year, th e old
Chem 10 had several problems. “First,
it’s a big course th at we teach tradi­
tionally as one big lecture with small­
er lab sections,” he begins. “We wor­
ried a b o u t p eople n o t asking q u e s­
tions in the lectures and we were con­
cerned about the varieties of prepara­
tion th a t s tu d e n ts have w hen th ey
come into the course.
“Introductory chemistry has a sort
of bad rap nationw ide,” Stephenson
continues. “For one thing, in m ost col­
leges and universities in tro d u c to ry
chem istry is taught as though every
p e rs o n in th e c la s s is a p o te n tia l
chem istry major. But only m aybe 10
percent of the class will go on to be
chemistry majors. The rest will go on
to be biologists or lawyers or doctors
w ith a s o u r ta s te in th e ir m o u th s
about chemistry.”
T he C h e m istry D e p a rtm e n t has
begun addressing these problem s by
cutting the num ber of topics studied
and dividing th e class once a week
into smaller conference sections. “The
idea was to emphasize working prob­
lem s in th e c o n fe re n c e s e c tio n s ,
w here people would feel m ore com ­
fortable asking questions. The m ore
concept-oriented m aterial would be
presented in the lectures.”
The results of the experiment were
mixed. “Students who knew what was
going on didn’t think the conference
sections w ere very useful,” Stephen­
son says, “so a tte n d a n c e w a sn ’t as
high as we’d hoped. But based on stu­
d e n t e v a lu a tio n s , o th e r p e o p le
thought they w ere great.” This year
th e departm ent is trying the experi­
m ent again, with Assistant Professor
Alison Williams teaching the course.
In the History Departm ent, a new
intro d u cto ry course, required of all
majors, will be taught for the first time
th is sp rin g by A ssociate P ro fesso r
Marjorie Murphy, Associate Professor
Stephen Bensch, and Assistant Profes84

F

he point is not to
som ehow \get it
right,' to m ake sure
we've got all the
biases taken away.
The point is to be
aware of the ways in
which interpretation
is limited— to be
humbled by the
problem of objectivity
or truth. ”
— Kenneth Gergen
Psychology
so r Pieter Judson. The new course,
called The Historical Construction of
Id e n tity , ta k e s a c ro s s -c u ltu ra l
approach to studying how societies
shape and reshape identities in a vari­
ety of historical settings. Next spring it
will cover th re e topics: slavery and
freedom , work and comm unity, and
state, nation, and Christendom . “All
these them es have a way of blending
time periods as well as geographical
locations,” says Murphy. “The notion
of a global history course has been
around for a while, but I think this is a
unique one. It could be a model for an
introductory history course to replace
the old W estern Civ course in depart­
ments across the country.”
or som e c u rricu la r innovations,
faculty m em bers are looking be­
yond Swarthmore’s walls to the world
o u ts id e . In th e P o litic a l S cien ce

F

Department, a five-year pilot project,
th e D em ocracy P roject, began last
year. Its goal is to provide students
with opportunities to study and expe­
rie n c e firs th a n d th e re la tio n s h ip
between democratic theory and prac­
tice.
Students participating in the pro­
gram are encouraged to take three
courses: Democratic Theory and Prac­
tice, M ulticultural Politics, and The
Dem ocracy Seminar: The Politics of
Community Action. In the seminar all
students undertake an internship with
a grass-roots comm unity group. The
other two courses are not primarily
in te rn sh ip c o u rse s bu t do ask stu ­
dents to do activist or research pro­
jects.
“We’re trying to broaden the ways
in w h ich s tu d e n ts h a v e a c c e s s to
kno w led g e,” say s p ro je c t d ire c to r
M eta M endel-Reyes. “I w as a labor
organizer for many years before going
to g r a d u a te s c h o o l, so i t ’s really
im p o rta n t to me 'to try to connect
community and classroom work.”
Last spring 19 students enrolled in
th e in te rn sh ip sem in ar, ta u g h t by
Lang Visiting Professor Nadinne Cruz.
(Mendel-Reyes will teach the course
this spring.) Students participated in
internships at area organizations such
as Delaware County Legal Assistance,
Children First, Thea Women’s Center,
a n d J o b s w ith P e a c e. S tu d e n t re ­
sponse to the course has been “just
trem endous,” Mendel-Reyes says.
The internships are very carefully
structured. The professor meets with
e a ch s tu d e n t b e fo re th e s e m e ste r
begins to get a sense of w hat his or
her interests are and works with him
or her to locate an internship. When
th e se m e ste r begins, th e professor
and student go out to the organization
th e y ’ve d e c id e d on an d s e t up a
“learning agreement” that details what
th e s tu d e n t w an ts to acco m p lish ,
what the organization hopes the stu­
dent will accomplish, and how the stu­
d e n t will be ev alu ated . D uring the
sem ester the professor keeps up with
how the internship is going and helps
address any problems. At the end, she
does an evaluation.
T here are im p o rta n t intellectual
b e n e fits to th is kind of learning,
M endel-Reyes says. “It’s extrem ely
important for students to understand
that political science doesn’t occur in
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

DECE

the classroom or at conventions of
st political scientists but out in the com­
its munity. There’s no way for students
)e- to really understand that without
ip some exposure to the community.” At
ic- the same time, experience in the com­
munity enriches students’ studies on
'O- campus: “Rather than setting up an
ee artificial divide between the intellect
ic- and the heart or the academy and
he real life, community learning experi­
of ences lend a richness and purpose to
all their looking at traditional college
ith resources because they’re able to
he make connections that they are really
ily eager to make.”
An internship or fieldwork is also
:uro- ! part of the educational experience for
I many students who are concentrating
tys in Peace and Conflict Studies. Six stu­
to dents did internships last summer,
or funded by grants from the Lippincott
or and Shoemaker foundations. While
ng J.W. Frost, the convenor of the con­
iiy centration, highly recommends that
iCt concentrators do internships or field­
work, he is concerned that the lines
in between intellectual activity and
by social activism not become blurred.
uz. “We’re an educational institution, not
'se an agency for social change,” he says.
in “Our function in working with a social
ich group is education, not making that
ce, group more effective.”
In fact there has been quite a bit of
er,
re­ discussion about the role that experi­
list ences in the community should play
in the curriculum, and there’s some
illy resistance, says Provost Jennie Keith.
ith “The resistance is rooted in a tremen­
ter dous commitment to academic excel­
or lence. The struggle is to be sure that
lim we’re not undermining that. It’s a fair
len question.” But, she points out,
;or Swarthmore’s curricular expansion
ion into the community is intellectually
) a driven. The Democracy Project, for
hat example, “is not a social service proj­
sh, ect; it has developed from theoretical
>tu- changes in the way we look at partici­
;tu- pation in politics. We look at politics
:he as much less top-down and much
nth more coming up from the micro level;
lps one implication of that is that stu­
she dents go and into the field to do
research. I think they are involved in
ual
ng, 7 cam e to understand that even if the
is nonsexist and nonracist, the
ely material
milieu in which it is taught m ight not be, ”
md says Charles K elem en, w ho has revised
r in the introductory com puter science course.
z t,

ETin

De c e m b e r 1993

riculum only stays alive insofar as it
breathes new ideas. It goes haywire if
the new ideas are unrelated or hostile
to all the old ones, and it goes soft if
only what is perfectly compatible with
what is already in place can be
engaged.
“The th eo rist Roland Barthes
wrote something I had never thought
of before. He said, ‘It is more serious
to change than to stay the same.’
Intellectually more serious. Change
isn’t a departure from principle; it’s a
hange always involves an element rethinking of principle. There’s more
of risk, so why does Swarthmore’s thinking involved in a departure than
curriculum need to change at all? there is in a standing still. I don’t think
“Here’s why,” says Philip Weinstein, that gives us a blank check, but it
chair of the CEP Task Force on Cur­ makes me realize th at the most
riculum. “The curriculum is on the responsible thing we can do is move.
“You can move terribly—we’ve
one hand a thing, the embodiment of
courses that are described in the cat­ been frightened about that. It would
alogue. But on a deeper level, it is an be easy to do it wrong. We’re still try­
embodiment of the College’s best ing to figure out how to do it right, but
ideas. And ideas change. Humans I know the right thing is to be trying to
change. Knowledge changes. The cur­ figure that out.” ■

a very intellectual activity.”
Part of maintaining a commitment
to excellence, Keith believes, is con­
stantly asking what we mean by excel­
lence. “At Swarthmore the immediate
answer to that is a very cerebral one,”
she says. “However, if we take seri­
ously the social responsibility side of
our long-standing mission as a college
and the response to changes in the
world, we have to broaden our notion
of intellectual excellence.”

C

85

FRIENDS

same time, Quaker worship requires each other. The 1960s challenge to
silence as the basis for ministry, and College paternalism coincided with j
Continued from inside back cover
we must not allow our commitment to the demand that academia shed its
both continuing revelation of new engagement to become a new tyran­ ivory tower and become more like the
aspects of Truth and communication ny. In our desire to learn from others, “real world.” Students and faculty
with each other. Our measure of light we must also recognize their need to alike are left with very little emotional
may differ and we may see differing define and refine their vision outside and intellectual protection as they
aspects of Truth, but we have a basis of the dialogue, especially if the dia­ deal with extremely difficult issues. It |
for dialogue. In positive terms, replace logue continues to be shaped by our is time to admit the desirability of
the smoked-glass metaphor with a perception of the issues. Groups that offering a safer haven to those whom
clear prism, and our differing visions have been historically dominant espe­ we ask to engage in a very risky pro­
cess—redefinition of
become a source of beauty rather cially require not just
themselves and their
patience but humility:
than confusion.
society.
Because their vision of
For Friends them ­
he Quaker business meeting is reality has been least
selves, the most
engaged in a search not for consen­ challenged by others’
important Quaker gift
sus with each other but for unity with perceptions, it may
is the insistence that
Truth. In a dispute Friends accept nei­ contain the most distor­
there is no separation
ther the majority opinion nor the least tion. In academic terms,
between our spiritual
common denominator but seek the re-placem ent of the
and secular lives. This
missing element that will enable all to Western canon with a
is usually expressed as
unite on a “third alternative.” A vari­ new set of common cul­
the demand that the
ety of unfavorable terms have been tural experiences will
ethical principles
applied to the speed by which this be a dynamic process,
derived from our reli­
process can work, but when it is fol­ with both support for
gious beliefs guide our
lowed faithfully, the results have specialized studies and
proved both creative and remarkably periodic redefinition of Mary Ellen Grafflin Chijioke ’67 daily lives. In typical
is curator o f the Friends Histori- Quaker dialectic, how­
core curricula.
durable.
ever, Friends would
In the classroom cal Library.
In contrast to the strict yes-no
remind us that the task
bipolarity of the Anglo-Saxon legal tra­ Quaker epistem ology
dition, Quaker process is based on the demands cooperative learning and a includes the solution, that a life cen­
assumption that polar opposites can search for multiple sources of insight. tered in the spirit will never lack
and do coexist. Truth lies not in We are all aware of the competitive resources to meet the demands
choosing between com peting ele­ pressures surrounding our education­ placed upon it. As a model, Friends
ments but in maintaining a dynamic al process, and most instructors seek offer the Journal of John Woolman, the
tension among them. Individual and to mute competition among students. autobiography of a Quaker saint and
community are both precious and We need also to remove the competi­ one Quaker literary work worthy of
tion
betw een inclusion in a new American canon.
in terd ep en d en t.
author and read­ Friends from the Hicksite tradition are
We need not
“Critical evalu­ especially suspicious of proselytism,
choose betw een
Quakers believe that er.
atio n ” too often but the Meeting on campus welcomes
contemplation and
becom es a con­ all who would like to try the Quaker
action but seek in­
Truth exists, that it is
test to prove one­ way of seeking in corporate silent
stead the rhythm
one, and that it is
self brighter than meditation the Truth that lies behind
that allows each to
the author rather all religion.
enrich the other.
potentially knowable. than a careful win­
Friends form a tiny minority in
In seeking to build
American
society. With all the vari­
nowing
to
find
the
a diverse commu­
intellectual wheat eties of Quaker that have resulted
nity, we need both
engagement and opportunities to to nourish one’s own development. from 165 years of schism and recom­
refresh ourselves within our own pri­ Emphasis on chaff also inhibits tenta­ bination, there are only about 140,000
mary groups. Quakers display a tive expression of new ideas, since in this country, with less than onerem arkable tem erity on slippery most students are all too aware of third worshiping in the silent manner
familiar at Swarthmore. Their hopes
their own limitations.
slopes.
The other Quaker offerings are of dominating the world lasted for
Diversity is the most visible issue in
our academic life today. A Quaker much simpler. “Guarded education” about five years in the 1650s and until
viewpoint is that we need to open our has become discredited as a term. about 1710 in Pennsylvania. It is also
academic and societal discussions to When the College was founded, it now clear that they will never again be
all not simply to achieve equity but meant protecting young Quakers from dominant at Swarthmore. But it is
because the voice we silence may be alien ideas; in the 20th century, it more than nostalgia that suggests that
uttering the essential element that will referred to guarding young people, the College can benefit from a closer
make Truth apparent to all. At the especially of opposite sexes, from attention to its Quaker legacy. ■

T

86

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

That Worked
Continued from page 7

live in a round house. It was built of adobe by my
father, and it lies alone in the desert beneath several
palo verdes whose branches are covered with golden
blossoms during the late spring. Just outside my
door, there is a short adobe wall that I built myself; the
lizards sit on it, soaking up the sun, watching the world
with heavy-lidded eyes in the silence. The silence is all
around, and in it, if you listen, you can hear the
wind singing and the creosote and mesquite trees
tossing words back and forth. I have lived almost
my entire life in this beauty, and I love it more than
anything. The house is still not finished—will never
be finished—so I know what it is to share a bath­
room with a tarantula, or free a young hawk that
flew into the dining room, or touch a javelina that
wandered up to the back door.
With all of this, I never felt poor. There were
always hikes into new and uncharted territory to be
taken and new adventures to be lived. That’s why it
really came as a shock when I found out that we
were going to lose it all, that when people spoke of
those awful statistics they were really talking about
us, sticking us into a group with those “other peo­
ple” who had always seemed so far away. It brought
me out of my dream, and I realized how different
my family was from those of my friends. Their
mothers didn’t do their laundry in the sink, and
they took it for granted that I had a VCR and a
microwave and a stereo and a dishwasher. I didn’t.
And they took it for granted that I could just go to
the mall and shop, or go
filh h n n e
miniature golfing, or buy
tickets to the U2 concert.
I couldn’t. It was all these
things that they could not imagine living without,
things that I had lived without all of my life, that set
me so far apart from them.
The thing that hurt me most was that they could
not begin to understand. I never believed that the
gap between rich and poor was so wide, but now I
do. It’s just as wide as the gap between every other
area of experience. No one who has not lived or
tried to understand it can ever know the hopelessness
and anguish in a society where you can do everything in
your power and never get ahead, where you can lose
your home because of legalities, or your business be­
cause you didn’t have enough money to invest, or your
job because you worked yourself into the ground. In
truth, you cannot know of anything unless you experi­
ence it, and that is what I would do—go out into the
world and experience everything.
But I believe that experience is not worth anything if
you don’t think upon it, treasure it, examine and recon­
cile it. If growing up in the desert and then losing the
desert has taught me anything it is that: To commit your­
self to an action is wonderful, but its value lies in the
thought. To watch and reflect like Thoreau on his porch
or like a Tibetan monk high in a mountain cave is soaring
poetry. It is to wake into a world and be alive, to dream
into the dreamtime, to take a path and follow it down a
million different roads....«

a

Andrea Gibbons grew up in the desert outside Tucson,
Ariz. Sidelined from athletics because of injuries suf­
fered in high school soccer, she is involved in Earthlust
and Amnesty International. Andrea has a passion for
knowledge about other cultures and languages and is,
among other things, taking Russian and French classes.

DECEMBER 1993

87

Friends Forever?
by
Mary Ellen Grafflin Chijioke ’67
n 1991 the local newspaper, The
Swarthmorean, asked a most unsci­
entific sample of new students why
they chose Swarthmore College. Twothirds mentioned the College’s Quak­
er tradition. Yet the College merely
calls itself “Quaker-related,” not Quak­
er, and few at Swarthmore have any
idea what Quakerism has to offer
beyond a concern for the individual, a
commitment to good works, and a
peculiar manner of conducting busi­
ness.
When the College opened in 1869,
all the students, faculty members,
administrators, parents, Managers,
and donors—everyone connected
with it except unskilled laborers—
were members of the Hicksite branch
of the Religious Society of Friends.*
Yet the sectarian/anti-sectarian
debate was as lively then as it is
today, when Quakers can be regarded
as an endangered species on campus.
Direct institutional affiliation with
the Society of Friends was never a fac­
tor at Swarthmore as at other Quaker
colleges like Guilford or Earlham.
When the Carnegie Foundation was
offering funds in 1908 to nonsectarian
colleges to establish retirement plans
(now TIAA/CREF), the only change
that Swarthmore had to make in its
charter was to drop the requirement
that members of the Board of Man­
agers be members of the Religious
Society of Friends. In recommending
that change to the College corpora­
tion, the Board stated that “the Col­
lege will be as absolutely under the
Management of Friends without the
clause as with it.”
Friends’ control was not a new
issue, and unresolved differences
over the extent to which the College
was answerable to outside Quaker

I

*In 1 8 2 7 - 2 8 t h e P h ila d e lp h ia , N e w Y o rk , a n d
B a ltim o r e Y e a r ly M e e tin g s s e p a r a t e d in to a n
e v a n g e lic a l O r th o d o x b r a n c h , w h ic h fo u n d e d
H a v e r fo r d C o lle g e , a n d t h e m o r e “lib e r a l” fo l­
lo w e r s o f E lia s H ic k s. T h e t h r e e y e a r ly m e e t ­
in g s w e r e n o t r e u n ite d u n til 1955.

Although Q uakerism has been d e e m e d irrelevant in m o d em ethical arguments, three
legacies remain: Q uaker testimonies, a revam ped notion o f a guarded education, and a
continued insistence on the importance o f the spiritual life for individual and community.

bodies had contributed much to the
high turnover in presidents in the
1890s. Joseph Swain’s gradual mod­
ernization of the College administra­
tion between 1902 and 1921 not only
gained him general autonomy from
the Board but also helped the Board
itself assert independence from out­
side bodies. Thereafter, the debate
continued in term s of how and to
what extent Quaker values should
shape College policy.
Within this new frame of reference,
Swarthmore did remain unabashedly
Quaker, at least until World War II. It
did not matter that the percentage of
Quaker students had declined steadily
alm ost from the day the College
opened its doors or that two nonQuakers, Thomas B. McCabe T5 and
Ruth Potter Ashton, were finally
appointed to the Board in 1938. Hicksite Friends, with Board encourage­
ment, still considered Swarthmore
“their” college and made full use of
the campus during the summers. By
Board policy the College still guaran­
teed admission to any qualified gradu­
ate of a Friends school. The College
was as much a part of the Quaker
establishment as of the higher educa­
tional establishment, and Quaker val­

ues (however interpreted) were pre­
sumed to be decisive when grappling
with difficult issues.
Change was coming, however. The
last major initiative taken by President
Frank Aydelotte before leaving
Swarthmore in 1940 was to begin a
Board discussion on the College’s
response to the coming war. He
advised, and the Board seemed to
agree, that the College ought not to
get involved in any direct war efforts
but rather should assist in Quakerrelated efforts like training relief per­
sonnel. Pearl Harbor changed all that,
and Swarthmore wound up hosting a
Navy V-12 unit (but not Civilian Public
Service training). The war did provide
one classic example of Swarthmore as
a Quaker institution: President John
Nason became chairm an of the
National Japanese American Student
Relocation Council, in large part
because of his pivotal connections
with the higher education community,
the American Friends Service Commit­
tee, and the federal bureaucracy.
After the war Quaker representa­
tion on the faculty began to shrink,
and critics increasingly argued that
Swarthmore was Quaker for purposes
of public relations but not when QuakSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

u

K

er practice would demand unpalat­ the cultural norm, however, is a con­
able choices. On the other hand, the viction that excess attention to mate­
use of “Quaker tradition” to defend rial goods takes time and energy from
parietal rules in the late 1960s, when the critical business of life. In addi­
the College seemed insufficiently com­ tion, conspicuous consumption is an
mitted to racial equality, alienated enemy of equality, and stewardship as
both faculty and students. Quakerism the model for our relationship with
was deemed largely irrelevant in later creation mandates a break from the
ethical arguments, such as those over disposable lifestyle of recent decades.
Simplicity as a habit of mind is also
divestment of endowment funds from
a useful intellectual legacy. The wellSouth Africa.
Today, with fewer than a half- ordered life may be unfashionable,
dozen nonemeritus faculty members but a preference for the simplest solu­
who belong to the Society of Friends, tion to a problem is a basic tenet of
these trends probably can’t be mathematics and science, and the
reversed. For better or worse, Friends terse proof is described as elegant.
Truth, the most basic of Quaker
Historical Library remains the only
department with strong links with-the testimonies, has the most wide-rang­
Quaker establishm ent. What then ing implications. In the 1650s, those
does the Society of Friends have to who had been Seekers began calling
offer modern Swarthmore besides themselves Friends of Truth and suf­
past endowment, a strong commit­ fered fines, imprisonment, and worse
ment to service, and a generalized rather than take judicial oaths, which
sense of ethics? I would suggest three would imply that some occasions
gifts that Quakerism can still proffer: required less than absolute truthful­
the Quaker “testimonies,” a revamped ness. The College drew on this her­
notion of a “guarded education,” and itage three centuries later when lead­
a continued insistence on the
importance of the spiritual
life for individual and com­
munity.
ll Quaker social thought
can be traced to four
basic testimonies: Simplicity,
Truth, Equality, and Peace.
The Quaker understanding of
equality and peace are hard­
ly self-evident, static, or noncontroversial, but they are
the best-known Quaker
tenets and are most frequent­
ly cited in the College’s litera­
ture, so I shall devote my lim­
ited space to the others.
Quaker simplicity is worth
mentioning because its most
obvious contributions have
been negative: a delayed
appreciation of the arts and a
suspicion of flamboyance in
style. The still-predominant
Quaker aesthetic—“of the
best sort but plain”—sounds
suspiciously like Volvo and
L.L. Bean basic and has the
danger of reinforcing ethnic
and class prejudices. Behind

G
ing the campaign against loyalty oaths
required for funding under the nation­
al Defense Education Act.
Rare though it may be, a commit­
ment to absolute truthfulness is a rel­
atively trivial legacy to offer. More sig­
nificant is the distinctive Quaker
notion of Truth and the process by
which we can seek it. Even more than
the ethical legacy, Quaker epistemolo­
gy offers guidance in dealing with
today’s educational issues.
First, Quakers believe that Truth
exists, that it is one, and that it is
potentially knowable. We may see
through a glass darkly, our vision
refracted by differing filters of culture,
personality, and experience, but a
common search for Truth is meaning­
ful. Each person brings to the search
not just individual limitations but an
insight that is both unique and closely
allied to the vision of others. We are
not doomed to cultural relativism. In
religious terms Quakers speak of “that
of God in every person,” which allows
Please turn to page 86

A

DECEMBER 1993

Swarthmore students on their w ay to the M eeting House, circa 1895. The requirem ent for
attendance at Friends Meeting, first m odified in 1905, was replaced in 1928 by required
attendance at Collection. In 1969 the College abolished m andatory Collection.

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