Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1994-08-01

arshaling in change

■

... A fte r a tenure dating back

rou gh ly to th e b ig bang, Paul C. M an gelsdorf Jr. ’49, the
M orris L. C loth ier P ro fes s o r Emeritus o f Physics, hands

o v e r th e staff o f o ffic e as th e C o llege’s m arshal to C onstance Cain
H ungerford p rio r to C om m encem en t in June. H ungerford, p ro fessor

o f art history, n o w takes on th e duties o f marshal, w h ich include
organizing and leading th e p rocession s and cerem on ies for
C om m encem ent, Baccalaureate, and presidential inaugurations.

SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE BULLETIN • A U G U S T 1994

4

In the Beginning

It seems natural to assume that there was a beginning, a tim e
when tim e began. Physicist John M ather ’68 and his team o f
NASA scientists set out to explore that beginning and found
remnants o f the prim eval explosion that created the universe.
By Jeffrey Lott

10 W ild B easts w ith W onderful Tales
Take a chest o f cardboard, old curtains, and other materials, m ix
in hundreds o f children, letM arya Ursin 71 stir in her talents as
a dancer and mime, and you have the m agical world o f Mystic
Paper Beasts, creating stories from myths around the world.
Photographs b y Deng-Jeng Lee

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: Cosmologist John Mather
’68 has spent 20 years studying
the origin of the universe. Story
on page 4. Photograph by Bruce
Reedy ’ 68.
P r in te d in U .S.A o n R e c y c le d P a p e r

The Swarthmore College Bulletin ( ISSN
0888-2126), o f which this is volum e XCI,
num ber 6, is published in September,
Decem ber, January, February, May, and
August by Swarthmore College, 500 Col­

14 And in the C e nte r Ring...
Entrepreneur M ickey Herbert ’67, founder o f one o f Am erica s
first HMOs, indulges in colorful outrageousness to help raise
funds for the two dozen events surrounding the annual Bamum
Festival in Bridgeport, Conn. O ldP.T. would have been proud.
By Bill Kent

18

M iracle

As he left to cover South A frica ’s first all-race elections for
National Public Radio, M ichael Fields ’69 had doubts that the
event would ever take place. A month later he witnessed the
peaceful transition from white-minority rule to democracy.
By Michael R e id s ’69

64

S ta yin g P ow er

A fter 82 years and m ore than 90,000 plates o f about 1,500
star systems, Sproul Observatory and Wulff D. Heintz, current
professor o f astronomy, have closed the book on the College’s
program o f photographic observations o f the heavens.
By Jeffrey Lott

2

Letters

lege A venue, Swarthmore P A 190811397. Telephone (6 1 0 ) 328-8401. E-mail
jlottl@cc.swarthmore.edu. Second class

22 The College

postage paid at Swarthmore P A and

30 Class Notes

additional mailing offices. Permit No.
0530-620. Postmaster: Send address
changes to Swarthmore College Bul­
letin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore
P A 19081-1397.

Text b y Rebecca A im

29 Alum ni Digest
37 Deaths
58 Recent Books b y Alum ni

■

he last time w e ran a story about scientific research on
the origin of life on Earth ( “Strewn From the Stars,”
August 1991) w e got a long letter from Leonard Willinger
’58 saying that w e had missed the Biblical boat. For sev­

eral months after w e published his criticism, the Rev. Willinger
and I conducted a lively personal correspondence about science
and religion, ending in a philosophical impasse that each of us had
to accept. We couldn’t agree on The Beginning— or much of any­
thing else— but the chance to sharpen and defend our views was a
w elcom e challenge.
Cosmologist John Mather ’68 is investigating the origin of the
universe from a purely scientific perspective ( “In the Beginning,”
page 4). He asserts that it is not the work of science to either
prove or disprove the existence of God. Finding a spiritual force
behind the big bang is “way
beyond m y capabilities,” says
Mather. Yet because his ground­
breaking research encroaches on a
realm of thought once exclusively
occupied by religion, he is often
asked the God question.
I wonder what might happen if
scientists like John Mather were
able to develop a perfectly under­
standable, absolutely irrefutable explanation of the origin of the
universe. Would the weight of their evidence and the beauty of
their logic convince us that som e knowable physical or chemical
process gave us the Earth, the stars, and our awareness of them?
Will the human mind ever be able to discover the workings of a
universe in which w e are but specks of barely conscious dust?
Since Galileo’s time, science has enlarged our knowledge and
challenged our beliefs. The 20th century creation story known as
the big bang is the latest in a long line of creation stories that
stretch back to the dawn of human thought— except that it may
turn out to be empirically “true.” If it is accepted as such, cosm ol­
ogy itself could be elevated to the status of religion, with Coperni­
cus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and Hubble as its saints— and sci­
entists like John Mather as its reluctant priests.
Perhaps that’s already happened. The legacy of 400 years of
scientific thought has made me skeptical about anything that can’t
be supported by experiment or observation. I’m not a literalist
about Genesis, but I constantly hedge. For me, the non-rationality
of the Bible’s creation story doesn’t necessarily rule out a spiritual
force behind the universe. Despite all the evidence, I can’t think of
m y relationship to the stars as a strictly physical process. There
are days when I often find m ore solace in myths than facts.

— J.L.
2

L

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What Fun! What Memories!
To the Editor:
With graduation gloriously behind
us, I have had time to read cover to
cover (a first for me as we get six
different alumni magazines) the latest Swarthmore College Bulletin.
What fun! What memories! What f
a superb job you did in covering
four very complicated years and tur­
bulent times for all of us. The vari­
ety of articles was truly reflective of
the many faces of Swarthmore’s
accomplished alumni.
!
As a member of Courtney Smith’s
family, I was deeply moved by the
Stapletons’ article [“The Challenge
of Change” ] and now look quite differently at this man I hardly knew. It
touched some deep feelings I forgot
were there, and I look forward to
their book coming out soon.
Courtney’s granddaughter Emily
Smith [’94] and grandson Eliot
Ingram [’94] looked wonderful walk- '
ing out of the Scott Outdoor Auditorium on May 30 with diplomas in
hand. I know he was watching.
PEGGY SMITH
(Mrs. Courtney Smith Jr.) '
Philadelphia

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Pressing Browne on Vietnam
fo
To the Editor:
Oi
The four Chinese businessmen
be
whose executions Malcolm Browne
ot
’52 witnessed [“Blood, Ink, and
bl
T ears,” May 1994 Bulletin ]— howevin
er guilty they themselves may have
of
been of profiteering— were sacrifi[ wi
cial lambs offered up by Air Vice
' he
Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky to divert
attention from himself and the many
oj
other Saigon generals and governm
ment officials who were among the
th
most corrupt and successful rackefo
teers and profiteers in Vietnam, yet
qi
Browne’s recounting of the execuA
tions makes no mention of this.
la
Moreover, “the street-corner exevt
cution” of the suspected Viet Cong
cl
guerrilla by Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan
w,
took place in the midst of the Tet
in
offensive of 1968 and had nothing
- er
whatever to do with Ky cracking the
ot
whip and wanting the world to
fo
know, as Browne asserts. Indeed,
( Pc
Loan was not Ky’s police chief and
interior minister, but rather General s he
Nguyen Van Thieu’s, Thieu having
sp
supplanted Ky as South Vietnam’s
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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9

head of government in 1967.
And all this from the pen of a
Pulitzer Prize-winning senior writer
at The New York Times, the best of
the best in his profession. The next
time you pick up a paper or flip on
the radio or watch the six o’clock
news, you might ponder that.
WILLIAM D. EHRHART 73
Philadelphia
Malcolm Browne responds: “Loan
was Ky’s adjutant and police chief
before Thieu became president, and
he continued in that role. ( I was
myself once arrested by Loan during
the Ky era.) Mr. Ehrhart seems to
have little use for the Afnerican press.
Neither did Loan, Ky, or Thieu. ”

MOVE a Cult,
Not a Pressure Group

ily

To the Editor:
I wonder if I might comment
ilk- ' somewhat belatedly on the article
to“Fighting Words,” describing Associ­
ate Professor Robin Wagner-Pacifici’s book on the City of PhiladelITH
phia’s handling of the MOVE crisis
Jr.) ’ [February 1994 Bulletin]. Dr. Waghia ' ner-Pacifici apparently begins with
the assumption that MOVE was a
I
form of protest or pressure group.
On the contrary, it was a cult. Its
behavior, including the use of
ae
obscene language, foul odors, and
blaring loudspeakers, was not
:vintended to communicate but to
/e
offend, thereby enforcing cohesion
I within the group by arousing the
1 hostility of those outside it.
The article quotes the actual (as
iny
opposed to the officially reported)
message shouted into a bullhorn by
e
the police commissioner when his
eforce surrounded MOVE’S headst
quarters: “Attention MOVE, this is
America. You have to abide by the
laws of the United States.” In my
ceview this message was admirably
l
clear and correct. Unfortunately, it
n
was delivered years too late. The
impotence of the bureaucracy in
- enforcing health, sanitation, and
he
other laws and regulations that exist
for the common good had already
( passively validated MOVE’S tactics.
1 t
Obviously, the assault on the
al '' house was a disaster in every re­
spect. There was a monstrous failPlease turn to page 28

l

AUGUST 1994

rehistoric humans had cave paint­ should com e your way/Who doesn’t
share your jo y today/The hell with
ings, ancient Egyptians had tomb
hieroglyphics, and this spring Swarth’em.”
And ph ilosophical m eanderings:
more students had a wall of Pearson
Hall to record their thoughts— uh well,
“May those who love us, love us. And
those who don’t, may God turn their
make that graffiti.
Just weeks before the Franklin Mint hearts. If he doesn’t turn their hearts,
Credit Union office in Pearson Hall was
may he turn their ankles, so we’ll know
them by their limping.”
to undergo major renovations, teller
The wall contained various works of
Anna Feeny put out a basket of colored
art, floral arrangements, vines, frogs,
markers and encouraged students to
and even a Chinese dragon. A bald
write or draw their thoughts on the
office walls before they were demol­ stick figure w earing a tulip shirt is
ished. Someone labeled it “The Wall of pulling a string through its head and
Angst.”
out each ear. Future art his­
torians might decipher this
If College archivists were
as c le a rly in d ica tin g the
to p re serv e the w all, how
wealth of brain mass of the
would researchers decipher
cam pus n atives. A n oth er
these glyphs in 1,000 years?
cartoon character with three
S ociologists w ould first
delve into the deep thoughts
strands of hair and big ears
proclaims in a bubble near
ex pressed on the w all
its head, “W onder why I’m
through famous quotations
happy? I’ll be done soon.
such as “Hacia La V ictoria
Siempre— ‘Che’ Guevara.” Or,
Yeh right. I wish.” T h ere’s
juxtaposed d irectly below
also a magic marker scoreboard that scores a gam e
that, the thought-provoking,
“Suckin’ on chili dogs outside
betw een the Realists and
Idealists. In each of the 10
the T a stee F reeze— John
innings, the Idealists receive
‘Cougar’ Mellencamp.”
zero points, while the Real­
And lest one ever question
ists score anyw here from
Swarthmore’s commitment to
m ulticulturalism , one has
zero to four. The final score:
only to translate messages in
Idealists-17; Realists-0. Go
figure.
the script of Swahili ( “I’ll see
The wall contained some
you later”), Russian ( “Good
thou gh ts that even grea t
luck to good people— those
paleon tologists (le t alone
w ho can read and cannot
cu rren t a d m in istra to rs)
read this inscription. Anka”),
would be hard pressed to fig­
German ( “Always sing a song
ure out: “Oops! Sorry! My
in you r heart. Evil p eo p le
karma ran o v er your d og­
don ’t have songs” ), urban
ma” ; “May Godspeed bless
street lingo ( “Nuff respec due
the feet of your holy camel”;
tu yuh wall”), Greek ( “Greek
“Peace, Love, and Hamsters.”
Islands and dry bread”), and
Finally, there are numerFrench ( “ Swat: Em brassez
ous referen ces to classes
mon derrière”).
There’s even graffiti for the mathe­ and exams being over. There are the
matically inclined. OK, kids, put your counters: “ 17 more days and I’m outta
here, Praise God,” wrote a student high
thinking caps on:
above a coat rack. “Only 5 more days
13q + q + 2 (3 q ) _ 9
and I’m done. I am envious of all the
2
Math wizard Don Shimamoto, associ­ rest of you who are having fun.” “Good­
ate professor and chair of the Mathe­ bye Swat: It’s been four LONG years.”
matics Dept., calculated the answer And there are those who express a
more laid-back attitude toward finals.
and chuckled for a good 20 seconds
before declaring, “The answer is lOq. I “I am NOT stressed!” w rote one stu­
dent, using a thick marker to stress the
think it’s som eon e’s w ay of saying
word not. “W elcom e to thesis hell,”
‘Thank you.’”
Archaeologists might conclude that wrote another. “Stress is a good thing
... re a lly !” And this last calm ing
the student body has a flair for the
poetic, such as in this sweet verse: thought: “ N ow the inm ates are in
“Share a joke/Hum a song/Pass some charge of the asylum.— Finals ’94 ”
— Audree Penner
sp ec ia l jo y along/And if som eon e

B

P
0
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1
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s

■

The Cosmic Background Explorer satellite
made “the discovery o f the century, if not o f a ll time. ”
And John M ather ’68 gets a lot o f the credit.

0,

By Jeffrey Lott

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4

AL
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

eeting John Mather ’ 68, you’d
n e v e r guess that his w ork
has r e v o lu t io n iz e d
ou r
knowledge of the early universe. His
unpretentious office at NASA’s God­
dard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md., could be the lair of any busy pro­
fessor. Books and papers cover every
available shelf and surface. A black­
board lists u pcom in g w ritin g p ro j­
ects— papers due, presentations, a
book. Tw o computer screens glow on
a government-issue desk, and the gray
metal chairs look a mite uncomfort­
able, especially for the plainspoken 6foot-5-inch physicist.
On the windowsill behind him sits
a shiny foot-high model of the project
that has been his life for the past 20
years, the Cosmic Background Explor­
er (COBE) satellite. In the scientific
community, it’s what sets John Math­
er apart from the crowd.
Cradling the m odel in his hands,
Mather m od estly refers to the p io ­
neering sp a c ec ra ft as “ our e x p e ri­
ment.” Launched into Earth orbit in
1989, th e COBE m ea su red and
mapped the faint microwave radiation
left o v er from the origin of the uni­
verse. And though Mather w ill only
say cautiously that “the COBE results
are consistent with the theory of cos­
mic in fla tio n ,” p h y s ic is t S tep h en
Hawking has described the COBE find­
ings as “the discovery of the century,
if not of all time.”
“All time” is a pretty big order, but
in a w ay it’s m ore than h yperbole.
Because that’s what John Mather and
his colleagues are really exploring—
all time, right back to the beginning.
It seem s natural to assum e that
there was a beginning, a tim e when
time began, that the physical universe
has not always existed as w e know it
today. Human beings seem to have
embraced this assumption all along.
The Bible starts with a creation story,
and religion and m yth from nearly
every culture have sought to explain
the mysteries of the physical world.
In this century astronomers, physi­
cists, and mathematicians have given
us a different idea of the beginning— a

M

Opposite: A microwave map o f the whole
sky from the COBE satellite shows largescale variations in the initial radiation
from the big bang that are the “seeds” of
the stars and galaxies o f today.
AUGUST 1994

radiation (CMBR) could be the key to
understanding— even p rovin g — the
big bang theory. In the nearly 30 years
since Penzias and Wilson, there have
been numerous attempts to study and
measure it, but so far M ather’s has
clearly been the most successful.
The big bang story begins in the
1920s with the discovery by astron­
omer Edwin Hubble that the universe
is expanding. Hubble found that the
galaxies are rushing away from each
other at terrific speed and that the far­
osmologists ask how w e got here
thest away (and thus the oldest) are
from then. Th is c o n fla tio n o f
receding the fastest.
space ( “h ere”) and tim e ( “then”) is One implication of Hubble’s discov­
not accidental. In the scientific cre­ ery was obviou s: If the u niverse is
ation story, space and time are inex­ expanding, it has to be expanding
from something. If you pressed the
tricable. When we look out into space,
w e’re looking back in time. W e see the
Universe Rewind Button on your cos­
sun as it was about eight minutes ago,
mic VCR, the galaxies w ould hurtle
back tow ard each other. Space and
and light from the next nearest star is
time would shrink to a single point, to
th e b e g in n in g , and w ith in th is
infinitesimal point would be found all
of the matter in the universe. Hit Play
and bang! here it com es again— or
rather, here w e come.
“At first it was very hard for many
p e o p le to a c c e p t th at th is g re a t
expansion could have happened at
all,” says Mather. “But scientifically
there are only a few choices. Either
th ere was an origin at a particular
tim e or th ere w a sn ’t. And if th ere
wasn’t, then we would want to explain
that too.”
Even A lb e r t Ein stein w as m ade
uncomfortable by Hubble’s discovery.
about four years old when it falls on
our eyes. On a clear dark night, w e
E in stein ’ s th e o r ie s had fa v o re d a
can look back thousands of years, but
m ore stable universe, but it becam e
a p paren t that c o sm ic eq u ilib riu m
that’s nowhere near the beginning.
With great telescopes w e can see a would require a balance of forces that
could not be stable. Says Mather, “It
lot farther. Instruments like the Hale
at Mount Palom ar and the H ubble w ould be like standing a pencil on
end.” And not on the eraser, either.
Space Telescope w ere built to look to
But h ow can w e know that this
th e v e r y e d g e o f v is ib le tim e and
explosion actually took place?
sp ace— som e 15 b illion light years
“Hot bod ies like the Sun radiate
away. Yet even they can’t see back to
m ost o f th eir e n erg y at v e r y sh ort
the v e ry beginning. Th at’s because
the oldest remnant of tim e d oesn ’t w a v e le n g th s ,” e x p la in s M a th er.
“ Som ething as hot as the big bang
glow like a galaxy; it just hums very
must have been filled with an enor­
faintly like radio static in the cosmic
mous am ount o f ra d ia tio n .” In the
distance.
1940s Russian-born physicist George
It’s a signal first identified by Bell
Laboratories researchers Arno Pen- G am ow and his c o lle a g u e s R alph
zias and Robert W ilson in 1965, the Alpher and Robert Herman had pro­
posed that some of the radiation from
y ea r John M ather was a freshm an
physics m ajor at Swarthm ore. Cos­ the primeval explosion might still be
out there.
m ologists knew right away that this
“I think it might have been possible
faint cosm ic m icrow ave background
sc ien tific cre a tio n s to r y b ased on
their methods of theory, observation,
and proof. Th ese scientists, known
c o lle c tiv e ly as co sm olog ists, h ave
m erged astronom ical evid en ce and
theoretical physics into the big bang
theory, a creation story whose power
is derived more from logic than mys­
tery. Now, in the minds of many, the
research led by John Mather has just
about rem o v ed the w o rd “th e o r y ”
from the big bang.

C

T h e oldest
remnant of time
doesn’t glow like
a galaxy; it just
hums faintly like
radio static in the
cosmic distance.

5

to find this radiation at that tim e,”
speculates Mather, “but no serious
efforts w ere m ade.” Nearly 20 years
passed b e fo r e Pen zias and W ilson
made their N obel Prize-w inning dis­
covery. What they found (while trying
to turn a primitive satellite communi­
ca tio n s antenna in to a ra d io te le ­
scope) was a distinct m icrowave sig­
ned that seemed to come from every­
w here. It bathed the universe in all
directions and it seem ed remarkably
co n s ta n t w h e r e v e r su b s e q u e n t
researchers pointed their sensors.
y the time John Mather received a
Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1974, the
big bang theory was w idely accepted.
But th ere w ere som e serious ques­
tions, like: Is the CMBR truly an arti­
fact of the origin of the universe, or
m ight this e n erg y h ave co m e from
something that happened later? The
COBE instrument for w hich M ather
was the principal investigator sought
to answer this crucial question.
His idea since graduate school had
been to compare the spectrum of the
background radiation to what’s called
a “blackbody” spectrum— a theoreti­
cal benchmark for all cosmic radiation
worked out by Max Planck in the last
years of the 19th century. M ather’s
ingenious, liquid helium-cooled detec­
tor aboard the COBE made 10 months’
worth of measurements and showed
that the CMBR spectrum was exactly
on the p re d ic te d cu rve. Th ou gh it
didn’t make headlines, the first public
announcem ent o f th ese findings in
January 1990 caused an audience of
m ore than 1,000 norm ally skeptical
astronomers to burst into applause.
Interpreting these data, Mather is a
bit less cautious: “W e can now say
that the big bang was com pleted in
the first instant, that no other energy
was released from other sources after
the origin a l e v e n t,” he w ro te . “W e
th in k that th e u n iv e rs e r e a lly did
expand from a hot and dense earlier
condition.”
Another crucial big bang question

B

Top: A computer-generated map o f one
million galaxies shows how they are
organized in huge strands. Cosmologists
have now traced this structure to just
300,000 years after the big bang.
Bottom: John Mather, with a model o f the
COBE satellite in the background.

was: How could billions of stars and
galaxies have evolved from a primeval
explosion that seemed to be unvary­
ing in every direction?
If the radiation and matter from the
early universe were exactly the same
ev ery w h ere (is o tr o p ic is the w ord
used by physicists), how could matter
have begu n to clu m p t o g e th e r to
make stars and galaxies? The forces
that pushed early atom s into huge
galactic structures should be appar­
ent in v a r ia tio n s in th e CMBR
(anisotropy, it’s called). Otherwise,
the first atoms (m ostly hydrogen and
h eliu m ) w o u ld h a v e ju st kep t on
expanding their separate ways forev­
er. But the CMBR seemed to be per­
fectly smooth; no one had been able
to find any lumps— uijtil the COBE.
O ne o f th e s a t e llite ’ s cro w n in g
achievem ents was to find and map
that anisotropy— the seeds of the uni­
verse. T h e announcem ent of these
findings in April 1992 made worldwide
headlines. T h e COBE sh ow ed that
abou t 300,000 y e a rs a fte r th e b ig
bang, the universe already show ed
enough variation in tem perature to
account for the formation of the huge
clusters of galaxies that populate it
today. (For more on the COBE experi­
ments, see page 8.)
o n s id e rin g th e su ccess o f the
COBE, it’s ironic that John Mather
once vow ed never to try another cos­
m ology experiment. He had tried to
measure the CMBR as a graduate stu­
dent, but by the time he left Berkeley,
his complicated experiment involving
detectors on a high-altitude balloon
was still incom plete. Frustrated, he
was moving on to a radio astronomy
post in New York, saying that cosmol­
ogy experiments w ere “too hard and
give only a few numbers.”
But he ch an ged his m ind w hen
NASA called for satellite proposals in
late 1974. He remembers the genesis
of the COBE project in characteristi­
cally spare terms: “W e pulled a little
team together and wrote a little piece
of paper that said, ‘H ere’s our idea
and w e’re pretty good at what w e do,
so why don’t you talk to us?”’ He says
he never expected much to happen,
but “ after a cou p le of years, NASA
said it was a good enough idea that
we should study it some more.”
In 1976 M ather m oved to NASA/

C

AUGUST 1994

Goddard to head a group of six scien­
tists charged with designing, building,
and launching the COBE. In addition
to Mather, the initial group included
Sam Guilds of the Jet Propulsion Lab,
M ic h a el H auser o f NASA, G e o rg e
Sm oot of the U n iversity of California-Berkeley, Ray Weiss of MIT, and
Dave Wilkinson of Princeton. (Coinci­
dentally, Wilkinson, an early investiga­
to r of the CMBR, had been on e of
Mather’s Honors examiners at Swarthmore in 1968.)
In 1982 NASA finally gave the goahead to build the 5-ton sa tellite ,
scheduling it for launch on the space
shuttle. “It was almost built in 1986
when the Challenger exploded,” says
Mather, fidgeting a little at the memo­
ry. “W e had to go back to the drawing
board.”

of the
COBE’s crowning
achievements
was to find and
map the seeds
of the galactic
universe.
The months after the Challenger
d is a s te r w e r e p r o b a b ly th e m ost
intense of the entire project. Scien­
tists and engineers at Goddard com ­
pletely redesigned the COBE, cutting
its weight in half in order to fit it into
the nose cone of a Delta rocket, the
only launch vehicle available after the
shuttle was grounded.
“It hit us pretty hard,” says Mather.
“But always the job in front of us was
how to get from here to the next step,
and if som ething looked like it was
g oin g to sto p us, w ell, it w as just
another thing to be overcom e. With
the COBE w e were trying to do things
a thousand times better than anyone
had done before. There were a whole
lot of things to learn along the way,
and it’s really tough, it takes a lot of
effort.”
Was he ever discouraged? “I can’t
say that I was. I tend to be the kind of
person w ho just dives in and does

something. When w e started off, no
on e to ld us th at it w o u ld tak e 15
years. I just said to myself, ‘Well, this
is fun e v e r y day. I’m n ot g o in g to
w orry about whether it’s going to take
another day— I’m just going to do it.”
ust doing it” appears to have been
John M a th er’s sty le lon g b e fo re
Nike shoes made it a national cliché.
Mather knew as a high school student
that he wanted to be a physicist. He
was adm itted to Harvard, MIT, and
Swarthm ore, ch oosin g Sw arthm ore
partly because of its size and setting.
He had grown up on a dairy farm in
New Jersey, where his father was an
agricultural researcher, and “Swarth­
m o re fe lt c o m fo r ta b le — sa fe and
green and peaceful. A lso, it had an
integrated program. If you wanted to
study physics, they m ade sure that
you got all of the basics. It was a good
place to sit down and study.”
A n d stu d y he did, m o v in g in to
sophom ore-level physics in the mid­
dle of his freshman year and graduat­
ing with Highest Honors. On receiving
his second degree from the College
this June— an honorary Doctor of Sci­
ence— Mather told the 1994 graduates
that “Swarthmore was the first place I
could really becom e a professional
scientist and like it.” He also found
that “the world was set up to reward
people who w ere good at this. I could
go ahead and follow my heart.”
W hen he was a student, M ather
ex p la in s, th e C old W ar w as at its
height and the United States had a
deep inferiority complex about its sci­
ence education. “W e w ere so sure that
the Russians w ere going to take over
that w e gave every kid who wanted to
do science every possible advantage.
It was actually very, very good for sci­
ence, and for the country too, though
the paranoia wasn’t so good.”
Another of Mather’s remarks to the
Class of 1994 brought the only sponta­
neous applau se o f the C om m ence­
ment exercises: “Cooperation works
better than competition when you are
trying to get something done. There’s
no point in trying to be first if you’re
all riding in one canoe.” (See page 23
for a lon ger excerp t from M ath er’s
talk.)
W henever Mather talks about the
COBE project, he uses the word “we.”
(H e e v e n a ttrib u te s th e c a n o e

J

7

metaphor to a co-worker, Marty Donohoe.) The initial team of six scientists
even tu a lly beca m e 20, and th e y in
turn w orked with hundreds of engi­
neers, technicians, and project man­
agers— even NASA la w y ers— to get
the satellite built. “If you count every­
body who worked on the COBE,” says
Mather, “there are about 1,500 p eo­
ple.”
“Th e canoe can be as big as you
want it to be,” Mather explains. “The
boundaries are artificial. W e can draw
little circles and say, ‘Well, this per­
son’s in this group and they’re work­
ing on this p ro b lem ,’ but th a t’s all
descriptive. In the largest sense, all liv­
ing things on this planet are in one
canoe.”
Y e t the advan cem en t o f scien ce
has traditionally depended on friendly
competition between scientists. “You
need the com petitive part to assure
that the best ideas actually surface,”

^ \ s k e d if he
thinks there was
spiritual force
behind the big
bang, Mather is
concise: “That’s
way beyond my
capabilities.”
says Mather. “It really makes people’s
creative thoughts w ork a lot better.
But when you have a big group like
the COBE team, you have to cooper­
ate with each other. It doesn’t always
m ean b ein g p o lite and nice. If the
other guy is wrong, you ought to tell
him because w e’re all in this together
and w e ’ re all g o in g to b e w ro n g
together. There’s a duty for people to
tell the truth as best they know it.”
B ig tea m s a n s w e rin g b ig q u e s ­
tions— it’s called Big Science and is
often criticized for its need for Big
Money.
Mather unashamedly defends the
$300 million cost of the COBE project:
“It’s a uniquely human opportunity for
us. I certainly don’t want to live in a
world where everyone says, ‘Well, it’s

just too expensive to have an adven­
ture, so w e ’re all just g o in g to sit
hom e.’ T ry to picture an ideal world
w here every on e is clothed and fed,
w h ere no one is p o o r or suffering.
What would w e want to do then? Well,
w e ’ d w ant to do w hat w e ’re doin g
now. It seems to me if w e pretend we
have to wait until some other problem
is solved first, then w e’re never going
to get anywhere. W e have to take on
the challenges w e see when w e see
them.”
NASA scientists admit that there is
no practical application for the COBE
resea rch . “ But,” says M ather, “ fo r
what w e got, it seems like a bargain.
You can say, ‘Well, that answer itself
was worth that amount of money,’ but
there is no absolute scale for that. Or
you could look at how hard it is to get
that answer in some other way. There
w ere well over 100 CMBR experiments
done before the COBE, and not all of
them w ere cheap. Th e pred ecessor
experiments showed that w e needed
this kind of project to get w here we
got.”
ow much is it really worth to find
out about The Beginning? And if it
becam e possible for science to fully
explain the orig in o f the u niverse,
would that be enough to satisfy the
human spirit?
G eorge Sm oot of the COBE team
got a lot of attention at an April 1992
press conference when he said of the
CMBR anisotropy map, “If you’re reli­
gious, it’s like looking at God.” Some
thou gh t Sm oot was taking a cheap
publicity shot, but Mather calls it “a
more or less spontaneous thought. He
was just trying to make it seem inter­
esting and important.”
N e v e r th e le s s , th e use o f G od
metaphors to describe the COBE find­
ings bothers Mather. “Within science
w e d o n ’t h ave a stu dy of G od ,” he
says. “It’s not our territory. If you real­
ly want to know how people feel and
think, cosm ologists aren’t the right
people to ask. A lot of people want us
to tell them that our measurements
agree with their Biblical theory of reli­
gion. But many others have m oved
beyond worrying about detailed com­
parisons [of scientific discoveries] to
ph ysical features d escrib ed in reli­
gious literature. I think that the real
Please turn to page 62

H

Aslightl
• B i he Cosmic Background Explorer
(COBE, rhymes with M oby)
■ satellite was the platform for
three separate experiments. It was
launched into polar orbit by a Delta
rocket in December 1989. With its
solar panels deployed, it measured 19
feet by 26 feet and weighed 5,000
pounds at launch. Its primary objec­
tive was to investigate tw o radiative
remnants of the early universe: the
cosmic microwave and infrared back­
ground radiations (CMBR and CIBR).
Four years of observations w ere com­
pleted in December 1993, and analy­
sis of the data is continuing.
The most widely publicized experi­
ment aboard the COBE proved that
the CMBR is anisotropic— not the
same in every direction. Previous
measurements had been unable to
find anisotropy, which is theoretically
vital to the agglomeration of matter
into stars and galaxies. George Smoot
of the University of California-Berke­
ley was principal investigator for the
differential microwave radiometer
(DMR) that made the first detailed
maps of the variations in the CMBR.
t o understand the importance of
this discovery, one has to delve into
the theoretical physics of the early
universe.
Atoms are the building blocks of
matter, but atoms themselves are
com posed of protons, neutrons, and
electrons, which in turn are made
from more fundamental particles.
Current theory holds that for about
one second after the big bang, the
universe was so hot— an estimated
1013degrees Kelvin— that all of these
subatomic particles w ere separated
from each other.
After a few minutes, some protons
and neutrons w ere able to join to
make helium nuclei, but electrons
and photons (particles of light) re­
mained blissfully free, banging into
each other at a furious rate like ado­
lescents dancing at a rave, with each
collision changing the wavelength of
the photons. (In the meantime, anti­
matter annihilated most of the mat­
ter, but that’s a problem for ¿mother
day.)
After about a thousand years (the
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

more technical explanation of what the COBE did
blink of an eye in cosmic time), the
temperature dropped enough that the
wavelengths of the photons were no
longer being changed by their elec­
tron encounters, fixing forever the
total number of photons in the back­
ground radiation. This is the radiation
that w e see today.
Even then, complete atoms were
still unformed. The young and restless
electrons w ere too energetic to settle
down in quantum marriages with the
heavy, dull nuclei of hydrogen and its
cousin helium. Their nuclear court­
ship lasted another half million years
while the universe cooled, and finally
atoms came together, forming vast
clouds that were the precursors to the
galactic universe w e see today.
The DMR maps represent the gravi­
tational potential in the universe
about 300,000 years after the big bang
and thus show the largest and oldest
structures that may ever be detected
by science.

In a second experiment, the far
infrared absolute spectrophotometer
(FIRAS) used sensitive detectors to
compare the radiation from space to a
known “blackbody” calibrator that
was periodically flipped in front of the
cone-shaped antenna like a mute on
the bell of a trumpet. John Mather was
the principal investigator for this
experiment. The goal was to prove
that the early universe had reached
what it called “thermal equilibrium”
and thus had no further input of ener­
gy after the big bang.
A blackbody is an ideal body or sur­
face that completely absorbs all radi­
ant energy falling upon it and itself
radiates at a spectral energy distribu­
tion first worked out by mathemati­
cian Max Planck in the 1890s. He
showed that the relation of brightness
and wavelength of a blackbody were
dependent on absolute temperature—
or thermal equilibrium.
Considering that the big bang was

SPECTROPHOTOMETER

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER: COBE SCIENCE WORKING GROUP

INSTRUMENT AND
SPACECRAFT ELECTRONICS

COMMUNICATIONS ANTENNA

SOLAR PANELS

The COBE carried three separate experiments into orbit.

AUGUST 1994

so hot, it’s hard to believe that the
early universe reached any sort of
equilibrium, but for a time the energy
levels of the particles in the cauldron
must have reached a constant state
throughout the pre-atomic soup. As
they bumped into each other in the
chaos following the explosion, sub­
atomic particles scattered and ab­
sorbed energy in the same manner as
a blackbody. Thus, for the tempera­
ture of the CMBR (2.726 degrees
above absolute zero), a certain energy/wavelength curve should result—
as it would for any blackbody.
The curve that came from the
FIRAS data matched the Planck curve
point for point to an accuracy of 0.03
percent— about 1,000 times better
than any previous observation. It
showed that at least 99.97 percent of
the energy in the cosmic microwave
background radiation (CMBR) was
released by the end of the first year
after the big bang, confirming that the
universe had in fact passed through a
state of thermal equilibrium in its
early evolution. This finding all but
rules out competing theories of cre­
ation like the steady state theory and
the “cold” big bang.
The data from the third COBE
experiment are still under study.
NASA’s Michael Hauser is principal
investigator for the diffuse infrared
background experiment (DIRBE), an
instrument designed to measure the
infrared light left over from the forma­
tion of the earliest luminous objects.
The above-described universe of sub­
atomic particles would have been a
“dark age,” and the measurement of
infrared background radiation would
provide insight into the evolution of
galaxies and the nature of the pregalactic universe. The interpretation
of the DIRBE data is made difficult by
the presence of so many bright in­
frared energy sources in the cosmos,
but the instrument was designed to
measure the collective glow from mil­
lions of objects rather than these
point sources. It is hoped that a faint
and uniform residual signal will
remain after computer analysis has
subtracted the foreground sources.
— J.L.
9

WildBeasfcwil}
WonderfulTab
Photographs by D e ng -Je ng Lee

Text by Rebecca Aim

t ’s a cloudless June d ay in Colum­

I

bus Park in N ew Y ork’s China­

town, th e kind o f d ay w h en chil­

dren can’t sit still, w h en shouts and
skirm ishes seem to break out spon­
taneously. Four hundred and fifty
children straggle on to a playing
field, reined in b y their teachers,
and sit cross-legged on th e hard sur­
face. T h eir w an dering attention is
caught b y a m akeshift stage set up
in th e corn er o f th e field. Behind the
flim sy blue curtain, m agic is being
made.
T h e M ystic P ap er Beasts, Dan
P o tter and M arya Ursin 71, pull
strange masks and costum es out o f
th eir large trunk, lining them up
against the chainlink fen ce that sur­
rounds th e park. M arya is a dancer,
writer, m ime, y o g a teacher, and
m assage therapist. Dan is a p er­
former, sculptor, potter, architect,
and maskmaker. Together, w ith that
chest full o f cardboard, old curtains,
vacuum tubing, and oth er “found”
materials, th e y create th e M ystic
P ap er Beasts.
From behind th e curtain, a swan
glides up to a group o f children in
th e front row, w h o fall su ddenly

The Mystic Paper Beasts (Dan
Potter and Marya Ursin ’71) per­
form tales for all ages. This
show for children is about the
search for a princess who has
disappeared with a dragon
(bottom far right). Among those
anxious for her is the queen
mother (right). Other Beasts
works, aimed at both children
and adults, include Ganesha,
the story of the Hindu elephant
god, and Tayo, about a Native
American healer.

WildBeast?wi
quiet. H er lon g neck bends graceful­
ly as she nibbles on children’s hands
and nametags, much to th eir delight.
Som e stand back, looking on w ith
serious eyes, and as th e swan com es
closer to them, she lifts th e gauzy
w h ite d ra p e ry that s erves as her
b o d y to reveal M arya underneath,
sm iling and dem onstrating h o w the
transform ation takes place. T h e cos­
tume, m ade prim arily o f pap er and
fabric, is beautiful and unusual, and
M arya’s m ovem en ts bring it to life,
the essen ce o f swan-ness.

T

hen th e s to ry begins. A princess
disappears w ith a dragon on her

b irth d ay and is found after great
searching o v e r land, water, and air.
In his search, her father m eets w ith
such beasts as a cat, several fish, a
fly tryin g to esca p e from a fly sw at­
ter, an ostrich, and a pair o f m ynah
birds. She’s finally found to b e living
w ell w ith th e dragon, and she com es
back to e n jo y her b irth d ay cake.
T h e stories th ey d o are “n ew tales
for old m yths,” Dan and M arya say.
This on e w as adapted b y M arya
esp ecially for th ese children.
W h en the tale is told, pandem oni­
um breaks out behind the blue cur­
tain. Shouts and skirm ishes erupt
again as children tr y on masks w ith
bulging eyes, shake bouquets o f
hearts, grab fabric out o f the large
trunk, pull th e levers, turn the
knobs, and preten d to b e beasts
large and small. Pure m agic.■

12

Dan Potter (left) founded the
Mystic Paper Beasts in 1976 for a
performance in Mystic, Conn.
Since then, the Beasts have trav­
eled internationally in various
forms: family circus, solo with
audience participation, and now a
duet. In 1989 Marya Ursin (top
right) joined the Beasts, now
based in Stonington, Conn. Marya
writes and directs and Dan engi­
neers the masks, with both paint­
ing, decorating, and performing.

n the Center
Herbert! I
In the hometown of P.T. Barnum,
big business meets the big top.
ow that’s what I’d really like to
wear,” Michael “Mickey” Her­
bert ’67 says, gazing reverently
at the glass case.
The case encloses a black, some­
what beat-up top hat that has frayed
around the brim. Affixed to the front
of the hat is a gaudy splash of colored
sequins. Beside it, coiled about like an
arabesque, is a metal whistle on a
black string.
A card explains that the hat and
whistle were donated to Bridgeport’s
P.T. Barnum Museum by a form er
ringmaster of the Ringling Brothers
and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Herbert, the founder and president

■

of Physicians Health Services, one of
Am erica’s first HMOs and the largest
in Connecticut, has alread y w orn a
ringm aster’s hat. At 49 he sp orts a
w id e , e a s y s m ile and ru d d y g o o d

looks. But today, at least, his attire
has Barnum all over it.
Literally. The lapels of his blinding­
ly bright, fire-engine red jacket are fes­
tooned with circus pins and patches.
Brown and green elephants cavort on
his necktie. He mentions that he was
considering wearing his red sneakers,
w ith th e fla sh in g ligh tb u lb s in the
heels, but left them at home with his

11

ringmaster’s hat in nearby Trumbull
at the last minute.
That hat is a souvenir from Her­
bert’s stint as 1993 Barnum Festival
ringmaster. To appear now in a top
hat would be, in Herbert’s opinion, a
bit much. Though Herbert is chairman
of the Barnum Museum and so can
still indulge in outrageousness as he
sees fit, this is, after all, 1994. In an
hour H erbert is goin g to have to
restrain his emotions as he relinquish­
es his ringmaster’s whip, whistle, and
pocket watch to the new ringmaster,
the vice president of a local bank, at
the Barnum Festival’s annual Whip,
Whistle, and Watch Luncheon.
“All good things com e to an end,”
he sighs. “You can do a lot of things in
life, but you’re only a Barnum Festival
ringmaster once.”
Parting with such a past is indeed
sw eet sorrow . Festival rules sp ecify
that form er ringmasters m ay appear
in public (in and around Bridgeport,
at least) in bright red jackets, but the
jackets can’t have tails.
“And I can’t w ear the w hite jodh­
purs and riding boots with it,” Herbert

By Bill Kent

says. “As for going around with a
whip, well, I’m not exactly that kind of
guy.”
The festival, a Bridgeport tradition
since 1949, honors the m em ory,
achievements, and personality of the
city’s most famous resident, Phineas
Taylor Barnum: promoter, showman,
politician, author, three-ring circus
impresario, and all-around master of
hyperbole and humbug.
“Who did not say ‘There’s a sucker
born every minute,’” Herbert adds.
“When I became involved here, the
first thing I did was read up on Bar­
num. Many things Barnum did were
hoaxes, but he did them with aplomb.
He never took advantage o f people.
W h en he had his m useum in N ew
York City, it was a bigger tourist at­
traction than the Metropolitan Muse­

um of Art. He knew that people enjoy
being fooled, as long as they can share
the joke.”
H erbert stops in front of another
case. A card identifies what looks like
a cross between a dead monkey and
the tail of a shark as the “Feejee Mer­
maid.” It’s an obvious fake that Bar­
num displayed m ore than a century
ago in his Manhattan menagerie.
“Barnum’s idea of humbugging peo-

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

16

J. M ISENCIK 1994 / B A C K G R O U N D C O U R T E S Y H IS TO R IC A L C O L L E C TIO N S , B R ID G E P O R T P UB LIC LIB R A R Y

pie was to pull their leg in such a way
that everyb od y knew he was pulling
their leg. He was a character who had
a lot of fun and liked to share it.”
As does Herbert, w ho admits that
he w as so m e w h a t u n p rep a re d fo r
some of the ringmaster’s skills. “I had
to learn how to crack that whip, which
is s o m e th in g th e y d id n ’t tea ch at
Swarthmore.”
Last year, from the beginning of
June to mid-July, H erbert cracked a
whip and blew a whistle, appearing in
full ringm aster regalia at co rp orate
m eetin g s, c h a r ity bazaa rs, p u b lic
schools, civic organizations, church
groups. His goal was to raise m oney
for the festival events culminating in a
triumphant parade on July 4.
As ringm aster H erb ert’s jo b was
not m erely to raise enough money to
c o v e r the K id ’s W ing Ding, Barnum
Pops Concert, Barnum Art Show, Cir­
cus Murder Mystery, Clown-Around,
banana boat ride, Jenny Lind singing
competition (in honor of a singer Bar­
num p ro m o ted ), parade, and oth er
events. He attended all preparatory
meetings, organized the program, and
arranged for the largest fireworks dis­
play ev er seen in Connecticut. Th e
events brought an estimated 200,000
people into downtow n Bridgeport—
150,000 for the parade alone.
“ From M ay to th e end o f July, I
think I had about two hours in the day
w hen I cou ld go back and find out
what was happening to my company.
Fortunately, there w eren’t any crises
w e couldn’t handle, and w e ended up
getting so many businesses involved
that if y o u ’ re in a B rid g ep o rt area
com pany and you ’re n ot involved in
the Barnum Festival, you stick out like
a sore thumb.”
Herbert just had to make his year
as ringmaster a bang-up time because
the year 1993 was the centennial of
th e Barnum M useum (a d e lig h tfu l
R en a issa n ce r o c o c o b u ild in g c o n ­
structed with m oney donated to the
city by P.T. Barnum), as well as the bi­
centennial of the circus in A m erica
(t h e firs t r e c o r d e d circ u s p e r fo r ­
mance in the new nation took place in
Philadelphia in 1793).
H erbert also felt a need to bring
to g e th e r as m any B rid g ep o rt busi­
nesses as possible “to show the peo­
ple of this city how important w e all

W it h a
Barnumesque
flourish, he
withdraws a
highly polished,
flamboyantly
engraved gold
pocket watch,
holding it like a
piece of the
true cross.
are to each other. It’s not that Bridge­
port doesn’t have enough civic and
business organizations— it does, and
they do a lot of good. But the Barnum
Festival crosses all barriers, all divid­
ing lines, all walks of life. W e have mil­
lionaires involved, w e have city pub­
lic school kids involved, kids from the
suburbs, people of every walk of life.
Th e Barnum Festival isn’t so much
about solving the problems of the city
as it is about raising the spirit of the
city. The idea is sim ply to have the

m ost fun w e can, and share it with
everybody. I can assure you, if some­
b o d y told me, back w hen I was in
Swarthmore, that I’d be blowing my
whistle about anything like this, well, I
wouldn’t’ve believed it.”
He takes a bauble-encrusted brass
whistle out of his jacket.
“ T h e w h istle is just a w h istle. I
won’t shed any tears to pass that on.
But this is going to be tough to part
with.”
With a Barnumesque flourish, he
withdraws a highly polished, flamboy­
antly en graved gold pocket watch.
The watch actually belonged to P.T.
Barnum, and Herbert holds it like a
medieval pilgrim clutching a piece of
the true cross.
“This,” he says, piling on the brava­
do, “is absolutely amazing.”
ickey Herbert’s fascination with
P.T. Barnum is a ctu a lly only
three years old. He was asked to get
in v o lve d in 1991 “and I got totally
swept up in it,” he says as he drives
his m o d e st C h ry sler E agle to the
Whip, Whistle, and Watch Luncheon
at the Bridgeport Holiday Inn.
Until he becam e Barnum ized, if
you asked Herbert how he’d describe
himself, he would say, first and fore­
most, a softball fanatic.
Born in Washington, D.C., he was
an early avid baseball fan and sandlot
player. He picked Sw arthm ore be­
cause he wanted a “good school that
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

was close to home, where I could play
a lot of baseball.”
Indeed, Herbert was captain of the
baseball team , co a c h ed b y G om er
Davies, and also played varsity soccer
for Coach Bill Stetson. At a time when
the country was gripped by student
protest and counterculture rebellion,
Herbert was inspired to be a business­
man by Professor of Economics Clair
Wilcox.
“He said to us, T o be in business,
you have to rem em ber tw o things,’”
Herbert remembers, leaving his car in
the h o te l lo t and w a lk in g r a p id ly
tow ard the entrance. ‘“ T h e first is
don’t trust anybody over 30.’ With all
the protests happening around the
country, that got a laugh. But then he
said, ‘Don’t trust anybody under 30.’
That didn’t get the‘ same laugh, but it
made a lot of sense to me.”
H erbert figu red that d esp ite the
issues that motivated his generation’s
unrest, business would still be busi­
ness. He got an M.B.A. from the Har­
vard Business School and join ed a
prestigious New York business con­
sulting firm just in tim e to have his
job, and the firm, disappear in the
recession of 1970.
In th e fa ll o f 1970, H e rb e rt an­
sw ered a “ h elp w a n te d ” ad in The
Washington Post for an administrative
assistant in Minneapolis. The ad had
been p laced b y Dr. Paul Elw ood, a
Minnesota physician who was trying
to persuade the Nixon administration
to encourage the growth of a new kind
of consumer-oriented medical service.
Elw ood had kicked around several
names for this service until he settled
on “health maintenance organization.”
M ickey Herbert becam e Elw ood’s
right-hand man. He found h im self
spending more time in his hometown
of Washington, D.C., attending highlevel meetings with congressmen and
members of the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare, than in Min­
n ea p olis. Th anks to th e ir e ffo rts ,
Congress passed the HMO Act in 1973,
and H erb ert found him self back in
Minneapolis, helping Elwood set up
the nation’s first official HMO.
The experience made Herbert want
to go off and set up his own. In 1976
he had narrowed his choices to three
locations: Los Angeles, Chicago, and
somewhere on the East Coast outside
AUGUST 1994

of New York City.
He settled on Bridgeport because
the neighboring town of Stratford had
the defending national fast-pitch softball cham pionship team . For eight
years Herbert played the outfield on
the Stratford team, w hich w on the
championship again in 1983. Between
gam es, in Tru m b u ll, a su bu rb of
Bridgeport where he made his home,
Herbert founded Physicians Health
Services Inc.
e were clearly ahead of our time
and s tru g g le d m is e ra b ly fo r
years,” he says as he breezes into the
Holiday Inn. “If I didn’t have softball to
get my mind off things, I don’t know
what would have happened. It wasn’t
until 1982 that w e broke even, and
w e’ve gotten bigger every year since.”
In 1992 Herbert was named one of
Inc. M agazine's Entrepreneurs of the
Year. In 1993 Physicians Health Ser­
vices became a publicly traded com­
pany, now grossing some $300 million
a year, with 4,000 participating physi­
cians and 170,000 m em bers in Con­
necticut and New York state.
H erb ert is also chairm an of the
American Managed Care and Review
Association, the HMO industry’s trade
group, and has been spending quite a
bit of tim e in his hom etow n again,
addressing the issue of national health
care with some of the same congress­
men he met 25 years ago.
“Without any effort on the part of
governm ent, the entire health care
industry is co n vertin g to m anaged
care,” Herbert says. “M y concern is
that the government will try to fix this
and screw it up.”
As soon as Herbert strolls into the
Holiday Inn’s lobby, big business be­
comes the big top. He can’t walk far
without someone in a red jacket (sig­
nifying a former ringmaster) or a busi­
ness suit saying hello, shaking his
hand, posin g for a p ictu re as if he
were a world-renowned celebrity.
One person isn’t overwhelmed. His
daughter Eleni, the eldest of his five
children, is a hostess at the h otel’s
restaurant. She waves her hand and
says, “Hiya Dad.”
Herbert waves back, asks her how
she’s doing, and finds himself swept
into the hotel’s banquet hall, w here
his w ife, Jackie, is w aitin g, as the

W

Whip, Whistle, and Watch Luncheon
begins.
T h e 270 p e o p le in th e b a n q u et
room rep resen t the elite o f n early
every major business, civic, religious,
professional, trade union, and political
group in the area. Th e room w ould
resem ble a typical Rotary, Lions, or
K iw an is lu n ch eon if n ot fo r a fe w
rather odd details. Every table has at
least one form er ringmaster, or the
w id o w o f a rin g m a ster, a tte n d in g
(1985 ringmaster Victor Kiam, Reming­
ton shaver TV huckster, is noticeably
absent). Colored balloons rise toward
the ceiling from black plastic top hat
centerpieces, surrounded by boxes of
Barnum’s Animal Crackers.
Politicians, the rich, the famous,
and the infamous are happily roasted
by a local radio personality. Herbert
isn’t called to the rostrum to relin­
quish his ringm aster a ccessories—
he’s passed them on to Bridgeport’s
M ayor Jim Gamin and C onnecticu t
Congressman Chris Shays, w ho pre­
sent them to Paul DelFino, a vice pres­
ident of the Bridgeport-based Shawmut Bank, 1994 Barnum Festival ring­
master.
The buzz around the room is devel­
o p e r and ca s in o o w n e r D on a ld
Tru m p’s recent proposal to build a
theme park at Pleasure Beach, a por­
tio n o f th e c ity fro n tin g th e L o n g
Island Sound.
Because M ickey Herbert is also a
m em ber of the B ridgeport Regional
Business Council, his opinion is re­
quested by just about everyone who
approaches his table. To one and all,
Herbert is cautiously positive.
“I’m fo r anything that w ill bring
Bridgeport out of the recession,” he
says. “The city’s been hurt badly and
it’s still hurting.”
But he adds that people shouldn’t
put their hopes in one basket. “What’s
g o in g to b rin g B r id g e p o r t back is
B ridgep ort itself. T h e re ’s a lot that
needs to be done and a lot of time that
needs to be spent on the problem. But
if you ’re looking for the people who
can do it, they’re all in this room, and
they can’t wait to make it happen.”*
As a student at O berlin College, free­
lance w riter B ill K ent briefly studied
clow ning with perform ance artist B ill
Irwin.
17

ay 2, 1994. In Alexandra, the
the brink of civil war. There was spec­
s c e n e is a su rrea l tab lea u
ulation that the violence might force
right out of Dante’s Inferno.
the vote to be postponed or even can­
S om e 300,000 p e o p le liv e inceled.
this Little did I suspect that I was
squalid township just across the free­ going to witness a modern-day mira­
w ay from Sandton, one of Johannes­ c le — th e p e a c e fu l b irth o f a n ew
burg’s wealthiest suburbs. T h ey are
nation.
packed into th e sq u a tte rs’ shacks,
M y re g u la r jo b as an e d ito r on
small brick homes, apartments, and
N PR’s national desk norm ally keeps
prisonlike hostels. In door
toilets are a luxury and raw
sewage flows in the streets,
w h ile dogs, goats, and an
occasional cow roam about,
scavenging for food. There
are no street lights and the
night is blacker than black.
But to n ig h t th e th ick
smoke of coal fires clogs the
air and the heavy blackness
is illum inated b y bonfires
d o ttin g th e la n d s c a p e .
Garbage and trash blaze in
metal oil drums or are just
piled in the dirt streets and
ig n ite d . A ro u n d s o m e o f
th e s e fire s , p e o p le h a v e
gathered to party through
the night. Some drink beer,
others smoke marijuana as
they sing songs of liberation
and dance for joy.
I s to p to s e e w h a t is
going on and am immediate­
ly surrounded and swept up
by the joyous tumult of the
crowd. It is as if people had
been waiting for someone to
c o m e and r e c o r d th e ir
ecstasy, to share their hope.

M

In 1991, about six months after the
National Party had repealed the Grand
A parth eid laws, I had been sent to
produce stories from an African American p e r s p e c t iv e a b ou t th e “ New
South Africa.” The N ew South Africa
was the catch phrase coined by the
image-makers of the regime to distin­
guish the m ultiracial, multicultural
future from the white-dotninated past. On that trip it
w as p r e tt y c le a r that
apartheid was not going to
die an easy death.
This time I got a sample of
the m ultiracial face of the
New South Africa while wait­
ing for my South Africa Air­
w a y s flig h t to le a v e New
York. The safety film on the
747 jetliner featured a mul­
tiracial cabin crew — white,
colored , and black. As the
film p ro g ressed , I noticed
that it was white crew mem­
bers w ho gave the instruc­
tions in Afrikaans, while the
co lo red crew m em ber had
the English lines. The black
didn’t have any lines at all.
In the film' none of the pas­
s e n g e rs a p p e a re d to be
interacting with each other
a c ro s s th e v a rio u s color
lines, alth ou gh on e white
crew member did adjust the
seat belt of a black passen­
ger, a little girl.
For many whites like Eric
Barry and his wife, farmers
from Natal w ho talked with
m e d u rin g th e fligh t, v io ­
lence meant crime, not polit­
ical violen ce. Political vio­
le n c e w as a p ro b le m for
blacks, not whites, and for
B arry it w as th e result of
tribalism. The elections, he
said, w e re stirrin g up the
tribal nature of the Africans.
The Barry family has raised maize,
wheat, and row crops for three gener­
ation s on a farm abou t tw o hours
northwest of Durban in Natal, home to
m ost o f South A frica ’s nearly eight
m illio n Zulus, th e n a tio n ’s single
largest ethnic group.
B arry said th e y liv e am ong the
Zulus, know them well, and respect
them tremendously. “The Zulus are a
proud people,” said Mrs. Barry. “We

MIRACLE

hen I had prepared to
leave W ashington for
Johannesburg in M arch, I
had my doubts that such a
celebration would ever take
p la c e . It w as w ith so m e
trepidation that I had volun­
teered to produce National
Public Radio’s coverage of
South Africa’s first all-race elections.
Political violen ce there was running
ram pant. M e m b ers o f th e Inkatha
Freedom Party and the African Nation­
al C ongress had been slau ghtering
each other for years, and since ANC
leader Nelson Mandela was released
from p rison in 1990, an estim a ted
12,000 had been killed. As the April
election drew nearer, South Africa had
all of the appearance of a country on

W

18

South A frica pulled back
from the brink o f c iv il war to
a trium ph o f democracy.
m e ou t o f h a rm ’ s w ay. But as an
A frica n A m erican , the p ro s p e c t o f
bearing some small witness to the end
of white-minority rule in South Africa
p r o v e d irresis tib le. B esides, I had
been there once before and I loved
the country and its people.

By Michael Fields ’69

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

speak their language, but they can’t coming next. One thing is clear: the
speak ours.” Eric Barry described the v io le n c e d riv e s a d a g g e r o f fe a r
Zulus as the Prussians of A frica— a straight into the heart of South A f­
martial, well-disciplined, hard-working rica’s financial capital.
South Africa is numbed to the daily
people who are loyal to their leaders.
death
toll. It’s not so m eth in g that
The Zulus are a patriarchal people, he
went on. They will never allow them­ directly affects whites, and for blacks
it’s just another hazard in an already
selves to be governed by the Xhosas,
p re ca rio u s life. But th e M a rch 28
who are a matriarchal people, or the
killings seem to demonstrate how far
ANC, which is predominately Xhosa.
“The real problem s facing South Inkatha is prepared to go to stop the
Africa are economic, not racial,” Eric
Barry concluded. W h oever wins the
election will have to generate jobs, he
went on. “W hen you send a b o y to
school,” he said, “you’re going to have
to have something for him to do when
he comes out.”
This was the first but by no means
the last analysis based on tribal traits
and s te r e o ty p e s o ffe r e d to me b y
white South Africans to explain the
political situation.
Blacks seldom offered tribalism as
an explanation for the nation’s prob­
lems. U nder apartheid the g o v e rn ­
ment attem pted to encourage tribal
divisions as part o f its stra teg y of
“divide and rule.” The ANC’s strategy
was to build a unified mass movement
by minimizing South Africa’s myriad
racial and ethnic distinctions. In fact,
polls before the election reported that
more Zulus supported the ANC than
su pported the Zulu-based Inkatha
Freedom P a rty — the reason, m any
observers concluded, that the Zulu
leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, was so
intent on disrupting the elections.

ele ctio n — and what price ev ery o n e
might have to pay to hold it. People
are shaken and depressed.
“The violence has made everything
uncertain,” says Judy Sandison, the
news director of Natal Broadcasting
S e rv ic e s in Durban. She se es th e
social order slow ly eroding. Service
w orkers are refusing to go to w ork
because they fear for their lives. Tele­
phone repairmen have been attacked.

O

n March 28, the day after I arrive
in South Africa, the Inkatha Free­
dom P arty brings the w ar hom e. A
march and rally called by Inkatha for
downtown Johannesburg turns deadly
when marchers proceed to the ANC’s
Shell House headquarters. Shooting
breaks out, and before the day is over
at least 30 people are gunned down in
the heart of the city. It isn’t clear who
really started the shooting. Many see
it as Buthelezi’s latest, most desperate
effort to fo rce postponem ent of the
election, and peop le w onder w hat’s
F, W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela led
the celebrations after South Africa’s first
all-race election. Violence between
supporters o f the African National
Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party
nearly scuttled the historic vote.
AUGUST 1994

TOP: UPI/BETTMANN BOTTOM: AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

19

Ilis
I

¡Ssii

AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

Cars b e lo n g in g to
h ea lth c a re w o rk e rs
h a v e b e en h ija ck ed .
“It’s becom e im possi­
b le to plan. P e o p le
d o n ’t k n ow w h a t’s
happening; they feel like they’re losing
c o n tr o l o f th e ir liv e s .” S a n d ison
observes that this is a major problem
in a society w here order was every­
thing: “You may not have liked the old
South Africa, but at least everything
had its place.”
The next day Sunni Khalid, N PR’s
rep orter coverin g Natal, and I head
north with David Alcock, our transla­
tor. Our destination is Esikhiwini, a
dusty little town about tw o and half
hours from Durban. The drive takes
us along the Indian Ocean, past beach­
es world famous for their surfing, then
th rou gh ro llin g hills c o v e r e d w ith
acres and acres of sugar cane.
In Esikhiwini it’s not easy finding
p e o p le w h o w ill talk. T a lk in g to
stra n g e rs , e s p e c ia lly fo r e ig n r e ­
porters, can be fatal. W e pay a visit to
the local induna, the equivalent of the
v illa g e chief. H e’s not hom e, and a

Nelson Mandela shakes hands with Zulu
King Goodwill Zwelithini after Inkatha
leaders agreed to participate in the vote.
A few weeks later, thousands lined up in
Soweto to cast their first-ever ballots.
member of his family tells us that if we
want to stay healthy, w e should get
out of town. W e park on a road head­
ing out of town to give the appearance
that w e ’v e stopped to ask for direc­
tions. Many passersby are reluctant to
talk, but a few say that they would like
to vote, especially since it is the first
chance they’ve ever had. They proba­
bly will, they say, despite the intimida­
tion being brought to bear by Inkatha.
W e don’t ask whom they’re going to
vote for.
As w e’re leaving town, w e spot an
official from the local taxi association
who has stopped to monitor the day’s
business. He w on ’t tell us his name,

saying h e’s fed up with
the violence because it’s
bad for business. He is
a fra id th at if th e Zulu
king, Goodwill Zwelithini,
does not get the proper
respect from the governm ent, Zulus
w ill be called upon to take up arms
and fight.
KwaZulu, a homeland within Natal
with som e degree of self-rule in the
old South Africa, is scheduled to be
absorbed as a province under the new
centralized government. The king has
been asking for a recognition of Zulu
s o v e re ig n ty that carries som e real
power, but the ANC is only offering a
budget and ceremonial trappings. The
taxi official says he would not fight for
a politician like Buthelezi, but if the
king asks him to fight, he will fight.

T

he next few weeks pass in a blur. I
spend 12 to 16 hours a day work­
ing with our reporters, Ann Cooper,
Sunni K halid, and M ich a el Skolar,
helping them with logistics, juggling
assignments, conducting interviews,
and dealing with bureaucrats at the
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

South African Broadcasting Corpora­
tion. At the beginning of April, the gov­
erned declares a state of emergency
in Natal and sends in troops. Nonethe­
less, the killing continues, including
the d eca p itation and m utilation of
eight voter-edu cation w orkers w ho
were distributing nonpartisan election
material in a village about 50 miles
north of Durban. More and more peo­
ple wonder how a “free” election can
be held in an area that is under mili­
tary supervision.
Meanwhile, everyone is keeping an
anxious eye on efforts to bring Inkatha
into the election. A summit m eeting
between Mandela, then-president F.W.
de Klerk, Buthelezi, and King Zwelithini comes to nothing. A team of volun­
teer m e d ia to rs h e a d e d b y H en ry
Kissinger comes and goes, virtually in
the blink o f an eye, a ccom p lish in g
nothing.
Despite a police ban, the Inkatha
Party’s youth brigade calls for another
march in dow ntow n Johannesburg.
Everyone is afraid that the March 28
bloodbath w ill be repeated. M y col­
leagues and I are not looking forward
to the p r o s p e c t o f c o v e r in g th is
march. However, with the possibility
of violence, our presence is mandato­
ry. The recent death of a well-known
and well-liked South African photogra­
pher casts a pall over the entire press
corps.
The day before the march, I go to
pick up a bulletproof vest. They come
in white or sky blue, and the Ballistic
Body Arm our Com pany assures me
that the tw o ceramic plates covering
my vital organs front and back are
im perviou s to an yth in g up to and
including rounds from an AK-47. If it’s
returned undamaged, the com pany
will buy the vest back at a steep dis­
count. This is not even a small conso­
lation.
On Monday Johannesburg breathes
a momentary sigh of relief when the
march is p o stp o n e d . T h e n a tio n ’ s
leaders meet yet again, trying to end
Inkatha’s election boycott. No one is
very op tim istic, b ecau se de Klerk,
Mandela, and B u thelezi h ave been
meeting off and on for months with
nothing that resembles progress. The
voting is scheduled to begin in just
over a w eek and no new proposals
have surfaced. This appears as one
last attempt to bring peace before the
AUGUST 1994

country slips off into a violent abyss.
Then the miracle begins. Buthelezi
s e ttle s . W ith e ig h t days le ft, th e
guardian of Zulu nationalism agrees to
end his boycott and bring Inkatha into
th e e le c tio n . N o on e q u ite u n d er­
stands why, sin ce B u thelezi cou ld
have gotten a b e tter deal anytim e
before. Th ere is much speculation.
Since it was clear that the elections
w ere going to be held on schedule,
some speculate he realized he faced
political marginalization by refusing to
participate. Others argue that he was
about to lose the support of the king.
The next day election posters fea­
turing B uthelezi’s pictu re o v e r the
IFP’s colorful green, yellow, black, and
red lo g o join those o f the National
Party, the African National Congress,
and the 23 other parties on p o w er
poles and walls around Johannesburg.

O

utside the
pollin g place,
the disabled clog
the narrow street.
Voters hobble in on
crutches, and one
arrives carried in
a wheelbarrow.
This is a day many
thought they would
never live to see.

T h e Joh a n n esb u rg s to c k m arket
clim bs, and th e rand stren g th en s
against the dollar. For the next few
days, there is a dramatic lull in politi­
cal vio len ce, and the p o lice rep ort
that crim e too seems to have fallen
off, at least momentarily.
Yet Inkatha is not even on the bal­
lot, creating a logistical nightmare for
ele ctio n officials. W ithin one w eek
stick ers th at b e a r th e lik en ess of
B u th elezi and th e Inkatha sym b o l
must be attached to the bottoms of 80
million ballots, just below the line for
the ruling National Party. (For weeks
the National Party had been telling

voters to vote for the last party on the
ballot. Now, at the 11th hour, they are
no longer last.)
Forty-eight hours before the voting,
South A frica goes through one final
violent convulsion. Terrorist bombs
start going off around the country as
w hite extremists make a final bid to
derail the elections. Nine are killed in
downtown Johannesburg, including a
white ANC candidate for parliament,
when a car bomb explodes near the
A N C ’ s reg ion a l h ead qu a rters. T h e
next day, a bomb kills 10 people at a
taxi stand in Germiston, a predom i­
nately black area just east of Johan­
nesburg. A right-wing extremist group
claims responsibility for the Germis­
ton ex p lo s io n and th reaten s m ore
unless w h ite s are g ive n th eir ow n
homeland so they will not be forced to
submit to black-majority rule.
t is soon clear, however, that neither
blacks nor whites will be deterred
from voting. The bombings seem to
b rin g th e n a tio n t o g e th e r in grim
determination to go forward with the
elections. The governm ent promises
to deploy more than 100,000 troops to
protect the polling places, and when
the voting finally starts on Tuesday,
April 26, even a “cynical” Am erican
journalist gets swept up in the em o­
tion. It is impossible not to get tearyey ed w itnessing this ex p ression of
faith in dem ocra cy. H op e is e v e r y ­
where.
The first day of voting is set aside
for pensioners, invalids, and people in
hospitals. It’s mid-afternoon before I
can get to the Sankopano Community
Center, a polling place in Alexandra
tow n sh ip . O u tside, cars and taxis
filled w ith eld erly men and w om en
and th e d is a b le d c lo g th e n a rro w
s tre e t. S om e v o te r s h o b b le in on
crutches. One wom en is carried in a
w heelbarrow . A nother woman, v e ry
overweight, her bleeding, swollen feet
w ra p p e d in rags, sto p s e v e r y few
steps, gasping and wheezing to catch
her breath. She says she has asthma,
and I w onder if she’ll make it down­
stairs to vote without collapsing.
T h e co u rtya rd inside is packed.
Som e p e o p le sta n d in a lo n g lin e
snaking up to a sin gle d o o r at the
entrance to the voting booths. Others
sit in chairs and benches, more or less
Please turn to page 63

I

21

I COLLEGE
"Accomplished and
empowered,” Class of
’94 leaves Swarthmore

ents included David Bam­
berger ’62, director of the
Cleveland Opera, who
received the Doctor of Hu­
mane Letters; Seamus
Heaney, internationally
renowned poet, who re­
ceived the Doctor of Hu­
mane Letters; and John
Mather ’ 68, a physicist with
NASA, who was awarded
the Doctor of Science.
In related Commence­
ment activities, Nadinne
Cruz, senior associate for
the Higher Education Con­
sortium for Urban Affairs,
delivered the Baccalaure­
ate address. Amy-Jill
Levine, the Sara Lawrence
Lightfoot Associate Profes­
sor of Religion, spoke at
Last Collection. Following
are excerpts from honorary
degree recipients’ charges
to the seniors.

Urging new graduates to
use their leadership roles
to help others becom e “as
accomplished and as em­
powered” as they are, Pres­
ident Alfred H. Bloom pre­
sided over the College’s
122nd Commencement,
awarding 321 bachelor of
arts degrees, 22 bachelor of
science degrees, and three
honorary degrees.
“What I would like to ask
you today is that as you
meet the demands of lead­
ership positions you as­
sume, you draw not only
on the intellectual skills
and on the ethical intelli­
gence you have developed
at Swarthmore but that you
draw also on your first­
hand experience with that
special Swarthmore rela­
tionship between teacher
David Bam berger ’62 is
and student. Remember
director o f the Cleveland
how accomplished and
Opera, which has received
how em powered that rela­
national recognition for its
tionship has led you to
outreach to schools.
become. Lead in a w ay that
“I would ask you all as
enables others to be as
the parents you will be­
accomplished and as
com e or the parents you
em powered.”
I already are, as the leaders
Honorary degree recipi­
you will becom e or the

leaders you already are, to
remember that the reason
w e need arts in the schools
is not so that children will
remember when Mozart
lived or died, although any
form of knowledge is valu­
able. The reason w e do all
this is for the children to
find themselves. W e talk a
lot these days about won­
derful catch words— self­
esteem and self-knowledge
and belief in self-worth— as
if these w ere new things
that had to be invented. In
fact they are old things that
need to be restored by
putting the arts and partic­
ularly the performing arts
back in the schools. So I
would urge you whenever
you see the chance to fight
for that.
“Here you have all stud­
ied some of the arts and
learned to becom e quite
sophisticated about them.
But you have certainly not
gotten to study all the arts
because the time did not
permit it. And so there are
a lot of arts about which
you may feel very unknowledgeable and very unso­
phisticated. But I’d just like
to remind you that those of
us who have been crazy
enough to go into this busi­
ness are in it not in order
to provide deep themes for
research papers, but in the
hope that when we do
things right, when th a t...
curtain goes up, there will
be magic behind it for you.”
Seamus Heaney, whose
term as professor o f poetry
at Oxford University is com ­
ing to an end, is the author
o f Death of a Naturalist and
many other award-winning
works.
“My first visit to Phila­
delphia was in 1971, when I
read poems to the students
of an inner-city high school.
The teacher in charge of

22

that event had hidden me
away in a kind of book clos­
et while he herded mini­
stampedes of teenagers

Seamus Heaney
down the corridors and
tried to pen them in as an
audience in another, much
less distinguished library.
And as I skulked there, like
some latter-day apostle in
his upper room, I heard a
voice from the corridor like
the voice of God asking a
simple question. It cried
out, in ringing American
and impatient tones, ‘Who
is this poet anyhow? Is he
any good?’
“Today, of course, you,
the Class of 1994, are hear­
ing that question, ‘Is she
any good; is he any good?’
in a particularly keen way.
Because from today, you
must begin to live in a
more exposed w ay as your­
selves. And you will only
begin to live truly, I would
suggest, when you have
conceived standards by
which you can fail. These
are the standards you test
yourselves against if you
want to attain that ideal
which Socrates once called
‘the examined life.’ They
are the standards represen­
tative of the highest possi­
bility, that ultimate possi­
bility, to which an artist
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

E

done. There’s no point in
trying to be first if you’re all
riding in one canoe. I try to
work with people so that
w e all get to our goal to­
gether, and then we let our
creative juices flow. I think
that’s important because
through most of my life in
school, I saw people worry­
ing about being better or
worse than their fellow stu­
dents and losing sight of
their larger goals. I wish I
could get people to stop
worrying about comparing
themselves with other peo­
ple and just go after what
they really care about.
Competition gets our
adrenalin flowing, but our
competitors are not really
our friends and neighbors.
Our competitors are the
cockroaches who will
inherit the earth all too
soon if w e don’t pay atten­
tion to what w e’re doing
and help each other along.
“If I could leave you with
any parting words, it is the
reminder to take the time
to imagine what you really
would like to do, really
think about it, and then go
after it with all your heart.
You’ll be too busy to know
if you’re better or worse
than somebody else or
whether you’re happy or
not, but you can be proud
to be yourself.”

like Cézanne or a poet like
Emily Dickinson or a hero
like Nelson Mandela sacri­
fices himself or herself.
“So you, the Class of ’94,
now stand in some book
closet deep within your­
selves and hear a voice
calling upon you to imagine
those standards, if you are
to be any good.”
John C. Mather ’68, a
physicist with NASA, origi­
nated the concept o f the Cos­
mic Background Explorer
(COBE) satellite to study
microwave radiation in
space (see page 4).
“When I gathered the
team to propose the COBE
satellite, I had no idea How
to make it happen. What
we all did together was to
solve the problems as they
came along. I found out I
had to learn about many
things I never expected,
everything from balancing
budgets to running meet­
ings to learning how to
type and writing memos all
day long. I found out I
didn’t know how to be the
kind of leader that I wanted
to be, and I had to ask for
help about that too.
“I also found out that
cooperation works better
than competition when you
are trying to get something

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John Mather ’68
AUGUST 1994

C

Gabriel Quinn
Bauriedel ’94,
senior class speaker
“Today of all days, let us
celebrate and let us dance.
And what better spot to
celebrate than in this am­
phitheater under the shade
of Liriodendron tulipifera
looking out on A cer negundo and Quercus rubra. I’ve
studied the nameplates for
four years. I wanted the
Scott Arboretum staff to
know that their hard work
has not been overlooked.

E

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E

oh no, but four years— give
or take a semester or
two— of fall, winter, and
spring night and mid-morn­
ing dreams. And just as in
the play, our dream has not
always been a satisfying,
successful, or especially
restful dream. In fact, it has
been a long, long, some­
times nightmarish, but ulti­
mately fulfilling dream.”

Honors Program
revised by faculty
Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel ’94
Today, if you listen closely,
you might hear, or even
see, Swarthmore’s new
mascot (w e’re ditching gar­
net because it doesn’t sing
and dance). Today I an­
nounce the new mascot:
Puck, our spritely, Crumdwelling, elfish twin. Puck
should be our mascot here
at Swarthmore, for he em­
bodies the three personali­
ties that represent us as
students.
“First, w e have the Hob­
goblin ‘devilish’ Puck: the
April Fools’ jokers, the part
of us that tries to outsmart
our professors just for the
challenge. Next w e have
Robin Goodfellow Puck: a
public servant, a problem
solver, a close friend who
mends our angst, someone
who cares about us. Then
there is the headstrong
Harlequin Puck, the leader,
director, and innovator.
This component wrote our
essays to get us into
Swarthmore and ensured
that we received the diplo­
ma today. Harlequin active­
ly participates on campus,
fueling change and prog­
ress in organizations, the
community, social life, and
political life. These three
personalities o f Puck have
lived through not just a
midsummer night’s dream,

After a year and a half of
intense dialogue, much of it
concentrated in the last
weeks of the spring se­
mester, the faculty has
approved a revision de­
signed to reinvigorate the
External Examination (Hon­
ors) Program. The revised
program will go into effect
for either the Class of 1997
or the Class of 1998, de­
pending on the recommen­
dation of the provost and
the faculty’s Curriculum
Committee in December.
Discussions w ere led by
the Council on Educational
Policy (CEP) task force on
curriculum, made up of the
members of CEP, including
the president and the
provost, plus three faculty
members added to ensure
representation across the
divisions. The task force
presented its first proposal
to the faculty in March, and
the faculty passed the final
version of the proposal
with a large majority on
May 23.
“I believe that the new
plan responds to each of
the factors that placed the
old Honors system in jeop­
ardy while retaining the
program’s intellectual
rigor, pedagogical impact,
and external distinctive­
ness,” said President Alfred
H. Bloom.
The revised program
departs from the current
23

one in several important
ways. Instead of taking six
seminars, Honors candi­
dates will take four “prepa­
rations,” three in a major
and one in a minor, or four
in a special or interdisci­
plinary major. Each prepa­
ration will be based on two
or more units of academic
credit. The word “prepara­
tions” was chosen rather
than “seminars” to make it
clear that there will be vari­
ous ways beyond the tradi­
tional seminar to prepare
for external examination.
In their senior year,
most often in the spring
semester, Honors candi­
dates will enroll for at least
one credit of Senior Honors
Study, designed to provide
an opportunity to review,
extend, and, when appro­
priate, integrate the work
that has been done in
preparation for external
exams. “This is what many
alumni who have been
through Honors point to as
the most important part of
the program,” says Provost
Jennie Keith, “so w e want
to formalize that, give it
credit, and give students
the time to devote to it.”
Senior Honors Study could
take place in a variety of
formats, ranging from inde­
pendent study of an addi­
tional reading list to a collo­
quium for all Honors candi­
dates in a department on a
particular topic. Students
could also make their own
proposals for this addition­
al work.
External examiners will
examine students on their
four preparations plus
their Senior Honors Study.
Departments will have the
opportunity to give examin­
ers a broader picture of
what a student has done by
sending them information
about all the student’s Hon­
ors preparations. Some
24

departments may set up
panels of examiners rather
than having each student
be examined four times.
For the first time,
Swarthmore instructors
will grade all work taken for
credit at Swarthmore and
used as a preparation for
Honors. Exceptions will be
Senior Honors Study and
theses or other original
work, such as laboratory
research or projects in per­
forming or studio arts.
External examiners will be
responsible for awarding
the level of honors. Finally,
when the revised Honors
Program is implemented,
the honorific Distinction in
Course will no longer be
given.
The revisions are intend­
ed to reinvigorate the pro­
gram and to give faculty
members and students
more flexibility to create

For a while this summer, it
appeared that the north campus
was invaded by an army of
gigantic demented ants. Piles of
dirt were everywhere as work­
ers labored to relocate under­
ground utility lines to prepare
for construction o f a new aca­
demic building north o f Parrish
Hall next month. The relocation
involved phone, data communi­
cation, electric, steam heating,
water, and sewer lines that ran
through Parrish Annex, which is

ways to do excellent work.
educational experiences
President Frank Aydelotte’s
that have not been easy to
Honors Program “put
accommodate within the
Swarthmore on the map,”
| program. Students who
says Philip Weinstein, the
have wanted to do such
Alexander Griswold Cum­
things as foreign study,
mins Professor of English
independent research in
Literature and chair of the
the sciences, and interdis­
CEP task force on curricu­
ciplinary concentrations „
lum. “That’s our legacy. But
have often found the pro­
the legacy has been ailing.”
gram too rigid and have
For 30 years the number
opted not to apply.
of students applying for
The revision addresses
and being accepted into
this problem by making the
the Honors Program has
program more hospitable
been declining, with only
to a broader range of edu­
10 percent of the Class of
cational experiences.
1995 participating in the
Departments will have
program. Only four stu­
more flexibility in defining
dents in the Natural Sci­
what kind of work will be
ences Division completed
required or accepted as a
Honors last May.
“preparation.” In addition
One major reason for
to traditional seminars,
the decline in student par­
some students may use
ticipation in the program is
such things as sequences
that over the years stu­
of courses, performances,
dents have increasingly
field work, and combina­
wanted to participate in
tions of seminars with for­
eign study to prepare for
Honors. Shifting the num­
ber of required prepara­
tions from six to four will
also give students more
flexibility in planning their
course of study.
Added flexibility will
also aid departments, some
of which have almost
dropped out of the pro­
gram because its structure
did not seem compatible
with teaching their stu­
dents in the best possible
way. “Each department
should be able to partici­
expected to be tom down later
pate in the w ay that makes
this month. Offices formerly
the most sense,” says
housed in the Annex have been
Philip Weinstein. The task
moved to temporary quarters in
force worked to create a
a refurbished Pearson Hall.
program that would allow
When the new building is
departments to set as the
opened in the winter of
standard for Honors the
1995-96, activity will turn to
kind of work they believe
Trotter Hall. A total renovation
their best students should
within its exterior stone walls
be doing, whatever form
will create new classrooms,
that work might take.
seminar rooms, and offices for
Lack of grades has also
the departments o f Classics, His­
been a big problem for stu­
tory, and Political Science.
dents who are planning to
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

attend graduate or profes­
sional schools, which in
recent years have more
heavily relied on grades for
admission. It has always
been thought that not giv­
ing grades was important
to the seminar, putting the
instructor in the position of
coach or colleague rather
than evaluator. But faculty
members have been grad­
ing Course students in sem­
inars since 1987, and sever­
al said in faculty discussion
that they w ere surprised to
find that giving grades had
not made any difference in
the relationship between
students and instructors.
Finally, the existence of
two routes to honorifics at
Swarthmore, the Honors
Program and Distinction in
Course, has put the College
in a kind of “intellectual dis­
honesty,” says Philip Wein­
stein. “W e’ve been speak­
ing with two tongues.
We’ve said that the Honors
and the Course programs
| are separate but equal, and
we’ve also said that the
Honors Program is the hon­
orific program.”
After this latest revision,
Course and Honors no
longer need to be thought
of as two separate tracks,
says Jennie Keith. “Concep­
tually, w e now have much
! more the sense that every­
body goes through the
same educational program.
The students who wish to
take what w e see as the
ultimate step, which is to
go beyond their relation­
ship to their teachers here
and to use what they’ve
learned in an encounter
with people outside, will
j want to enroll in the Hon­
ors Program. As w e move
away from a two-track kind
of program, it makes sense
to have only one definition
of what w e think is the very
best that our students can
AUGUST 1994

Time to say goodbye—Commencement 1994.
get out of Swarthmore.”
The elimination of Dis­
tinction in Course was
among severed aspects of
the revision that were hotly
debated by the faculty.
Also controversial was the
creation of the Senior Hon­
ors Study, with some facul­
ty members feeling that
independent study for all
Honors students was not
the best use of either the
students’ or the faculty’s
time. On the other hand,
many faculty members
thought that this time for
reflection and integration
was the most important
part of the program for stu­
dents’ intellectual develop­
ment.
Some faculty members
questioned whether the
program should continue
to include external exami­
nations, pointing to the
cost of these exams and
the difficulty some depart­
ments have in getting

examiners. But Barry
Schwartz, professor of psy­
chology and a member of
the CEP task force, explains
the reasoning of the group:
“It is important for stu­
dents to see that they are
not engaged in a private
conversation with their
teachers, that what they
have learned is actually
communicable to other
people.” He adds that the
presence of external exam­
iners also helps keep the
faculty in touch with the
rest of the academic world.
This fall each depart­
ment and concentration
will be working to define
more specifically the for­
mats for preparations and
for Senior Honors Study.
Depending on the progress
the departments have
made, in December the
Curriculum Committee will
decide whether the revised
program will be ready to go
into effect for the Class of

1997 or 1998. After four
years of operation, the pro­
gram will undergo formed
review.
The Board of Managers
is enthusiastic about the
revision, says Dulany
Ogden Bennett ’ 66, chair of
the Board’s Instruction and
Libraries Committee. Her
committee was kept in­
formed of the work of the
CEP task force throughout
the process, and the task
force “solicited discussion,
comments, and questions”
from the Board, she says.
“There was a real frank,
energetic, and positive
interchange between the
faculty and the Board com­
mittee, with each under­
standing its proper role.
W e wanted to be sure that
the faculty was giving the
question of Honors the cen­
tral importance for the
ethos of the College that it
deserved, but w e under­
stood that the particulars
of the new program w ere
entirely in the faculty
domain. It was very heart­
ening to be convinced of
the seriousness of the fac­
ulty about the revision and
their conviction that it will
work.”
Members of the Col­
lege’s faculty and adminis­
tration are also enthusias­
tic. “I am deeply excited
about the steps the College
has taken to return the
Honors Program to its sta­
tus as the signature pro­
gram of the College,” said
President Bloom. Thomas
Blackburn, the Centennial
Professor of English Litera­
ture, former dean, and a
member of the CEP task
force on curriculum,
echoes the president, look­
ing forward to the opportu­
nity to create new possibili­
ties for the College’s best
students: “Next fall could
be a very exciting time.”

E

c

Staff positions filled
for student services
Tw o important staff posi­
tions in student services—
director of Psychological
Services and director of the
Black Cultural Center—
w ere filled recently.
David E. Ramirez, for­
merly director of clinical
training for Haverford Col­
lege’s Psychological Ser­
vices, began his duties as
director of Psychological
Services on July 1. He re­
places Leighton Whitaker
’54, who resigned to pursue
other professional opportu­
nities.
Prior to his position at
Haverford, Ramirez was a
staff psychologist at the
University of Pennsylvania.
His bachelor’s, master’s,
and doctorate degrees are
from the University of
Texas at Austin.
Maxine A. Proctor, previ­
ously a member of the
dean’s staff at the Universi­
ty of Chicago, was named
assistant dean and director
of the Black Cultural Cen­
ter, effective Aug. 11 She
replaces Joan Eldridge,
who served as acting direc­
tor for the past year.
At Chicago Proctor was
an academic adviser as
well as the adviser for the
Minority Student Enrich­
ment Program. She holds a
bachelor’s degree from
Chicago State University

26

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College adopts new
judicial system
and student code

David Ramirez
and a master’s degree in
inner-city studies from
Northeastern Illinois Uni­
versity.

Avery, Krugovoy retire;
both become emeriti
Tw o hiembers of the facul­
ty in Modern Languages
and Literatures— George
A very and George Krugov­
oy— retired at the end of
the spring semester. Both
have been named emeriti.
Avery, professor emeri­
tus of German, joined the
Swarthmore faculty in 1959
as a lecturer. From 1975 to
1980, he served as chair of
the Department of Modern
Languages and Literatures.
Born in the U.S.S.R., Kru­
govoy, professor emeritus
of Russian, received his
graduate degrees in Aus­
tria. He came to Swarth­
more in 1968 as an associ­
ate professor in the areas
of Russian literature, phi­
losophy, and folklore.

New dates for
October break

Maxine Proctor

. 0

Please note that the dates
for October break for 1994
have been changed to Oct.
7 (end of last class or semi­
nar) to Oct. 17 (8:30 a.m.).
The change is to coin­
cide with the fall vacations
of Bryn Mawr and Haver­
ford colleges and the Uni­
versity of Pennsylvania.

A revised student judicial
system and code of con­
duct have been adopted
and will be in place for the
1994-95 academic year.
The new judicial system
does away with three for­
mer disciplinary commit­
tees and replaces them
with a single College Judi­
cial Committee that will
adjudicate all major viola­
tions of College regulations.
Composed of two faculty
members, two students,
and one administrator who
is not a dean, it will normal­
ly be convened by Dean of
the College Ngina Lythcott.
Minor infractions— those
where a finding of guilt
would result in a sanction
less severe than suspen­
sion— will be handled by
Dean Lythcott or members
of her staff.
The new “Statement of
Student Rights, Responsi­
bilities, and Code of Con­
duct” details the College’s
standards concerning a c a -.
demic honesty, computing
ethics, personal conduct,
sexual conduct, alcohol
and drugs, and respect for
College property.
Lythcott said she had
concerns about “whether
the old code reflected the
real values of Swarthmore
and whether it gave stu­
dents a fair chance to know
and understand them.” The
process of revising the
code of conduct was al­
ready under w ay when
Lythcott joined the College
two years ago, but her ar­
rival spurred an even more
comprehensive overhaul. It
was studied and rewritten
by a committee composed
of students, faculty mem­
bers, and members of the
dean’s staff, then presented
to the student body and

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the faculty for approval
this spring.
Included are more
explicit definitions of sexu­
al assault and harassment
and the statement that
“students have the respon­
sibility to ensure that any
sexual interaction occurs
only with mutual consent.” ]
Dean Lythcott explained,
“In the past the code said
in essence, ‘You have to
read my mind,’ and now it
says, ‘It’s m y obligation to
let you know what I do or
do not want to happen.’”
The code emphasizes the
counseling and support
available on campus and
refers to specific rights of
complainants and accused
persons in matters of sexu­
al misconduct.
Praising the work of the
students and faculty mem­
bers who revised the code,
Lythcott stated: “It is im­
portant for students to
know the values of the
community that they are
choosing to live, work, and j
play in. I think this new
statement makes those val­
ues clear.”

J

Admissions
deadlines change
The Admissions Office has
changed its Regular Deci­
sion application deadline
from Feb. 1 to Jan. 1. This
brings Swarthmore’s date
into line with other highly
selective colleges and uni­
versities and will allow the
deans more time to read
applications carefully.
Admissions has also
merged its two Early Deci­
sion plans (form erly Fall
Early Decision and Winter
Early Decision) into one
Early Decision option with
a deadline of Nov. 15.
At the same time, the
College’s application fee
has been raised from $45 to
$50.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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Women’s lacrosse
earns national ranking
Guided by second-year
head coach Karen Yohannon Borbee, the w om en’s
lacrosse team had its most
successful season in the
history of the school, com­
piling an overall record of
124. The women w ere also
recognized on the national
level for the first time,
being ranked 13th in the
nation in the final Brine/
IWLCA coaches’ poll of the
season. Julie Noyes ’95 led
the Garnet with 107 goals
and 18 assists, establishing
both national and College
records for the most goals
scored in one season. She
was named a first-team
national All-American by
Brine/IWLCA and the Unit­
ed States W om en’s La­
crosse Association. Lia
Ernst ’97 received honor­
able mention Pennsylvania
regional All-American sta­
tus, while Noyes and defen­
der Madeline Fraser ’95
were first-team All-Centen­
nial selections. Ernst and
defender Heather Maloney
’95 were second-team AllCentennial selections. Bor­
bee was honored as the
Pennsylvania Region Coach
of the Year.
The w om en’s outdoor
track and field team fin­
ished fourth at the Centen­
nial Conference Champion­
ships this spring. Kate
Dempsey ’95 qualified for
the NCAA National Champi­
onships in the 800-meter
with her time of 2:15.88,
which also set a new Col­
lege record. Another high­
light of the season was the
1,600-meter relay team’s
performance at the Penn
Relays. In the 12 years that
women’s track and field
has been a varsity sport, no
Swarthmore woman had
ever won a medal at this
prestigious event. This
AUGUST 1994

C

year, at the 100th anniver­
sary of the meet, the relay
team of Dempsey, Megan
Cunningham ’95, Tina
Shepardson ’94, and Jill
Wildonger ’97 took home
silver medals in the MAC
race. Shepardson was also
the conference champion
in the triple jump, in which
she broke her own College
record several times.
The m en’s outdoor
track and field team came
in sixth at the Centennial
Conference Champion­
ships. Scott Reents ’96
came within three seconds
of the College record in the
5.000- meter when he ran a
15:03 against Haverford.
His time was good enough
to earn him a spot in the
Penn Relays in the college
5.000- meter. Mike Turner
’96 had four first-place fin­
ishes at the conference
meet, winning the 100- and
200-meter races and help­
ing to solidify victories for
the 400- and 1,600-meter
relay teams. Eric Pakurar
’97 had a successful rookie
year, taking second place
in the 400-meter hurdles at
the conference meet and
also having participated in
the 400- and 1,600-meter
relays and the triple jump
throughout the season.
A long-standing Swarth­
more streak was broken
this spring when the men’s
tennis team did not qualify
to send a team to the NCAA
Division III Tournament for
the first time in 19 years.
The men ended the year
with a record of 6-10 and
finished the season ranked
fourth in the Northeast re­
gion of the NCAA and 18th
in the nation. Including
matches played in the fall,
Barry Mook ’96 accumulat­
ed a record of 8-15 at No. 1
singles, and George Khalaf
’96 posted a record of 13-12
at No. 2 singles. In the No. 1

O

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doubles spot, the duo of
Brandt Lincoln ’95 and
Vijay Toke ’96 had an over­
all record of 5-12.
The baseball team fin­
ished up the year with a
record of 5-28. However,
after winning only three of
the first 30 games of the
season, the men pulled
things together and won
two of their last three
games. Pitcher Chuck Hud­
son ’96 came on strong as
the season progressed,
picking up the save in the
Garnet’s final win against

Kate Dempsey ’95 qualified for
the NCAA nationals in track.
Dickinson. After losing 12
seniors (and eight starters)
to graduation in 1993, the
team lost only four seniors
to graduation this year.
Under the direction of
new head coach Dan Sears,
the w om en’s tennis team
finished the season with a
record of 3-13. Becky Katz
’95, at No. 1 singles, com­
piled a record of 6-8. The
team was forced to make
do without Kim Crusey ’95
this spring. Crusey, who
played in the No. 1 slot dur­
ing her first two years,

E

spent the semester study­
ing in Spain.
Zack Colburn took over
the reins as head m en’s
lacrosse coach this year,
after serving as an assistant
coach in 1993. Even with
Colburn at the helm, the
team struggled this season,
finishing with a record of
2-14. Brian Dougherty ’95
(19 goals, 13 assists) and
Ben Seigel ’96 (19 goals,
seven assists) led the team
in scoring.
The softball team fin­
ished the season with a
record of 2-23 and a confer­
ence record of 1-13. The
one conference win was
against Washington, whom
they beat 5-3. The women
also won a third game
against Haverford, which
currently plays softball at
the club level only. Margy
Pierce ’95 led the team in
batting with an average of
.371, and outfielder Lena
Loewenthal ’97 received
honorable mention All-Cen­
tennial honors.
Due to wet weather con­
ditions, the g o lf team got a
late start to the season. At
the Centennial Conference
Championships, Swarth­
more finished eighth of the
eight teams that participat­
ed. Swarthmore’s top com­
petitor was Andres Zuluaga
’94, who shot a 226. Shawn
Bundy ’97 played at num­
ber one for the Garnet
throughout the season and
finished at the champion­
ships with a score of 247.
Peter Yoho ’97 shot a 233.
Haverford captured the
H ood Trophy this year by
a score of 9-6 in head-tohead competition. This
spring the Fords swept the
Garnet in baseball, while
also winning in wom en’s
tennis and men’s lacrosse.
Swarthmore defeated
Haverford in w om en’s
lacrosse.
27

LETTERS
ure of communication on the part of the
authorities handling the stakeout. How­
ever, I seriously doubt that any mean­
ingful negotiation with MOVE was possi­
ble at this point. The “hybridized form
of discourse” that Dr. Wagner-Pacifici
calls for sounds to me like a recipe for
further confusion and social disarray.
How better to encourage the growth of
more violence-prone cults in the future?
JOYCE MILTON ’67
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Don’t Drop Distinction
To the Editor:
I read with interest the article in the
May Bulletin on revising the External
Examination Program. I was most con­
cerned that there is a proposal to elimi­
nate the Distinction in Course honorific.
I have always felt that the External
Examination and Course programs
should be separate but equal paths to a
Swarthmore diploma. To eliminate Dis­
tinction unfortunately indicates that the
two programs are not considered equal
by many in the College community.
Students who elect to finish their
degree programs in Course generally
have very strong reasons to do so. Why
should they be penalized for this deci­
sion by taking away the potential for an
honorific? Should only 20 percent of the
student body have the potential to
receive “with Honors” on their diploma?
I understand the faculty’s wish to
strengthen and improve a program that
is truly unique to Swarthmore. However,
these improvements should not come at
the expense of the Course program,
which has been and will continue to be
the choice for many Swarthmore stu­
dents who feel it is the best way to
achieve their academic goals.
JAMES A. ROWLEY, M.D. ’85
Baltimore
Editor’s Note: In late May the faculty
adopted a revised External Examination
Program, including the elimination o f the
honorific Distinction in Course. See arti­
cle, page 23.

She Was an Angel
To the Editor:
Recently, the Swarthmore College Bul­
letin (May 1994) circulated through the
Alumni Programs and Development
Office here at Franklin & Marshall. I was
delighted to find an angel on page 12.
28

Continued from page 3

Back in the summers of ’66 and ’67,1
was a dippy high school kid with no
future, just one of central Pennsylvania’s
many small-town rural poor. I was fortu­
nate to be recruited into the PREP pro­
gram housed at F&M. PREP had been
created in 1964 by concerned faculty
and staff members at Swarthmore and
F&M to make equal access to higher
education among the disadvantaged a
reality. (It subsequently became the
Great Society’s national Upward Bound
Program). Among the many wonderful
people who helped me and 50-some
other kids of all shapes and colors one
summer was Marilyn Holifield ’69.
As a tutor, Marilyn taught me to write
better, talk better, and think better. She
shared with me her culture and her love
and concern for the welfare of others,
no matter what their station. She shared
her ideals and .beliefs, and she intro­
duced me to others who felt the same.
Marilyn represented for me a new and
expanded vision of a world to be ex­
plored. She was an angel.
Marilyn, wherever you are, you’ll
always have a fan in me.
RUSS BURKE
Lancaster, Pa.

Terpsichorean Excesses
To the Editor:
The caption on the maypole picture in
the May Bulletin [Class Notes, page 32]
indicated that the dance is no longer
performed. Its demise must be fairly
recent. The maypole was danced every
spring I was at Swarthmore, 1984-87.1
was taught the traditional Swarthmore
maypole (apparently choreographed
deep in the mists of time by a gym
teacher) by Margaret Smith and Keith
Henderson, both Class of 1984.1danced
it myself in ’84 and ’85, then taught it to
16 more or less willing dancers in ’86
and ’87.1don’t know whether it sur­
vived after that.
Swarthmore folk dancers had a
chance every spring to dance at May
Day at Bryn Mawr. I can confidently
report that although their strawberries
were excellent, the Bryn Mawrters’ maypole event was a mere beribboned
footrace when compared to the splen­
didly complex terpsichorean excesses
of Swarthmore’s annual logistical night­
mare.
CARIN RUFF ’87
Silver Spring, Md.

“One of the Brightest
Memories of my College Years...”
To the Editor:
If the maypole tradition has in fact died,
I am very sorry to hear it, because it is
one of the brightest memories of my col­
lege years. The Folk and Square Dance
Club was where I made some of my best friends at Swarthmore, and folk dancing
continued to be a big part of my life
after graduation— in fact, nine years
after I graduated I met my wife in a folk
dance group.
In my first two years at Swarthmore
the Folk and Square Dance Club was
ruled with an iron hand by Irene Moll,
who told us during Freshman Orienta­
tion week that she had probably taught
some of our parents to dance. She re­
tired in 1977.
I suspect that the only Morris
dancers in the [1966] photo are the
men. There were no women Morris
dancers at Swarthmore until my junior
year (1977-78). Morris dancing is tradi­
tionally an all-male dance, but that tradi­
tion came under increasing criticism in
our group until it was finally abandoned.
The Parent’s Day performance had
two parts. In the morning we processed
down Magill Walk, stopped a couple of
places in the Ville to perform, then pro­
cessed to the train station, performing
for a few bewildered Saturday com­
muters, then processed through the din­
ing hall (this was the best part.1) and
onto Sharpies Patio, where we gave a
brief performance. To imagine the pro­
cession, you have to visualize very
bright outfits, sleighbells attached to the
Morris dancers’ trousers making an
unholy racket in the dining hall, flowers
in all the women’s hair, ribbons across
the Morris men’s chests, a piper or two,
a fool, a “horse,” and a virgin if we could
find one. In the afternoon we returned to
the patio for a longer performance cul­
minating with the winding of the maypole.
DANA NANCE MACKENZIE ’79
Gambier, Ohio

CORRECTION
President Lyndon B. Johnson and U.N.
Secretary General U Thant received hon­
orary degrees from Swarthmore in 1964,
not 1965 as was reported in “A Day in
the Life” (May 1994). Thanks to Walter
Pinkus ’65 and Diana Judd Stevens ’63
for their careful reading.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ALUMNI

DIGEST

4,200 alumni elect 14 to Council

st r
ig

New York: The New York Connection
gathered at Carnegie Hall for a sopra­
no performance by Susan Rosenbaum
’87. A coffee reception with Susan followed the May 20 concert.

1
;

Philadelphia: On May 27 the Philadel­
phia Connection, together with
Swarthmore’s graduating seniors,
traveled to Veterans Stadium to cheer
on the Philadelphia Phillies as they
played the Houston Astros. Bob ’81
and Carolyn Morgan Hayden ’83 orga­
nized the annual outing. '

t

Chicago: On June 2 Swarthmore
recent alumni participated in a fivecollege bowling extravaganza with
alumni from Carleton, Oberlin, Kenyon and Wesleyan. Mary Schless
Roach ’81 organized the event.

lii
d.

j

Los Angeles: Alumni, parents, and
friends spent an afternoon at Warner
Bros, with Los Angeles Times film
critic Kenneth Turan ’67. The June 12
event was coordinated by Walter
Cochran-Bond ’70.

n-

ie
j
i,
d

'9
o

it

N

ore than 4,200 ballots were
returned in this year’s Alumni
Council election— a 17 percent
increase over last year’s total. Four­
teen alumni were elected from seven
geographic regions to serve threeyear terms on the Council, which
meets three times each year at the
College. They join 28 other Council
members under the leadership of
Gretchen Mann Handwerger ’56.

M

Zone A
David Newcomer ’80
York, Pa.
Anne Matthews Rawson ’50
Swarthmore, Pa.
Zone B
Alice Higley Gilbert ’48
Garden City, N.Y.
Susan A. Rech, M.D. ’79
Plattsburgh, N.Y.
Zone C
Marilyn Modarelli Lee ’56
Greenfield, Mass.

Lisa A. Steiner, M.D. ’54
Cambridge, Mass.
Zone D
Colleen A. Kennedy, M.D. ’72
Arlington, Va.
Betty-Jo Matzinger ’87
Annandale, Va.
Zone E
Jean L. Kristeller ’74
Terre Haute, Ind.
Dorothy Watt Williams ’50
Lakewood, Ohio
Zone F
Charles Lee Bennett ’77
Durham, N.C.
Elizabeth Letts Metcalf ’42
Coral Gables, Fla.
Zone G
Judith Aitken Ramaley ’63
Portland, Ore.
Glenda M. Rauscher ’69
Paradise Valley, Ariz.

Washington, D.C./Baltimore: Close to
20 alumni, parents, and friends spent
a Sunday afternoon in June at the Baltimore Museum of Art, having brunch
at the museum’s café and then enjoying a tour of the Matisse cutouts.
Salam Mir, parent of Sarny ’96, put
together the event,

For the alum ni bookshelf...

London/Paris: Traveling Swarthmoreans met “local” alumni during a Col­
lege-sponsored trip with Centennial
Professor of English Literature Tom
Blackburn. Lucy Rickman Baruch ’42
coordinated the London reception
Aug. 6, and the Paris Connection did
the honors on Aug. 8, led by Gretchen
Mann Handwerger ’56, Ed Gardner ’81,
and Elizabeth McCrary ’83.

Edited by
Jeptha J. Carrell ’45 and
Demaris Affleck Carrell ’47

Maine: On Aug. 20 Chris ’54 and Jane
Walker Kennedy ’55 hosted their
annual Swarthmore clambake at their
home in Damariscotta.
AUGUST 1994

A SINGULAR TIME,
A SINGULAR PLACE
Swarthmore College
and World War II

his new
book from Swarthmore College contains tran­
scripts from the memorable War Years Reunion and Alumni College
held in June 1992. It includes talks by former President John Nason,
President Alfred H. Bloom, and numerous distinguished guests and
fellow alumni. It features 16 pages of rare photographs.

■

Order from the Swarthmore College Bookstore, (610) 328-7756.116 pages. $6.50
plus $1.50 for postage and handling. Credit cards accepted.

29

Having Her Say and Including Theirs
Film and video review column by Evan Levine ’84 contains comments from children.
com m ent from Levine are placed next
h e’s colum nist, author, m useum
to the category headings.
coordinator, interviewer, new
Levine and her rug rat reviewers
m other, and wife— and doing it all
have com m ented on everything from
while living in the heart of M anhattan.
Last Action Hero and Batman to Disney
“I’ve certainly becom e m ore orga­
m ovies and Faerie Tale Theatre
nized,” says Evan Levine ’84.
videos. “T he kids are savvy,” Levine
Levine’s colum n, “Guide to Chil­
says. “T hey do n’t like condescending
dren’s T V and V id eo ,” is d istrib u ted «
vid eo s.” A nd while the popular purple
w eekly in 600 new spapers arpund the
dinosaur, Barney, m ay seem to be
country. But the colum n, w hich high­
“irritating and the happiness forced”
lights m ovies, T V show s, and special­
for Levine and som e parents, “there’s
ty videos that might interest children,
certainly nothing objectionable about
is not just an adult’s perspective on
it and young children really like it.”
kid’s entertainm ent; she includes the
Levine, w ho holds a m aster’s degree
opinions of children and a ratings
in English from New Y o rk University,
scale.
is also the author of two children’s
T he colum n, now in its fourth year,
picture books. She cam e to the pub­
“There have been videos I’ve liked but to
is syndicated b y United M edia, w here
which the children didn’t respond at all, ” says lishing w orld in a som ew hat fairy-tale
Levine form erly w orked and m et her
m anner. “I was taking a class in cre­
Evan Levine ’84, whose syndicated column
husband, Robert Levy. Levine finds
ative writing in graduate school at
includes children’s opinions.
the child reviewers m ostly through
N YU . T he teacher had w on a Newber­
w ord of m outh, and over the years
ry Aw ard for her children’s books and I show ed her one of
she has built up a reviewing contingent of 25 to 30 children
across the country plus several classroom s of children from a m y stories. She w asn’t interested in that, but on the last day
of class, I show ed her another story I’d written. She gave it to
Long Island sch ool. T he children range in age from 3 to 14.
her publisher, w ho later w rote me a letter suggesting changes
“T he older ones write their com m ents or I talk to them . W hen
and then said he w as going to publish it.” That book is Not the
they reach a certain age, they just kind of drop out and lose
Piano, Mrs. Medley!, published in 1991. Her book Kids Pick the
interest in reviewing and new ones always seem to com e
along,” Levine says. “T he little ones, w ho can’t write, talk with Best Videos for Kids was recently published and is similar to
the colum n but in a longer format. It also provides sources to
their parents after viewing a video and then I talk with the
parents.” T he review ers’ youth does not preclude self-expres­ get in tou ch w ith the makers of the video. Her second picture
book, What’s Black and White and Came to Visit?, is expected
sion: Levine said one 10-year-old girl enjoyed reviewing
to be in stores in Septem ber.
videos so m uch she declared, “I’m going to do it until I die.”
Levine’s full-time job is as coordinator for publications for
And a 5-year-old, w hen asked his feelings on a com pilation
young people in the Education Departm ent of the M etropoli­
video of Disney songs, told Levine in an exasperated tone, “I
tan M useum of Art. T o m ake the collections and exhibits
only like songs about baseball!”
m ore accessib le, Levine’s departm ent produces appropriate
Levine takes satisfaction in the fact that for som e children,
literature. In this cap acity she has coordinated a booklet
reviewing videos has a greater reward than just fun. A 12titled 20 Questions: Kids’ Most Asked Questions About the
year-old dyslexic b o y living in Hawaii finds the opportunity to
Metropolitan Museum of Art, expected to be available in the
review videos gives him a v o ice and pride. “The stigm a of
fall. In it, children will find answers to questions su ch as
being dyslexic has left him som ew hat sh y ,” Levine says. “But
“W hat o bject in the M useum co st the m ost?” “Is this the
being able to stand in front of a classroom of his peers and
biggest M useum in the w orld?” and “W hat is the oldest object
voice his opinions has heightened his self-esteem. W hen oth­
in the M useum ?” She also writes and develops children’s
ers in the his class started asking if they could do reviews
guides for the m useum ’s perm anent collections, one of the
too, he said, ‘No, this is for m e.’ Things like that really make
m e feel good. T he colum n is one of the few forums w here kids m ost extensive of w hich is of Egyptian art. Her departm ent
p roduced a booklet that includes a guide to the collections as
get to express their opinions. It teaches children to be critical
well as recipes for Egyptian foods, stories, how to write hiero­
thinkers. T h ey need to think about w hy they liked or didn’t
glyphs, and books to read for additional inform ation. Fam ily
like som ething.”
guides to special exhibitions and teacher m aterials are also
Levine too has learned to becom e a critical thinker in
p roduced in this departm ent.
determ ining how to phrase questions. “Y o u can ’t just ask
Until recently, how ever, m uch of Levine’s insight into w hat
children, ‘Did you like that?’ All they do is say yes or no and
children like to w atch or read could be said to be inform ed
don’t elaborate. So I’ve learned to ask questions like, ‘W ould
you w atch it m ore than once and w hy?’ ‘If you were the writer but not firsthand. That has now changed. Last O cto b er
Levine gave birth to her first child, Tobias. “H aving a baby
w hat w ould you change?’ ‘W ho is your favorite character?’
has m ade m e doubly interested in w hat’s go o d ,” she says.
‘W ould you w atch it w ith a sibling?’ ”
“He has strong opinions already.” Although at this age one
Before sending out the videos, however, Levine gets the
susp ects they are m ore about strained carrots v s. sm ooshed
perm ission of the parents or teachers. The young reviewers
bananas.
rank the videos on fun factor, believability, hum or, visuals,
—Audree Penner
appropriateness, and social value. A num ber ranking and

S

AUGUST 1994

55

Recent Books by Alumni
We w elcom e review copies o f
books by alum ni. The books
are donated to the Sw arthm orean a section o f M cCabe
L ib rary a fte r they have been
noted fo r this colum n.

KarinAguilar-SanJuan’84
(ed.), The S tate o f A sian

A m erica: A ctivism a n d Resis­
tance in the 1990s, South End
Press, 1994. W ritten from the
perspectives of labor orga­
nizers, artists, law yers, histo­
rians, and others, this co llec­
tion of essays provides analy­
ses of a range of issues from
the rise in anti-Asian violence
to the social construction of
race and ethnicity.

Margaret Glover (Moore)
FoleyAmes’38 (trans. and
ed.), The N ew (S o -C alled)
M agdeburg E xperim ents o f
Otto von G uericke, Kluwer
A cad em ic Publishers, 1994.
Translated for the first time
from Latin, this w ork details
the experim ents of 17th-cen­
tury scientist O tto von Guer­
icke, the “neglected genius”
w ho w as associated with the
developm ent of the barom e­
ter, the therm om eter, the air
pum p, and a rudim entary
electric m achine.

EmilieAmt ’82, The Acces­
sion o f H enry I I in England:
R o yal G overnm ent R estored
1149-1159, T he Boydell Press,
1993. This book focuses on
H en ryJI’s achievem ents in
the last few years of King
Stephen’s reign and the first
years of his own, especially
in adm inistration and
finance; on the people w ho
contributed to those achieve­
ments; and on the local and
com m unal dim ension of the
events of these years.

Lotte(Lazarsfeld) Bailyn ’51,
B reakin g the M old: W omen,
M en, an d Tim e in the N ew
C orporate W orld, T he Free
Press, 1993. U sing real-life
cases, Bailyn illustrates com ­
m on problem s facing this
country’s w ork force as busi­
nesses stuggle to address the
58

problem of coordinating
w ork and private life and
explains w hy current com pa­
n y efforts usually fail.

DavidCateforis ’86, W illem
de K ooning, Rizzoli Interna­
tional Publications, 1994.
W illem de K oonig is a painter
o p po sed to any and all sys­
tem s. This fully illustrated
volum e traces the everchanging career of this artist
w ho altered the cpurse of
A m erican art.

Michael C.Ehrhardt ’77, The
Search fo r Value: M easuring
the C om pany’s Cost o f C apital,
Harvard Business School
Press, 1994. Providing a
fram ew ork for practitioners,
this book details the various
m ethods for accurately eval­
uating investm ent in proj­
ects, divisions, or entire com ­
panies.

AndreGunderFrank ’50 and
Barry K. Gills (eds.), The
W orld System , Routledge Inc.,
1993. This book confronts
the idea that historic long­
term econom ic interconnect­
edness did not begin 500
years ago but rather 5,000.
T he editors gathered an
array of scholars involved in
w orld system analysis and
include both statem ents and
responses to the idea of a
“one w orld system .”

PatriciaGillespie

’72 and
M ary M athew s, Voices from

W ithin: Faith -life Stories o f
W om en in the Church, H ope
Publishing H ouse, 1994. This
theological prim er is the
result of a four-year consulta­
tion project w hose object
w as to let w om en explore
how they think/feel/experience their faith, their rela­
tionship to G od, and their
place in the church.

JohnW. Harbeson’60, Ray­
m ond F. H opkins, and David
G. Sm ith (eds.), R esponsible

honoring Charles E. Gilbert,
w ho retired from Swarthm ore’s Politiceli Science
Departm ent in 1989, this vol­
um e contains essays related
to one or both of G ilbert’s
sem inal articles, “T he Frame­
w ork of Adm inistrative
Responsibility” and “Opera­
tive Doctrines of Representa­
tion.”

AnneT. (McCaghey)Keene
’62, E arthkeepers: Observers
an d Protectors o f N ature,
Oxford University Press,
1994. M ore than 100 natural­
ists and environm entalists—
from ancient tim es to the
present— are profiled in this
reference aim ed at adoles­
cent readers. It also includes
tables of plant and animal
classifications, the geological
ages of Earth, a further read­
ing list, a glossary of term s,
and a list of organizations
that prom ote nature stud y
and conservation.

MarthaP. King’73, H ealth y
K ids! State In itiative s to
Im prove C h ildren’s H ealth,
National Conference of State
Legislatures, 1993. This pub­
lication exam ines state
issues and highlights a vari­
ety of program s in insurance
coverage, M edicaid im prove­
m ents, children with special
health care needs, im m uniza­
tion, adolescent health,
m inority health, early inter­
vention, and em ergency
mediceli services.
’73, M elissa K. Hough,
Jennifer M . Lam an, and Julie
A . Poppe, M a te rn al an d C hild

King

MarthaP.

H ealth Legislation 1993,
National Conference of State
Legislatures, 1994. Sum m ariz­
ing approxim ately 500 laws
and resolutions concerning
maternal and child health
issues, this publication cov­
ers su ch topics as adolescent
health, child fatalities, coor­
dination of services, prenatal
care, and sch ool health.

RichardMartin

G overnance: The G lobal C hal­
lenge, University Press of

’67 and
Harold K oda, W aist N ot: The

A m erica, 1994. A festschrift

M igration o f the W aist 1 8 0 0 -

1960, T he M etropolitan
M useum of Art, 1994. Pub­
lished in conjunction with
the exhibition “W aist N ot”
held at the M etropolitan
M useum of Art, this volum e
contains drawings illustrat­
ing the variability of the
“fashion w aist,” from the
Empire dress of the early
1800s to the trapeze dress of
1958.

JeanMichenerNicholson
’49, illustrations b y Judy
NicholsonAsselin ’75, Feel­
ing a L ittle B it A fra id , Peace
and Ju stice Press, 1993. This
children’s book captures in
sim ple language the m any
fears young children face as^
they brave the world and
how they find com fort and
courage in the process.
’49,

MichenerNicholson

Jean

F eeling a L ittle B it Lonely,
Peace and Ju stice Press,
1994. A lso for children, this
book looks at the lonely
times young children experi­
ence and show s how they
develop creativity to deal
with their loneliness.

SarahVanKeuren’66, A
N on-S ilver M an u al: Cyanotype, B row nprint, P alladium
& Gum B ichrom ate, pub­
lished b y the author, 1994.
B ased on 14 years of teach­
ing non-silver photographic
p rocesses, V an Keuren devel­
oped this m anual to supple­
ment classroom instruction
by teachers experienced in
the p rocesses and to help
those already com m itted to
printing in non-silver.

WilliamFooteWhyte’36,
Hon. ’84, P articip an t Observ­
er: A n A utobiography, ILR
Press, 1994. Considered one
of the premiere social scien­
tists of this century, W hyte,
Professor Emeritus of the
New Y o rk State School of
Industrial and Labor Rela­
tions of Cornell University,
gives his first-person account
of his life and career as a
scholar-practioner in sociolo­
gy and ethnography.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

the mathematical cosmologists is that
w e’ll be able to do that again, to say
what is the topology or shape of the
Continued from page 8
whole universe.”
Knowing the shape of the universe
spiritual issues are about moral priori­ might help settle one of the most vex­
ties, and they are not in conflict with,
ing cosmological questions. One theo­
o r even v e r y much rela te d to, the
r y su g g e s ts th at th e r e m igh t be
sh a p e o f th e p h y s ic a l u n iv e r s e .”
enough mass in the universe to allow
Asked if he thinks there was a spiritu­ gravity to halt the expansion, that all
al force behind the big bang, Mather is
of the objects w ould ultim ately pull
concise: “That’s w ay beyond m y capa­ back together into another infinitesi­
bilities.”
mal point, creating another big bang.
Still, the God question hangs over
This so-called “closed” universe may
the work of every cosmologist. If you
be attractive aesthetically and philo­
accept the big bang, you have to ask sophically, but the missing mass— or
what happened before the beginning.
“dark matter”— has not been found.
Mather calls this “a currently unap­
The opposite ( “open”) theory holds
proachable question. Because w e ’re
that the universe will expand forever,
part o f the expanding universe, w e
becoming infinitely large— a beginning
can’t observe it from an external per­ but no end.
spective. As far as w e can tell, the big
T h e q u e s tio n is n ’ t lik e ly to be
bang happened, but there’s virtually
resolved anytime soon, says Mather,
no trace of the conditions that caused
who, with the COBE research winding
it to happen.
down, is thinking about new projects.
“W e’re on an almost entirely math­ “W e have only tw o ways of figuring
ematical adventure here,” he points
out whether the universe is going to
out. “Einstein’s theories o f relativity
stop expanding. One is to know all the
w ere propelled by intuition and math­ law s o f p h y s ics and to kn ow h o w
ematics, and everything he said about
much gravity there is coming from all
it turned out to be true. The hope of kinds of matter. That’s a hard prob­

BEGINNING

Left: The COBE was launched into a 559-

mile high polar orbit by a Delta rocket.
Right: The satellite had to be completely

redesigned after the Challenger explosion
made a space shuttle launch impossible.
lem . T h e o th e r is to m ea su re the
shape of the universe so well that we
can actually see if things are slowing
d ow n . T h a t ’ s a w fu lly hard to o
because you don’t know how far away
things re a lly are. T h e r e ’s no good
yardstick.”
But M ather and his cosm ological
colleagues have solved hard problems
before. “You sort of just circle around
th em and c h e w on th in gs, try to
immerse yourself. It’s like learning a
language. You w ork on it, memorize
the words, talk to people in it— and
eventu ally you can do it. You can’t
quite pin down the moment in which
it happens. Doing science is a skill a
lo t like that, and so m etim es ideas
come from who knows where.”
Is he attracted more to the aesthet­
ics of a closed or an open universe? “I
sort of like the idea of infinite expan­
sion fo r e v e r and e v e r ,” says John
Mather. “But as an observer I have no
preferred view. I have to go measure.” ■
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

MIRACLE
Continued from page 21
patiently, w aiting their turn, eating
fruit, or sipping lukewarm drinks. This
is a day that many here never thought
they would live to see, so they’re pre­
pared to wait a few hours more.
“Today w e ’re putting apartheid in
the grave,” one wom an giggles. “W e
don’t know what will come out of the
grave....” Her com panion chimes inf
“We don’t know what is going t6 hap­
pen. W e w ere suffering a v e r y long
time, you see. Now we are looking to
go forward.”
On W e d n e s d a y m ost o f South
Africa’s 22 million voters are expected
to vote. By the time I get to the Henley
Primary School in Soweto just before
7 a.m., when the polls are scheduled
to open, several hundred people are
already in line. Those at the front say
they’ve been there since 4 a.m. How­
ever, neither the ballot boxes nor the
polling booths have arrived. Shortly
after 7 a pickup truck manned by elec­
tion c o m m is s io n w o rk e rs c o m e s
speeding up and they start scrambling
to get the polling station set up.
By the time voting gets started two
hours later, the line is almost a mile
long and g r o w in g lo n g e r b y th e
moment. Tavern owner Masuga Mota
is at the front and is so excited he said
he couldn’t sleep all night. “I feel like
I’m a b ove the m oon,” says Mota. “I
feel like I’m finally a human being, like
this is my country too. I’m finally a cit­
izen.”

which controls radio and TV broad­
casting in South Africa, had planned
round-the-clock, American-style co v­
erage of the results on radio and its
three TV channels. The election spe­
cials in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, and
Xhosa were going to pre-empt regular
programming for a few days until the
final results were in.
When the shows went on the air for
the first time on Saturday, there were
literally no returns. For the next few
days, results staggered in, a few hun­
dred or a few thousand at a time, with
hours passin g w ith no sig n ifica n t
news. Th e netw ork gam ely tried to
carry on but eventually surrendered
to reality (and audience pressure) and
returned to regular programming.
None of this mattered, of course,
because the result was a fo re g o n e
conclusion. Opinion polls had predict­
ed a comfortable victory for Mandela,
so it came as no real surprise when
the ANC was d ecla red the w inner,
though it didn’t get the parliamentary
m ajority enabling it to w rite a new
con stitu tion w ithout su pp ort from
other parties. De Klerk and the Nation­
al Party finished a distant second.
That evening Nelson Mandela and
F.W. de K lerk, th e tw o m en w h o
presided over the miracle, spoke to
the nation of reconciliation and coop­
eration. Mandela, the humble victor,
took no credit for his role in the liber­
ation struggle, thanking the people as
the true heroes. He shared again his

vision of one South Africa, united, aris­
ing from its disparity of races, cul­
tures, and languages.
* “W e might have our differences,”
M andela said in the nationally tele­
vised address, “but w e are one people
w ith a com m on destiny in our rich
variety of culture, race, and tradition.”
Mandela also paid an eloquent trib­
ute to de Klerk, his partner and adver­
sary in engineering this orderly and
r e la tiv e ly peacefu l tran sition from
white-minority rule to democracy.
“W e have w orked together, quar­
reled, addressed a sensitive program,
and at th e end o f ou r h e a te d e x ­
changes w e were able to shake hands
and drink coffee,” Mandela said.
But for me, there was a moment in
d e K le r k ’ s c o n c e s s io n s p e e c h , a
speech of tremendous grace and elo­
quence, that som ehow captured the
dangerous passage the nation had just
co m p leted and set out the difficult
challenges that lie ahead.
“A p o w e r g rea te r than man has
g iv e n South A fr ic a th e s p irit, th e
chance to com e forward in peace,” de
Klerk said. “God Alm ighty has been
kind to us. Now it is up to the political
le a d e r s to jo in to g e th e r , to w o rk
together, for the good of our people
and to com plete the task of healing
and reconciliation. God bless Africa.”
Then he paused and repeated “God
bless Africa” in Xhosa. “Nkosi Sikelele
iAfrika,” he said. It’s also the name of
South Africa’s new national anthem. ■

O

fficials seriously underestimated
how long it would take to collect
and count nearly 19 million paper bal­
lots by hand. The logistical problems
that plagued the elections themselves
also afflicted the v o te count, and it
was almost another week before the
results w ere officially announced and
the election was declared “free and
fair” b y the In depen den t E lectoral
Commission.
Under procedures set up by elec­
toral officials to guard against fraud,
ballots w ere supposed to be counted
twice b efore results w ere released.
This slowed things down so badly, it
was finally abandoned. This led to an
unusual problem for the South African
Broadcasting Corporation. The SABC,
AUGUST 1994

M ich ael Fields ’69, shown in South Africa with new president Nelson M andela, is national
desk editor for N ation al Public Radio. H e helped coordinate the netw ork’s coverage
o f the historic elections that brought the A frican N ation al Congress to p o w er this spring.
63

Staying Power
By Jeffrey Lott
his year Professor of A stronom y
Wulff D. Heintz and Sproul Obser­
vatory closed the book on an 82-year
p rogram o f p h o to gra p h ic o b serv a ­
tions of the heavens. More than 90,000
ph otogra p h ic plates of about 1,500
stars or star systems have now been
cataloged and evaluated— the largest
co llection of its kind to h ave com e
from one telescope. The program has
“run its course,” said Heintz. “W e have
squeezed out of photography every­
thing w e could do at this location.”
The research has concentrated on
two distinct classes of stars— binaries
and dwarfs. Binary stars are systems
in w hich tw o (o r som etim es m o re)
stars orbit about each other, swinging
in a gravitational do-si-do. Dwarf stars
have smaller-than-usual masses and
low luminosities. Most stars belong to
o n e o r b o th o f th e s e c a te g o r ie s ,
explains H eintz. But it takes c lo s e
observation to optically separate the
binaries or to find the faint dwarfs.
“ M uch o f w h at is kn ow n o f th e
m asses o f sm a ller stars has co m e
from this instrum ent,” says Heintz,
noting that decades of astronometric
m easurem ents are often n eeded to
calcu late stellar masses. “T h e first
goal is to find the distance of a star
and hence its luminosity. For binaries,
through careful measurement w e then
d eterm in e the orbits, p eriod s, and
masses of the members of the system.
This information allows theorists to
determine the internal structure and
evolutionary status of the stars.”
Som etim es a b in ary system w ill
have one bright, easily seen member
and a darker unseen com panion of
lower mass whose existence can only
b e in fe r r e d th ro u g h th e p e r io d ic
motion of the larger star. The gravita­
tional tug from the companion makes
the bright star w aver in its path like
an unbalanced tire. But because the
period of this wiggle might be as long
as 15 to 20 years, long-term observa­
tion is n eeded to d etect the subtle
changes in direction.

T

„

64

T h e Sproul o b s e rv a tio n s began
shortly after the observatory’s 24-inch
refracting telescope was tested out in
1912. A t the tim e, the Sw arthm ore
telescope was the largest refractor on
the East Coast and the third m ost
powerful in the nation. Professor John
Miller became the first of a long line of
distinguished Sw arthm ore astrono­
mers that included Sarah Lippincott
and Peter Van De Kamp.
Heintz has worked at the refractor
for 26 years, helped in recent years
only by student assistants. “It’s diffi­
cult for us to be awake for class the
next day after having spent a night at
th e t e le s c o p e ,” he says, “ but th e
o b serv a tio n s and th eir p ro c es sin g
have continued on schedule.” Dozens
o f stu d en ts h a v e c o n tr ib u te d to
Heintz’s work since he joined the fac­
ulty in 1967.
Of particular interest has been the
Sproul Observatory hunt for so-called
brow n dw arfs, stars o f such sm all
m ass th at th e ir n u cle a r fu rn a ces
h a ven ’t qu ite enough fuel to shine
brightly. Theoretically, a brown dwarf
is about one-twelfth, or less, of the
mass o f the sun, to o sm all to em it
light from a hydrogen thermonuclear
reaction like our star but big enough
to glow faintly as its gases collapse
under the pressure of gravity.
In 1972 Heintz put theory and ob­
servation together, announcing that a
b in a ry sy s te m know n as W olf-424
could be a pair of brown dwarfs. (The
object is named for Max Wolf, the as­
tronomer who first cataloged it about
85 years ago.)
He made this announcement after
studying Sproul photographic obser­
vations o f the object dating back to
the 1930s. Then in 1989, after 17 more
years of observing it through another
of its p e rio d ic w iggles, Heintz pub­
lished a research note in the journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics claiming
that W olf-424 w as in d eed a brow n
dwarf system. He received wide pub­
lic ity fo r his work, w hich The New
York Times described as “a victory for
old-fashion ed astronom y, in w hich
astronom ers used to dedicate their
lives to the study of a limited number
of objects in space.”

Though Heintz’s findings have yet
to be co n firm ed (a n d in fact have
been disputed by som e other scien­
tists), he argues that “only our long­
term observations permit an accurate
calculation of their masses and thus
back up the claim.”
He is critical of the way the United
States supports basic research like
his. “Governmental support has long
been the lowest among industrialized
The 24-inch refracting telescope in the
Sproul Observatory, the gift o f Sen.
W illiam Sproul, cam e into full use in the
spring o f 1912. It was built by the famous
telescope m a k e r John B rashear o f Pitts­
burgh. The observatory’s first director;
Professor John A. M ille r (b elo w ), follow ed
his friend, President Joseph Swain, to
S w arthm ore from In d ia n a University.
Professor W ulff H e in tz (rig h t) jo in e d the
C ollege’s faculty in 1967.

u

You can’t rush things,
says Professor Wulff
Heintz, who has spent
26 years at the Sproul
Observatory telescope

K

G

nations, and in recent years what dol­
lars w ere available have been con­
sumed by expensive space missions.
On long-term projects, ground-based
observers have the advantage over
usually sh ort sp ace m ission s,” he
says, “but it is always easier to get
funding fo r sh in y new eq u ip m en t
than for operating and maintaining
existing equipm ent. Even large re­
search universities are now seriously
affected.” Heintz’s w ork was funded
until 1990 by substantial National Sci­
ence Foundation grants, but financial
support has since been scarce.
For the past four years, Heintz has
worked jointly with Harry Augensen
of W idener U niversity revising and
translating from German a three-vol­
ume Compendium o f Astronomy. The
English edition appeared this sum­
mer.
N ow 64, Heintz looks forw ard to
m ore years at the Sproul eyepiece,
though no longer with photography.
He ex p ec ts to contin ue the visual
ob servation of double stars by mi­
crom eter, a high-magnification mea­
suring d e v ic e w ith crossw ires. He
first did this type of work in 1954 at
Mount Stromlo O bservatory in Aus­
tralia, and he has continued to hunt
binaries at Swarthmore and at Cerro
T o lolo O bservatory in Chile. Heintz
has discovered more than 850 double
stars in his career.
Even w ith o u t p h o to g ra p h y th e
Sproul Observatory will have its uses,
says Heintz. There is talk of adding a
charge-coupled device (CCD) to the
instrum ent— an electron ic im aging
tool that could measure star bright­
nesses more accurately over shorter
observing times, permitting shorter,
m o re s tu d e n t-o rie n te d p r o je c ts .
Heintz hopes to make the telescope
m ore useful for science instruction
and also for the popular open house
nights.
Though photographic observation
is n ow c o n s id e re d o ld -fa sh ion ed ,
after m easuring th ree 16-year-long
orbits of Wolf-424 recorded on more
than 700 p la tes, H ein tz to ld a
reporter, “You can’t rush things. I’ve
m ade m y reputation b y being v e ry
careful.” ■

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