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SWARTHMORE
College Bulletin
Football at Swarthmore:
A question of values
December 1998
S W A R T H M
COLLEGE BULLETIN
DECEMBER 1998
Features
On the Line
10
Football at Swarthmore is a question of values.
By Garret Keizer
Searching for Xanadu
16
Hypertext guru Ted Nelson ’59 scorns the World Wide Web.
By William Saletan ’87
10
Fast Plants
20
A little plant brings big ideas to Chester-Upland classrooms.
By Chad Glover
Departments
Letters
3
Your views on our pages.
20
Collection
4
News of Swarthmore today.
Alumni Digest
24
Your College events connection.
Class Notes
26
The lives of Swarthmoreans.
Deaths
30
Swarthmore remembers.
In My Life
52
42
Reflections on “the good life.”
By Niki Giloane Sebastian ’65
Books & Authors
52
An expanded look at alumni books.
Our Back Pages
64
Wish you were here.
4
On the cover: New head coach Peter
Alvanos wants the Garnet Tide to “play with
one heartbeat.” Photograph by Jim Graham.
O R E
64
Alumni Profiles
An apple for the teacher
37
Ed Clark ’49 helps honor great teaching.
By Audree Penner
Designs of the times
45
Dorothy Twining Globus ’69 knows clothes.
By Audree Penner
Calling Bangladesh
50
Iqbal Quadir ’81 knits together villages.
By Carol Brévart
50
16
24
Parlor Talk
I
n a recent issue of Glamour magazine, Vassar alumna Victoria Balfour complained that her college magazine’s Class Notes are nothing but “bubbly laundry lists of accomplishment” that portray lives
in which “everyone has the spouse of their dreams, a job they adore,
perfect children, and enough money to refurbish old Victorian houses.” She argued that alumni magazines should give Class Notes a shot
of reality by including more of the challenges and struggles of everyday life, such as career problems, illness, depression, difficulties with
children, or the loneliness of old age.
Though Swarthmore’s Class Notes aren’t just the rosy recitations
of accomplishments that Balfour decries, she does have a point: the
notes do tend to paint generally positive pictures of our lives. But
that’s not because the personal experiences she wishes to
Not everyone’s a CEO,
see in print have been excised
by
cheerful class secretaries or
a computer genius, or
Pollyanna editors. They are
a teacher of the year.
less frequently submitted in
the first place—a fact that may
And not everyone
be even more significant than
changes the world.
Balfour’s initial complaint.
Any discussion of the
verisimilitude of Class Notes raises a larger question: How can the
Bulletin best fulfill its communications and public relations mission
for Swarthmore and at the same time be honest and true for its readers?
Our first responsibility, of course, is to tell you the story of the
College, to bring you the student experience, the research, the
debates, and the educational challenges that are the lifeblood of
Swarthmore. Second, from its vantage point on campus, the Bulletin
looks outward, bringing you stories of alumni who engage and sometimes change the world with their ideas and deeds. But not everyone’s a CEO, a computer genius, or a teacher of the year. Not everyone changes the world.
We’ve long had an idea on our story list called “Ordinary Lives.”
As we conceived it, such an article would affirm and celebrate alumni
who get up in the morning, put on their shoes, and go forth to deal
with jobs, kids, money, traffic, grocery shopping, relationships—the
stuff of everyday life. But “Ordinary Lives” has yet to appear, and I’m
beginning to think it never will. That’s because it’s impossible to identify anyone who’s truly an exemplar of the ordinary. One of the values
that Swarthmore imparts is the simple Quaker idea that each person
is truly extraordinary.
Thus, a third, almost paramount goal emerges for those of us who
edit the Bulletin: to relate all of the ideas, accomplishments, challenges, and struggles that are Swarthmore College to the lives of our
readers. To help meet this need, we have launched a new section of
the Bulletin called “In My Life,” which we hope will give individual
voice to the authentic experiences of living. See page 42 for the inaugural essay.
We trust that you read this magazine not out of some sense of
obligation to the alma mater but because you find in it something that
adds value to your own experience, something that stimulates your
thinking, illuminates your journey, and, once in a while, touches your
heart.
—J.L.
2
SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE BULLETIN
Editor: Jeffrey Lott
Managing Editor: Nancy Lehman ’87
Class Notes Editor: Andrea Hammer
News Editor: Cathleen McCarthy
Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner
Designer: Bob Wood
Intern: Jim Harker ’99
Editor Emerita:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Associate Vice President
for External Affairs:
Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59
Changes of Address:
Send address label along
with new address to:
Alumni Records Office
Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore PA 19081-1397
Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail:
alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.
Contacting Swarthmore College:
College Operator: (610) 328-8000
www.swarthmore.edu
Admissions: (610) 328-8300
admissions@swarthmore.edu
Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402
alumni@swarthmore.edu
Publications: (610) 328-8568
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Registrar: (610) 328-8297
registrar@swarthmore.edu
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 08882126), of which this is volume XCVI, number
3, is published in August, September,
December, March, and June by Swarthmore
College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA
19081-1397. Periodicals postage paid at
Swarthmore PA and additional mailing
offices. Permit No. 0530-620. Postmaster:
Send address changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397.
©1998 Swarthmore College
Printed in U.S.A. on recycled paper
Letters
THE GIRLS OF WILLETS
To the Editor:
I very much enjoyed the article “The Campus That Never
Was” [September 1998].
However, for those of us who
don’t get back to the campus
very much, it would have
been a plus to have included
some of the buildings that
did get built. Willets, for
example, was being built in
1959, the year I graduated.
My group of friends didn’t
like the look of it at all and
felt that the campus was
being ruined. I remember a
derogatory rhyme that
began “_____ like saucepans,
heads like skillets, we’re the
girls who live in Willets.”
Does anyone remember the
entire rhyme?
SUSAN BARKER GUTTERMAN ’59
New York
SAVED BY THE
DEPRESSION
To the Editor:
For those of us who lived
through it, the Great Depression has to be considered a
dismal experience. Yet from
“The Campus That Never
Was,” it appears that it may
have unknowingly saved
Swarthmore’s beautiful campus. We should all be most
grateful for that—as well as
for the subsequent appearance of architect Vincent
Kling. Imagine Parrish Hall
without its Mansard roof!
J.C. BENNETT ’45
Morris Plains, N.J.
BEST OF THE BEST
To the Editor:
In reading “The Campus That
Never Was,” I was particularly struck by the mention of a
supposed congruent style
among Swarthmore’s buildings. For my part, I’ve often
boasted that one can tour
several times and places simply by walking the campus.
In short order, one can visit a:
• Victorian mansion
(Parrish Hall)
DECEMBER 1998
• Medieval fortress (McCabe
Library)
• Modern Swiss ski lodge
(Sharples Dining Hall)
• Site of ancient muster and
moot (Scott Amphitheater)
• Timeless European inn
(Worth and Bond)
• Holiday Inn of indistinguishable locale (Willets)
• Gothic cathedral complete with cloister (Clothier
Hall)
• Formally disciplined, utterly exuberant garden
Actually, I was referring to
the rose garden there, but it
does describe the precious
best-of-the-best that I got in
my brief years at Swarthmore.
KARELLYNNE WERTHEIMER
WATKINS ’74
Denver
FRAUGHT WITH NAUGHT
To the Editor:
We are surprised that Louise
Zimmerman Forscher ’44
objects to Associate Dean
Joy Charlton’s use of the
word “fraught” to describe
the student environment at
Swarthmore. The Supplement
to the Oxford English Dictionary (1987) gives, as meaning
4, the definition “distressed;
distressing,” and it cites,
along with a Dick Francis
novel, the Spectator of 1966:
“All that had gone before led
me to expect an end more
fraught.” We have encountered many linguistic innovations at Swarthmore—some
of them quite distressing—
but this is not one of them.
ELLEN MAGENHEIM
Department of Economics
WILLIAM TURPIN
Department of Classics
DIRTY MONEY?
To the Editor:
I read with interest the
recent article in The Garnet
Letter (summer/fall 1998)
announcing the establishment of a scholarship fund in
the name of Edward L. Dobbins ’39. This fund, which I
have learned was established with the help of
$50,000 in matching funds
from the General Electric Co.
(GE), is intended for “a student from Massachusetts,
with preference to a Berkshire County resident, who is
deeply committed to the betterment of society and
exhibits such dedication
through community or environmental activism.”
There’s a great irony here
because in Berkshire County,
GE is widely regarded as a
toxic polluter. The company’s Large Transformer Divison in Pittsfield dumped tons
of PCBs onto the ground and
into the Housatonic River.
Heads like skillets? Susan Barker Gutterman ’59 remembers
a rhyme about the girls of Willets Hall. Above: Willets ca. 1960.
Polluted properties have
become worthless, parks
and playgrounds have been
fenced off, and Pittsfield is
now dominated by a huge
abandoned industrial site
that’s infested with PCBs.
GE has fought for years to
prevent the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
from declaring the area a
Superfund site and has gone
so far as to run full-page ads
in the Berkshire Eagle, claiming no danger from PCB
exposure. Yet recent studies
show that exposure to even
minute amounts of PCBs can
cause endocrine disruption,
leading to birth defects,
learning disorders, and other
health problems.
Does Swarthmore really
feel OK about taking scholarship money from a defiant
toxic polluter? I hope the
College will think twice about
taking dirty money.
ANDY GORDON ’71
Lenox, Mass.
Editor’s Note: In September,
a consent agreement was
announced between the EPA
and General Electric. The
company has promised to
remove PCBs from 1.5 miles
of the Housatonic River bottom, help with economic redevelopment in Berkshire County, seek greater public participation in decisions about the
cleanup, and contribute $25
million to natural resources
restoration in Massachusetts
and Connecticut.
WRITE TO US
The Bulletin welcomes letters
concerning the contents of
the magazine or issues relating to the College. All letters
must be signed and may be
edited for clarity and space.
Address your letters to: Editor, Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1397,
or send by e-mail to bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
3
COLLECTION
TODAY
PHOTOS BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
S WA RT H M O R E
Hundreds rallied after an incident at the College’s Intercultural Center.
Students protest after apparent vandalism
A
crowd estimated at between 300 and 400 gathered at
the Parrish Hall steps on Nov. 12 to protest an apparent defilement of the College’s Intercultural Center
(IC). Late on Nov. 7, a student had discovered piles of what
first appeared to be feces, vomit, and candy sprinkles
around the main room of the IC.
When a large group of students gathered Nov. 8 to organize a protest, campus public safety officers were still investigating whether the incident represented a hate crime or
merely a drunken splurge. The apparent “feces” later turned
out to be cake, but Janine Gent ’99, the student who discovered the mess, said that the placement of the piles looked
intentional, and a flyer distributed at the rally related the
incident to “other events … this semester contributing to a
feeling of lack of safety among students.”
Faculty, staff, and students came to the rally to express
support for the IC, which provides office and meeting space
in the Clothier Hall Cloisters for groups representing Hispanic, Asian, and queer students. The apparent vandalism
occurred in the former Board of Managers room, which
serves as a common space for the groups.
Students carried signs and chanted the slogan: “Respect,
Safety, Unity.” Leaders of the IC, including its director, Assistant Dean Anna Maria Cobo, were joined on the podium by
4
students representing the Black Cultural Center, which has
separate quarters in Robinson House.
“It doesn’t end with a rally like this,” Maurice Eldridge
’61, vice president for college and community relations and
executive assistant to President Alfred H. Bloom, told the
crowd. “If I know anything about my life—and I have been
black all of it—it’s that it’s a struggle that goes on and on.”
After the rally, he added: “What I admire most about Swarthmore is that it’s one of the few places I know of where we
can work on those issues because we genuinely want to—
and believe we can—make it a better place.”
Just weeks before, many of the students at the rally had
attended a much quieter protest against intolerance—a candlelight vigil held on Oct. 20, following the brutal murder of
Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman.
The earlier gathering was more like a Quaker meeting
than a call to action. Organizer Tim Stewart-Winter ’01 spoke
briefly about Shepard and gay youth, followed by a long,
silent meditation. Gay students read poems, shared their
fears, and told personal stories of social persecution. The
vigil ended with several verses of “We Are a Gentle Angry
People” and “We Shall Overcome.” Afterward, several students lingered under the tower and quietly hugged.
“It was probably the most intense public mourning I’ve
ever experienced,” said Talia Young ’01. “I still feel a little
physically ill thinking about it.”
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
n easy A? No such thing at Swarthmore.
That claim is becoming a rare distinction; few colleges
can make it any more. Grade inflation is climbing steadily at
other top-ranked schools, according to a recent article in
the U.S. News & World Report, which placed the College
No. 2 among liberal arts colleges in the country. Swarthmore was identified as one of the few schools that still
make students work hard for A’s and B’s.
Swarthmore grads had a collective grade-point average
(GPA) of 3.24 last year. “A B-plus is pretty good at Swarthmore,” the article reported, “but still a notch or two below
the average at many other elite schools.”
By contrast, GPAs at other schools—including Ivy
League schools such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and
Penn—have increased significantly, said U.S. News. In a
1993 survey of 150 colleges, 26 percent of students’ grades
were A-minus or higher compared with 19 percent in 1976.
At Princeton, a two-year study released last February found
that the median GPA of its graduating class had increased
from 3.08 in 1973 to 3.42 last year.
“Faculty, especially teaching assistants and younger professors, are caving in” to complaints from students about
“marks they consider too low,” said U.S. News. “At Princeton, the number of grades that have been ‘readjusted’ has
increased every year during the 1990s.”
Other schools that have avoided grade inflation include
Class of 2002 ... Women outnumber
men by 21 in Swarthmore’s new 369member first-year class. More freshmen are from New York (57) than any
other state, including Pennsylvania,
which follows at 42. Twenty-eight class
members are from other countries.
Of 4,585 original applicants for the
Class of 2002, only 19 percent were
offered admission. The median combined SAT-I score for the class is
1,440—an increase of 10 points over
last year. Seventy members scored a
perfect 800 on the verbal portion, 33
on the mathematics. Engineering was
the most popular choice among the 35
percent who chose majors, followed
by biology and political science.
Great debate ... In its first annual
Novice Invitational Tournament, Oct. 2
and 3, the College’s Amos J. Peaslee
Debate Society hosted 30 debate
teams from eight colleges. The Swarthmore team of John Dolan ’01 and Karla
Gilbride ’02 placed second behind the
winning Princeton University team.
Dolan and Gilbride also placed second
and seventh, respectively, in individual
competition.
On the following day, the Swarthmore College Bowl team hosted 16
DECEMBER 1998
© SCOTT GOLDSMITH
A
Grade inflation—everywhere else
The College is still all undergraduate, but grad schools know that
Swarthmore grades more rigorously than many other schools.
Johns Hopkins University, Reed College, St. John’s College,
and the University of the South.
When applying to graduate schools, students from these
colleges need not fear losing out to students with higher
GPAs, however. Graduate and professional programs are
aware of the inflation trend, said U.S. News, and have begun
to focus less on GPAs than on standardized tests, essays,
interviews, and recommendations. MIT, for example, does
not use GPAs as part of its graduate admissions process
but seeks self-starters who show research and problemsolving abilities.
bia University, and then returned to
Swarthmore to teach French classes
from 1957 to 1995.
P E O P L E
teams of first- and second-year students at a quiz bowl tournament.
Swarthmore took second place behind
the University of South Carolina. Peter
Austin ’02 and Rhett Buttermore ’01
were fourth and fifth highest-scoring
individuals out of about 60 contestants.
Lauded professors ... Co-author
Aimee S.A. Johnson, assistant professor of mathematics, was awarded the
Mathematical Association of America’s
George Pólya Award for “Putting the
Pieces Together: Understanding Robinson’s Nonperiodic Tilings,” an article
published earlier this year in the College Mathematic Journal.
This month, Jean Ashmead Perkins
’49, Susan W. Lippincott Professor
Emerita of French, will receive the
Association of Departments of Foreign
Languages Award for Distinguished
Service in the Profession. Perkins
received an M.A. and a Ph.D. at Colum-
Shooting star ... Rush Holt, a former
Swarthmore physics professor and
erstwhile Honors examiner, won a congressional seat in New Jersey’s 12th
District last month. Holt’s victory may
have been helped along by a ditty
sung on the floor of the House of Representatives by Michael Pappas, the
district’s conservative Republican
incumbent.
In an advertisement broadcast
repeatedly in the final weeks of a close
campaign, Democrat candidate Holt
used a recording of Pappas singing the
praises of Whitewater Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr. Against an antiStarr voice-over, Pappas was shown on
the floor of the House singing:
Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr,
Now we see how brave you are.
We could not see which way to go
If you did not lead us so.
The ads proved effective as the
Monica Lewinsky affair dragged on and
public opinion of Starr soured. Holt,
whose last job was assistant director
of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab,
has never held elected office.
5
COLLECTION
Birth of a stereotype
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
N
obody gets over seeing Birth of a Nation for the first
time,” visiting film scholar Quinn Eli told black studies students who had just seen the 1915 silent film
in November. Hollywood’s first blockbuster, the three-hour
Birth of a Nation, made director D.W. Griffith a legend and
set the standard for cinematography for a generation to
come. But the film also glorified the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)—
and, some say, led to the KKK’s resurgence in the 1920s—
and introduced negative black stereotypes that persist in
filmmaking today.
Several of the students, all African American, confessed
to laughing through much of Birth of a Nation. The film
shows black men leering at white women and baring their
feet in a Reconstruction-era state legislature, before a dignified and—according to film captions—“helpless white
minority.”
“It was so outrageous, it was funny,” one student said.
Many of the film’s “Negroes” were obviously white actors in
blackface. “It’s just disturbing,” said another, “to think it
was a regular movie, like Superman.”
“It was not a ‘regular movie’ then,” Eli countered, “but it
defined what regular movies would become.” At a time
when most movies were 5-cent one-reelers, the epic 12-reel
Birth of a Nation wowed audiences and launched the “plantation melodrama” as one of film’s most popular genres—
and, Eli would add, myths. Some 75 movies set in the Old
South followed, littered with mammies and Uncle Toms,
and “nearly all were huge successes,” Eli said. “Birth of a
Nation didn’t invent black stereotypes, but it brought them
to a much broader, more absorbent audience.” Eli is an
assistant professor of English at Community College of
Philadelphia and a doctoral candidate at Temple University.
Among the stereotypes established in the film, he said,
“The Ku Klux Klan used Birth of a Nation as a recruiting film
well into the 1960s,” film scholar Quinn Eli told black studies
students of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent film.
were “coons, toms, bucks, mulattoes, and mammies.”
Asked to define these terms, students responded knowingly. Coons are “bumbling and idiotic,” toms are “sellouts”—
the rewarded, faithful companions to white masters, and
bucks are dark-skinned, hulking sexual predators. “The
buck was created whole cloth out of Birth of a Nation,” Eli
said. “The KKK was invented to protect white womanhood
from the buck.”
Students were warned to be wary of the subtle perpetuation of these roles in current cinema—even in crowd
pleasers such as The Color Purple and Lethal Weapon, in
which Danny Glover plays a classic tom, Eli said. After a
scathing analysis of Gone With the Wind—another blockbuster whose charming Old-South appeal revolved around
stereotypes established in Birth of a Nation—his claim that
Ghost was essentially “the same movie” (with Whoopi Goldberg presumably a female tom) met with laughter and
good-natured protests.
“Oh, I’ll never be able watch a movie the same way,” one
student groaned.
“That’s the point,” Eli replied.
Sap rising—
Can’t you feel it, Anna?
Even now, in the autumn dusk—
Even now, with the wild leaves flying....
T
hus goes the libretto of The Black
Swan, a collaboration between
Nathalie Anderson, professor of English literature, and Thomas Whitman,
assistant professor of music. Their
opera so interested Sarah Caldwell,
artistic director of the Boston Opera
Company and legend of the music
world, that she agreed to direct the
premiere at the Lang Performing Arts
Center in September.
Based on Thomas Mann’s 1953
novella Die Betrogene, the opera tells
the story of a widow who falls in love
6
with her son’s tutor and believes that
love has made her young again. Whitman composed the opera, working
closely with Anderson, who wrote the
libretto. Baritone David Kravitz ’86
played the male lead.
Anderson, a poet, was just beginning her year’s leave as a Pew Fellow
in the Arts when Orchestra 2001 Artistic Director James Freeman introduced
her to Whitman five years ago.
“Mann’s story seemed to me to
offer an intriguing opportunity to
explore a woman’s rediscovery and
reaffirmation of her own self-love, as
she allows herself to sidestep societal
assumptions, expectations, and proprieties and open herself to love for a
younger man,” says Anderson.
DENG-JENG LEE
Professors collaborate on love story
David Kravitz ’86 (left, with soprano Freda
Herseth) sang the male lead in the premiere
of The Black Swan, an opera written by
professors Nat Anderson and Tom Whitman.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
the reasons indicated in U.S. News ratings. True, we have
many quantifiable resources, including an incredibly low
student–faculty ratio. These are the sorts of things a college can purchase, however, if it is fortunate enough to
rue to its faintly medieval architecture, Swarthmore
have sufficient funds. What really sets Swarthmore apart is
may be considered a kind of monastic cloister where
its institutional seriousness of purpose, what President
students, faculty, and administration are very disciAlfred Bloom often refers to as a commitment to “ethical
plined—or at least place a high value on the appearance of
intelligence.”
hard work. Many of us don’t get out much into the so-called
A commitment to ethical intelligence inevitably leads to
real world. Although we don’t have a written list of monasa sense of discomfort. By asking hard questions and then
tic rules, some are nonetheless communicated and folusing our academic and intellectual skills to search for
lowed. For example, unless you work in the higher reaches
answers, we risk upsetting our belief systems. We also open
of the administration, being well dressed is frowned upon.
opportunities to dispel erroneous stereotypes we may have
It’s fascinating to observe how first-year students and new
taken for granted.
faculty gradually assume uniform habits of moderate
Comfort has to do with the known, and it easily leads to
grunginess.
stasis and hardening. Ethical intelligence, on the other
Over the nine years that I’ve been teaching here, I’ve seen
hand, accepts continual forays into the unknown. A liberal
a subtle but similar hardening of avowed ideas at Swartharts education ought to liberate, not ossify. It ought to
more, especially, I think, since the Colmake students uncomfortable.
lege was designated No. 1 a couple of
The notion of a liberal arts education
years in a row by U.S. News & World
originated in the ancient world where
Report. One aspect of that hardening can
there were seven “liberal arts”—the
be seen in campus attitudes toward reliverbal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and
gious faith. I wonder why, considering
logic, and the mathematical arts of
academia’s current climate of respect for
arithmetic, geometry, music, and
cultural diversity, it is still considered
astronomy. The liberal arts (from liber,
acceptable to scoff at religious faith and
meaning “free”) were carried on by free
its practitioners. Why is it that Budcitizens, as opposed to the mechanical
dhists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims are
arts, such as carpentry, which were
so often assumed to be unintelligent or
rendered by slaves.
psychologically unstable? From what I’ve
That solidification and maintenance
observed in faculty and classroom disof class distinctions doesn’t apply at
cussions, and from students’ written
Swarthmore because we’re able to
work, this widespread attitude results
afford a financial-aid policy that allows
from ignorance, intellectual laziness, or
students to be admitted regardless of
outright prejudice.
social class. Yet are our students truly
At a faculty lunch last year, the Colfree?
lege’s Roman-Catholic, Jewish, and Michael Marissen is associate professor of
When I say that I hope students will
music. His book Lutheranism, AntiProtestant religious advisers gave an eyebe uncomfortable at Swarthmore, I
Judaism, and Bach’s St. John Passion
opening report on religious life on cammean that I hope they will not expect
was published this year, along with
pus. It turns out that about half our stutheir education simply to affirm their
dents make use of the Office of Religious An Introduction to Bach Studies, which existing identities and commitments.
he co-wrote with Daniel R. Melamed of
Advisers on campus, usually in their first
This sort of individual or group egoism,
or second year. It’s also not commonly Yale University, and an edited volume of in my view, is neither ethical nor intelliessays, Creative Reponses to Bach
known that a significant number of
gent. I also hope that Swarthmore will
from Mozart to Hindemith.
tenured Swarthmore professors are
do more than inspire questions about
deeply committed Jewish or Christian
individuals’ identities and commitbelievers.
ments. If a liberal arts education can affirm one’s gender,
It is not unusual in academic work to see scholars and
race, color, age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, there is no
students struggling to explain such things as the revolution
reason why it should work against one’s faith.
in 18th-century France or the predominantly liturgical creIn studying the sciences and “humanities” at Swarthative output of J.S. Bach. Historians often assume that peomore (I prefer the corresponding German notion of Geisple must have socioeconomic motivations for their behavteswissenschaften—literally, “spiritual/intellectual knowlior, but is it so difficult to imagine that intelligent, psychoedges”), I hope students will feel challenged and compelled
logically stable people might actually do things that are
to examine many things beyond what is comfortable and
against their social or economic interests? That in some
the immediately perceivable. I expect this will help in best
instances their behavior might be inspired by genuine relirealizing the College’s stated purpose: “to make its students
gious beliefs? You don’t have to agree with the religious
more valuable human beings and more useful members of
beliefs to appreciate their potential explanatory power in
society.”
historical research.
This essay was adapted from Professor Marissen’s talk at
Swarthmore may well be among the top two or three libFirst Collection, welcoming the Class of 2002 to Swarthmore.
eral arts colleges, but if so, I don’t believe it’s because of
Faculty view: Is religious faith
incompatible with academic life?
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
T
DECEMBER 1998
7
COLLECTION
A
s electronic media slowly take over paper, the
fascination with hand-crafted books grows. Nowhere
is
this dichotomy more obvious than at Swarthmore.
The McCabe Library, for example, is becoming increasingly computer dependent even as its historic special collections continue to
expand. Book art has dominated both McCabe’s lobby and the College’s List Gallery this semester, and an art books program is being
launched in the Art Department.
The program reflects a major trend in the art world. Though
many artists are exploring computer-generated art, others are delving into the ancient bookmaking traditions of papermaking and
printmaking, binding, illustration, and calligraphy. Swarthmore has
been treated to a rich sampling of art books this fall. The library
kicked off the semester with “Art of Visualizing Poetry,” an exhibit
of the work of nine book artists, followed by an October show of
books by Shirley Jones, a Welsh artist and poet.
In October, the List Gallery opened “Challenging Forms: Books,
Poetry, and the Visual Arts,” with a lecture by David Bunn, a conceptual artist who makes art and poetry from the card catalogs that
many libraries are discarding these days. Bunn’s Los Angeles studio
is crammed with more than 500 boxes of musty card catalogs,
which he sees as “a present-day ruin.”
Bunn’s were the only unillustrated books in the exhibit. Other
examples were elegant, sometimes cerebral celebrations of paper
and ink by a variety of artists, including painters, printmakers, photographers, and poets. Books ranged from minimalist silk prints to
large rice paper accordions with transparent windows. Some books
were collaborations between artists and poets; others were artists’
interpretations of the classics. Painter Sean Scully brooded on
James Joyce, and Lesley Dill created mixed-media interpretations of
Emily Dickinson’s poetry with photo collage and stitched figures.
“This show is not meant to be a comprehensive survey but a
provocative sampling of creative strategies, influences, and
themes,” says List Gallery Director Andrea Packard ’85. “In concert
with the library, we want to provide an opportunity for campus dialogue.”
Randall Exon, chair of the Art Department, hopes that dialogue
will lead to a major interdisciplinary book arts program. This
semester, students from the department’s Advanced Works on
Paper class collaborated with the English Department’s Advanced
Poetry Workshop to create their own illustrated books. The results
were shown at McCabe Library at the end of November.
Exon hopes to see art students collaborating with philosophy
and even math classes in the future. “We’re one of the few liberal
arts colleges making a serious attempt to establish a book arts program,” he says. “One thing that unites everyone on campus is an
interest in books. So this project brings everyone together. It’s a
perfect fit.”
8
Bound in Japanese cloth, Twelve Prints and Poems,
an accordion book by artist/poet Peter Nadin, features
poetry, etchings, and chine collé (Chinese collage).
The book was shown at the List Gallery in October.
Philosophy professor dies
Morrison Moore,
John
professor emeritus of
philosophy and religion
and longtime registrar
of the College, died on
Sept. 26 at age 94.
Moore received a bachelor of divinity from the
Union Theological Seminary, a master’s degree
from Harvard, and a doctorate in philosophy
from Columbia.
After teaching at Hamilton College for 10
years, Moore came to Swarthmore in 1943 as
associate professor of philosophy. He served
as associate dean of men from 1945 to 1950,
as registrar from 1948 to 1971, and as acting
director of the Friends Historical Library
from 1971 to 1973. He was an active member
of the Swarthmore Monthly Meeting, served
on the boards of Pendle Hill and the Friends
Historical Association and as executive director of the Society for Values in Higher Education.
Professor Moore wrote the influential
book Theories of Religious Experience and a
book on the history of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. He was also an editor of the Journal of Quaker History. Moore is survived by
his wife of 68 years, Margaret Whiteside
Moore, two daughters, five grandchildren,
and seven great-grandchildren.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
Ink + Paper = Book Art
outstanding seasons. Co-captain Brian Bell ’99 led the team
in receiving with 33 catches for 481 yards. Bell finished second in the Centennial in catches per game (4.13), third in
receiving yards per game (60.1), fifth in kickoff return averhe women’s field hockey team appeared in the postage (19.6), and sixth in all-purpose yards average (86.3).
season for the third consecutive season, as they
On defense, the Tide was led by a freshman trio of linereached the semifinals of the ECAC Mid-Atlantic
backers dubbed “the smurfs” because all are under six feet
Championship. The Garnet finished the 1998 campaign with
tall. Joe Corso made 69 tackles and led the squad with seven
a 13-7 mark and second place in the Centennial Conference,
tackles for loss. Jon Bartner recorded 66 tackles and a teamwhere they posted a 7-2 record.
high of three forced fumbles, and Axel Neff made 57 tackles.
Holly Baker ’99 and Donna Griffin ’99 paced the squad on
Defensive lineman Tony Skiadas ’99 recorded 40 tackles—6.5
offense. Baker scored a conference-best 17 goals and seven
for loss, forced three fumbles, and received a Centennial
assists for 41 points, while Griffin led the Centennial with 11
honorable mention.
assists. Both athletes were named First Team All-Centennial
The men’s soccer team struggled to a 3-17 overall mark
Conference and First-Team Regional All-American and were
and posted an 0-7 conference record. Scott Samels ’99 led
selected to play in the National Field
the Garnet offensive attack with a
Hockey Coaches Association Divicareer-high five goals and one assist.
sion III North/South Senior All-Star
Midfielder Mike Schall ’99 scored one
Game.
goal on the season and was named
Defensive leader Jen Hagan ’99
Second Team All-Centennial.
scored four goals and two assists
The women’s soccer team recorded
and was named Second Team Alla 6-12 mark overall and went 2-7 in
Centennial and Second Team
conference action. Forward Sarah
Regional All-American. The Garnet
Nusser ’02 led the offense with eight
was ranked 12th nationally and fifth
goals and received a Centennial Conin the South Atlantic region.
ference honorable mention. The team
Under the direction of first-year
defense improved under first-year
head coach Luci Rosalia, the
head coach Shawn Ferris, as the Garwomen’s cross-country team placed
net allowed just 24 goals compared
third at the Centennial Conference
with 54 in 1997. Goalkeeper Sari
championships and seventh at the
Altschuler ’01 recorded five shutouts
NCAA Division III Mid-East Regional.
and 1.97 goals against average.
Jokotade Agunloye ’01 placed
The men’s tennis team sent two
fourth in both races, earning Allmembers to the National Rolex ChamCentennial Conference and Allpionships for the second consecutive
Mideast Regional honors and qualiseason. Greg Emkey ’99 captured the
fying for the NCAA championships.
singles portion of the ITA Division III
Agunloye is the third Garnet harrier
East Championships to advance to the
to reach the championships in as
National Finals, then teamed with
many years.
Peter Schilla ’01 to capture the douAt the regionals, captain Karen
bles title. At the Nationals, Emkey finLloyd ’00 ran a personal-best time of
ished seventh in singles and, with
20:28.9 to place 43rd, while Amalia
Schilla, placed seventh in doubles.
Jerison ’00 finished 69th. The Garnet
The women’s tennis team posted a
posted a 3-1 record in dual meets
1-3 fall season mark but closed on a
Regional All-American ... Jokotade Agunloye, a high note as they swept all six singles
this season.
sophomore cross-country runner from New York
The men’s cross-country squad
brackets to capture the Capital Classic
City, earned regional All-American honors with
earned sixth place at the Centennial
at Catholic University. No. 1 singles
fourth-place finishes in both the Centennial
championships and ninth at the
player Jen Pao ’01 led the Garnet with
Conference championships and the Mideast
Mideast Regionals. Marc Jeuland ’01
an 8-1 mark on the season.
Regionals. She finished 81st in a field of 183 at
placed 24th at the Regionals and
With just two seniors on the squad,
the national meet at Dickinson College.
was named to the All-Mideast
the young Garnet volleyball team
Regional team. Captain Gordon
struggled, posting an 0-16 mark. FirstRoble ’99 placed 51st—second for the Garnet—while Sam
year Elisa Matula led the squad in kills, and sophomore BonEvans ’01 finished 53rd. At the Centennial championships,
nie French led in assists.
Jeuland finished in 10th place to earn Second Team All-CenHaverford leads the battle for the Hood Trophy after the
tennial honors.
fall season, 5-1. The lone Garnet victory came in field hockey
New enthusiasm infused the football team this season
as Swarthmore blanked the Fords 4-0. In their final home
with the hiring of first-year head coach Pete Alvanos. Unforcontest, seniors Donna Griffin, Holly Baker, and Lurah Hess
tunately, the results were the same. The Garnet Tide finscored goals to top Haverford, and Julie Finnegan ’00 also
ished its third consecutive winless season with an 0-8
scored.
record. Despite the dismal record, several individuals had
—Mark Duzenski
Field hockey in postseason play
for third consecutive season
MARK DUZENSKI
T
DECEMBER 1998
9
S WA R T H M O R E
ON THE LINE
OF SCRIMMAGE
To discuss football at Swarthmore is to engage in
a discussion of what makes up a liberal arts education.
By Garret Keizer
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM GRAHAM
R
oughly 500 miles lie between my home in
ball team’s existence. This last sounds like an exagnortheastern Vermont and the campus of
geration, of course, but exaggerated reports hold
Swarthmore College, where I’m driving to
some of the allure of far-off places.
report on the rebuilding of its football program.
The distance seems inconsequential, in part
warthmore is no longer a Quaker college in
because the College has provided me with a much
much the same way as the Parthenon is no
better car than the one I usually drive, and in part
longer a Greek temple: You don’t need to
because I’m traveling a good deal farther than that
stand for very long in either place to know where
from my own experience. I’m coming for a glimpse
you are or to know where, some years back, you
of two cultures about which I know very little: the
would have been. There’s a certain aura.
culture of intercollegiate athletics and the culture
At Swarthmore, the aura has to do with the likeof small liberal arts colleges. I tell friends I’m not
lihood of hearing the word “Quaker” in an intergoing as a writer; I’m going as an anthropologist.
view, with a vestigial belief in every person’s inner
This is what I know: After two
light—with what one professor
seasons of not winning a single
calls “our exquisite sensitivity” to
football game—and of being badly
differences of background and
beaten more than once—Swarthpoint of view. An outsider comes
more College has made a well-pubto feel that he will not be dislicized decision to rebuild its promissed out of hand here, and pergram. The decision has come at
haps also that if he’s not careful to
least partly in response to the frusremain on the paths laid out here,
trations of players, seven of whom
he risks stepping on a rare plant
quit the squad in midseason last
or a raw nerve.
year. The decision has included
Above all, the aura has to do with
removing the former coach, Karl
New head coach Peter Alvanos.
a concern for values. “To me, that’s
Miran, then a tenured faculty memwhat makes the discussion of footber of the College, and hiring Peter Alvanos, 33, forball intellectually interesting,” says John Caskey,
mer defensive coordinator for the University of
economics professor and chair of a committee that
last year examined Swarthmore’s athletic program.
Chicago and one of 125 applicants for the Swarth“Economists love to talk about fighting over
more job. In addition, the College has added to the
resources, but the trade-offs here are of values, not
coaching staff and to the recruitment budget.
of money.” To discuss the presence of football at a
I am told that not all members of the College
community support these developments. I am also
place like Swarthmore is to engage almost
inevitably in a discussion of what makes up a libtold that some other members are probably not
eral arts education—even of what makes an action
aware of these developments, or of the football
successful or an experience meaningful.
team’s losing streak, or, in some cases, of the foot-
10
S
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Where there seems to be the clearest consensus
is on the importance of winning. Everyone from
Athletic Director Bob Williams to President Alfred
H. Bloom asserts that a successful team need not
be defined by a winning season. No surprises
there. All are equally in agreement, however, that
some wins and, more important, some reasonable
assurance that winning is possible are essential for
students to feel they have had a meaningful experience.
And that’s where one starts to hear about tradeoffs.
To field a football team capable of winning at
least some of the time requires a critical number of
talented players, probably around 60. The present
squad numbers 37, with roughly 20 first-year students. Small teams like this one can be rendered
noncompetitive by a handful of injuries. And small
teams are also more likely to have injuries because
the same players constantly take the field.
The “depth” problem takes one to issues of
admission and even deeper into a discussion of
values. If one thinks of a college administrative
building as a single cell, the admissions office is
where the DNA is. It’s where one finds the codes for
what a college values most. Everyone knows that
Swarthmore prizes and attracts academic excellence. Last year, the Swarthmore Admissions Office
turned down more than 200 applicants with SAT
verbal scores of 800. Needless to say, the College
values other attributes besides those required to
earn a perfect SAT score. Among these values are
racial, cultural, and regional diversity as well as talents that correspond to the many offerings of an
institution like Swarthmore. Dean of Admissions
Robin Mamlet says that admissions work here is a
matter of “how you meet 2,000 needs with a class
of 360 students.” At present, one of those needs is
football.
“Could the fact that an applicant is talented in
football weigh into an admissions decision?
Absolutely.” Having said that, Mamlet goes on to
debunk the “reductive” notion that admissions at
Swarthmore can be summarized as a search for the
“first best kid” at a given school and that recruiting
football players or, for that matter, dancers or engineering students is a matter of setting aside a “first
best kid” in order to admit a “second best” or a
“third best” who meets a given recruitment need.
“We just don’t look at people that way,” she says.
“As an admissions person, I believe that my job
is to bring into the College the kinds of students
that our faculty wants to teach. So if the kids who
can play football are not the kinds of kids our faculty wants to teach, I don’t want to do it. But I can
think of specific kids who play football, who love
football, and who wouldn’t choose a college that
DECEMBER 1998
11
F
ootball at
Swarthmore
is a complex
issue—like
every other
issue here.
Complexity is
the darling of
the intellectual
temperament.
12
didn’t have football, who are so perfect for this
place. I can think of their names, I can think of their
stories, and I know there are others out there.”
The problem is that other schools also know
they’re out there and want them just as much as
Swarthmore does. Even among Division III schools,
the scramble to attract athletically gifted and academically qualified students is an ever-escalating
competition that more than one person at Swarthmore likens to an arms race. “I’m a big sports fan,”
says Economics Professor Rob Hollister, “but I
think that for these liberal arts colleges, it’s out of
control. There are a bunch of adults down in the
field house spending 80 percent of their time kissing up to a bunch of kids and their parents to
recruit them. This is not what grown-up people
should be doing.”
Along with questions of the values at stake in
recruiting football players, one also hears questions surrounding the values at stake in building
them into an effective team with an effective base
of support. These discussions are also bound up
with questions about the attitudes that the players
themselves bring to campus.
Associate Provost Barry Schwartz, who teaches
in the Psychology Department says, “The history
of football at Swarthmore in the time I’ve been at
Swarthmore—which is 28 years—has been vexed
almost the entire time. For most of that time, we
had a bad team. And when we had a good team, the
price we paid was sub-rosa warfare between the
football team and the rest of campus. We had a lot
of working-class kids playing football. We were successful in recruiting these kids. But Swarthmore
was like outer space to these kids....
Here are these athletes who’ve
been stars in high school ... discovering that on this campus people
have disdain or contempt for football players.”
Referring to “a set of values definitely related to the fact that we
were founded by Quakers,” Robin
Mamlet says, “This is not a place,
historically, that has valued display
of prowess. We’ve only recently
become stronger in the arts, for instance. I think
what lives on here is an ethos that doesn’t always
neatly intersect with a spectator sport.”
It is precisely at this point of dubious intersection that some would make their strongest arguments in favor of the school’s commitment to football and its latest efforts to rebuild the program. In
a nutshell, football becomes an issue of diversity.
Characterizing this side of the argument, John
Caskey says, “The football players frequently come
from central Pennsylvania, tend to be more politiSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
cally conservative, more business oriented. Do you
want Swarthmore to be all tree-hugging liberal
eggheads?”
College Provost Jennie Keith apparently does
not. “A pitfall of a place like Swarthmore is a disdain for things that are not intellectual. Our students need to learn not to disdain other parts of
human experience. I think that’s part of our educational mission.” She goes on to note that “football
is attractive because it cuts very widely across
society. We have other sports here that are perhaps more regional or that are experienced by people of more privileged backgrounds.”
“It keeps us from becoming precious,” says Tom
Blackburn, an English professor and longtime faculty adviser to the team. He is one of several who
note that the kind of discipline and collective effort
expected of the men on the team enrich a college
culture where individual achievement and small
classes are the norm.
No one makes these points more emphatically
than the players themselves.
“We not only bring diversity,” says Mason
Tootell ’99, “we bring aggressive attitudes. We
bring the lessons we learn from the field into the
classroom.” Tim Malarkey ’89, who majored in
physics and exudes the confidence of a man capable of running for Congress at a moment’s notice,
says that playing football “did more for my selfesteem than any other experience.” Co-captain J.P.
Harris ’99 concurs. “I learned more about myself by
not quitting football last year than I learned in any
classroom.”
All of this is to say that football at Swarthmore
is a complex issue—which may be no more than to
say that football is like every other issue here. As
I’m told repeatedly, Swarthmore is a “highly intellectual place,” and complexity is the darling of the
intellectual temperament.
In the field of action, however, simplicity still
characterizes most decisions, where, essentially,
you either do, or you don’t. As quarterback Ford
O’Connell ’99 says, “If you’re in a class, a professor
can give you a problem that you can take home,
that you can rationalize, that you can internalize.
On the football field, you have three seconds to
make a decision.”
Though Swarthmore may have taken longer
than three seconds, the College did choose to act:
decisively, unequivocally, and, in dismissing its former coach, some would say rashly. Without denying the complexity of the issues, without ignoring
the inescapable question cited by John Caskey—
“Is there some limit to the number of things you
can be excellent in and stay a small college?”—this
small college chose one course of action and
rejected several others, not the kind of move for
DECEMBER 1998
which tree-hugging liberal eggheads are generally
renowned.
H
ead football coach Peter Alvanos could
dress up like a firefighter, and you would
still know he was a football coach. Something about the way he cocked his helmet, or
shouted his orders, or described carrying children
through the door of a burning building as “just my
job”—something would give it away that he’s
doing what he was born to do.
Maybe his eyes most of all. “When we interviewed him, we saw that spark in his eyes,” says
J.P. Harris. I hear the same observation from several other teammates. “He’s a fiery coach,” says Ansa
Yiadom ’01, “and that’s what we needed here.”
What nearly every returning player seems to
think the team needed most of all was a higher
standard of discipline. “And fortunately or unfortunately,” says Peter Alvanos, “that’s what I’m all
about.” On his first day of summer training,
Alvanos greeted his new charges by saying, “Take
off your hats and sit up straight.” Then, in the
stunned silence that followed, he
said, “Welcome to football camp.”
This regimented approach
might soon wear thin were it not
coupled with good doses of
humor (Alvanos likes to refer to
the rigors of summer training as
“Club Med”—plenty of food, sunshine, etc.), active listening
(Alvanos met individually with
every player who finished the previous season before designing his
plan for this one), and a work
ethic that exceeds anything he requires from the
team. “It’s the same drive that I would hope any
professor has,” says Alvanos, who’s fond of referring to himself and his staff as “professors of football.” Reviewing a summer training schedule that
begins with “dawn patrol” and ends with roundthe-campus bed checks from 11 p.m. till after midnight, one has to marvel at the professors he must
have known!
One also has to wonder at the personal cost of
this routine for a man who responds to a question
about his “other interests” by saying, “Mostly I just
want to be with my family. Just to push the kids on
their swings if that’s what they want—that’s
enough for me. I’m a pretty simple guy.”
His assistant coach and friend, John Keady, who
came with Alvanos from Chicago, agrees with the
self-assessment. “If you talked to Pete, if you sat
down and had a beer with him, you’d find out that
what you see is what you get. He’s going to be honest with you.” I did talk with Pete, and I did have a
“I’ve been playing
football since I was
in fourth grade,”
says co-captain
Brian Bell (top),
“and as far as I’m
concerned, football
is not a cerebral
game. Thinking
happens off the
field.... Once you
step on the field, it’s
reaction, it’s emotion, it’s intensity,
it’s desire—it’s
camaraderie.”
Opposite page:
Elliot Lee ’02 and
Chris Conaway ’02.
Above: Jay Schembs
’01 works out.
13
Alvanos seems
intent to identify
the football team
with the College
community rather
than to define it
against the College
community.
He talks with cocaptain Brian Bell
(above) while Paul
Willenberg ’00 gets
help with stretching. Opposite page:
offensive lineman
Carlo Fitti ’00.
14
beer with him, and what I found along with honesty
was an almost soldierly refusal to be tempted by
any insinuation of a grievance or, if you will, a football player’s refusal to set himself apart in any way
from the rest of “the team.”
“The program’s under a microscope here; I’m
not going to deny that. Is it fair? Well, Swarthmore
has to be doing something right if it’s always
ranked the first or second best liberal arts school
in the country. So in our own little worlds, we’re
probably all under a microscope.” Translate that
attitude to coaching, and you’ll have a statement
like this: “You’re always going to have
a star here and there, but as I tell the
kids, on every play you’re going to
have 11 winners or 11 losers. That’s
what makes football special.”
Alvanos seems intent to identify this
esprit de corps with the College community rather than to define it against
the College community. He tells his
players that if they wish to see spectators at games, then they too must
be spectators at other athletic
and cultural events on campus.
He has invited professors and
administrators to serve as “guest
coaches” at games, “to see what it
is we do.”
But what he can do as a recruiter
is likely to interest them most of
all. If Alvanos emphasizes anything to me in several hours of
conversation, it’s that he knows
he can find qualified student athletes and that “we’re not going to
lower our academic standards to get this thing
done.” After a while, his stress on the latter is
almost poignant.
Actually, there seems to be no lack of official
faith in his sincerity or ability on this point.
Describing him as “indefatigable and full of infectious enthusiasm,” Provost Jennie Keith says:
“Quakers don’t have missionaries, but I think Peter
will be a missionary for Swarthmore.”
Presumably, they don’t have sacrificial lambs
either, but it’s hard to consider his task and not
wonder. Even Keith is quick to add, “He’s got a
great challenge ahead of him.”
W
hen Peter Alvanos talks of the Swarthmore community—usually with a deference that marks him as a relative
newcomer—he speaks of “the hill.” So do a number
of his players. He’s referring to a geography that no
attentive visitor to the College can miss. Most of
the campus lies on the crest and slopes of a hill;
the field house lies at its base, quite literally on the
other side of the tracks. For Swarthmore coaches
and athletes, going to the gym is always a descent.
Going anywhere else on campus always means a
climb. Do this often enough, and you begin to think
of Sisyphus rolling his stone up a hill, or of the
Furies, enshrined and presumably pacified underneath one.
On my second day at Swarthmore, I head down
to watch the team do one of its summer practices.
It’s morning and already hot; players are sweating
even as they assemble, helmets in hands, on the
sidelines of the practice field. The trainers stand in
readiness with ice packs and bandages. Beside the
observation tower, one young man is down on his
knee, holding his face in his hand. Good grief, I
think to myself, they haven’t even started yet, and
already one of them has gotten bopped in the
head. Then the man crosses himself discreetly and
rises to his feet.
Out on the field, the entire coaching staff is
milling and scuffing over the turf as though mounted on horses. Alvanos paces among them, garnet
cap turned backward on his head, laminated
charts stuffed into the front waistband of his
shorts. Once or twice I’ve heard him refer to his
“football family”; now he seems to stand in an
unposed photograph of all its men: several jocular
uncles, an earnest older brother, even a soft-spoken grandfather. See the tall one grinning in the
middle, young enough to horse around and fierce
enough to bring you up short—that’s the head
coach. That’s the Dad.
The practice begins almost without ceremony,
though all of its parts are clearly orchestrated.
First, the players traverse the width of the field in
a variety of movements, bounding like two-legged
antelopes, then grasping alternate knees at alternate strides and returning slowly, then loosely
goose-stepping back the other way. They clap and
yell; strapping on their helmets, they do jumping
jacks. One of Alvanos’ slogans for the team is “one
heartbeat.” The choreography of practice almost
seems an attempt to render that idea through
interpretive dance.
Talking with some players after practice, I find
that all of them approve of the direction Alvanos
has charted for the team. All of them are enthusiastic about their coach; a few of the upperclassmen make a point of putting in a respectful mention of their previous coach. When I ask these
older players what it’s like to be a football player
“on the hill,” I receive a variety of answers.
Ford O’Connell remarks that “Swarthmore is
very liberal in its thinking but very conservative in
its protection of that.” In his view, this conservatism often carries a prejudice against football
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
and those who play it. He recounts a conversation
in which a fellow student had questioned whether
football belonged at an “academic” school like
Swarthmore.
O’Connell challenged him: “So what you’re saying is that it belongs at a place like Florida State.”
When the student answered that, yes, that was
what he was saying, O’Connell shot back: “What a
snobbish thing to say! What you’re implying is that
‘academics’ don’t belong at Florida State.”
Co-captain Brian Bell ’99 notes the same bias as
O’Connell, though he blames some of it on the lack
of “a reciprocal relationship” between the team
and the rest of the College community. “And Coach
has stressed that if we want them to support us, we
have to support them.”
In a separate interview, Mason Tootell speaks in
a similar vein about “us and them” and goes one
step further: “I think a lot of us reject the Swarthmore culture and put ourselves on an island. And in
past years, football has done
some things to discredit
itself.” He cites an incident of
violent behavior by a former
teammate.
This is where J.P. Harris
interjects, “When that incident happened, this person
was playing on the basketball team. But he was labeled
‘a football player.’” Harris, an
Honors political science
major, says that some of his
classmates have been surprised to learn that the
same label applies to him.
Two things become clear to me as a result of
these conversations. The first is that although
these athletes may soon be able to “play with one
heartbeat,” they certainly do not think with one
brain. The second takes longer for me to acknowledge; it comes strangely to one who has never had
much interest in sports.
I want these guys to win.
I
f Alvanos
emphasizes
anything,
it’s that “we’re
not going to
lower our
academic
standards to
get this
thing done.”
S
warthmore President Alfred Bloom could put
on a football uniform, and your best guess
would be that he was a college president. In a
world where almost anything is possible, I suppose
there’s a chance of his surprising me with some
nostalgic reminiscences about those great days
out on the 40-yard line with old Bud so-and-so who
does foreign policy up at BU these days and still
drops by the lake once a year to watch the Super
Bowl . . . but I don’t think so. When I tell him that I
don’t have an athletic bone in my body, he laughs
Please turn to page 60
DECEMBER 1998
15
SEARCHING FOR
By William Saletan ’87
I
t’s one o’clock in the morning,
and Theodor Holm Nelson ’59 is
explaining in a blizzard of mindbending metaphors how he conceived the origins of what is now
the World Wide Web. Nelson, widely
regarded as the founding prophet of
interactive media, is speaking to me
by phone from the other side of the
world. It’s midday at Keio University
in Japan, where Nelson teaches,
writes, and designs software, but he’s
exhausted. He works at night and
sleeps during the day. “Mine is a parallel universe,” he explains on his
home page on the Web. “I share the
physical universe with other people,
but it seems I see it very differently. So
my world is the same but different.”
And how. Everything about Ted
Nelson is upside down. While others
study how things work, Nelson imagines how they could work differently.
While others adapt to systems, Nelson
adapts systems to people. While others plan forward from the status quo,
Nelson plans backward from perfection. That’s why he foresaw the age of
cyberspace four decades ago and why
he is so dissatisfied with it today.
The first inklings of interactive
media came to Nelson in childhood.
When he was 5 years old, he contemplated how florists sent flowers by
wire. “What did they do to the flower,”
he wondered, “so that they could
send it down the wire and rebuild it at
the other end?” His parents’ show
business careers also inspired his
imagination. His mother, Celeste
Holm, starred in more than a dozen
movies and won an Academy Award
for Best Supporting Actress (for her
role in Gentlemen’s Agreement) when
Nelson was 10. His father, Ralph Nel-
16
son, directed 11 films and won an
Emmy for directing the television production of Requiem for a Heavyweight
in 1956.
“When I was 12 years old, bang,
here came this thing called television,” Nelson recalls. “So the notion of
one medium succeeding another was
plain to me, as was the notion of men
at work in front of cathode ray tubes. I
sat behind my father [in the studio].
These bright, intelligent guys sitting at
screens with absolutely captive intensity in the control rooms—that
seemed to me the way it ought to be.”
Y
ou’d think
Ted Nelson’59
would be happy
to claim the
World Wide Web
as his brainchild,
but he isn’t.
When the Japanese film Rasho-mon
came out in 1949, Nelson saw it three
times. Its portrayals of a jointly witnessed story intrigued him. Film and
literature, he realized, could be presented not merely in a preordained
sequence but in “multiple parallel versions.”
Nelson arrived at Swarthmore allergic to orthodoxy of all kinds. “I
majored in extracurriculars,” he says.
He challenged the College’s restrictions on fraternization between male
and female students. “In the 1957 student affairs committees, sitting there
with Dean Susan Cobbs, who hated
my guts and tried to get me expelled, I
was arguing for sexual freedom—
before anybody else dared open their
yaps about it,” he recalls. Nelson was
also an incorrigible prankster. One
time, as Nelson remembers it, Dean
W.C.H. Prentice gave a Collection
speech exhorting students to turn in
“troublemakers” in their midst. “The
following Monday, in everyone’s mailbox there was a typeset confession
blank, saying that because the deans
did not wish to maintain an elaborate
police system, ‘Your cooperation is
expected.’” Below the words, “I have
recently committed the following
offenses,” the form listed various categories and a line for the student’s signature. “There was a firestorm of
protest,” Nelson laughs. “A couple of
hundred people sent them in.”
In the classroom, Nelson criticized
theoretical constructs, arguing that
they oversimplified reality. He didn’t
even like the paper they were printed
on. Ideas were connected in multiple
dimensions, he reasoned. So trying to
represent them on paper, much less
edit them, was intrinsically crude.
“There was no way, with paper, to
represent the changes and structures
and connections,” he explains. “You
can represent the changes with
arrows, but after a certain point, you
have to retype it.” This led Nelson to
the idea of hypertext. “David Rose
[’60] told me that I laid out the whole
hypertext idea to him when we were
undergraduates together.”
Nelson’s ideas crystallized a year
after graduation, when he enrolled in
a computer course at Harvard. He
started with the idea of word processing. As Nelson saw it, word processing
(which was yet to be invented) would
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Asked what he was wearing in this
photo, Nelson said, “A tuxedo. Also a
Xybernaut wearable computer with a
head-mounted display.” But why the
tuxedo? The inventor of hypertext feels
that in the future, wearable computers
will be not be “just for the factory
floor,” but will become “a standard part
of a thoughtful person’s social ensemble.”
might choose, with a mouse click, to
veer away from the College’s history
and explore a tangent string of literature about the Crum. On this path,
you might come across a reference to
Spiro Agnew’s description of Swarthmore as “the Kremlin on the Crum.”
Whereupon you might choose to go
off on a tangent about Agnew, and so
on.
A hypertext system needed digital
addresses for documents, so users
could find them through links. But
Nelson wanted much more. He wanted users to be able to create links in
documents written by others. Nelson
also wanted the system to track every
change in each document and automatically to reorganize the links
accordingly, which was immensely
more difficult. Nelson was seeking
nothing less than a universal, selfupdating library. He called it Project
Xanadu.
SYLVIA OTTE
F
allow the writer to revise each draft.
Nelson wanted a program that would
also link each section of the new draft
to the same section of previous
drafts—as far back as the original
notes. By backtracking through these
links, the writer could compare serial
versions of each section and could
recombine current and previous versions of the various sections into a
new draft. The program remained
DECEMBER 1998
unfinished, but Nelson’s dream of
linked literature grew. In 1965, he gave
it a name: “hypertext.”
Hypertext, as Nelson conceived it,
would not be limited to fixed sequences—as paper required—but would
allow readers to move within a text, or
between texts, in whatever sequence
they fancied. Suppose that while reading a history of Swarthmore, you came
across a reference to Crum Creek. You
or more than a decade, Nelson’s
Swarthmore connections helped
nurture the project. Because his
ideas were radical, “The conventional
computer establishment locked me
out,” he says. “At Swarthmore, there
were people who could help.” Nelson
visited the campus frequently from
1970 to 1972, drawing on the advice of
faculty friends and the assistance of
two of Swarthmore’s first computer
science students. In 1976, the College
invited Nelson back to teach courses
in interactive software and hypermedia.
Nelson’s courses brought him new
disciples, and in the summer of 1979,
he summoned his followers from
around the country to Swarthmore to
complete the Xanadu project. He was
no longer teaching on campus, but he
enjoyed the atmosphere and maintained an apartment nearby. His disciples rented a house and redesigned
the entire system from scratch. “We
were pushing the envelope of practi17
cability on every side,” says Nelson.
“We were writing a program that was
bigger than compilers could handle.”
Eventually, the programmers ran out
of money, and Nelson and his group
joined a software company in Texas.
Xanadu was put on hold. The “Swarthmore summer,” as Wired magazine
referred to it years later, was “Xanadu’s golden age.”
But while Xanadu lay dormant, its
seeds took root. In 1987, Apple introduced HyperCard, a program that allowed users to construct webs of links
within their personal computers. The
program’s name and concept transparently derived from Nelson’s work.
“HyperCard apparently came out of
the talk I gave at the hackers’ conference in 1984,” he says. “I was invited
to fly to Apple in ’86 or ’87 for a chat
with [Apple CEO] John Scully.... I think
he wanted to take my measure and
see whether I would object to the
word ‘HyperCard’ being used for what
they were about to release.” When the
program came out, Nelson recalls,
“Everybody said, ‘Oh, my god, Nelson,
this is what you’ve been talking
about!’”
Not really, says Nelson. The problem with HyperCard was that it was
stuck inside a single machine. Nelson’s dream required a network so
that users could link to documents on
other people’s computers. The Internet solved this problem. In 1989, Tim
Berners-Lee, a physicist and former
software developer, began to build a
system for reading and writing hypertext on the Internet. He called it the
World Wide Web. Berners-Lee
“dropped by my office in ’92 when the
[Web] was in alpha or beta,” says Nelson. “He wanted to show it to me
because he had just heard about my
work.” Nelson, it turned out, had been
the source of many of the words and
ideas that had filtered down through
the software world and were now
coming to life on the Web: links, a digital registry of document addresses
(uniform resource locators, or URLs),
a “hypertext transfer protocol”
(HTTP), and a “hypertext markup language” (HTML).
Nelson also influenced the transformation of the Web into a mass medium. In 1989, he presented his Xanadu
design to the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NSCA)
at the University of Illinois. Larry
18
Smarr, NSCA’s director, was sufficiently impressed that he expressed interest in joining the Xanadu project.
Later, Smarr told Nelson he had begun
a new project of his own. That turned
out to be Mosaic, the first consumeroriented Web browser, which was
produced by Smarr’s lieutenant, Marc
Andreessen, and released in November 1993. Six months later,
Andreessen left NCSA to found
T
he conventional
wisdom in the
computer industry
is that Nelson’s
Project Xanadu
failed and that he
and his ideas are
relics. Nelson
returns this
condescension
by dismissing the
World Wide Web
as irretrievably
mediocre.
Netscape Communications, which
turned the Web from a communications tool of scientists into a popular
interactive medium.
Y
ou’d think Nelson would be
happy to claim the Web as his
brainchild, but he isn’t. While
others celebrate what it can do, he
dwells on what it can’t do. You can’t
write notes on somebody else’s document or overlay them on the original.
You also can’t quote significant parts
of somebody else’s document without
violating copyright law. And when you
read one document that quotes another, you can’t see the original context
without finding your way to the quoted document.
Nelson has always thought to solve
these problems with an idea he first
named “transclusion,” but now calls
“hypersharing.” Every document
would be linked intimately to every
other document that quotes it or
refers to it, so that the reader could
see them simultaneously. Suppose
Nelson wanted to criticize the writings
of Dean Cobbs. While reading Cobbs’
work, you could see Nelson’s comments alongside the original. And conversely, while reading Nelson’s comments, you could see Cobbs’ words,
so Nelson wouldn’t get away with taking them out of context.
Nelson goes back to the premise of
his student days: Computers should
improve on paper. “What they’re giving us now is so much less than paper,
it’s pathetic,” he complains. “One of
the things you can’t do on a computer
screen is flip. With a book or stack of
cards, you can flip through at great
speed, and your eye sees things.
Opening a file on a computer is like
prying open a wooden crate. It’s
absurd.” The more Nelson talks, the
more you realize that what’s nutty
isn’t his analogy, but the fact that
you’ve never noticed the ways in
which your computer is inferior to the
stuff your parents wrote on. For example, he observes, “Paper is compatible.” Furthermore, “if I buy a CD-ROM,
I’m not allowed to write in the margins. What the hell is that about?”
Defenders of the Web, CD-ROMs,
and other imperfect technologies say
they’ve engineered real progress
while Nelson has held out for idealistic “vaporware”—software that is
promised but never delivered. Some
think Xanadu expressed the radical
political ambitions of the 1960s and
1970s and ultimately collapsed for the
same reasons. Nelson always envisioned technology that would promote equal access to information and
freedom of the press. Even his
metaphors are populist and countercultural. In a recent essay on piracy
and copyright law, he argued: “There
is a hunger for the reuse of media. If
we can find a legitimate way to feed
this hunger, then perhaps the stealing
will not be necessary.” He calls his latest software “the sexual revolution
brought to the spreadsheet. Spreadsheets require that a cell have an up
connection, a down connection, a left
connection, and a right connection. In
my system, each cell’s connections
are its own business.”
Much of the criticism of Nelson’s
ideas echoes criticisms of the political
left. One reviewer has called Xanadu a
“weird, semialtruistic/semifascistic
vision” of a world in which “all inforSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Computers should improve on paper,
says Nelson. But today’s machines
are “pathetic.... Opening a file on a
computer is like prying open a wooden crate.”
SYLVIA OTTE
totally explorable,
customizable, userreconfigurable, and
shareable world.”
But in a such a
world, wouldn’t people get lost? Skeptics
use Nelson’s personal life to illustrate
the point. He is notoriously disorganized,
blessed and cursed
with a brain whose
rapidly branching
trains of thought
defy conventional
notions of coherence. His chaotic
books and manual
filing systems are
legendary. When I
interviewed him, his
unrelenting tangents
and objections to
the premises of my
questions made a
hash of the outline I
had prepared. “My
world is not organized around your
outline,” he later tells me.
Nelson concedes that many computer users prefer the comfort of dictated structure to the responsibility
that comes with total freedom. “I’m
not interested in that trade,” he
replies nonchalantly. “I’m not interested in pandering. I want to make people aware of the necessity of freedom.” Structure is useful, he argues,
but only if it’s “permeable” and open
to change by the user. “I believe in
creating elegant environments that
help and encourage people to create
the structure they want. But that
doesn’t mean it has to be some particular restrictive structure that the
dweebs created in the last 20 years.”
As to the notion that total freedom is
scary, Nelson brushes it off with his
favorite analogy: “It’s like a blank
piece of paper.”
The conventional wisdom in the
computer industry is that Xanadu
failed, that more practical software
makers succeeded, and that Nelson
and his ideas are relics. Nelson
returns this condescension by dis-
mation is irrevocably networked.”
Others have portrayed Nelson as
naïve for supposedly postulating a
“communal database administered, of
course, from above.” These skeptics
prefer the Web and its free-market
patchwork, in which you can revise or
remove anything you’ve written without being monitored and without concern for others who may have linked
their work to yours. It’s better to let
individuals work out these occasional
breakdowns, goes this argument, than
to hold out for a perfect system.
Nelson’s rejoinder, in turn, echoes
criticisms of the political right. If the
Web’s defenders think the cybermarketplace is truly free, they’re deluding
themselves, he suggests. “All information is already irrevocably linked,”
says Nelson, “but the connections are
currently hidden. Some people want
to keep things hidden; I don’t.”
The opposite case against Nelson’s
vision is that it’s too anarchic. He
derides “regularity chauvinists” and
rejects traditional software concepts
such as “files,” “icons,” and even
“metaphors.” Instead, he proposes “a
DECEMBER 1998
missing the Web as irretrievably
mediocre. “I don’t think you can put
wings on a child’s wagon,” he scoffs.
But beneath this posture, Nelson has
quietly reconsidered his past and his
future. “To me, binding the whole
thing together into an indivisible
structure was always the center.
Being a monist made it hard to break
it down into tactical goals. And that’s
a fundamental failing that’s left me
where I am. If I were a company man
or somebody able to do small things
in a small way, it would have been
much more effective.”
Accordingly, Nelson has changed
approach. He has divided Xanadu into
pieces that can be grafted onto the
Web. “Now that we have a dispersed
Web under dispersed ownership and
management, we have to create systems that can be marketed on that
Web,” he explains. One piece is a
“micropayment” system under which
each author would automatically
receive a small royalty—a one-time
electronic debit—from anyone who
accessed her work on the Web. Another piece is “transcopyright”—an
emerging legal doctrine under which
the author may permit readers to
quote her work as long as they
accessed it from her site. A third piece
is a program that would let the reader
see the original document side by side
with documents that quote it.
Don’t think for a minute that Ted
Nelson has given up more radical
plans for transforming cyberspace.
He’s got projects under way to
redesign word processing and the
construction of interactive media. It
seems a long way from his college
days of pen and paper, but it isn’t.
“Swarthmore is a place where ideas
are honored,” says Nelson. And all he
ever wanted was “a magic paper that
allows those ideas to be expressed
and understood in their full glory.”
William Saletan ’87 is a senior writer
for Slate (www.slate.com). His book
on the politics of abortion rights is
forthcoming from the University of
California Press. Saletan serves as
a member of this magazine’s advisory
committee.
19
FAST PLANTS
Planting the seeds of science in Chester
By Chad Glover
T
here are too many kids in
Wayne Johnson’s seventhgrade class. Thirty-eight children cluster around a maze of
heavy black desks. A girl sits with her
back to a door that is open onto a
courtyard. Another is crowded into
the class’s entrance, almost sitting in
the hallway. Thirty children would
have been better. Twenty-five is the
state average. With 38 children—
mostly black but more than a few
white—even the sound of their
breathing creates a dull roar.
This is Chester-Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, a district consistently at the bottom of statewide rankings. It has soldiered through mergers, takeovers,
and a waning tax base. But still there
Brassica rapa, small members of the mustard family, have a short
life cycle that allows students to observe new features every day.
20
are sparks of hope, places where children’s eyes light up with the excitement of learning.
John Anderson ’50, a former professor of anatomy and family medicine at the University of Wisconsin–
Madison, is responsible for having
fanned at least a few of those sparks.
Working with Wayne Johnson and
other teachers in the Chester-Upland
schools, Anderson introduced a science curriculum called “Fast Plants,”
which endeavors to teach kids basic
science skills at very low cost.
The plants referred to are Brassica
rapa, small members of the mustard
family that were bred by University of
Wisconsin Professor Paul Williams to
have a seed-to-seed life cycle of 35
days. The short life cycle allows students to observe new features every
day: germination visible within two
days, flowers by two weeks, pollination by hand with “bee sticks,” and
seeds harvested at five weeks. The
plant thrives in fluorescent light and
is resilient enough to withstand even
the rough hands of young botanists.
The Fast Plants curriculum uses
the cooperative learning approach to
introduce students to the basic skills
of doing science: making and recording accurate observations, including
drawing; using the observations to
generate and solve problems; and
communicating the results. Team
members rotate daily through four
roles: leader, attendant, recorder, and
evaluator. In that way, each student
gains a familiarity with each role. In
addition to learning the cornerstones
of the scientific method, students
learn to work together.
But getting everyone else to work
together to bring Fast Plants to
Chester-Upland wasn’t so easy.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
DECEMBER 1998
A
nderson says that institutions test
volunteers’ commitment. “Hang
around long enough, vault enough
hurdles, and the powers that be begin
to listen.” After the first workshops,
the teachers expected him to disappear, leaving them with no guidance,
no resources, and no hope. They were
wrong. Anderson became a fixture in
their classes, finding materials and
answering their questions.
“Eventually, when I kept coming
around—and after we received a
$10,000 grant to cover their salaries
for workshops (the teachers were
working without a contract and
weren’t real eager to volunteer)—they
began to relax. I had gained their
trust,” says Anderson.
But there were still more hurdles to
jump on the way to bringing Fast
Plants into the classrooms. After the
first year, Anderson was sure that he
had gained a commitment from the
district, only to have some administrators “swear blind” that they had given
him no such thing. It was back to the
beginning.
“He was here for three years,” says
Wayne Johnson, a 29-year veteran—
and alumnus—of the Chester-Upland
schools, “donating his time and his
expertise.” One of John Anderson’s
goals was to recruit strong leadership,
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
A founder of the Institute for Multicultural Science Education at the University of Wisconsin, John Anderson
had been involved with building more
equitable education opportunities for
more than 30 years. In 1990, after retiring from his faculty position, Anderson moved from Madison back to the
Swarthmore area to become dean of
programs at the nearby Quaker
retreat Pendle Hill.
“I was contemplating leaving Pendle Hill in 1993, when I attended a Fall
Weekend presentation at the College
on the Chester–Swarthmore College
Community Coalition,” said Anderson.
The coalition had been formed
between the College and community
leaders in Chester to give structure to
Swarthmore’s long-standing commitment to Chester. Discussions began in
1991 to address two principal concerns: how Swarthmore College could
contribute to long-term, positive
change in Chester; and how direct
interaction with urban poverty could
enhance curricular study so that solutions conceived in Swarthmore’s
classrooms might be tested in a real
setting.
Although impressed with the
enthusiasm of the people involved in
forging these ties with the city, Anderson was struck by the lack of involvement with Chester schools. He wanted
to bring the principles of the Institute
for Multicultural Science Education to
bear on the educational problems in
Chester. “There isn’t the room or the
budget at Chester-Upland for something big,” Anderson says, “But I saw
that I could start a small program
there. And, if it could work there, then
it could work anywhere.”
Anderson received an unpaid
appointment at the College as an
entré, and then, armed with the Fast
Plants program and his own scientific
expertise, he marched into ChesterUpland—and met failure after failure.
“I think they’d had their fill of dogooders coming in with ideas, conducting a workshop or two, but then
not seeing things through to the end,”
says Anderson. “People were suspicious. We’re talking about people who
already had their plates overfilled.
They didn’t need anyone taking up
their time—and not necessarily doing
any good.”
Seventh-grade teacher Wayne Johnson
uses the cooperative learning approach to
introduce students to the basic skills of
doing science: making and recording accurate observations, including drawing; using
the observations to generate and solve
problems; and communicating the results.
21
22
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
so that the program would continue
to blossom after he was no longer
involved. Johnson directs the program at the classroom level, and Jean
di Sabatino, the curriculum coordinator, has provided central administrative support.
Anderson also brought with him a
sense of excitement that was infectious; it remains the driving force
behind Fast Plants today. “The teachers have to be excited to teach it,”
says Johnson. “I’m excited by it. The
kids can feel it. They can tell. Teachers aren’t assigned; it has to be something that they choose to be a part of
or it won’t work.” Increasing numbers
of teachers are choosing to be part of
the Fast Plants team. By the end of
this school year, the curriculum will
have been used in 30 classrooms in
the Chester-Upland School District,
with variations at the fourth, seventh,
and 10th grades. Wayne Johnson
expects to see the program implemented in 60 classrooms next year.
It was the cost of the program that
enabled Fast Plants to take root in the
Chester-Upland School District. The
start-up cost per classroom was $200,
mostly for the lamps. Maintenance of
the program, though, is only about
$35 a year, maybe less as teachers
find ways to cut costs. Most of the
materials are recyclable.
“Potting soil is extremely cheap,”
said Johnson, “and it goes a long way.
The bee sticks are literally the thorax
of a bee affixed to a toothpick—we
buy dried bees as a safety measure.
Regular pollinating sticks might be a
little cheaper, but the kids just get so
excited by the bee sticks. The seeds
we harvest from the experiments are
then used the following year.”
Maurice Eldridge ’61, vice president
for College and community relations
and co-chair of the Chester–Swarthmore College Community Coalition,
insists that they’re harvesting more
than seeds: “John Anderson went into
the Chester-Upland schools and found
teachers who were burned out and
angry, and you just can’t teach effectively like that. In working with them
to develop this program, John gave
teachers the ability to manage their
classrooms in new ways. Fast Plants is
getting teachers to look at teaching
and learning differently, and that spills
over into every other subject. Finding
a new way to interact with kids gives
teachers a new tool, and it’s the kind
of tool that can be shared and used to
effect change at the systemic level.”
I
t’s 9 a.m., and a chill still grips the
air in Wayne Johnson’s classroom.
Through the windows, you can see
other children in other classes peacefully dozing. In this room, however,
there is too much going on to sleep.
Too much excitement.
“What is this?” Johnson asks, pointing at a simple chalk diagram on the
blackboard. It’s a seed just beginning
to sprout, the crude shape of a
comma.
A child shouts, “A cotyledon!”
Mr. Johnson shakes his head, “Not
yet.”
Bouncing up and down in his seat,
the boy’s next attempt comes before
Johnson has finished speaking:
“They’re radicles.”
“That’s right. And this?...”
“It’s a ... it’s a ...” A girl in the center
of the classroom pats her binder. She
F
ast Plants
is getting
teachers
to look at
teaching and
learning
differently,
and that
spills over
into every
other subject.
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
MEGAN BATTEY
John Anderson ’50 (below) spent
three years getting the Fast Plants
curriculum established in
Chester-Upland schools. Now it’s
being taught in 30 classrooms at
three grade levels.
knows the answer. They have been
discussing it for the past week, so it
might even be staring up at her from
the pages of her notes. There is a
tense race going on throughout the
class. Who can form the words first?
“Hypo— hypocotyl,” she finally blurts.
And then someone in the back, someone who was a bit slower on the draw,
says, “Stop calling out.”
After the review, the class breaks
into teams. One student from each
group walks to the front of the class to
grab materials: a magnifying glass, an
eye dropper, and the seed pot.
Though the plants were selected
for their rapid maturation, they were
only planted yesterday. The not-yet
plants sit in white Styrofoam cubes,
each marked with the names of the
members of the group on masking
tape. To the untrained eye, it looks
like nothing more than dirt.
The students pick and probe the
dirt for any signs of life. Taking turns
with the magnifying glass, each makes
an observation.
“I don’t see a thing yet,” says one
boy. His face is curiously scrunched
as he looks. After turning the pot
around in his hands, he passes it on.
The next student has better luck. “I
see a seed,” she says. She brushes her
finger across the top of the soil, careful not to touch the seed. It’s so small,
you might not notice it. “This one,”
she adds, pointing at something that it
appears only she can see, “looks like it
split open.”
A third student, a tall 13-year-old
boy, lays the magnifying glass on the
table, and cranes his nose down to the
container. “The one thing I notice
about it,” he said with an exaggerated
sniff, “this stuff stinks!” Although not
exactly the type of information one
might find in a textbook, it is a statement that exemplifies one of the
strengths of the program.
“It’s really what makes Fast Plants
so unique,” says Johnson. “The children share with each other, and in
doing so they learn to respect what
each of them has to offer. By the end,
after the six weeks have passed, some
of the students who might have been
too shy or too afraid to speak out in
class are volunteering answers.
They’re getting involved.”
Through the work of John Anderson, Wayne Johnson, and others, science education is improving in
Chester-Upland at many levels: Students in elementary, middle, and high
schools are learning science by mastering the fundamentals of doing science rather than simply by memorization—under the guidance of teachers
who understand and practice the difference. To accomplish this, the traditional one-shot “in-service” training
for teachers has been replaced by
high-level, intense professional development, with appropriate follow-up
and support.
The students in Fast Plants will pollinate their own plants. As they snap
the delicate thoraxes off bees to make
bee sticks, discussion might turn
toward the anatomy of insects. They’ll
probably talk and giggle. The class
walks a fine line between discovery
and chaos. “If you go around, though,
and listen to what they’re talking
about, you’ll find they’re learning
about the plants,” said Johnson.
“There is no such thing as a quiet
classroom with Fast Plants.” !
Chad Glover is a reporter for the
Philadelphia Tribune.
23
Alumni Digest
Upcoming Events
Garnet Sages: Vince Boyer ’39 invites
alumni who graduated before 1949 to
the annual Highland Park Club gathering in Lake Wales, Fla., from Thursday,
Jan. 28, to Monday, Feb. 1.
Cathy Tak, who met with alumni and
prospective students at the home of
Judy Levine Feldman ’65. Alida ’92 and
Patrick Zweidler-McKay ’89 planned a
fall hike to Middlesex Fells.
Chicago: Alumni and prospective students mingled at a gathering with
Admissions Counselor Betsy Geiger
’96 at the home of Lois Polatnick ’74.
Miami: President and Mrs. Alfred H.
Bloom met with alumni, parents, and
friends of the College at the Miami
City Club, thanks to the hospitality of
David Gold ’75. Mark Shapiro ’88 invited Swarthmoreans to the All Ivy Holiday Happy Hour.
Boston: Connection events include a
Philadelphia: The Connection
visit to the Boston Aquarium, a conreturned to the Dock Street Brewing
cert at the New England Conservatory
Company for a behind-the-scenes tour
Metro DC/Baltimore: Regina Maisog
of Music, and a Red Sox game at Fen’89, special proj- by Head Brewer Eric Savage, son of
way Park.
Bob Savage, Isaac H. Clothier Jr. Proects coordinaSanda Balaban
tor for the Balti- fessor Emeritus of Biology.
’94 has initiated a
Residents of Kendall and Crossmore Ravens,
book group modlands
retirement communities enhosted a tour
eled after the
joyed
a performance by the Alumni
of the new NFL
Metro DC/BaltiGospel
Choir.
stadium at
more groups (see
On
campus,
alumni athletes
Camden Yards
below). Members
returned
to
play
Ultimate and field
and a visit to
will read works on
hockey
and
to
compete
in the alumni
the ESPN Zone.
the “Asian Diaspocross-country
race.
Swarthmore
The book
ra” assigned by
groups
began a Warders of Imaginative Literature
English Depart(SWIL) celebrated the organization’s
Seattle alumni visited and learned more about second year,
ment faculty
20th year with a weekend reunion.
sharing a curWashington state’s largest land swamp.
member Frank K.
San Francisco: The Connection welSaragosa, who will A land-exchange analyst explained the threat riculum with
the
Boston
comed new chairs Neal Finkelstein ’86
of
highway
expansion
through
the
forest.
present a lecture
Connection
and Becky Johnson ’86. Alumni sociolin the spring.
(see above). Carrie Schum ’88 hosted
ogists had dinner with sociology faculDenver: Bill Pichardo ’71 and Maria
a wine-tasting in Arlington, Va., and
ty members Joy Charlton, Braulio
Klemperer Aweida ’56 will co-host a
the Alumni Gospel Choir performed at Muñoz, and Sarah Willie during the
reception featuring Sara Hiebert ’79,
the church of Wilma Lewis ’78.
annual meeting of the American Socioassistant professor of biology, on Sunlogical Association.
Metro NYC: The
day, Jan. 10.
Connection pubSeattle: Peter
Metro NYC: Debbie Branker Harrod
lished its second
Morrison ’40
’89 is coordinating the second annual
semiannual Artist
invited Connecorganic vegetarian brunch.
Newsletter, listing
tion members
Philadelphia: Women basketball play- performances and
to explore San
exhibitions by
ers will gather for an alumnae game
Juan Island and
Swarthmore peron Saturday, Feb. 6. Young alumni are
camp on his 30
invited to cocktail receptions for grad- forming and visuacres of land in
al artists in the
uates of liberal arts schools.
Friday Harbor.
Big Apple. Artists
George Stein ’67 is organizing a
Regional
included the stuseries of alumni panels to be presentSwarthmore
dent
a
cappella
ed on campus in the spring.
events are run
group Sixteen
From the Class of ’98, Dylan Humphrey, Lynn by volunteers. If
Feet,
who
perRecent Events
Chosiad, Sonja Downing, and George Matula you would like
formed holiday
reunited at a reception hosted by President
Austin: Neil Austrian Jr. ’87 hosted
to organize an
songs at RockeBloom in San Francisco in October.
Director of Admissions Jim Bock ’90,
event in your
feller Center.
alumni, and prospective students at
area, please
Jim DiFalco ’82
his home. Cathy Horwitz ’96 helped
contact Katie Bowman ’94, assistant
organized a repeat evening with the
organize a tri-college potluck lunch.
director of alumni relations, at kbowFestival Chamber Music Society,
man1@swarthmore.edu or (610) 328including
dinner
at
Federico’s.
Boston: Donald Swearer, Charles and
8404. Look for the latest information on
Alumni
visited
Symphony
Space
for
Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of
upcoming alumni events and activities
Religion, was welcomed by alumni at a a performance of KA-TAP!, a blend of
around the country and abroad on the
East
Indian
Kathak
and
American
tap
gallery directed by Sabrina Moyle ’96.
Alumni Office home page: www.swarthdance,
conceived,
choreographed,
The Connection hosted another Colmore.edu/home/alumni.
and
directed
by
Janaki
Patrik
’66.
lege visitor, Admissions Counselor
24
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Keep in touch
with Swarthmore’s
Internet listservs
T
Class president elections
occur in reunion years
he Alumni Office now supports
nine listservs—electronic discussion groups in which your e-mail message is distributed to everyone on the
list. For instructions on joining the following listservs or creating a new
one, visit the World Wide Web site
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/
Alumni/services/listservs.html, or email webeditor@swarthmore.edu.
• Boston Connection
• Chicago Connection
• DC/Baltimore Connection
• Metro NYC Connection
• Philadelphia Connection
• Connection Volunteers
• Folk Festivals
• Class of 1963
• Class of 1994
I N
1999
CAMPUS EVENTS
CALENDAR
Black Alumni Weekend
March 19–21
Alumni Council Meeting
March 19–21
Parents Weekend
April 16–18
Alumni Weekend
June 4–6
Alumni College Abroad:
Prague to Berlin
June 13–24
For events information, please call
the Alumni Office at (610) 328-8402,
or e-mail alumni@swarthmore.edu.
B R I E F
Free Recordings ... The Alumni Relations Office has inherited some
recordings made in March 1965 by the Swarthmore College Chorus and
College Singers. The late Peter Gram Swing conducted the performance,
which was recorded at a joint concert with the Columbia University Chorus
in New York City.
The program includes 17th-century motets by Schein and Schuetz,
works by Debussy and Des Prez, and “After Spring Sunset” by Peter Schickele ’57. Alumni who would like one of these historic LPs sent to them free of
charge may contact the Alumni Office.
A
lumni in classes with reunions
next June will have an opportunity in 1999 to nominate and elect new
class presidents.
This is part of a process that the
College and the Alumni Council’s
Executive Committee initiated in 1997
and refined this year. The purpose is
to provide a mechanism for classes
that wish to consider new leadership
or for class presidents who wish to
step down as well as to extend the
terms of incumbents.
Nomination forms will be included
in copies of the March Bulletin that
are mailed to alumni in class years
ending in 4 and 9. (Forms also will be
sent to members of the Class of 1968
because its president resigned after
the process had been completed for
that group of reunion classes.)
Those making nominations should
ask the potential nominees whether
they are willing to serve. The names
of nominees, if any, will be made
available to their classes during Alumni Weekend, June 4–6, so that those
attending the reunion can discuss
their preferences. Ballots will be sent
in the fall to classes with nominees
other than the current presidents.
Externship Program ... Alumni Council members are working with the
Career Planning and Placement Office to coordinate student externships
and housing over the winter and spring breaks. Local contacts are Steve
Gessner ’66 (Baltimore), Roberta Chicos ’77 (Boston), Ike Schambelan ’61
(New York City), Elizabeth Killackey ’86 (Philadelphia), and Gretchen Gayle
Ellsworth ’61 (Washington, D.C.).
The Student View ... Generations of students have read The Phoenix,
which continues to be published weekly. The student newspaper currently
includes news, features, editorials, letters to the editor, and arts and sports
sections. Alumni can call (610) 328-7362 or e-mail phoenix@ swarthmore.edu for off-campus rates and information.
The Daily Gazette, a free e-mail publication sent out five days a week,
offers timely reporting on campus news, sports, and events as well as
world news summaries and weather. Alumni can subscribe by sending an
e-mail to requests@student-publications.swarthmore.edu with the words
“subscribe daily” as the subject of the message.
Black Alumni Newsletter ... Do you have something you’d like to share
with your classmates for the first edition of a black alumni newsletter? Send
them by U.S. mail to Danielle Moss Lee ’91, 788 Columbus Avenue #17R,
New York NY 10025 or by e-mail to danielle68@aol.com.
DECEMBER 1998
Arabella Carter Award winners—
and the right ones this time.
Stokes ’51 and Mary Jane Winde Gentry ’53
were awarded the Alumni Association’s
1998 Arabella Carter Community Service
Award at last June’s Alumni Weekend. In
presenting the award, Alumni Council President Jack Riggs ’64 described how the
Gentrys’ “moral commitment and organizing skills came together when they led the
founding of the only nonprofit life care
retirement community in Vermont.”
The wrong photo appeared in the
September Bulletin.
25
BOB WOOD
CLASS
NOTES
Alumni Profile
An Apple for the Teacher
Ed Clark ’49 helps honor great teaching in his Florida community.
F
GOLDEN GATE GAZETTE, NAPLES, FLA.
or a classroom teacher,
returned to the College to
being the recipient of a
finish his education, hoping
Golden Apple award is comto go on to earn a graduate
parable with receiving a visit
degree in education. But he
from the Publisher’s Clearwas also newly married to
inghouse prize patrol and
Janet MacLellan Clark ’48,
winning one of the film
and they were expecting
world’s Oscars. In surprise
their first child. So Ed Clark
classroom presentations, a
put aside his dream of being
golden apple (well, OK, it’s
a teacher and entered the
bronze, but it’s very shiny)
insurance industry, where
is given to five educators in
he had a successful 42-year
Collier County, Fla., for outcareer.
standing teaching. Later, the
Susan McManus, executeachers are guests at an eletive director of the Collier
gant awards ceremony and
County Education Foundadinner. Ed Clark ’49 sits on
tion, says Clark is “a comthe selection committee of
passionate and committed
the Collier County Education
volunteer.” Many people,
Foundation that determines
after they retire, do not get
Collier County math teacher and 1997 Golden Apple winner Tom
the winners.
involved in their retirement
Groce receives a hug from colleague and previous winner Jory
Collier County’s Golden
communities,” McManus
Westberry as Ed Clark ’49 (left) looks on with enthusiasm.
Apple Teacher Recognition
says. “But Ed not only sits
receive cash awards during surprise
Program began eight years ago and is
classroom presentations. The selection on the selection committee, he volunbased on the trademarked Golden
teers in our schools. He’s a real asset to
committee then spends approximately
Apple Teacher Recognition Program in
the community and a wonderful exam500 hours observing and discussing to
neighboring Lee County, Fla., that was
ple.”
determine the top five winners.
started 12 years ago. Clark, who has
The Collier County community heavThe five Golden Apple awardees
been on the selection committee for
ily
supports the program through busireceive the engraved golden apple, a
three years, describes a detailed and
ness
sponsorships and media cover14-carat golden apple pin, a cash award
confidential process of applications,
age.
The
local McDonalds restaurants
of more than $2,000, and several other
recommendations, and classroom
even print placemats with pictures of
gifts from local businesses. At the dinobservations that screen potential winthe 40 Teachers of Distinction. The
ner in their honor, held at the elegant
ners based on numerous aspects of
banquet, which is televised live in conRitz-Carlton hotel, the teachers also
their teaching, including the ability to
junction with Lee County’s award proreceive membership in the Golden
create a comfortable atmosphere for
gram, shows video clips of teachers
Apple Academy of Teachers—an ongostudents, to challenge them to reach
instructing their students in the classing element of the program that allows
high standards, and to involve families
room and then gives each honoree an
teachers to give their input on key
in the educational process. The selecopportunity to make an acceptance
educational issues both locally and
tion committee is made up of educaspeech. The evening’s festivities also
nationally.
tors and business and community
give teachers and community business
Clark says all the attention is warleaders.
leaders an opportunity to come togethranted: “Teaching is often looked upon
The applicant pool is whittled to 100 as a second-class profession. Educating er and talk.
teachers, each of whom is observed by
Clark encourages other communiour children is one of the most impormembers of the Golden Apple Core,
ties
to follow Collier County’s example,
tant jobs there is. I benefited from a
comprising former educators, parents,
citing
the recent formation of a Golden
good public education and was able to
students, and former selection commit- go to a good college.”
Apple program in his former home of
tee members.
Springfield, Mass., and other places
Part of Clark’s enthusiasm for the
Clark says the program “puts a spot- Golden Apple program comes from his
around the country. “Everything about
light on good teaching and shows that
the program is done first class and with
unfulfilled desire to have been a teachthe education system is working. It
the highest quality,” says Darlene
er himself. He remembers reading
encourages young people to become
Grossman, president of the Foundation
Houston Peterson’s book Great Teacheducators and encourages teachers,
for Lee County Public Schools,
ers: Portrayed by Those Who Studied
who can see that they are honored and Under Them while a student at Swarth“because we believe that’s the way
respected.” The Core narrows the field
teachers should be honored.”
more in the late 1940s. Clark had
to 40 Teachers of Distinction who
—Audree Penner
served in World War II and had
DECEMBER 1998
37
In My Life
Reflections on
“The Good Life”
By Niki Giloane Sebastian ’65
42
NIKI SEBASTIAN
N
earing the double nickel, with no
retirement benefits, a minimal
IRA, and currently no full-time job
nor immediate plans for one, I look out
the floor-to-ceiling windows of my New
Mexico living room at my horses grazing
in the adjacent pasture, and I reflect.
The most I have earned in any year
since graduating from Swarthmore in
1965 was just under $32,000, which I
made in 1990 when I was an upperechelon administrator in an agency of
New Mexico’s state government. I hold a
master’s degree, yet I consistently earn
less than the median income for high
school graduates.
I will never have the funds for
Swarthmore Alumni College Abroad.
Indeed I don’t have the funds for vacation travel, which is why I choose to live
my vacation on site, in a home of less
than 1,000 square feet situated in an
area overflowing with history and nontraditional culture, with huge painterly
skies of evanescent color, and where the
Great Plains lap up against the Rockies.
The unemployment rate in my county has not been below 10 percent for
many years, so most people survive by
“a bit of this and that.” When I prepared
to move to northern New Mexico in
1972, I was told to “expect to do whatever it takes to survive for at least a
year, until you can make connections
and get established in your field.” I
did—and have continued to do so every
year since, “my field” becoming the
exceptional versatility of thought and
ceaseless interest in new learning that
Swarthmore encouraged, and that life
experience has led me to accept as central to the “me” of me.
I am within two years of paying off
my home and four acres of land, and I
have all the possessions I can use. I support myself, my husband (who has been
severely ill), and a plethora of animals. I
volunteer as co-chair of the local AIDS
alliance and as a member of the Foster
Grandparent/Senior Companion Advisory Board, and I am a “getaway” parentsubstitute for foreign students attending
the United World College in nearby
“I don’t have the funds for vacation travel, which is why I choose to live my
vacation on site,” writes Niki Sebastian. She lives simply in northern
New Mexico, “where the Great Plains lap up against the Rockies [and] the
unemployment rate has not been below 10 percent for many years.”
Montezuma.
At present, my income dribbles in
from counseling (I am a licensed mental
health practitioner), writing (essays, features, and short fiction), reviewing case
records for a home health agency (I
headed the agency when I was willing to
put in 60-hour work weeks), and baking
bread (hand-kneaded loaves for weekly
customers). Occasionally, I get contracts to provide training in communications, AIDS issues, or aspects of personal development. How else does one survive when one’s advanced degree is in
language pathology, a specialty not recognized as existing—let alone necessary—within the New Mexico educational system?
One of the great appeals for me of
settling in northern New Mexico a quarter-century ago is that it was—and in
Editor’s Note
In My Life is a new department of the
Bulletin that features first-person
essays. Readers interested in submitting an essay for publication should
first write for editorial guidelines.
Address: Editor, Swarthmore College
Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397, or send e-mail
to bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
many ways still is—more like living in
a foreign country than in the United
States. I have always felt more at home
learning another new-to-me culture than
I have when trying to fit into the predominant American one, which was
never mine in the first place. Although I
am singularly white of skin, I was raised
by immigrant Jewish parents who spoke
Hebrew and German at home in addition to English—with half of my raising
taking place in Vietnam and France. My
family placed great emphasis on learning for its own sake: for the stretching
and the excitement of mastery. Perhaps
to make sense of the cultural variety I
experienced so early, I fell in love with
exploring the interconnectedness that
underlies the world’s peoples and ideas.
I was fortunate to have good teachers—culminating in the sheer delight of
my first weeks at Swarthmore, where I
found myself in the company of intellectual peers, where debates begun in the
classroom did not terminate with the
end of a period but spilled down the
walks and into the dining hall and
dorms. My delight lasted through the
full four years, through the original, traditional Honors program, and right up
through my last oral exam in philosophy, which turned out to be an hourlong philosophical exploration of my
personal values. “A coherent system,
cohesive, with substantive content,” the
examiner decided. My feet did not touch
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
ground again until well after graduation.
Many of those four years of classroom, dining room, and dormitory
debates involved aspects of what each
of us would ultimately incorporate into
our concepts of “living the good life.”
What was never in question was our
implicit understanding that ideas not
translated into action had little value. I
don’t know that anyone openly acknowledged how Swarthmore’s Quaker underpinnings were showing in that assumption. We often debated how best to demonstrate our beliefs—never whether to
demonstrate them.
Manifesting one’s beliefs doesn’t
come easily, especially if one chooses a
nontraditional path. I remember Dean
Susan Cobb meeting during senior year
with those of us not immediately headed for graduate school. She warned us
that we—especially the women—would
find it difficult to integrate ourselves
into the mundane workplace after the
intellectual freedom and respect we had
experienced at Swarthmore. She advised us to be ready to be considered
less employable than technical school
graduates who had good secretarial
skills. She was right.
In New Mexico, after waiting tables,
cutting and selling firewood, and learning to build houses from adobe brick
and used mining timbers, I did find
employment more in line with my training—in state government and eventually
teaching psychology for the College of
Santa Fe. It was still nontraditional, however, because my students were maximum-security prisoners in the state penitentiary. I was there for the 1980 riot,
leaving the facility just a few hours
before the violence erupted. Later,
counseling survivors, I learned of plans
the students had made to protect me
should the trouble have started while I
was still inside.
In the aftermath of what has been
termed the bloodiest prison riot in U.S.
history, I again experienced the price
exacted for living my version of the
good life, with its obligation to know—
and act from—one’s ethical beliefs. I
was invited to speak at a symposium on
the causes of the riot. In Quakerly fashion, I spoke truth to power and was
promptly blacklisted.
Back to waitressing, to building a private counseling practice, to writing, and
eventually to working as a paralegal for
the team defending prisoners accused
of riot-related crimes. As I entered yet
DECEMBER 1998
W
ouldn’t it be
appropriate for
Swarthmore
to award an
occasional
honorary
Master of Mastery?
another new area of learning, there was
a flash of remembrance: I had scored
well on the law boards but never
applied to law school. I thought at the
time that my approach to living the
good life was more philosophical than
legal, and nothing in my exposure to our
court and corrections systems has
altered my conviction that truth and justice find little expression in them. But
there are a sprinkling of well-intentioned
people working within each system, trying to make improvements against virtually overwhelming odds.
In a recent call for nominations for
honorary degrees, the College said it
was seeking to honor a person “on the
ascent of his or her career or at the peak
of achievement” who had shown “distinction, leadership, or originality in a
significant field.” Living the good life is
not limited to such people, not unless
negotiating life from a basis of principle,
manifesting those principles when it
counts, and serving one’s fellows along
the way constitutes a career in a significant field. Is there such a thing as a master’s degree in mastery? Wouldn’t it be
appropriate for Swarthmore to award an
occasional honorary Master of Mastery?
Is there any more “significant field” than
living life fully, ethically, and well?
Many of the people I have encountered throughout my variegated yet still
significantly unified experience deserve
honorary degrees. I’m thinking of an
elderly lady whom I assisted in hospice
care. She was dying of a most painful
form of bone cancer, yet her gentleness,
patience, and determination to savor
every moment of her few remaining
weeks helped ease her grandson out of
a crisis of identity and past the lure of
gangs. I propose a degree for the prison
lifer who enrolled in my classes to
relieve boredom and opened up to his
own creativity, writing a fascinating science fiction adventure based on the
premise that how we relate to the world
depends on whether we spend our earliest months on our backs (in a crib,
European mode) or tied upright in carrying cloths or cradle boards (in the
African and Native American mode).
What about an award for a local Spanish-speaking couple, now in their late
70s, neither of whom went beyond sixth
grade, whose five children (three of
them daughters) hold a total of 10
advanced degrees and work as president of a community college, owner of a
travel agency, nursing administrator of a
hospice, and co-owners of a busy truck
stop and restaurant.
So wherein lies the asserted unity in
my experience, I hear you asking? Certainly not in area of employment, nor
even in the constancy of its change. No,
my experience of living a unity—the
good life—lies not in the what of life but
in the how and why. I seek to allow the
Quakerly “that of God” to manifest fully
in others, as in myself. I make room for a
centered awareness that is far more
than intellectual and emotional expression, and without which intellectual and
emotional expression have no resonance. I focus on enjoying the rich diversity around me, the varied ways in
which truth and integrity manifest themselves, the spiritual experience often
referred to as beingness. I reap therefrom that settled feeling of home, which
a poet once tellingly described as “the
place you don’t have to deserve,” where
one accepts oneself and is, therefore, at
ease. No Alumni College Abroad? Minimal contributions to the Alumni Fund—
even though I appreciate what Swarthmore offers and would like to support
it?
So be it. Like Popeye, I am what I am. !
Niki Giloane Sebastian ’65 is a counselor,
home health worker, bread baker—and
writer—in Sapello, New Mexico.
43
Alumni Profile
Designs of the times
Dorothy Twining Globus ’69 creates fashion exhibits to educate and enjoy.
orothy Twining
Globus ’69 has one
of the biggest closets
in the world. As director of the Museum of
the Fashion Institute of
Technology (FIT) in
New York, she is
responsible for a collection of more than
50,000 costume pieces
and more than 30,000
textiles.
Globus oversees all
aspects of mounting
the museum’s exhibitions, from budgeting
and grant writing to
the development of
themes, the use of
physical space, and
publicity. Each exhibition can take
years to bring to the public—and to the
11,000 students of FIT, who study art
and design, business, and technology
at the school’s Seventh Avenue campus.
“Clothes are vessels of memory,”
says Globus of her exhibitions. “People
love to look at fashion. Clothing evokes
associations with times past. Just
about any woman can tell you what she
was wearing on the important occasions of her life. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”
A recent example is an exhibition of
the work of clothing designer Claire
McCardell, whom Globus describes as
a “revolutionary designer of the 1940s
and 1950s. McCardell made an American lifestyle practical, wearable, and
affordable. Her innovative construction
and materials have inspired many a
contemporary fashion designer.
“When word went out that this exhibition was being produced, we had
numerous phone calls from women
who had held onto their own Claire McCardell garments and wanted to offer
them for the show. From these unsolicited calls, we ended up taking in a
dozen more outfits.”
At FIT, Globus mounts four to six
major exhibitions each year, along with
an annual student exhibition that showcases around 2,000 pieces from the
school’s art and design division. FIT’s
curriculum ranges well beyond fashion
DECEMBER 1998
Globus has been
intrigued by museum
work since serving as a
student intern at the
Smithsonian in the 1960s.
After graduating from
Swarthmore with a
degree in art history, she
went to work full time for
the Smithsonian, where
she met her husband,
Stephen Globus, now a
venture capitalist. She
moved to New York in
1972, when she was
appointed curator of exhibitions of the CooperHewitt Museum—the
national design museum
of the Smithsonian Institution. Globus joined FIT
in 1993. Her predecessor there was
another Swarthmorean, Richard Martin
’67, who is now curator of the Costume
Institute at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art.
The FIT museum looks back, but it
also looks forward. Globus recently
completed a show with three professors from Central-Saint Martins College
of Art and Design in London. Titled
“C’AD Infinitum: Textiles, Techniques,
and Technologies” it showed how computer technology has changed the
design and production of textiles.
“People think you would lose a lot of
the handwork that goes into creating
designs for fabric,” she says, “but actually computers have aided in timesaving ways.
“Computer technology is important,
but there’s nothing like seeing and
touching the real objects,” she said. “I
think that’s the future of museums—
contextualizing things and understanding how they fit into the world. That’s
what the FIT museum does as it adds
to its collections. It makes fashion and
textiles accessible for study by students, scholars, and industry.”
“You can look at a photograph
alone, or you can look at the actual
item, which will tell you far more about
the garment, how it was made, and
even reflect what was going on in the
world at the time.”
—Audree Penner
Photos by Irving Solero, Courtesy of the Museum at FIT, New York
D
Clothes are “vessels of memory” according
to Dorothy Globus, who creates exhibitions
at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. An example is the recent retrospective
of the work of designer Claire McCardell
(top), whose postwar work Globus calls
“revolutionary.”
and includes such subjects as advertising design, cosmetics and fragrance
marketing, interior design, packaging,
fabric restoration, and toy design.
With 12,000 square feet of gallery
space and two floors for storage,
Globus has developed exhibitions on
everything from linen (a fiber used not
only for garments but for such purposes as mummy wrappings and making
fire hoses) to the innovative contemporary clothing designs of Isabel and
Ruben Toledo, a young Cuban-American couple.
45
Alumni Profile
Calling Bangladesh
With cell phones, Iqbal Quadir ’81 knits together a nation.
I
n 1971, Bangladesh’s war for independence forced some city dwellers to
flee to remote villages. One day, Iqbal
Quadir ’81, the 13-year-old son of one
such family, was sent from the village,
where they had taken refuge, to another village to get medical supplies. The
two motorboats that had supplied efficient transportation between the villages had suspended their service
because of the war, so the boy had to
make the 10-kilometer journey on foot.
After walking all morning, he arrived
to find that the person he sought was
not at home. Young Quadir spent the
afternoon trekking home. When the
boat service later resumed, life in the
villages improved dramatically—farmers and fishermen, again able to transport their products more easily, earned
more; necessities became available
again. The young Quadir was struck by
the importance of being connected and
the disadvantage of being isolated.
Some years later, armed with a
degree from Swarthmore and an M.A.
and M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, Quadir went to work briefly at
Security Pacific Merchant Bank. Then
he joined Atrium Capital Corporation, a
small New York City investment firm.
In 1993, memories of Quadir’s childhood experience were rekindled when
a computer link in his office broke
down. He said: “I remembered the
wasted day in 1971. Connectivity was
productivity, be it in a modern office or
an underdeveloped village.”
Research on telecommunication in
Bangladesh revealed two phones for
every 1,000 people and virtually none
in the rural areas, home to 100 million
of the nation’s inhabitants. “I wondered
how much human energy was being
wasted in such an unconnected nation
of 120 million,” Quadir said, “and I
found it particularly disturbing at a
time when new forms of connectivity
such as the Internet and e-mail were
transforming even such mature
economies as in the United States.”
Research showed him that a significant
contribution to economic progress
comes from telecommunications and
that a poor economy like Bangladesh
would gain $5,000 annually in gross
national product by installing just one
50
Putting Iqbal Quadir’s
(right) idea into practice,
a rural Bangladeshi
woman sells phone
services to her fellow
villagers. She bought the
cellular phone with a
Grameen Bank loan.
$1,000 phone. “Furthermore,” Quadir said, “the prices of
telecommunication links are declining
continually. Because India, with comparable economic conditions to
Bangladesh, had five times as many
phones per capita, it was clear to me
that the culprit was poverty in initiative, not economics.” He decided to
take the initiative.
After a year of investigation, Quadir
concluded that the main obstacles to
telecommunication in Bangladesh were
deficient infrastructures such as roads
to facilitate servicing a telephone network, records to enable credit checks,
and banks for collecting bills. Seeking a
bright spot in the gloomy situation,
Quadir approached Grameen Bank,
which had initiated a revolutionary
microcredit system, making small
loans to the very poor. Grameen was
already operating in 35,000 villages
with 1,100 branches and 12,000 workers. Quadir said, “Its workers were
obviously making good credit decisions, as 97 percent of its two million
borrowers—mostly women—were paying back their loans.” Typically a
woman borrows $100 to $200 without
collateral from Grameen to start a
small business. For example, she uses
the money to purchase a cow. The
woman then sells milk to her neighbors, makes a living, and pays off the
loan. She becomes self-sufficient.
“Connectivity can play a similar
role,” argued Quadir. “Just as credit
obviates dependence on middlemen, a
telephone connects the woman to customers and suppliers without intermediaries. Moreover, a telephone can be a
‘cow’ as well.” A woman could borrow
$200 from Grameen, buy a cellular
phone, and sell communication services to fellow villagers. By 1994,
Quadir convinced Grameen
that a telephone network
would work to its advantage,
and that the bank’s
widespread experience
could compensate for the
lack of roads, billing systems, and credit checks.
“This was the proverbial 1
percent, the inspiration,”
said Quadir, “with the
remaining 99 percent, the
perspiration, to follow.” He
persuaded Telenor AS, the state-owned
telephone company in Norway (which
in 1995 had more cellular telephones
per 1,000 people than any other country in the world), to support his initiative. “After much effort by Grameen’s
management,” Quadir says, “today we
have GrameenPhone in Bangladesh, a
commercial operation that already has
25,000 customers in Dhaka alone and is
rapidly expanding into other areas.”
A pilot program involving 150
Bangladeshi villages has confirmed
that each village operator makes an
average of $2 a day after expenses, or
$750 a year, which represents more
than twice the country’s per capita
income. Hundreds more villages will
soon be part of the network too.
“I believe,” Quadir says, “that the
digital revolution has no reason to be
confined to advanced countries but
can become a revolution in economic
development as well.”
—Carol Brévart
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Books & Authors
Rejoicing in nature
Barbara Gawthrop Hallowell ’46,
Mountain Year: A Nature Notebook,
John F. Blair, 1998.
N
to say nice things about yet another
tree-hugging alum enthusing over the
beauties of nature, about which he or
she knew little. But this book is so informative, accurate, and just plain fun
reading that I am going to buy copies as
presents for friends and relations.
—Timothy Williams ’64
Professor of Biology
A wish come true
Molly McGarry and Fred Wasserman
’78, Becoming Visible: An Illustrated History of Lesbian and Gay Life in TwentiethCentury America, New York Public
Library/Penguin Studio, 1998.
I
BARBARA HALLOWELL
orth America has a rich heritage of
naturalist writers—Aldo Leopold,
Rachel Carson, and Henry Thoreau just
for starters. Barbara Hallowell’s [’46]
collection of essays on the life and times
of nature in the southern Appalachians
can be added to that list.
In the manner of Edwin Way Teal,
Hallowell organizes her thoughts as a
yearlong calendar of 85 one- to two-page
sketches about natural events. In winter,
she covers winter weather and how
birds keep from freezing; in spring it is
flowers, trees, and ferns; summer brings
insects, toads, and salamanders; and in
autumn, she explains how pollution has
altered the famous blue haze of the
Smoky Mountains and tells us why
leaves fall. Despite my training as a field
biologist and naturalist, I learned a thing
or two myself: the derivation of the
name “Wake Robin,” that toads like to
be tickled, that ragweed is an important
food source for birds, and the difference
between rime ice and hoarfrost.
Hallowell rejoices in nature and is at
her best describing the joys of snake
watching or defending unappreciated
animals such as earthworms, black-
birds, or vultures. The book packs a lot
of science into short essays, although I
could tell when she wrote about things
she had read about rather than having
experienced them herself. Occasionally,
the reader is slowed by taxonomic discussions that pertain only to her region
of the country, but most of the writing is
witty and sprightly, emphasizing appreciation of nature rather than its description.
Almost anyone who enjoys the
woods will learn something in this book,
but it will hold a special interest for
those who know the Appalachians—
especially the southern half of that
range. Hallowell’s interests are so broad
that she will give most readers a new
appreciation of some aspect of the natural world, such as her explanations of
how to make sumac tea, what a simple
hand lens reveals, and how to follow the
tracks of leaf miners in green leaves.
The book is thoughtfully designed
with many fine color photographs by
the author and others. There is both an
index and a references section, which
might better have been called recommended reading. (One surprising omission from the latter is the excellent
three-volume series on bird behavior by
the author’s fellow alumnus Donald
Stokes ’69 and his wife, Lillian.)
I was a bit apprehensive when asked
to do this review. I feared I would have
Barbara Hallowell’s photograph of a millipede appears in Mountain Year. She lived
for 23 years in the mountains of North Carolina, where she combined her interests in
natural history, writing, and photography in newspaper columns, nature education,
and three books—including, with daughter Anne Hallowell Reich, the popular guide
Fern Finder. She and husband Tom ’37 now reside in Kennett Square, Pa.
52
n June 1994, more than a million
queer people from around the world
descended on New York City to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the
Stonewall riots, which many see as the
beginning of the modern gay rights
movement. One of the most astonishing
sights that summer was the enormous
banner proclaiming an exhibition titled
“Becoming Visible: The Legacy of
Stonewall” that dominated the Fifth
Avenue facade of the New York Public
Library.
The Stonewall Inn, a well-known
Greenwich Village gay bar, was raided
by the New York City police on June 28,
1969. The vice squad—and the queer
patrons themselves—were surprised
when the routine raid turned into a riot
as bar patrons and other gays, fed up
with official harassment of homosexuals, fought back.
Inside the library, visitors were treated to a series of rich sensory experiences that made visible a history of New
York’s lesbians, gays, and bisexuals,
both individuals and communities, in
the 20th century. Artifacts—including
musical recordings—from each decade
of the century documented private and
public lives, diverse communities,
movements, and public cultures. From
lesbian pulps to physique art, no aspect
of queer life went unexamined.
The exhibition drew primarily on
materials acquired by the library in the
1980s, but it was rounded out by objects
recovered through the tenacious efforts
of its intrepid curators, Fred Wasserman
’78, Molly McGarry, and Mimi Bowling.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Attention authors
The Bulletin welcomes review copies
of books, compact disks, and other
works by alumni. (No magazine or
journal articles, please.) The editors
choose featured books for review, and
others receive capsule reviews. All
works are then donated to the Swarthmoreana section of McCabe Library.
Send your work to Books & Authors,
Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1397.
DECEMBER 1998
reference in follow-on case courses and
after graduation. Also appropriate as an
undergraduate introductory text for
exceptional students, this book may be
used when the introductory course is
taught over two terms.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Visitors left the library visibly moved,
and many returned repeatedly, commenting that they wished the show
might travel to their hometown.
With the publication of Becoming Visible: An Illustrated History of Lesbian and
Gay Life in Twentieth-Century America by
McGarry and Wasserman, they will finally see their wish realized. This superb
book instantly takes its place as the best
available illustrated history of queer
people in the United States.
The authors have managed to reproduce all the virtues of the exhibition,
while expanding the story to include a
fuller account of personalities, communities, and events in other parts of the
United States. In four sections titled
“Stonewall”; “Sodomites, Perverts, and
Queers”; “Social Worlds”; and “Organizing,” they summarize the historical literature in these fields, illustrating it with
more than 300 exquisite reproductions
of photographs, documents, and objects
from The New York Public Library’s collections. These illustrations draw the
reader into hitherto invisible realms
that narrate a full range of experience
from the intensely private to the blatantly public. The pioneering efforts of community historians have only recently
produced these historical narratives for
us; now this book makes them tangibly
real for the first time.
Becoming Visible is far more than a
fascinating photographic record. Its
authors have drawn intelligently from
the available historical literature, offering a written text that takes its place
among the best general syntheses of
20th-century lesbian and gay American
history.
—Pieter Judson ’78
Associate Professor of History
Fred Wasserman ’78, co-author of Becoming Visible, is currently director of curatorial administration at The Jewish Museum in
New York. He was one of the principal
curators of the Ellis Island Immigration
Museum. The poster above is from 1978.
Other recent books
Brian L. Hawkins and Patricia Meyer
Battin ’51 (eds.), The Mirage of Continuity: Reconfiguring Academic Information
Resources for the 21st Century, Council
on Library and Information Resources
and Association of American Universities, 1998. This collection of essays
addresses the changes in technology
and their impact on ways academic
communities will provide information
resources in the 21st century.
Peter Bloom ’65, The Life of Berlioz,
Cambridge University Press, 1998. As
part of a series providing accounts of
the lives of major composers, this book
about Berlioz places the French musician in the periods of the Bourbon
Restoration, July Monarchy, Second
Republic, and Second Empire in which
he lived and worked as composer, conductor, concert manager, and writer.
Michelangelo Celli ’95, Words Are Dogs
Barking at Windmills, Vantage Press,
1998. Winner of the “Editor’s Choice
Award” in the National Library of Poetry’s New Poets Competition, Celli
evokes humor, intrigue, and wisdom in
this volume of unique verse.
Eugene F. Brigham, Louis C. Gapenski,
and Michael C. Ehrhardt ’77, Financial
Management: Theory and Practice, 9th
ed., Dryden Press, 1999. This textbook
in corporate finance is designed primarily for M.B.A. programs and then as a
Margot Gayle and Carol Gayle ’58, CastIron Architecture in America: The Significance of James Bogardus, W.W. Norton
& Company, 1998. The first book on the
life and work of James Bogardus, a pioneer of cast-iron architecture in America, describes the refacing of American
cities in the mid-19th century.
Janet Letts ’52, Legendary Lives in La
Princesse de Clèves, Rockwood Press,
1998. This study arose from Letts’
curiosity about the internal narratives
of La Princesse de Clèves, providing
glimpses of 16th-century history.
Richard Martin ’67, The Ceaseless Century: 300 Years of Eighteenth-Century Costume, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1998. Martin, curator of The Costume
Institute at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, analyzes fashions of the 18th to
20th centuries.
Elizabeth (Sutherland) Martínez ’46,
De Colores Means All of Us, South End
Press, 1998. In these essays, Martínez
chronicles Chicana/o history and presents a radical Latina perspective on
race, liberation, and identity.
Yopie Prins ’81 and Maeera Shreiber,
Dwelling in Possibility, Cornell University Press, 1997. This collection, which
interweaves feminist critical essays and
poetic meditations on genre and gender, cuts across conventional boundaries between critics and poets—suggesting new ways of thinking about history and identity.
Mary Roelofs Stott ’40, Mary’s World,
International University Press, 1997. In a
foreword by husband Gilmore Stott,
this posthumously published volume of
collected essays is described as expression of intensely private thought, which
evokes universal recognition in people
from all walks of life.
Mara Taub ’60, Juries: Conscience of the
Community, Chardon Press, 1998. These
readings for students and prospective
jurors on the realities of the police,
court, and penal code provide a guide
for understanding our criminal justice
system.
53
ON THE LINE
Continued from page 15
and says, “Neither do I.”
Nevertheless, it is very clear to me—and to
other, better-placed observers—that in deciding to
rebuild Swarthmore’s football program, Alfred
Bloom was acting on the basis of something deeply felt, and perhaps newly felt.
Even so outspoken a critic of his decision as Professor Barry Schwartz, who
says, “I think we should have bitten the
bullet and kissed it [football] good-bye,”
also says, “I think that Al was moved by
the football team’s arguments that this
was a significant part of their lives, and
that an institution that is as committed
as we claim to be to allowing people to
flourish in the various ways that people
flourish ought to include this.”
I confess to being moved at Bloom’s
being moved, and I confess to
some surprise. I’m invited to
Bloom’s office on the day I’m
scheduled to spend with the
team, and I’m eager to get back
down the hill. I expect to hear
little more than the official
position on “the contribution
that football makes to our educational program in general,”
which is, in fact, what I do hear.
But when Bloom describes
the times he has spent talking
and, on at least one occasion,
traveling with football players,
The Garnet emerge
I feel as though I may be as close as I’ll get to the
through the gates
culture of this institution. What I sense is not to be
onto Clothier Field
found in any guarded quotation so much as in the
for the Homecoming
unguarded expression on his face. He has been
game against Ursiengaged by an issue, he has heard from those with
nus College. Defena perspective that “my own background did not
sive lineman Ben
provide,” he has modified his views as a result—
Merkel ’02 (above)
and he’s as visibly delighted by that entire process
watches from the
as a man who’s made his first batch of homemade
sidelines as
wine and can’t resist taking you into the basement
Swarthmore goes on
for a sip.
offense. Sophomore
quarterback Scott
Murray (opposite)
gets caught behind
the line of scrimmage by an Ursinus
rush. Swarthmore
lost 21–13.
60
E
veryone on hand to see Swarthmore play its
October 3 homecoming game against Ursinus feels the home team can win. And win is
what everyone seems intent on telling Peter
Alvanos he will do, as I tag along beside him on my
second visit to Swarthmore. No virgin groom ever
had this many handshakes and winks at the expec-
tation of imminent performance. I cannot help but
wonder if there’s any place else he’d rather be.
He’ll be here a while, regardless. His day began
at 6 a.m. with a solitary run around the track and a
review of play charts that anyone who didn’t know
better might assume were the flight plans for a
space mission.
He joins his team for breakfast at 9:30. The players eat shoulder to shoulder at several packed
tables in the center of Sharples Dining Hall, their
coaches in white shirts and ties, and the overhead
beams and black chandeliers adding a certain
Arthurian ambience to the meal’s subdued mood.
At its last game, against Gettysburg, the team was
behind 21–0 at the half. Swarthmore came back to
score 20 points, losing 27–20. This time, the players
promise one another, they’re going to play “a
whole football game.”
The team from Ursinus arrives early. Coming off
their bus, they put one in mind of that old circus
routine where 10 clowns get out of a Volkswagen,
except there are 70 or 80 of these guys. During
warm-ups, they look even more numerous. They
roar when they shout; the Swarthmore players on
the other end of the field shout just as loudly, but
their combined volume is less.
Passing by on the track with her mother, one of
Alvanos’ daughters calls out “There’s Daddy!”
Whether or not he hears her, I don’t know. I think I
know what the rule is, however: Focus, nothing but
focus. Mother says a gentle “shh” and ushers the
girls into the stands.
Robin Mamlet is on the sidelines, this day’s
“guest coach.” Bob Williams is here. Alfred and
Peggi Bloom are here. The stands are at least threequarters full. “This is incredible for us,” Mamlet
says.
Back in the locker room, the team begins the ritual transformation of pressure into fighting spirit.
Someone shouts defiantly, “Nobody comes into
our house and walks out with a win!” I hear the
summoning of a primal emotion, or maybe it’s only
the rumble of Quakers rolling in their graves.
Alvanos finally addresses the players. “Take a
moment for yourselves,” he says quietly. All are
silent. His pregame speech lasts less than a minute.
He tells them, “To believe is to be strong,” and they
take the field.
In the tense minutes that ensue, Bob Williams
will make an offhand remark to me that stays on
my mind till the very end of the game. “It’s a funnyshaped ball, isn’t it?”
The teams are tied 7–7 at the half. Swarthmore
takes the lead 13–7 on the first play of the third
quarter, but Ursinus soon manages to even the
score. I remember that the Swarthmore team is
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
known as “The Garnet Tide” as players on the sideline sweep me along in an advancing wave beside
their comrades on the field. I also remember something that Assistant Coach John Keady said to me
in the summer: “My job is to keep Peter’s blood
pressure down.”
At the end of the third quarter, when Ursinus
once again moves ahead 19–13, and then 21–13,
Keady’s job is all but a lost cause—though the
game is still not. In sport, as in other kinds of labor,
coaching has to be one of the quintessential experiences of human helplessness; there are any number of things you can do besides watch, but in the
end, you watch. Alvanos watches bent over, hands
on his knees, as if some unprecedented ruling
might give the former linebacker leave, just once,
to charge onto the field and play. Others show the
same anguish. At one point, Mason Tootell, seemingly exasperated from cheering on the team, turns
to the fans and exhorts them to rally with his fist
raised over his head. “Come on!” he shouts. In
another moment, I could expect him or one of his
fellows to call the same thing to the gods.
No one scores in the last quarter, though almost
to the end, Swarthmore seems on the verge of a
touchdown. Then Ursinus takes possession of the
ball—and the clock, as always, takes possession of
the rest.
The scene in the locker room after the game is
like a death. None of the players will so much as make eye
contact. It’s a raw October
day, so the sound of so many
full throats and noses may
owe to nothing but the
weather. If that’s the case,
Alvanos, too, is affected by
the cold.
“I don’t know if there’s
anything I can say right now
that will help. But I know one
thing—you guys fought your
asses off from beginning to
end. Dadgumit, this football
team deserves to win! You have to understand
something, men. They’re not going to feel sorry for
us. Just like we’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves.... But the next time we get tired, I want you
to think back to what it feels like right now to be sitting in this locker room. The great thing about football is, you get another opportunity. I think of
something my mother always used to say to me,
‘This too shall pass.’ We’ll come back on Tuesday,
full of piss and vinegar. We have to get this one
more notch up.”
It’s hard to imagine a fuller range of emotion in a
DECEMBER 1998
C
oaching has to be one of the
quintessential experiences
of human helplessness. There are any
number of things you can do besides
watch, but in the end, you just watch.
61
single paragraph of impromptu rhetoric: grief,
praise, resignation, sentimentality, hope. Maybe
love. I think of two things Brian Bell said
to me during my last visit. “He cares for
us, he feels, he’s an emotional guy. It
motivates me when I see my coach
going through the same emotions that I
go through on the field.”
For Bell, those emotions are not extraneous to the sport. “I’ve been playing
football since I was in fourth grade, and
as far as I’m concerned, football is not a
cerebral game. Thinking happens off the
field, it happens in preparation, in
offices. Once you step on the field, it’s
reaction, it’s emotion, it’s intensity, it’s
desire—it’s camaraderie.”
When Alvanos says, “On your captains,” all hands go on Bell and Harris so
that together they look like a living maypole around which spent dancers and
garnet sashes have all been wound
together in one bruised heap. As Bell
begins to address his teammates, too
quietly for me to hear many of his words
but in a tone that is almost maternal, I
find myself wondering how many other
experiences in his education or in his
whole life will match the intensity of
what he must be feeling now.
B
Co-captain J.P. Harris ’99 (top) quarterbacks the team
against Franklin &
Marshall. Defensive back Elliot Lee
sustains an injury
as the game winds
down to Swarthmore’s final drive.
Freshman Justin
Pagliei’s prayers
aren’t heard as
Swarthmore falls
short, losing 21–17.
62
ack in his office, Peter Alvanos is
still struggling to master his own
intense emotions; it seems in poor
taste to play the reporter with him.
“We’re so close, we’re so close! I feel
bad for these seniors who haven’t won a
football game in the last two years.
They’re the ones who’ve made the commitment. Yes, the College has made a commitment,
but they’re the ones who endured over the past
two years. I want to win for them.”
I press him to respond more personally. “Professionally am I satisfied? No. Now it’s 0 and 3 on my
record.... My personal stake boils down to wins and
losses. That’s what a football coach is.”
He breathes a very deep sigh and murmurs,
“Oh, man.” Then he looks up, fully composed,
intrepid, the missionary. “So there it is, my friend.”
There it is indeed: what no one at this school
will ever say, what Peter Alvanos himself might not
have said in a cooler moment. “Wins and losses.
That’s what a football coach is.”
Aristotle referred to it as “anagnorisis” or
“recognition,” the point at which the tragic hero
recognizes his predicament in a way that dignifies
even as it clarifies his fate. I don’t mean to suggest
that Peter Alvanos is destined to be a tragic figure—I’m willing to wager that he’s destined to
become one of the best-loved and most successful
coaches in Swarthmore’s history—I only mean to
suggest that if he were to be tragic, he has what it
takes to carry the part. The robed choristers can
chant all they want to about divine necessity and
mortal hubris and the role of athletics at a liberal
arts institution; standing in the midst of them, even
towering above them, Peter Alvanos knows the
score.
O
n my first trip to Swarthmore, I missed a
turn. I was very close to the College, and I
knew I was close not only by the map but
also by the architecture of the houses and the landscaping around them. Within several disorienting
moments, however, I found myself moving down a
street of modest homes set close together in
blocks of flat terrain. “I have a feeling this isn’t
Swarthmore,” I said to myself. I doubled back and
found the College on the hill. “You were probably in
Chester,” someone said, when I explained my
delay.
Now I wonder whether in missing my turn I had
actually found my story, even before I had a clear
idea of what that story was about. I had found that
“significant part of our culture” that Ed Steiner ’59,
former captain of the team, told me would be forfeited if his alma mater ever gave up football. I had
found that place where boys of athletic aptitude
still prefer making a touchdown to paddling a
kayak. Perhaps I had found something like that
place where Peter Alvanos, age 6, announced to his
father and mother that he was going to be a football coach when he grew up.
All of this occurs to me on my way from Swarthmore, after I finally exit the New Jersey Turnpike
and begin to wind my way through a small working-class suburb where the lawns are stuck with
red, white, and blue election signs—Italian, Polish,
and Latino surnames rocking in the wind beside
cement statues of saints. I know this neighborhood
fairly well, having driven through it every day for
four years on my commute to college. It’s one town
over from where I’ll sleep tonight at my in-laws’
house, one town over from where I was born.
When you screw up in places like these, nobody
writes an affecting little memoir called Remembering Denny about what a shame it was. Nobody
wants to remember. When you go to college, or to
the ball field, you’re expected to make good.
That expectation is the first of two reasons
given by Swarthmore Economics Professor Rob
Hollister for the noteworthy fact that so many footSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
ball players major in economics. Parents of football players, he says, “tend to have a business orientation.” Noting the similarity between the
schematics of football plays and economic models,
he adds, “It may also be that kids who like football
like the systematic elements of the subject.”
I want very much to believe in a third reason,
that somewhere in the formative experiences of
these highly disciplined and highly intelligent
young men is an elemental understanding that it is
economics that determines where Chester ends
and Swarthmore begins, economics that proves
the sincerity of our convictions—that puts the
proverbial money where the proverbial mouth is—
economics that will show, ultimately, whether
words like “diversity” and “inclusion” are clarion
calls for social justice or merely the latest feints of
privilege. And perhaps these young men also sense
that what Alfred Bloom calls “the congruence of a
commitment to serious analytic thought and the
use of that thought to bring about a better
world”—the congruence he sees “at the center of
what Swarthmore is about”—is not always made of
controlled experiments or polite discussions.
Sometimes a better analysis, not to mention a better world, derives from going helmet to helmet on
the line of scrimmage.
These thoughts are interrupted on a dark side
street when a boy suddenly steps into the far range
of my headlights. I touch my brakes in apprehension. It is late, and the dim streetlights barely show
through the trees. I slow down even more when I
notice a second figure poised in the shadows
beside my car. Then the first boy cocks back his
arm, and I come almost to a stop. A football sails
over my car, over my head, as the boy at the curb
charges red-lit across my rearview mirror and into
the direction of Swarthmore, already more than
100 miles behind me. !
Garret Keizer is the author of No Place But Here: A
Teacher’s Vocation in a Rural Community, and A
Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry. The Garnet Tide ended its 1998 season 0–8.
A
fter the
loss,
Alvanos
struggles to
master his
own intense
emotions....
“We’re so
close, we’re
so close!”
DECEMBER 1998
63
Our Back Pages
Top: The Strath Haven Inn, ca. 1930.
Generations of parents stayed here
while visiting Swarthmore.
Below: The Ville before Michael’s College
Pharmacy. The building on the right still stands.
.
.
.
e
r
e
h
e
r
e
w
u
o
Wish y
B
efore e-mail, before
CNN, before low-priced
long-distance phone calls,
there was the humble postcard. It took just a minute to
write one and just a penny
to send one.
The back of one card
reads: “ Come to see me
soon, and I’ ll tell you how
I came here.” Another
says: “ Have been very
busy, but not too occupied
to think of you.”
Thanks to Keith Lockhart
of Ridley Park, Pa., for sharing with us a few examples
from his collection.
Left: The windowless Book
and Key “crypt” held many
mysteries on Elm Avenue.
64
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Clockwise from top left:
• The Mary Lyon School, part
of which is still a College residence hall.
• A view of the College from
the Ville, with the railroad station in the foreground. Note
the stationmaster’s laundry
hanging out.
• The “New Library,” later the
Tarble Social Center. Only part
of this building still stands after
the fire of 1983.
• Wharton Hall, with its center
section unbuilt, and a row of
cabbages growing where the
tennis courts now stand.
• Magill Walk when the trees
were younger.
DECEMBER 1998
© SCOTT GOLDSMITH
y!
d
a
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r
rs are
i
a
h
c
Your
t
ke
c
i
t
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u
o
Y to
I
N
M
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A
D
N
E
K
WEE 9
19•9
JUNE
4–6
The reunion spotlight in June will be
on Swarthmore alumni who are members of classes ending in 4 and 9. Planning is already under way to offer a
variety of opportunities to help alumni
get reacquainted with the College and
each other. Watch for the complete
schedule in your mailbox next spring.
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1998-12-04
The Swarthmore College Bulletin is the official alumni magazine of the college. It evolved from the Garnet Letter, a newsletter published by the Alumni Association beginning in 1935. After World War II, college staff assumed responsibility for the periodical, and in 1952 it was renamed the Swarthmore College Bulletin. (The renaming apparently had more to do with postal regulations than an editorial decision. Since 1902, the College had been calling all of its mailed periodicals the Swarthmore College Bulletin, with each volume spanning an academic year and typically including a course catalog issue and an annual report issue, with a varying number of other special issues.)
The first editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin alumni issue was Kathryn “Kay” Bassett ’35. After a few years, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 was appointed editor and held the position for 36 years, during which she reshaped the mission of the magazine from focusing narrowly on Swarthmore College to reporting broadly on the college's impact on the world at large. Gillespie currently appears on the masthead as Editor Emerita.
Today, the quarterly Swarthmore College Bulletin is an award-winning alumni magazine sent to all alumni, parents, faculty, staff, friends of the College, and members of the senior class. This searchable collection spans every issue from 1935 to the present.
Swarthmore College
1998-12-04
42 pages
reformatted digital
The class notes section of The Bulletin has been extracted in this collection to protect the privacy of alumni. To view the complete version of The Bulletin, contact Friends Historical Library.