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HOMELANDS
AROUND
THE GLOBE
14
50
80
68
11
ON THE COVER:
OLGA ROSTAPSHOVA ’02, A RUSSIAN CITIZEN AND A
U.S. PERMANENT RESIDENT, FEELS MOST AT HOME ON
CAMPUS UNDER THE WHARTON HALL MAGNOLIA TREES.
PHOTO BY GEORGE WIDMAN. STORY ON PAGE 32.
24
Features
No More
14
Cookbook Labs
Hands-on science learning
By Alisa G i a r d i n e l li
Sports for
All the
Right Reasons
20
De p a r t m e n t s
Letters
Ongoing dialogue
Collection
Life lessons from athletics
4
Overflowing news
Profiles
By Karen E m a s B o r b e e
Acts of God
24
Acts of Nature
Acts of Man
Havoc of natural disasters
Alumni Digest
40
Swarthmore connected
Class Notes
42
Notes from friends
Deaths
International students adjust
By Andre a H a m m e r
32
48
Classmates remembered
B o o ks & A r t s
64
Prolific alumni
In My Life
58
Retirement or Renaissance?
Nathan and the Narwhals
B y To m S ahagian ’74
20
50
Mary Lou Roger Munts ’45,
a lifelong activist
Rolling
the Rock
Up the Hill
80
56
William Frohlich ’57, founder of
the Northeastern University Press
By Carol Brévart-Demm
Affinity With
Animals
B y R u t h Cooper Lamb ’56
O u r B a c k Pa g e s
A Wisconsin
Gem
By Ralph Lee Smith ’51
By Willia m H o o ke ’ 6 4
Homelands
Around the
Globe
32
3
Thomas Goldsmith ’75, exotic
animal veterinarian
By Audree Penner
68
PA R L O R TA L K
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
2
Moving on: A short story
T
he minivan with Maryland plates is straining to contain four years of books,
blankets, clothes, electronics, and unidentified gear. The new graduate’s parents—hours after proudly snapping photos of their daughter in cap and gown—
look bewildered by the array of stuff. On the sidewalk is a lacrosse stick (they didn’t
know she had one), a large stuffed bear, and a plastic laundry basket full of rumpled
sheets.
Their daughter is distracted. Friends keep interrupting, hugging, sharing quiet
words. Packing the car doesn’t mean much to her. This last day of college has been
filled with rituals—other people’s rituals, mostly. Her diploma, cinched in garnet
ribbon, sits on the dashboard, alongside the rose she wore at the ceremony, which
is wilting now but still quite beautiful. Her
head is bursting with ideas and plans and
Their daughter is
memories. Like a frown, a wandering cloud
eclipses the afternoon sun. A nervous breeze
distracted. Upstairs, tugs at the corner of one of her sheets, filling it with warm June air, urging it to fly
her room is echoing
from the basket. Upstairs, her room is echoand empty; a few
ing and empty; a few hours’ drive lies
ahead—and a life.
hours’ drive lies
She can’t take Swarthmore with her.
What’s in the car are just her things. Most
ahead—and a life.
could belong to any student—notebooks,
CDs, a computer, a file of graded papers—
yet she has with her other markers of her college years: a china mug from orientation, a T-shirt from Peru, two treasured ticket stubs, a deck of cards with all the aces
missing. (Along the way, she’s discarded more aces than she’s saved.) At this
moment, it’s what’s in her mind that really matters.
The last thing in the car is a potted ginkgo tree—a gift from the Scott Arboretum. She remembers the coleus the arboretum gave her freshman year. It got all
leggy in her dorm room, reaching for the sun, then died the summer she saw Machu
Picchu. The baby tree will have to ride to Maryland in her lap. She’ll try to plant it
somewhere—but there’s so much to do ahead. No promises, she thinks.
Her friends are gone now, and that breeze is threatening rain. Start the car; it’s
time to move on.
—Jeffrey Lott
SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE BULLETIN
Editor: Jeffrey Lott
Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer
Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm
Collection Editor: Cathleen McCarthy
Staff Writer: Alisa Giardinelli
Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner
Designer: Suzanne DeMott Gaadt,
Gaadt Perspectives
Administrative Assistant:
Janice Merrill-Rossi
Interns: Stephanie Gironde ’04,
Andrea Juncos ’01
Editor Emerita:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
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
World Wide Web
www.swarthmore.edu
Changes of Address
Send address label along
with new address to:
Alumni Records Office
Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail:
alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume
XCVIII, number 5, is published in
August, September, December, March,
and June by Swarthmore College, 500
College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 190811390. 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 19081-1390.
©2001 Swarthmore College
Printed in U.S.A. on recycled paper
ASTRONOMICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
I read “Barnard’s Wobble” with great interest and some sadness. I’m sure most
Swarthmoreans of my generation remember Peter Van de Kamp with high regard
and fondness. His pioneering research at
the Sproul Observatory was only one
aspect of a true Renaissance man, combined as it was with his teaching, his
directing of the College orchestra, and his
Charlie Chaplin seminars. It is a shame
that disappointment and controversy
haunted him in his final years.
The final sentence of the article alludes
to “entirely different methods and instruments” that are today being used to accomplish what Dr. Van de Kamp thought he
had accomplished in 1963—the detection
Although I’ve worked on many interesting
and highly fruitful aerospace projects, I
would have to rank Hubble at the top for
its challenge, accomplishments, and unique
connection to my years at the College.
ROBERT ROWLEY ’61
Danbury, Conn.
A Walk
in the
Woods
of extrasolar planets. Preeminent among
these is the Hubble Space Telescope, specifically its fine guidance sensors (FGSs). Two
of Hubble’s three FGSs provide the signals
to keep the telescope pointed at individual
stars with unprecedented accuracy for
hours at a time. The third FGS serves a
dual purpose—as a guidance backup and
as an additional science instrument that
can detect and resolve binary star components as dim as magnitude 17, with only a
few milli-arc-seconds of separation. That
Wulff Heintz was right concerning Van de
Kamp’s work on Barnard’s Star has, in fact,
been demonstrated most recently and
definitively by the Hubble FGSs.
However, as Dr. Otto Franz, astronomer
at the Lowell Observatory and member of
the Hubble Astrometry Science team, said
to me after reading the Bulletin article, “Van
de Kamp’s failure regarding Barnard’s star
does not nullify or even diminish the astrometric achievements attained at the Sproul
Observatory by him and his associates,
notably the work published by Sarah Lee
Lippincott ’42 and her collaborators on
astrometric (unseen) low-mass stellar components to nearby stars.” He went on to
say that Swarthmore astrometry has played
a seminal role in formulating astrometric
projects for the Hubble FGSs.
My keen interest in all of this derives
not only from my association with Swarthmore but from the good fortune that I had
to be able to spend seven years of my engineering career contributing significantly to
the manufacture of the Hubble FGSs.
WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
In the interest of clarifying a misconception about the College’s affiliation with the
Maryland National Bank Association
(MBNA), I want to assure our alumni and
parents that their names were not sold to
MBNA for the affinity credit card offer. The
College provided a list of names and addresses to print on a brochure. MBNA is
prohibited from using that data for any
other reason.
There’s no denying that this is a business proposition for MBNA, but the bank
has also offered an attractive interest rate
to Swarthmoreans and a means, for those
who are interested, to identify their ties to
the College. In return, the College receives
a small royalty that supports the financial
aid endowment.
We realize this program does not appeal
to all as a way to demonstrate support of
the College but trust that, as with everything else, there is room for differing opinions. However, we do acknowledge and
thank the hundreds who have subscribed
to the credit card and whose purchases are
providing an additional stream of income
for student scholarships.
DIANE CROMPTON
Director of Development Operations
SAY IT AIN’T SO
Say it ain’t so, Al Bloom! Swarthmore College, with one of the nation’s oldest football programs, cannot be casually tossing
that program in the dustbin, can it? Now I
know how three million Dodger fans felt
when the O’Malley family tore the heart
out of Brooklyn in 1957.
Intercollegiate athletics exist at Swarthmore in their purest sense. Whether it is
football, wrestling, or badminton, wellrounded scholar-athletes play for the joy of
the game. That football survived for more
than a century and was on an upswing is
something to celebrate and cherish.
I do not attribute ill motives to President Bloom and the Board of Managers.
Please turn to page 79
JUNE 2001
I would like to reinforce the understated
sentiments about Professor Peter Van de
Kamp expressed by Professor John Gaustad in “Barnard’s Wobble” (March Bulletin). He stated that “in terms of the rest
of Van de Kamp’s career, he did very important, accurate work.”
Indeed, it is almost impossible to identify a scientist alive today with the foresight and fortitude of Professor Van de
Kamp, who in the late 1930s began a systematic search for extrasolar planets,
knowing it would not pay off for decades.
The fact that it took until the 1980s for
“other observatories” (many of which were
staffed with Van de Kamp’s own students)
to begin to publish their own results is a
testament to the advanced state of his
research program at Swarthmore.
Only the naïveté of a starry-eyed freshman during a pilgrimage to the home of
the legendary retired professor more than
20 years ago could have caused me to ask
him if he had plans to write an autobiography. Even today, I am skeptical of his reply
that there would be little interest in his
story. I can well imagine that there would
be considerable interest, both inside and
outside Swarthmore, in the saga of someone who was—and probably remains—the
College’s most famous professor. The sad
but captivating tale of Barnard’s star and
the falling-out between Van de Kamp and
Professor Wulff Heintz is but one small
chapter of a full and rich story.
DOUGLAS BRAUN ’83
Boulder, Colo.
LETTERS
FORESIGHT AND FORTITUDE
3
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
COLLECTION
STUDENTS PROTEST
“RACIALIZED” POLICE
T R E AT M E N T
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
O
4
n April 13, about 70 students and a
few faculty and staff members,
dressed in black, marched quietly
down Magill Walk and around the streets of
the Ville. They were protesting a recent incident involving College students that led to
accusations of “racialized policing” by
Swarthmore borough police.
Early on the previous Sunday, April 8,
three African-American students from
another college assaulted Randy Keim ’02 in
his Mertz Hall room after a Delta Upsilon
party at which the four apparently argued.
They beat him badly enough to require hospital treatment. About an hour later,
Swarthmore borough police entered the offcampus apartment of Nii Addy ’02 and
Prince Achime ’01.
Keim later said he had mentioned
Achime as possibly knowing his assailants.
In an apparently unrelated incident, a
female student from Bryn Mawr was arrested for assaulting Keim earlier that night.
SWARTHMORE BOROUGH POLICE CHIEF THOMAS
Addy and Achime claim the police
entered their apartment while they were
sleeping, then questioned and searched
Achime. Soon afterward, officers received a
tip from the College operator that a phone
call had been made from the Willets Hall
room of Sanjay Richards ’03, requesting a
taxi to 30th Street Station. Suspicious that
the call was from the assailants, officers
entered Richards’ room without his permission, he says, told him to step into the hallway, asked if he had drugs or weapons, and
then frisked him. “There was no reason for
the search because we clearly did not fit the
description the victim gave of his assailants,” Richards later told The Swarthmorean.
“I think we were searched because we were
African Americans.”
“I felt like [I was questioned in that
manner] completely because of my race,”
Achime told The Phoenix. “No question on
that one.” Addy agreed that their treatment
was racially motivated.
CRAIG LOOKS ON AS STUDENTS MARCH IN
PROTEST AFTER AN INCIDENT THAT SOME CALLED
“RACIALIZED.”
Members of the Swarthmore AfricanAmerican Student Society (SASS) complained to the administration of “procedural
abuse” by the police—including “frisking,
harassment, and demeaning treatment” and
entering without probable cause.
On the morning of April 13, President
Alfred H. Bloom and Vice President for College and Community Relations and Executive Assistant to the President Maurice
Eldridge ’61 met with the borough’s mayor
and chief of police. “The College is investigating the matter and working with the
police and independently to understand
what took place,” Bloom said afterward.
“We’re deeply concerned that our students feel they’re being singled out in terms
of race,” Eldridge said. “It’s contrary to the
Hungerford
named provost
C
Safety awareness
intensifies
D
uring the weekend of Feb. 24, a series
of unrelated incidents left the College
shaken. Several vehicles had their tires
slashed in the parking lot outside the LambMiller Field House, a student was arrested
for disorderly conduct, and another student
reported a sexual assault. All cases remain
open at the Swarthmore Borough Police
Department at press time.
“The assault, along with a mugging last
semester, came as a stark reminder that we
cannot afford complacency around the
issues of safety and security,” says Dean Bob
Gross ’62. “The College does not exist in a
bubble.” Subsequent meetings of administration and students resulted in a plan to
heighten safety awareness and increase safety measures on campus.
The Student Council Safety Committee
will work with the College’s Public Safety
officers in identifying areas in which to add
lighting this summer. Campus directories
and phones will be installed in several locations. Near the railroad tracks, where the
ART HISTORIAN—AND NEW
PROVOST—CONNIE HUNGERFORD
portion of the long-range plan that the
College Planning Committee presented to
the Board of Managers in May 1999, part
of the Middle States accreditation
process.
“I look forward to getting to know
more of the faculty well and to representing their concerns within the senior
administration,” she says.
mugging took place, Public Safety will install
surveillance cameras and increase patrols.
The administration also plans to review
the student-staffed Garnet Patrol shuttle
and escort service, possibly adding staff
positions—with the goal of extending the
hours that safety escorts are available. “We
also recognize that we need to do a better
job of educating students about the need to
take reasonable precautions,” Gross says.
Administrators are also examining how
alcohol use may have effected the February
incidents. “We are concerned about the
rowdiness and vandalism that seem to have
increased recently, always as a result of alcohol abuse,” Gross says. “Students report
that a decrease in the number of public parties has resulted in more abusive drinking in
dorm rooms. This is a perennial problem on
college campuses, the result of the presence
of so many ‘adult but underage’ drinkers.
“Most students at Swarthmore are concerned about what they perceive as a shift in
the social climate. We need to work with
Student Council and other groups to build
the kind of campus culture we all want.”
—Cathleen McCarthy
JUNE 2001
onstance Cain Hungerford, Mari S.
Michener Professor of Art History, will
become provost in the fall, taking over
from Jennie Keith, who served two
terms. Keith will be returning to her
teaching duties as Centennial Professor
of Anthropology. “As I’ve begun to learn
more about the details of this position,
I’ve come even more to admire what
Jennie has accomplished as provost and
how she has gone about her work,” says
Hungerford.
Hungerford received an M.A. and
Ph.D. from the University of California at
Berkeley. She specializes in 19th-century
French painting and, in 1999, published
the biography Ernest Meissonier: Master
in His Genre. She taught a seminar on
Modern Art and courses on Picasso,
Nineteenth-Century European Art, and
Twentieth-Century Western Art.
Hungerford has been responsible for
the College’s art collection for many
years. She also prepared the self-study
GEORGE WIDMAN
principles of the College.”
After the march that afternoon, the
crowd convened near Parrish steps for a
“speak-out.” The mood was quiet and
somber. “This is not a confrontation or an
accusation but instead an opportunity for
the College community to hear our testimonies,” announced Brandyn White ’03, a
member of SASS and organizer of the rally.
African-American students spoke of
encounters with borough police officers they
suspected of being racially prejudiced, often
while driving near campus.
Rodney Morris ’01 closed the rally on an
emotional note, after adding his own recollections of harassment, including being
called “nigger” and “coon” while walking to
the Ville three years ago. “Crying at the
injustice of the world is not enough,” he
said. “This speak-out is a continuation of a
struggle that’s been going on long before
today. At Swarthmore, we know how to
change the world—but we need to put our
faces behind it.”
Discussions followed at the Black Cultural Center (BCC) to explore “ways in
which we can keep such incidents as those
shared during the speak-out from occurring
in the future,” says Timothy Sams, assistant
dean and director of the BCC.
On April 19, SASS members met with the
mayor, police chief, Eldridge, Sams, Dean
Bob Gross ’62, and Associate Dean for Student Life Tedd Goundie. SASS requested a
meeting with borough police to discuss the
official police report filed on April 8 and
“what the police department perceives to be
a healthy relationship between Swarthmore
borough police and students.” They also
asked that police receive annual sensitivity
training.
On May 1, a suspect in the assault was
arrested in Philadelphia, then arraigned at
Media District Court with bail set at
$10,000. The investigation is ongoing.
At press time, SASS students were still
waiting to hear from borough police regarding their requests. “The students didn’t ask
for anything unreasonable,” Sams says.
“There may also be ongoing meetings,
whenever students have encounters with the
police, to talk about ways to ameliorate the
problem. Students are looking for a continuous relationship rather than waiting for
disasters.”
—Cathleen McCarthy
5
COLLECTION
Introducing
mixed-gender rooms
C
ILLUSTRATION BY CLARE SCHAUMANN
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
C
6
oed rooms will be introduced on a
limited basis starting this fall.
After discussions with administrators, the Housing Committee endorsed
the proposal made by Timothy StewartWinter ’01 and members of Swarthmore
Queer Union last December.
In his proposal, Stewart-Winter argued
that “mandatory same-gender rooming is
heterosexist, in that it fails to account for
the comfort of gay, lesbian, and bisexual
students. The basis for the ban on mixedgender rooming was the assumption that
this would prevent sexual tension or relations between co-habitants.”
However, many homosexual students,
he wrote, “are less comfortable living with
same-gender roommates than they would
be with roommates of the other gender
because of factors like attraction and
homophobia that complicate the usual
issues of compatibility.”
The option to choose an opposite-sex
roommate will be offered in 50 spots—
about 4 percent of student housing—in
the Lodges and two sections of Worth that
do not house freshmen.
Both Lodges and Worth
contain hall units that
house four to six students.
“The experiment will
be re-evaluated next
year to see if it is indeed
meeting the needs of
our students, especially
the queer students. At
that time, it could be
ended, enlarged, or
remain the same,” says
Myrt Westphal, assistant dean of the College
and director of residential life.
There is no guarantee
that students who
choose this option will
receive it because the
distribution of rooms
will continue to be done
through a lottery. Westphal does not expect many couples to
request coed rooms. “At Swarthmore, there
is a student culture that strongly suggests
that you not live with a romantic partner,”
Westphal explains.
“Most people, I think, are doing it
because they would feel more comfortable,” Matthew Miller ’04 told The Phoenix
before the lottery. He was hoping to live
with female friends next year but failed to
land one of the allotted spaces. Because
juniors and seniors have the option of single rooms, and freshmen are not allowed
the coed option, it’s an issue that mainly
affects rising sophomores like Miller.
Alex Brennan ’04 was also hoping to
room with female pals but did not draw a
lucky number. “There were too many
sophomores who wanted coed housing,”
he said.
Danielle Keifert ’04, on the other hand,
got her wish. Next year, she will share a
hall unit in the Lodges with her “four best
friends,” one of whom happens to be
male.
—Cathleen McCarthy
Newly tenured
T
he following faculty members have recently been promoted to the rank of associate
professor with tenure: Aurora Camacho de
Schmidt, Spanish; Nathaniel Deutsch, Religion; Ted Fernald, Linguistics; Steven Hopkins, Religion; and Paul Rablen, Chemistry.
4
6.4 x 10
dollars won
O
ne member of the Swarthmore faculty has found a new way to apply her
scholarship. Andrea Stout, assistant professor of physics, appeared in April on
the popular quiz show Who Wants to Be
a Millionaire? She left with $64,000
when neither she nor her last “lifeline,”
former Mathematics Professor Chris
Towles, knew that the late rapper Tupac
Shakur had published posthumous poetry.
Hilde Cohn dies
A
bout 30 friends and
family gathered at
the Friends Meetinghouse in April
to honor Hilde
Cohn, professor
emeritus of German, who died in
her sleep in Haverford, Pa., on March 13
at the age of 92. Several
of Cohn’s former students and colleagues
from the College attended.
After writing essays for Jewish youth
organizations and other publications, Cohn
emigrated to the United States in 1937, joining a network of German-Jewish scholars
who enriched American higher education
during that period. Cohn’s father perished
at Buchenwald the year after she left.
Cohn taught at Bryn Mawr College for
10 years, serving as head resident of the
school’s German House for many years. In
1948, she joined Swarthmore’s German
Department—which later became the German section of the Department of Modern
Languages and Literatures—and retired in
1975. Along with German-language courses,
Cohn taught courses and seminars in German literature, ranging from Romanticism
to 20th-century novels, poetry, and drama.
Going off
the grid
team of students recently filed a provisional patent application for their design of an off-the-grid home-heating
system to be used during short-term power outages. This student project is the first to lead to a promising patent application since Joseph Higgins ’91 and Associate Professor of Engineering E. Carr Everbach received a patent for a sudden infant
death syndrome crib monitor in 1998, which they share with
Kevin Parker at the University of Rochester.
The home-heating system team is the third to work on the
project initiated by Fred Orthlieb, professor of engineering,
but the first to include nonengineers. Along with the team’s
other faculty adviser, Professor of Engineering Erik Cheever
’82, and led by Honors engineering and mathematics major
Tushar Parlikar ’01, the students received a big boost in February from a grant of almost $18,000 from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance.
“By the end of the semester, we hope to have a working
prototype that marketing people can show off at trade shows,”
Parlikar says. Engineering and physics majors designed the
system, then economics and psychology majors worked
together to market it.
The team plans to file the claims section of the patent
application in July and hopes the patent will be issued next
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
A
THE DESIGN AND MARKETING TEAM OF A GROUNDBREAKING HEATING SYSTEM
(CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT): PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING FRED ORTHLIEB, ARI
HAUSER ’01, TUSHAR PARLIKAR ’01, PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING ERIK
CHEEVER, MICHAEL STANLEY ’01, TIM LANG ’04, TAN MAU WU ’02, APRIL
TERRELL OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE, PUKAR MALLAR ’01, AND NII ADDY ’01.
summer. “Then we will contact some players in the homeheating industry,” Parlikar says, “such as boiler and zone valve
manufacturers, to license out our patent on a nonexclusive
basis.”
—Alisa Giardinelli
Nobel physicist
attracts
attention
Class of 2005
admitted
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER WILLIAM PHILLIPS
He seemed very interested in what the
students at Swarthmore did,” says Amy
Reighard ’01, an Honors physics major who
answered Phillips’ questions about her thesis over lunch. “He was not only obviously
very smart but personable and friendly—the
kind of person you hope wins a Nobel
Prize.”
his year, 889 students were admitted to
the College, slightly more than 25 percent of the 3,530 who applied. The group is
expected to yield about 376 first-year students.
Of those who come from high schools
that report class rank, 56 percent of admitted students are in the top 2 percent of their
high school class, and 91 percent are in the
top decile. Fifty-seven percent come from
public schools, 31 percent from private
schools, 4 percent from parochial schools,
and 8 percent from schools overseas.
Admitted students come from 6 continents, 42 nations, and 45 U.S. states as well
as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico,
and the Virgin Islands.
More admitted students declared an
“undecided” major than any other. Next, in
order, are English, engineering, biology,
political science, economics, and history.
Forty-three percent identify themselves as
American students of color—19 percent as
Asian Americans, 10 percent as African
Americans, and 13 percent as Latino/a.
JUNE 2001
T
W
hen you throw liquid nitrogen
around, people get excited,” Nobel
Prize–winning physicist William Phillips
said with a chuckle. A dozen physics majors
shared the laugh over lunch in Sharples
during his recent visit.
Phillips was speaking from experience.
Moments earlier, he had wheeled into the
DuPont Science Building the liquid nitrogen and other props he would use during
his evening lecture “Almost Absolute Zero,”
an updated version of the 1997 Nobel lecture he gave in Stockholm. Known for cooling and trapping atoms with laser light,
Phillips also gave a physics and astronomy
colloquium, “Optics With Matter Waves,”
that afternoon.
Professor of Physics Frank Moscatelli
has spent the last two summers working in
Phillips’ lab at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology in Maryland,
where Phillips is a fellow. As this year’s president of Swarthmore’s Sigma Xi chapter, he
invited Phillips to campus.
7
C
entennial Professor of English Literature Thomas Blackburn retired in January after a distinguished 40 years at
Swarthmore, including six years as dean
of the College.
In addition to his seminars on Shakespeare and Milton—a subject on which
he has been widely published—Blackburn leaves a wide range of contributions behind. As a former college athlete, he was actively involved in recruiting and working with student athletes.
During his first four years at Swarthmore, he helped coach the football team
and, over the years, served as faculty
adviser for football, lacrosse, and
wrestling teams.
In the spring of 2000, he was a member of the Athletics Review Committee
and a steadfast opponent of radical
reductions in the College’s intercollegiate athletics program. “Working with
students in other areas—whether it’s
athletics or drama—helps you understand what’s going on with them academically. It’s one of the traditional
ideals of the liberal arts college: to
understand the whole persona of a student, not just the intellectual aspect,”
Blackburn says.
As dean of the College from 1975 to
1981, Blackburn reorganized the Dean’s
Office and helped revamp the mental
health services offered by the Health
Center. He was also an early computer
enthusiast, teaching introductory computer courses to faculty and staff.
In 1985, he established the Writing
Associates Program, based on one set up
at Brown University by Tori HaringSmith ’74, in which students are trained
to tutor other students in writing. For
15 years, Blackburn directed and refined
the program. Surveys consistently reveal
the program’s value to faculty and students, and alumni report that the program helps in everything from theses to
tactfully fixing up their bosses’ writing.
“Our aim was never better papers but
better writing,” Blackburn says.
Swarthmore
students are
“the kind of
students who
challenge, satisfy, and reward
those who work
with them in
classroom and
seminar,” he
said in his bacCENTENNIAL PROFESSOR
calaureate
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
address last
THOMAS BLACKBURN
year. “To my
mind, the great
soliloquies by
Shakespeare, like Hamlet’s ’To be or not
to be’ … remind us that we must
inevitably make choices in a universe
where the consequences of those choices are always hidden in the future....
“I’m grateful that I was chosen to go
to Oxford,” continued the former Rhodes
Scholar, “and [grateful] to meet there
my best choice ever, Ann who became
my wife... Only in that context does my
choice to teach at Swarthmore come
second…. I’m glad I have the choice
now to retire from regular teaching—or
at least, I think I’m glad because the
ramifications of that choice and the
choices that will follow all lie in the
obscurity of the future.”
—Cathleen McCarthy
A legacy of
activism
P
rofessor of Russian since 1962 and
former Chair of the Department of
Modern Languages and Literatures
Thompson Bradley retires this year, leaving behind a legacy of activism that will
last long after his jaunty signature
beret, scarf, and goatee are no longer a
familiar sight on campus.
Bradley is a Marxist, a Socialist, and
a political activist with deep ties to the
former Soviet Union. Students recall, in
evaluations, lively debates in the professor’s office—and departing, more often
than not, with one of his books under
their arms.
“He’s deeply involved with the students,” wrote a sophomore after taking
his course The Russian Novel. “He constantly links Russian literature with
Russian politics. I liked this because it
taught me about Russian history as well
as the literature.”
Bradley sees himself as part of a
school of political academics who came
of age in the turmoil of the 1960s. “I
think there are fewer and fewer people
in academia today who think of their
lives as having to do with a practice
outside of academia. I can’t imagine
only doing activism or only teaching. To
me, they seem as indivisible as literature and history,” he says. Fortunately,
he adds, “the College has always had a
commitment to social change.”
Before coming to Swarthmore in
1962, Bradley spent a year in Moskow,
as 1 of 35 American scholars sent there
as part of a cultural exchange.
Working in the
Lenin Library
and the Gorky
Institute of
World Literature, he witnessed the
downgrading of
Stalinism. He
PROFESSOR OF RUSSIAN
also befriended
members of the
THOMPSON BRADLEY
Soviet dissident
movement. Last
year, Bradley invited one of them, the
legendary Elena Bonner, to speak at the
College.
When Bradley began teaching at
Swarthmore 39 years ago, he turned his
focus to local activism and was instrumental in building community outreach
to Chester, Pa. Next year, he will teach
journal writing to inmates at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center.
“I was one of the luckiest people
alive to have taught at Swarthmore,” he
says. “One thing this college encourages
and inspires is intellectual seriousness—
which fits in well with social activism.”
—Cathleen McCarthy
GEORGE WIDMAN
A well-rounded
career
WALTER HOLT
COLLECTION
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
8
Farewell to Blackburn, Bradley
“B R A V E A N D
W I L L I N G,”
K I TAO R E T I R E S
that [produced] sudden insight, and
the third provided a twist and a new
dimension to the whole problem—
and usually made you laugh as well.
n a scene redolent of Bergman’s
I’ve only recently begun to really
Wild Strawberries and Kurosawa’s
appreciate, in refining my own teachMadadayo, nearly 100 of William R.
ing, the utter uniqueness of her teachKenan, Jr., Professor of Art History T.
ing style in simultaneously making
Kaori Kitao’s students and colleagues
things understandable and making
from five decades gathered in Februthe student think.”
ary to celebrate her impending retireFred Wasserman ’78, director of
ment.
curatorial administration at The JewThe range of speakers and topics
ish Museum in New York City, also
hinted at the breadth of Professor
spoke, as did Paul Jaskot ’85, organizKitao’s own wide-ranging interests—
er of the symposium and a professor
she taught art history, architecture,
at DePaul University in Chicago.
and film studies—and the deep
At the reception, I discovered that
impact on her pupils. Symposium
many of Kitao’s former students, like
topics ranged from colonial architecme, diligently preserve notes and
ture to Steven Spielberg, the
papers from her classes. My noteStonewall riots to Ellis Island, and
books have running lists of Kitaothe design of Kohlberg Hall to the
isms in the marginalia. I even treasure
importance of coffee in undergraduher criticisms of my work. “You need
ate education and wound through the “I HAVE A THING ABOUT THE CIRCUS,” SAYS T. KAORI KITAO OF
to be more specific,” Kaori commentZen-like lesson of Kaori’s famous lec- HER FAVORITE PAINTING IN THE LIST GALLERY, “CIRCUS,” BY
ed on one of my papers. Several pages
ture in introductory art history that
later, when verbosity had overtaken
JOHN STUART CURRY, SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND OF THIS COLbegan simply: “Rock. Garden. Rock
me, she wrote: “See comment, page 2.
LAGE OF PROFESSOR KITAO’S MANY INTERESTS. “ONE OF THE
Garden.”
I take it back.” On a similarly longTHINGS I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO WAS BECOME A TRAPEZE PERNot surprisingly, many of Kitao’s
winded paper on Rembrandt, she
former students ended up in art- and FORMER. I LIKE THE FUSION OF GAUDY EXCITEMENT AND THE
crossed out the artist’s name on my
architecture-related fields. But there
title page and wrote “Ramblant.”
VERY SAD, MELANCHOLIC NOTE UNDERNEATH THE GLITTER.”
were also writers, business people,
Professor Kitao has been notable
choreographers, and Web designers
throughout her career in expanding
who came to honor Kitao’s career and
both her own horizons and those of
praise her influence.
the College. Arriving at Swarthmore in 1966 as a respected Renais“I wanted to follow in her footsteps. I asked her for career advice sance scholar and the author of the definitive work on St. Peter’s
after finishing a degree when the market for teaching jobs was thin,” Square in Rome, she also pioneered courses in local architecture,
recounted Kevin Murphy ’82, an art history professor at the City
film, and industrial and commercial design.
University of New York. “She told me, ‘Better to do something use“She’s brave and willing to take on new things,” said Justin Hall
ful in preservation than to teach somewhere really lousy.’”
’98, the host of Web Workshop on ZDTV, who, in a reversal of roles,
“She taught me the value of trying the impossible,” recalled
was Kitao’s teacher for a class in html. “Just look at her Web page [at
architect Margaret Helfand ’69, who designed Kohlberg Hall and is
www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/art/Faculty/kaori/tkitao.htm]. It’s
co-designing the College’s new science center. “Her singular way of
technically accomplished, but even more, it’s fairly unique in that it’s
looking at things upside down and sideways is fundamental to my
deeply personal, surprising, and constantly updated.”
work.”
On her Web page, Kitao writes: “Art history in my view is a mis“She was extremely encouraging to me in pursuing a career in
nomer. What I profess is study of art, and though the historical conscreenwriting and filmmaking when I was an undergrad, even
text of works of art is by no means irrelevant, the focus of my interthough I majored in English,” said Yongsoo Park ’94, a New
est is their genesis in the creative minds as revealed in the works
York–based filmmaker and author of the recently published novel
themselves rather than the social circumstances surrounding them.”
Boy Genius. “Well after I graduated, she came to New York to screen
“In the beginning, there were things,” Kitao commented during
the reels of my film one by one, giving me detailed feedback that
the symposium proceedings. “Words and images are a reminder of
made it possible to finish.”
things, but, even if you have 500 pages, they never replace the
David Cateforis ’86, a professor of art history at the University of immediacy and experience of the object.… I like things more.”
Kansas, recalled Professor Kitao’s skill in classroom analysis: “She
Asked about her plans for retirement, Kitao observed: “The
always had three things to say in a critique. The first isolated the
whole point of the exercise is to have no plans.”
problem, the second provided a succinct commentary with a clarity
—Matthew Wall ’87
JUNE 2001
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
I
9
Attorney: Describe the conditions on the mountain that night.
Witness: It was snowing, sleeting, hailing. Temperatures were
subzero. Winds were 70 mph. I couldn’t stand up without
falling over. Terrible.
Attorney: What did you do?
Witness: We did the only thing we could do. We clung to each
other to wait it out. The next morning, P.J. was unconscious.
I couldn’t find a pulse. I tried to carry him, but I was too
weak. So I returned to Camp 4 alone.
Attorney: What happened upon your arrival?
Witness: I told everyone about the storm. By then, P.J. had
been up there on the mountain, exposed, for well over
a day. We had to face the reality that he was gone.
No, this is not a scene from Law & Order—it’s a
round in the National Championship Mock Trial Tournament held in St. Paul, Minn., in April. Swarthmore
team captain Dennis Cheng ’01 is acting as defense
attorney, questioning Payal Shah ’03, who plays the
guide of an ill-fated expedition up Mount Everest.
Cheng and Shah—who won a “best witness” award at
regional competitions—are part of an eight-member
team. This trip is only Swarthmore’s second to the
national championship—and they’re about to place
second out of 393 teams.
Team captain Cheng, a double major in political
science and economics, co-founded the group last year
with friend BoHee Yoon ’01, a double major in political science and women studies. In their first year, the
team placed 10th and won Best New School, and
Cheng won the prestigious Spirit of the American Mock
Trial Association Award.
This year’s competition involves the fictitious case of
Gilbertson v. Everest Experience, based on events from the
book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest
Disaster by Jon Krakauer, which chronicles the horrors of a
1996 climb that cost 12 lives. Each team has been instructed
to read the book for background and build their case from
legal documents and witness affidavits sent before the competition. Real lawyers and judges serve as the mock judges
who decide the cases—and the competition winners.
Today, in the courtroom, the family of the fictitious “P.J.
Gilbertson,” who supposedly died while climbing Everest, has
brought a civil suit against the guide who led the expedition.
Like all student lawyers in the competition, Cheng is making
up his lines as he goes, and, as in a real court trial, he is frequently interrupted by objections from competing lawyers and
by the judge.
In the next round, Yoon steps up to cross-examine a student from another school who plays yet another guide from
the expedition. In her gray suit, Yoon fires questions like a
seasoned pro. “In fact, you would—and have—entrusted the
defendant with your life,” she says. “Isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, I have,” he responds.
“No further questions, your Honor,” Yoon says curtly and
spins around, ponytail flying, to return to her team.
After each team has played out the trial four times—the
plaintiff’s side twice and the defense side twice—winners are
announced, and Swarthmore’s team goes off to dinner elated.
“It’s about 50 percent rehearsed performance and 50 percent improvisation,” Cheng explains later. “The case is written
so that there’s no clear winner, and both sides have a strong
case, but it’s slightly slanted toward the defense each time
because of the burden of proof. The strength of our team is
definitely in the presentation and our witnesses—and also
teamwork. It’s very apparent when you watch us that we
worked as a team.”
Six of the eight members of Swarthmore’s team were
involved in Mock Trial competitions during high school, and
DENNIS CHENG ʼ01
COLLECTION
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
10
Future
lawyers score
big
SWARTHMORE’S MOCK TRIAL TEAM (LEFT TO RIGHT): DENNIS CHENG ’01,
BOHEE YOON ’01, EDEN WALES ’03, AND DEANNA WILSON ’04 PLAYED
ATTORNEYS. PAYAL SHAH ’03, CHARLES SMALL ’03, GABE TAJEU ’03, AND
ELIZABETH GOLDSMITH ’01 WERE WITNESSES.
none had professional coaching, as did many of the teams
they competed against. Cheng estimates that about 90 percent of the teams at Nationals showed up with professional
attorneys—some with as many as four or five coaches. Cheng
says the team did get some helpful advice from Philadelphia
attorneys Jonathan Cass ’88 and wife Jacquelyn Caridad.
Many on the team hope to argue real cases some day.
Cheng plans to attend law school after earning a master’s in
international relations from the London School of Economics.
Yoon and Eden Wales ’03, who won a “best attorney” award at
the regional competition, have applied to law schools. “Some
of us started thinking about becoming lawyers because of
Mock Trial,” Cheng says.
—Cathleen McCarthy
MAN
WID
said, provoking the laughter that frequently
erupted in the audience.
Unlike editorial cartoonists, Bechdel said
her strip is like a soap opera in which politics are integrated as they are in real people’s
A
lison Bechdel, award-winning creator of the syndicated comic strip
“Dykes to Watch Out For,” combined social commentary with sophisticated
humor during her March visit to campus.
It’s a balance that has made her strip a lesbian cultural institution.
Bearing more than a slight resemblance
to her signature character, Mo, Bechdel
spoke to a standing-room–only crowd in
the Scheuer Room for the College Libraries’
annual political cartoonist lecture. In conjunction, McCabe Library featured original
drawings, memorabilia, and books in a
monthlong exhibit of her work.
When she started her strip in 1983,
Bechdel said it was considered quite radical.
“Unfortunately, just drawing pictures of lesbians doesn’t cut the mustard anymore,” she
ALISON BECHDEL’S SELF-PORTRAITS BEAR AN
UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE TO HER COMIC PROTAGONIST, MO. (SEE TABLE OF CONTENTS.)
A TASTE OF THE COMIC ENTERTAINMENT
NOW AVAILABLE IN McCABE LIBRARY
lives. Using slides of her strip, she illustrated how, over the years, her characters have
dealt with issues such as AIDS; children;
bisexuality; aging; and, most recently, the
conservatism of the gay rights movement.
Bechdel also couldn’t resist highlighting
the timelessness of some of her work. A
character in one panel, pictured in bed, says
to another, “I’m not getting up until the
Electoral College is abolished, and George
Bush is impeached.” Bechdel got one of her
biggest laughs when noting that she wrote
that line 12 years ago.
What’s next for the diverse group that
populates her strip? They will most likely
address the issues Bechdel is facing herself.
“I play with the concept of assimilation
with Mo, Clarice, and Toni,” she said. “Universality is tricky. The more support you get,
the less marginal you become.”
Don’t get her wrong. “I don’t wish for
the old days of being oppressed,” she
added. “But there is a tension from being an
outsider and being a citizen. I want both.”
—Alisa Giardinelli
JUNE 2001
A DYKE
T O WAT C H
OUT FOR
RGE
S
tudents looking for a respite from their studies
at McCabe Library can now leaf through a
comic book, thanks to two students
and an alumnus who donated 350 comic
books to the library this semester. The
collection captures the breadth of
contemporary comic-book subculture—from “A. Bizarro” to
the “The Uncanny X-Men”—
and is available in the current
periodicals/newspaper lounge.
About two-thirds of the collection
comes from Greg Erskine ’01, the rest from
Ben Myers ’01, David Newman ’76 (father of
Sarah Newman ’04), and Erskine’s friend Jeremy
Westphal. Erskine began collecting comic books in
high school, graduating from superheroes to independents, including autobiographical and historical
comics. “There is a lot of male-power fantasy in the
attraction to superheroes,” Erskine admits, about a genre
that hasn’t changed much over the decades. “It’s still big
muscle-bound men hitting each other.” These days, they’re also
using lasers.
Such male fantasy abounds in the McCabe collection but so do
“deconstructed” superheroes—parodies like Batman with a
paunch—as well as self-contained stories like Ghost World, “about a
couple of teenage girls after high school trying to decide whether to
go to college,” Erskin says. “These are less soap opera and
more novel” than their forerunners.
The library has agreed to contribute $400 annually to building
the collection, which Erskine
will help organize, including
graphic art novels and comic
compilations. “Historically,
comic-book authors have been
mostly white males,” Erskine says.
“We’re trying to get more by women
authors and other minorities.”
Meanwhile, Erskine is working part
time in the McCabe coffee lounge/reading room, where he enjoys watching students reading his comics. “It’s sort of an
oasis in the middle of McCabe,” he says.
—Cathleen McCarthy
GEO
Comic books
at McCabe
Library?
11
COLLECTION
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
12
E
E
arly this semester, the College adopted a revised policy on student cheating, produced by a faculty committee.
Provost Jennie Keith and the Committee on
Faculty Procedures (COFP) appointed the
six faculty-member Committee on Academic
Dishonesty in December 1999 to clarify
cases of academic misconduct and reconsider
ways to adjudicate them.
“but it’s not an automatic consequence.” For
example, stealing someone else’s paper from
their computer—something that happened
recently—will result in suspension, he says,
“but sloppy note taking or failure to properly cite a reference may not.”
Appeals are no longer decided by the
president. Now, a student must present a
case for an appeal to the president and the
provost. If
they decide
there are sufficient
grounds, a
new faculty/student committee is appointed
to review the case.
After examining cases of dishonesty in
recent years, Weinberg says, it became clear
to the group that the expanded use of computers in academia has facilitated cheating.
“Students don’t have to leave their dorm
rooms to find material on the Web and
download it,” he says.
The Web has made it easier to plagiarize—and made plagiarism easier to detect.
Weinberg says the College is considering
subscribing to a Web service that scans the
Internet for duplications in student papers
and other text.
“Certainly, computers and the Internet
have made it easier and more tempting to
cheat,” Goundie agrees. In one recent case, a
student lifted, from the Internet, part of a
lecture given at the University of California
at Davis, then failed to properly attribute the
source in his paper.
Goundie says the number of reported
cases of cheating has increased this academic year. Six were reported last fall. The norm,
he says, is two to four cases per year. “I don’t
know if more faculty members are bringing
cases before the committee or more students
are cheating—or just not cheating as well as
they used to,” Goundie says. At press time,
one case had been reported for the spring
semester. Most cheating occurs at the end of
the semester, he says, “when the pressure
starts to increase.”
A few academic departments have produced their own policies on academic misconduct. “It’s time for the College to make a
statement that we take academic integrity
seriously and to make our policy clear to students,” Weinberg says. “We want every faculty member to bring these cases forward.”
—Cathleen McCarthy
Ta k i n g a s t a n d
against cheating
The group met throughout the academic
year, first with the provost and deans, and
finally with Tedd Goundie, associate dean
for student life. Last fall, they presented a
preliminary draft of their proposal to the
provost, COFP, and faculty and department
chairs. The revised policy was passed by the
faculty in February.
“Some faculty members were wary of
bringing students up on charges of academic misconduct because they feared the students would be automatically suspended for
the semester,” says Robert Weinberg, associate professor of history, who took over as
chair of the committee last fall. “But if students are cheating on homework and
quizzes, and faculty members handle it
themselves without reporting it, the students may do it again in someone else’s class,”
he says.
The appeals process was altered, and “we
clarified what should be examined,” Weinberg says. Before, if a suspicion of cheating
was reported, the College Judiciary Committee (CJC)—consisting of two faculty members, two students, and one administrator—
met to discuss whether the evidence merited
a hearing. Now only faculty members of the
CJC make this decision. If they decide on a
hearing, the dean of the College convenes
the entire CJC to meet with the accused student and decide the outcome.
The CJC also has a more detailed set of
guidelines and procedures to follow. “The
point is to take into account the extenuating
circumstances and issues of intentionality.
In other words, did the student mean to
deceive the professor?” Weinberg says. “We
underscored that the committee needs to
look at the whole case and all the factors
and make a recommendation based on that.
“Suspension does happen,” he adds,
Wo m e n ’s t e n n i s
tops Conference
T
he women’s tennis team captured
the Centennial Conference (CC)
Championship with a perfect 10–0
record. Anjani Reddy ’04 led the Garnet
with a 19–1 record this spring, was
33–2 overall on the year, and captured
the CC Singles Championship. The Garnet
ranked as high as 22nd in Division III
during the year, and Reddy was ranked
third in the Atlantic South Region.
The men’s tennis team made the
National Collegiate Athletic Association
(NCAA) Division III Tournament for the
23rd consecutive year, with an 8–5
record. Pete Schilla ’01 scored 10–3 in
Division III, earning All-American honors.
The women’s lacrosse team scored
10–5 overall and 5–4 in conference play.
Katie Tarr ’02, Kristen English ’01, and
Jenn Hart ’03 all earned first-team AllCC honors. Tarr led the Centennial in
scoring with 63 goals, and Kristen English ’01 made the CC first-team squad for
the third season.
Mark Dingfield ’01 led the men’s
lacrosse team in scoring this season
with 41 points, bringing his career total
to 179 points, including 121 goals and
58 assists. He is third on the Garnet
career goal list and fourth in points.
At the CC women’s track and field
championships, the Garnet placed fourth.
Imo Akpan ’02 captured gold in the long
jump and the 400-meter dash and silver
in the 200-meter dash. Joko Agunloye
’01 won the 5,000-meter run and placed
second in the 3,000-meter run, qualifying for the NCAA Championships.
At the CC men’s track-and-field championships, the Garnet placed ninth with
38 points. Marc Jeuland ’01 earned gold
in the 10,000-meter run and qualified
for the NCAA Championships.
Catcher Josh Lindsey ’01 earned second-team All-CC baseball honors with a
career-best .370 on the season and finished his career with 95 hits.
Heather Marandola ’01 and Gretchen
Heitz ’04 earned second team All-CC
softball honors.
In club sports, the women’s Ultimate
Frisbee team defeated Bucknell to win
the state championship.
—Mark Duzenski
Ve rs a t i l e a t h l e t e
m ove s o n
Overall
Record
5–20
4–2
3–10
10–5
5–20
2–1
3–0
8–5
12–3
Centennial
Conference
4–14
7th
0–6
5–4
5–11
9th
4th
—
10–0
HEATHER MARANDOLA PERFORMS THE TRADITIONAL VICTORY CEREMONY BY
REMOVING THE NET AFTER SWARTHMORE’S FIRST-EVER CENTENNIAL CONFERENCE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP IN MARCH.
tistics, or the awards—but the game. “Sports are fun!" she says, in
her typical tongue-in-cheek manner. On a more serious note, she
adds, “I’m one of those people who plays not for the successes but
because I love to play.”
Like most engineering majors, Marandola “lived” in Hicks Hall.
This spring, her final electrical engineering project was a bicycle
computer built from scratch. She will be working for an engineering
firm in Camden, N.J., and hopes to help Shibles when she can next
season.
It was a bittersweet moment for many in the Swarthmore community when Marandola took the field for the last time on April 24
for a double-header against Haverford. Her versatility, dedication,
and love of the game will be missed. But most important, Heather
Marandola will be missed for being Heather. It’s difficult to imagine Swarthmore women’s sports without her.
—Kate Nelson-Lee ’03
JUNE 2001
Spring 2001
Intercollegiate Sport
Baseball
Golf
Men’s lacrosse
Women’s lacrosse
Softball
Men’s track and field
Women’s track and field
Men’s tennis
Women’s tennis
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
A
t the end of this year’s women’s basketball season, each
player received a red-covered “season summary”—a booklet
containing more season statistics, awards, and articles than
any Garnet women’s basketball team has ever seen.
You can find Heather Marandola on almost every page.
A three-sport athlete, Marandola never missed a game in her
Swarthmore career. She has started every soccer and basketball
game, and except for one game in Florida in 1999 when she was
late returning from the Emergency Room, she has started all of her
softball games as well. She has played almost every position in all
three sports. In total, Marandola has played 283 games while pursuing an engineering degree.
This year’s record-breaking basketball season began four years
ago. Marandola was head coach Adrienne Shibles’ first recruit in
the coach’s second season at Swarthmore. The student scored 321
points that season and was well on her way to be a 1,000-point
scorer but switched to the back court on Shibles’ request. Though
the position involved less point-scoring glory, Heather became the
backbone of the team. This season, she lead the Garnet to 22 wins,
a College record, as well as the team’s first Centennial Conference
Championship crown, their first trip to the NCAA Division III
tournament, and seven other school records.
Shibles credits the program’s rise to the pinnacle of the Centennial Conference to Marandola, who currently holds nine career
records for Swarthmore, including most career games played (101),
second-most career assists (298), and a spot at number six on the
career points list (928). Shibles has said repeatedly that if it weren’t
for the fellow Maine native and defense lover, the record-breaking
2000–01 season wouldn’t have happened.
But what the season summary doesn’t capture is the spirit of
Marandola—her inspirational qualities as a leader in Swarthmore’s
female athletic community. “She’s an incredible leader and has an
amazing work ethic,” says Shibles. “She’s just a well-rounded person who has managed to do it all at Swarthmore. I respect her for
that.”
Marandola’s fellow soccer, basketball, and softball players have
recognized her talents as a leader and motivator by electing her
captain of all three teams her senior year and of the basketball and
softball teams her junior year.
But what matters most to the senior are not the records, the sta-
13
No More
Cookbook Labs
I n s c i e n c e t e a c h i n g t o d a y, a s k i n g t h e q u e s t i o n s i s a s i m p o r t a n t a s k n o w i n g t h e a n s w e r s .
By Alisa Giardinelli
Photographs by Jim Graham
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
W
14
hat have we spent so far?” The
question is the third item on
the agenda at the meeting of
the Home Heating System E-Team, and
Tushar Parlikar ’01 is running the show.
“We’ve already spent some money—$1,000
so far on valves, motors, and gears.”
“We also got larger screws for putting
the box together,” adds fellow engineering
major Ari Houser ’01. “As soon as I make
some nice drawings, we can start building.”
Although the group of seven students
and two faculty advisers has met in a Hicks
Hall conference room regularly since September, this meeting in February was more
than a usual progress-report session. It was
also the team’s first meeting since they were
awarded an $18,000 grant for their project
(see page 7).
“Work, please work!” Across the quad, in
a DuPont Science Building chemistry lab,
Vanessa Knoedler ’01 is cheering on a reaction in progress. Behind a fume hood sits a
small, tightly capped flask in a hot-oil bath.
Not visible in the flask’s solvent are the two
molecules she hopes will react. It will be
several hours before she knows if they have.
During the last three semesters,
Knoedler, a chemistry and French double
major, has made about 30 new molecules,
most of which she has used to produce even
more innovative chemical combinations.
“There’s one more I need, and it’s being a
jerk about getting made,” she says. “It would
be nice to have this last one, but I may end
up with a question at the end of my thesis.
And that’s OK.”
In addition to forming the basis of her
senior thesis, Knoedler’s research will likely
lead to a journal article on which she will be
listed as a co-author. “I’m very excited,” she
says. “I can’t wait to do a database search
and find something with my name on it.”
arely a decade ago, these scenes would
B
have been almost unheard of, even in a
top undergraduate science program like
“IN THE OLD DAYS,” SAYS PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS EUGENE KLOTZ (ABOVE), “STUDENTS WERE
MUCH MORE RECEPTACLES. YOU POURED IT IN—
AND AT SWARTHMORE WE CRAMMED IN AS MUCH
AS WE COULD—AND LEFT IT TO THEM TO DIGEST.”
KLOTZ IS WORKING WITH FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS
(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) DANIEL CHAMBERLAIN,
RACHEL KAUFMAN, AND KATHRYN McCAFFREY.
DURING THE LAST THREE SEMESTERS, CHEMISTRY
MAJOR VANESSA KNOEDLER ’01 (RIGHT) RESEARCHED WAYS TO PRODUCE NEW MOLECULES.
Swarthmore’s. The opportunity for undergraduates to conduct their own research, let
alone obtain funding and publish it, would
have been extremely rare, especially at a
small college. At Swarthmore and many
other top liberal arts colleges, the opposite
is now true.
These changes are not lost on current
faculty, such as Associate Professor and
Chair of Chemistry Robert Paley. “Forty
years ago, when this building was built,” he
says, in his DuPont office, “there was no
consideration that research would become a
teaching tool. Faculty had labs [just] to tinker on their own stuff.” Those days are long
gone. “Now, there’s more of a push for students to learn the process of investigation
and to generate their own experiments,”
says Associate Professor of Biology Sara
JUNE 2001
“I may end up with a
question at the end of my
thesis. And that’s OK.”
15
“Active
engagement
is the
catch phrase.”
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
MARY ANN KLASSEN (RIGHT), LECTURER IN
16
Hiebert ’79. “Give them the tools, a few
techniques, and off they go.”
“In the last 15 years, the emphasis on
undergraduate research really took off, not
just here but at all the good schools,” Paley
says. “So we added a research wing in the
1980s, and now we’ve outgrown it.”
Paley, a 2000 recipient of a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award to support
undergraduate research, says such work is
the best vehicle for teaching and learning.
“Students will know the positives, such as
success when an idea works,” Paley says.
“And,” he adds with a chuckle, “they’ll know
what the frustration level is and if they like
it or not.”
“When doing research, students can hit
brick walls,” admits Associate Professor of
Physics Carl Grossman, who addressed this
issue last fall at “Swarthmore Tomorrow,” a
faculty and alumni program on the future of
science. “Someone asked me if that happens
in class. Well, yeah, it happens every week,
and the students don’t know how to deal. So
PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY, LOOKS AT SUN SPOTS
WITH ROSS MESSING ’04 (LEFT) AND JIM MAIOLO
’04 (AT THE TELESCOPE).
what do you do? Just like in the real world,
you troubleshoot.”
But beyond troubleshooting, Grossman
wants students to learn about real-world
physics research. “So we use a combination
of modern research techniques and classic
experiments,” he says. “It’s not solely
physics for physics’ sake.”
The balance pays off, but it’s not easy.
“Requiring research theses for majors [10 to
12 a year, half of whom stand for Honors]
has been a challenge,” he admits. “I usually
have two or three students working with me
each summer, and I’m as busy as I am the
rest of the year. It’s a lot more work than we
thought, but we all agree it’s a very valuable
experience.”
Perhaps even more valuable is that stu-
dent-faculty collaboration often leads to
published articles. Paley—also on the faculty
panel at “Swarthmore Tomorrow”—recalls
an exchange from the discussion. “One
alum asked if you can really publish with
student research,” Paley says. “I gave a list
of quality journals that student work has
appeared in, such as the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Organic Letters. The
alum was impressed. It’s good stuff, and it
gets published.”
“We don’t have the quantity of a big
research university,” Grossman adds, “but
in quality, we have comparable stuff. In
physics, very little thesis work is not published.”
T
his focus on undergraduate research is
not the only notable characteristic of
today’s best science education. Thanks to
curriculum changes and a commitment to
making course material more engaging, the
actual tools and methods used to teach science are also drastically different from those
BOB PALEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND CHAIR
OF CHEMISTRY, WORKS IN THE EXISTING DUPONT
SCIENCE BUILDING INSTRUMENT ROOM. THE
COLLEGE’S NEW 160,000-SQUARE-FOOT SCIENCE
CENTER—HALF OF WHICH WILL BE NEW CONSTRUCTION—IS SCHEDULED TO OPEN IN 2004.
also reduced the amount of time she spends
lecturing. “One way to teach is to lecture the
same old way and give an exam that requires
students to apply what they’ve learned to
novel context questions,” she says. “And
students freak because it’s really hard.
Another way is part lecture, then stick in a
problem-based learning exercise for small
groups in which they practice solving novel
context questions.”
Hiebert says such assignments, although
replacing part of what she would have done
in lecture, are important because they allow
students to get immediate feedback from
each other and from her. “It’s amazing,” she
says. “Students who go through my class
that way have a totally different standard for
themselves about what it means to understand the material.”
Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
Eugene Klotz uses similar methods in his
classes. “In the old days, we wouldn’t take
class time to have people work together,” he
says. “Students were much more receptacles.
You poured it in—and at Swarthmore we
crammed in as much as we could—and left
it to them to digest. Now, I try to have them
work in pairs. It facilitates understanding.”
Still, such changes do not mean the
material is any easier. “No pain, no gain is
still true,” Hiebert says. “Some students find
novel context questions really difficult and
have trouble understanding the questions or
the words. But published studies show that
if students don’t struggle with the questions, all the benefits disappear.”
“Active engagement is the catch phrase,”
agrees Mary Ann Klassen, a lecturer in
physics and astronomy. “Fewer than 10 percent learn best with a passive lecture format.
It’s easy to fall back and think, ‘if my lecture
is crystal clear, they’ll understand, and lightbulbs will go on.’ But it’s just not true.”
“When I saw those data, I got sick to my
stomach,” Hiebert says. “I thought ‘oh no—
everything I thought about what it takes to
be a good teacher is wrong.’”
But effective teaching, although critical,
is only part of the equation. This became
clear to Lynne Molter ’79, associate professor of engineering, after office hours with
students who were thinking of transferring
from the department. “You can tell they’re
distressed and upset, so I try to find the
problem,” she says. “If it’s course related, I
ask, ‘How did you study? Did you read the
Breaking New Ground
for Science at Swarthmore
E
arlier this month, Swarthmore further
demonstrated its commitment to providing students with a top science education by breaking ground for a new
science center. This major renovation
and expansion of the College’s science
facilities is the result of an extensive,
long-range planning process, completed in 1999, that identified dramatic
improvements to the science facilities on
campus as the College’s most pressing
institutional need.
Major improvements include more
laboratory space for students and faculty members, flexible workstations, stateof-the-art lecture halls, and labs designed for better computer access.
“People still don’t use computers in
classrooms as much as they’d like to,”
says Eugene Klotz, professor of mathematics and statistics. “I’d like a computer hooked up to a projector, set up and
ready to go, so when a student has a
question and you want to show something on the spur of the moment, you
can do so.”
Safety is also a major component of
the center’s design, which includes
much-needed improvements to laboratory air quality and ventilation. “Forty
years ago, the idea that students should
not be exposed to vapors wasn’t on the
map, which affected the design of fume
hoods,” says Robert Paley, associate
professor and chair of chemistry. “You
can’t teach chemistry without handling
chemicals, so our job is to protect students and design experiments that minimize the amount of chemicals they
handle.”
The new science center, the first
building on campus whose planning
and design includes consideration of
the project’s environmental implications,
will also allow the growing computer
science department to move from its
current home in the Sproul Observatory.
Additional features, such as a new
freshman biology lab in the Martin
Building and a new commons adjacent
to Cornell Science Library, are also
planned. Completion, at a total cost of
$74 million including endowment for
operations and maintenance, is scheduled for April 2004.
—A.G.
JUNE 2001
of years past. Labs are more interactive.
There are more group and class projects.
Even computers have changed from early,
cumbersome programs to user-friendly
applications. And the traditional lecture format? It’s almost as much of a relic as punch
cards and setting coordinates by hand.
Professor of Computer Science and
Mathematics Charles Keleman illustrates
this point with a favorite maxim about the
role of professors today. “You may have
heard this—‘switching from the sage on the
stage to the guide on the side.’ There’s a nice
ring to it,” he says.
“We’re not standing and pontificating,”
Keleman explains. “We’re setting tasks.
We’re going around being coaches, cheering
students on when they get stuck.”
In his introductory computer science
courses, for example, Keleman is more likely
to have students work individually on a
problem than take notes from his “minilectures.” And sometimes, he does not even
give those. “Faculty members don’t want to
show off,” he says. “We want students to do
stuff. My greatest goal is to help students
progress to the point where they don’t need
me for the course material.”
In the last few years, Sara Hiebert has
17
book? How many times?’ One student said
eight—I almost fell off my chair! It was like
a bolt of lightning.”
That bolt prompted Molter to look for
answers to questions she had not seriously
considered before. “Do students discover
new ways to learn as they mature?” she
asks. “Or do people have rather different
ways of learning? Some students march in
and easily sail through, while others spin
their wheels, work hard, and make little
progress. I want to prevent people from
thinking engineering is too hard.”
After informally asking her students
about their study practices, Molter hopes a
proposal she recently submitted to the
National Science Foundation will allow her
to further examine the issue. With fellow
Professor of Engineering Erik Cheever ’82
and Professor of Education Ann Renninger,
Molter plans to study how prospective engineering majors learn their course material.
“Students have to be responsible for figuring out what works for them, but we hope to
SARA HIEBERT, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY
(RIGHT), RACES LIZARDS WITH SENIOR BIOLOGY
MAJORS CLARISSA NOBILE (LEFT) AND HILARY
CLAY (CENTER), BOTH OF WHOM HAVE WORKED ON
INDEPENDENT RESEARCH PROJECTS IN HIEBERT’S
LAB. “ONE OF MY MAIN GOALS IS TO GET STUDENTS TO JUST WATCH ANIMALS DO THINGS,” SAYS
THE ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGIST.
provide models,” she says. “What works for
them? There is no one answer.”
There is also no one tool or piece of
equipment that works in all situations, so
students have access to a wide range. For
instance, Carl Grossman conducts a physics
lab in which he uses ultrafast lasers to study
and measure laser pulses of roughly 20 femtoseconds [roughly a thousand billion times
faster than a millisecond] in duration. Other
projects involve a low-temperature refrigeration system he says is routinely used in
graduate programs. “We’re trying to bring
big university access and depth of experience to Swarthmore,” Grossman says.
In astronomy, students can use two 8inch-diameter reflecting telescopes whose
computer controls allow them to find an
object by simply entering its name into the
control pad. “It’s almost too easy to get
excited about all the cool stuff,” Mary Ann
Klassen says. “The first time students in the
introductory astro lab look through a telescope and see Saturn—it’s a ‘wow’ experience. We’re hoping with more telescopes
and outdoor labs, students will get a good
understanding for what astronomy is all
about.”
And when the weather is uncooperative,
students use computer simulations. “We
can re-create famous observations in astronomy, such as those made by Edwin Hubble
[who showed the universe was expanding],”
Klassen says. “Normally, it would take several hours to make an observation of a single
galaxy. Now they can simulate in an evening
one of the great discoveries of modern
astronomy.”
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
C
18
hanges in computers and computer
science have also had a demonstrable
effect. “What we teach now to freshmen, we
were teaching to first-level graduate students in 1966,” Charles Keleman says. “I
[was a teaching assistant] in classes like
that. Back then, there were no interactive
labs.”
Of course, computers are used in all sciences. In chemistry, for example, it is possible to make molecular models on the computer screen. “You can move them, rotate
them,” Robert Paley says. “You can do calculations to find the angles between segments
of DNA or the distance between atoms in an
enzyme.”
Eugene Klotz, a self-described “old coot”
CARL GROSSMAN (RIGHT), ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
who predates the use of computers at
Swarthmore, lauds their use in his math
classes. By carefully juggling materials in his
office, he demonstrates why. “Before, I
would have drawn a curve on the board and
held a meter stick to the curve to show how
the slope changes, while also trying to make
a drawing at the same time,” he says. “Now,
we can spend 5 minutes using Graphing
Calculator, a subtle, inexpensive program
students can easily get a copy of, to show
the same thing. That’s way cool, I think.”
Klotz also notes that technological
advancements have changed the ways sta-
OF PHYSICS, AND PATRICK CONNOLLY ’01 HAVE
WORKED TOGETHER ON AN ADVANCED LAB IN
ULTRAFAST LASERS AND ON RESEARCH IN ULTRAFAST OPTICAL PHYSICS. “WE’RE TRYING TO BRING
BIG-UNIVERSITY ACCESS AND DEPTH OF EXPERIENCE TO SWARTHMORE,” SAYS GROSSMAN.
JUNE 2001
“What do you do?
Just like in the
real world, you
troubleshoot.”
ples of his field can be taught. In the early
1990s, he recalls hearing that an entire calculus final exam could be done on a computer. Less than 10 years later, the same
work can be done with a calculator. “Why
bust your butt teaching somebody something they can do with a few buttons?” he
asks. “What you want to do is teach the
ideas behind the manipulations.”
Although computers have opened up
new ways of teaching old subjects, there are
still some things best done without them,
even in computer science courses. “For
example, in an algorithms class, the assignments are basically the content of recent
research papers,” Keleman says. “In this situation, we’re not in front of computers but
reasoning about computational problems.”
As an animal physiologist, Sara Hiebert
prefers that students collect data by hand to
learn that data are almost never as clean as
they appear in textbooks. “One of my main
goals is to get students to just watch animals do things,” she says. “It’s unpredictable. It’s messy. I mean, we race lizards.
Sometimes they race, sometimes they just
stop. Sometimes they go up your arms and
onto your head. And students are uneasy
with that and sometimes complain that
there is too much error, or that what we are
doing is not scientific because so many
things can go differently from what we had
planned. But, in fact, everyone who has
raced lizards has experienced the same
problems and published those studies.”
In biology, computers still serve many
needs. “I love the server, where I can put up
class data and share them easily,” Hiebert
says. “I love computers collecting data for
me if I need it done every 10 minutes for
weeks. But if students leave understanding
exactly where the data came from and what
to do with them once they’re collected, we’ll
have done the very best thing that we can.”
So although high-profile advancements
have dramatically changed how science is
taught, it should come as no surprise that
old-fashioned innovation and hard work
remains the driving force of science education. “I don’t think anyone at this college
would say science is learning how to use
machines,” Hiebert says. “It’s how to generate ideas and design experiments. If you
want to be on the frontiers of science, that’s
what you need to do, and that’s what we’re
all after here.” T
19
SPORTS
FOR
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
20
JIM GRAHAM
I
was an elite athlete. I participated in a variety of sports in
my life but reached the pinnacle as a lacrosse player. As a
member of various lacrosse teams, I was a high school
state champion, a collegiate national champion, and a world champion. I don’t usually like to talk about my accomplishments, but I
need to make a very important point: Reaching the highest level in
my field has little to do with why I want to coach women’s sports at
Swarthmore College.
If the level of an athlete’s achievement is predictive of a person’s
future career, like many of my former teammates, I should be coaching at a Division I lacrosse powerhouse. But here I am at a small,
elite liberal arts college, and people often ask me why. My answer
leads directly to my philosophy of sport, which, in turn, dictates
how I coach—and recruit—Swarthmore scholar-athletes. These
days, there’s a lot of discussion about athletic recruiting at the
College. After this explanation, I hope you will gain a better understanding of how I “recruit” the scholar-athlete.
Let’s start with a simple but important fact: No athlete likes to
lose, whether it’s lunchtime tennis, pick-up basketball, recreation
softball, intramural soccer, or intercollegiate athletics. It’s also a
fact, however, that every time there is a contest, there will be a winner and a loser. I’ve come to the conclusion that because I was on
so many successful teams, where winning was often taken for
granted, I learned to notice other aspects of sport. Don’t get me
wrong—winning was fun, and I enjoyed it, but there was a lot
more to it. I also started to see that “success,” as it is often defined
in sport, can have its negative aspects.
As a junior education major at the University of Delaware, I got
the opportunity to coach at a local private school and was immediately hooked. I learned then that I wanted to coach, but to be able
to coach and make a living, I also needed to teach; I had not yet
made the connection that they were one and the same. So I became
a high school math teacher, and, for six years, I taught math all day
KAREN BORBEE, SWARTHMORE’S LACROSSE COACH, TRIES TO BALANCE
ACADEMIC AND ATHLETIC TALENTS WHEN RECRUITING FOR THE COLLEGE.
SHE SAYS THAT “SWARTHMORE SELLS ITSELF TO STUDENTS WHO ARE LOOKING
FOR THIS KIND OF EXPERIENCE.”
and coached sports after school. I enjoyed teaching math, but it was
in the coaching that I felt I was truly making a difference. I could
see the educational role that sport was playing in these students’
lives.
While I was coaching high school field hockey and lacrosse, I
was also a member of the U.S. National Team playing world-cup
ALL THE RIGHT
REASONSSS
Play for fun, demand your best, and be satisfied no matter what the outcome.
lacrosse. I realized then that there were many similarities between
appreciate their diversity and what makes them special, even
my experiences at the world-cup level and my student-athletes’
though it meant they might not be the better basketball team. I
experiences in high school. The only difference was our skill. The
know that when those women—now grown, 10 years later—have
intangibles, as I call them, were the same. In fact, whatever the skill,
tough times, they look back and use what they learned that season
the educational value of sport is indisputable—the life lessons that
to find the positive aspects of any challenging situation.
can be learned from team play—and that was what interMy ever-evolving
ested me (see box on p. 23).
philosophy was fur“No athlete likes to
As my philosophy of sport evolved, I knew that
ther put to the test
coaching was the type of educating I wanted to pursue.
during my first field
lose ... [but] because
The lessons that could be taught through sport are so
hockey season six
powerful, and although sport wasn’t the only avenue to
years later. This time,
I was on so many
teach these intangibles, it was what I knew best.
it wasn’t losing that
I was lucky. First at Haverford College and for the
was the issue but
successful teams,
past 11 years at Swarthmore, I found a quality academic,
winning. When I
liberal arts, Division III experience. Once again, I was
became the head
where winning was often
hooked.
field-hockey coach,
When I first came to Swarthmore, I was hired as the
I inherited a very suctaken for granted,
head women’s basketball and soccer coach. With little
cessful team. But for
experience coaching either sport, I had to put my basic
many players, winphilosophy to an immediate test. I thought that no mat- i learned to notice
ning was the only
ter what sport I coached, I could still educate. This was
reason for playing.
other aspects of sport.”
never so clear as during that first basketball season,
One woman said to
when my team lost 24 straight games—more than half
me during a one-onof them by more than 40 points, and a handful by 60 to
one meeting, “If we
70 points. Not one player or coach quit that season. As I watched
don’t win, then it’s not fun, and there’s no reason to play.” My chalthe amazing growth of those students, I grew too. Everyone kept
lenge that season was to teach the group that numbers of wins are
working, and we were able to win the final game of the season,
not the measuring stick—that they could have fun, reap all the benagainst a team that had beaten us by 30 points earlier that same
efits from participation in sports, and still be successful. We strugyear. You might have thought we had won the national champigled at times, both on and off the field, but, in the end, although
onship that night.
our winning percentage was lower, our accomplishments as a group
My job that season was to teach those students how to have fun;
were greater.
how to deal with their limitations yet still reach their potential;
My philosophy of sport is very simple: Play to have fun, demand
how to lean on each other yet support each other; and how to
your best, but be satisfied with your best no matter what the out-
JUNE 2001
By Karen E m a s B o r b e e
21
“I don’t look for the
athlete who is really
smart; instead, I look
for the scholar who
come. Sport is a minimodel of life: What you learn on the field, you
take with you as you live your life.
Swarthmore students amaze me. They play the game for the right
reasons, they have their priorities straight, and they study hard and
play hard. It is my job to help them understand that, unlike in the
classroom, they may not always be the best athletes, but they can
still always give their best.
So I knew why I wanted to be here. I wanted to propagate the
benefits of participation in sport, and I knew there were young
women out there who would want to reap those benefits without
losing their focus on academics. I knew I could help these students
to learn all the intangibles and help foster their multiple talents,
both athletic and intellectual.
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
wants to play sports.”
BORBEE, A LACROSSE STANDOUT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, WAS
ALSO A MEMBER OF THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP U.S. NATIONAL TEAM.
“SWARTHMORE STUDENTS AMAZE ME,” SHE SAYS. “THEY HAVE THEIR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT, AND THEY STUDY HARD AND PLAY HARD.”
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
A
22
ll this leads me to the question of how I recruit scholar- athletes to study and play at Swarthmore College. I look for the
special young woman who seeks—in addition to the best education
in the world—the benefits of participation in sport. I don’t look for
the athlete who is really smart; instead, I look for the scholar who
wants to play sports. This young woman is not simply a scholar or
an athlete—she can be both and, at Swarthmore, still more than
that.
When I can find a young woman who is a scholar, who wants a
Swarthmore academic experience and is a strong lacrosse player, it’s
a good day. If I can’t, then I look for a young woman who is first a
scholar, wants a Swarthmore experience, and loves to play lacrosse.
Then it’s up to me to teach her the game as well as I can and as well
as she is able to learn it. But most important, it’s up to me to help
her reap all the benefits that she can receive through participation
in sport.
Each year, I start with 150 to 200 interested candidates. After I
do research, make phone calls, write letters, attend tournaments,
and review videotapes, that number is quickly reduced to about 50.
More research is done on those 50; there are more phone calls, letters, visits, videos, and feedback on them—and maybe 25 to 30
actually apply. The Admissions Office accepts approximately 6 to 8,
and I hope (with every one of my appendages crossed) that 4 or 5
enroll. Women’s lacrosse is played with 12 players on the field at one
time, and 24 are needed to scrimmage in practice. So if we have a
couple of bad recruiting years, we are in trouble.
How do I find these young women? In fact, a good portion find
me first. Others are recommended by high school coaches or contacts. They know the student and recommend that she explore
Swarthmore. Rarely is a student recommended to the College
because she is a top athlete but rather because she is a top student, a
scholar who loves to play a sport and doesn’t want to give up participating.
I believe that every student-athlete who is interested in coming
LIFE LESSONS FROM
SPORT
Developing fitness and
wellness
Managing time
Prioritizing
Setting goals
Working to achieve
those goals
Strengthening
self-confidence
Learning inclusion and
acceptance
Putting personal
achievements aside for
team achievements
Dealing with disappointment
or losing
Dealing with success or
winning
Encouraging sportsmanship
Dealing with fear or
adversity
Emphasizing personal and
team accountability
to Swarthmore College is academically engaged. Why else would
anyone want to come? It certainly wouldn’t be for athletics alone.
There are many top-quality academic institutions that put far more
emphasis on sports and others that are less academically challenging but still offer a great education and participation in sports.
My greatest recruiting challenge lies in the competition—
Amherst, Williams, Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. Not bad choices.
So why Swarthmore? That’s my challenge. When a recruit tells me
that Swarthmore is one of five or six schools she is interested in, I
invite her to visit. I introduce her to the other students on the team
and to their roommates and hall mates. I have her attend some
classes and meet some faculty members. Swarthmore sells itself to
students who are looking for this kind of experience. Almost always,
she leaves with Swarthmore either as one of her top choices, or the
College is off her list completely. And that’s how I like it: Recruits
arrive gray and leave black or white.
I’m here because I believe my philosophy of sport and Swarthmore College are a good fit. I spend so much time recruiting in
order to ensure the future of my program. If I don’t bring in enough
recruits for a few years, I will have done a disservice to the students
who are already in my program. Still, I walk a fine line. I don’t look
for the really smart athlete who may be looking for something other
than what we offer. I tell them what we’ve got and hope it’s what
they want. If I look for talent, and yet it’s not the right fit, I have
done a disservice to the recruit and to the students in my program.
The challenge is in establishing a balance between athletic talent
and academic pursuits to make the right fit—both for the young
woman and for the College. T
Associate Professor of Physical Education Karen Borbee played college lacrosse at
the University of Delaware. This essay is adapted from a talk she gave to her fellow
members of the faculty in February.
JUNE 2001
Working with people you
may or may not like
23
Acts of God
Acts of Nature
Acts of Man
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
A
24
force-five hurricane makes midnight landfall on the Central American coast;
screaming wind, surging tides, and sliding mud kill 10,000. The earth shakes violently, and an Indian city crashes down in dust and death. A long-dormant volcano
erupts for the first time in 300 years, forcing thousands to flee. A tornado carves up
a Midwestern town, tossing trailers like tenpins. Floodwaters breach the levees of
the Mississippi. Wildfires scorch the California hills.
These events have always been part of the human experience, bringing
unbidden death and damage from sky, ocean, and earth. Until the last century,
most people viewed such extremes as aberrations from the normal order, momentary suspensions of the natural law, or acts of a capricious God. But to the
modern mind, such extremes are natural geophysical hazards over which
humankind has little or no control.
In this context, the intellectual divorce between man and
nature seems almost complete. Even the term natural has come to
exclude human influence; we separate geophysical events from
industrial accidents, terrorism, wars, and other disasters clearly
of human origin. And though we may be able to ameliorate
such human failings, conventional wisdom says that the
natural order will continue unswayed by human intervention. No army can stop a hurricane. But can humans
control the resulting death and destruction?
Natural disasters may not be so natural
after all. Scientists and policy makers are beginning to understand the profound effect of human
activity on the outcome of extreme natural
events. The human factor is huge, and the
stakes are high: We can either accept a
future in which hurricanes, earthquakes,
eruptions, and other extreme events
become acute challenges to human
existence, or we can reduce the
impact of these inevitable
natural events by raising
our awareness and
adjusting our
behavior.
We a re n o t v i c t i m s o f n a t u ra l d i s a s t e r s b u t c o d e p e n d e n t s .
A TORNADO TOUCHES DOWN NEAR DIMMIT, TEXAS, ON JUNE 2, 1995.
JUNE 2001
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
By Willia m H o o ke ’ 6 4
25
AP/WIDE WORLD
Losses from natural disasters
vary sharply each
year, but trends over the past few decades are disturbing. On average, disasters kill tens of thousands, injure hundreds of thousands,
and leave comparable numbers homeless annually. Individual
events—a tropical storm in Bangladesh or an earthquake in
China—may claim more than 100,000 lives, and these figures are
rising at least as fast as population growth.
Similarly, economic losses to disasters are doubling or tripling
each decade. They now amount to many tens of billions of dollars
each year, although the international experience varies. U.S. losses
add up annually to less than 1 percent of the Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), even during the 1992–96 period, when the costs
averaged $1 billion per week. By contrast, Chinese losses are more
like 4 to 6 percent of GDP in bad years. For the least developed
countries, a single disaster can result in losses 50 percent or more
of GDP, as did Hurricane Mitch in 1998, erasing decades of foreign
investment and destabilizing society throughout Central America.
The outlook is correspondingly bleak. Estimates suggest that a
category-five hurricane making landfall on New Orleans or New
York would inflict damages approaching $100 billion. A repeat
of worst-case Los Angeles or San Francisco earthquakes would
exceed $250 billion. A Tokyo earthquake comparable to the 1923
event could cost well over a trillion dollars. Of course, impacts
go beyond the economic. Loss of life could be in the tens of thousands in several of these instances, and experts predict that grave
environmental damage and ecosystem loss would also accompany
such disasters.
Thunderstorms, though less extreme, are an important atmospheric driver. Some 2,000 thunderstorms are under way worldwide at any given time. In the tropics, their aggregated updrafts
force the major global atmospheric circulation patterns. Their lightning is an important global source of trace atmospheric constituents such as oxides of nitrogen.
The solid earth also works through extremes. What appears to
be continental drift from the perspective of geologic time presents
itself as volcanism and earthquakes from our human viewpoint.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
If extremes are a hallmark of geophysical, oceanic,
and atmospheric processes, then disasters are
symptoms of human decisions and behavior.
26
All of this prompts questions. What causes so-called natural
disasters? Are mounting losses the result of increasing numbers or
severity of extreme events? Must losses inevitably increase? If not,
what steps can and should we take to minimize them?
For most of my career—33 years as a scientist at the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and now as a senior policy fellow at the American Meteorological Society—I have worked
with others to seek answers to these and related issues. Collaborating with organizations ranging from the Commerce Department to the American Red Cross, the World Bank, academia, and
the insurance industry, we have sought to understand the nature
of disasters and to seek measures and policies that would reduce
their number and impact. Here are some conclusions emerging
from this work:
The earth does its business
through extremes.
Such extremes are not interruptions of natural processes but rather
their culmination—part of the planet’s natural order.
Hurricanes provide a significant fraction of annual rainfall in
some areas. In the summer of 1999, Hurricane Floyd turned an
East Coast drought into a wetter-than-average year.
Concentrated around the Pacific’s “Rim of Fire” and along other
plate-tectonic boundaries, earthquakes are the physical manifestation of the earth’s dynamic crust.
Ecosystems do their business in the same extreme manner.
Think for a moment about the way we talk about population explosion and population collapse. We speak of disease outbreaks. Many
prey species give birth at the same time of year and survive in large
numbers because predators are unable to “staff up.” (Seventeenyear locusts are an extreme form of this behavior.) In fact, many
ecosystems depend on such natural extremes as drought, flood,
heat, or cold for their survival. Seeds in desert soil await the arrival
of sufficient rainfall to support an entire life cycle—only then will
they germinate. At the opposite extreme, pyrophytic flora use wildfire to foster their spread and growth.
Without doubt, natural extremes can be reasonably expected.
Particular events that are unlikely during any given instant are
inevitable over time. Most events can actually be predicted on some
time horizon, but even where deterministic prediction proves elusive—as for earthquakes—information about fault zones and their
seismic activity is rapidly accumulating. We know roughly when—
and more precisely where—they are likely to occur.
A HONDURAN MAN (LEFT) STRUGGLES TO ESCAPE AS FLOODWATERS FROM
HURRICANE MITCH ENGULF HIS HOME. THE MASSIVE STORM IN 1998
(BELOW), WHICH HAD WINDS OF 180 MPH, ERASED DECADES OF ECONOMIC
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
PROGRESS IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
That may well be appropriate. The cost of designing and building structures to withstand higher winds rises rapidly, and even if
we design for these wind speeds, we can’t make ourselves entirely
safe. The winds in the most intense tornadoes, such as the one that
hit Moore, Oklahoma, on May 3, 1999, approach speeds up to 300
mph and produce forces four times greater than a worst-case hurricane. Engineers know buildings that survive have simple rooflines—the ideal shape would look something like a pillbox. In fact,
most houses built in Florida in the 1940s, when hurricane frequencies were higher than those in the years since, look just like this.
But today’s aesthetic runs to complex rooflines, gables, large overhangs and eaves, inviting destruction by wind. In addition, the
desire everywhere for beachfront homes means vulnerability to
storm surge in a hurricane. If you can hear the surf daily from your
deck, you can expect it to wash over you when the extreme event
occurs.
Our vulnerability
is not simply the result of engineering.
Individual psychology, aesthetic preferences, group decision making, social frameworks, and culture all play a role. The National
Flood Insurance Program, though well intended and functional in a
number of respects, has also led to repetitive loss by financing
rebuilding in flood plains. State regulation of property and casualty
JUNE 2001
Disasters reflect social decisions.
If extremes
are a hallmark of geophysical, oceanic, and atmospheric processes,
then disasters are symptoms of human decisions and behavior. (We
define a disaster as disruption of entire communities that persists
after the hazard has come and gone and exceeds the communities’
ability to recover unaided.)
Consider a simple example: The meteorological definition of a
hurricane is a tropical storm with wind speeds of at least 75 miles
per hour. Yet the most intense hurricanes develop surface wind
speeds twice that—around 150 miles per hour. Because wind force
varies as the square of wind speed, the most powerful storms are
theoretically four times more destructive than their weaker counterparts, yet the damage they inflict is more than 200 times greater.
Why? In part, because we have written building codes that require
structures such as mobile homes to stay intact only at wind speeds
below 75 miles per hour. Other residential construction may typically stay intact at wind speeds up to 120 miles per hour, but few
buildings are designed to tolerate the severest storms.
27
insurance is often driven by political considerations instead of
actuarial data, and zoning decisions at the local level are frequently
influenced by campaign donations from land developers.
Communities resist the efforts of the Forest Service and other federal agencies to reduce woodland fuels by means of controlled
burns. All of these factors play a role in shaping our vulnerability to
hazards.
their normal work and focus instead on finding potable water.
The profile of disasters has been altered markedly by the emergence of megacities. Worldwide, cities of more than 10 million population are growing in number, tripling over the last two decades,
and are expected to double over the next 20 years. These cities have
grown up as international job shops, competing for work in the
global economy. To bid for work, they must keep costs down, and to
We operate on the assumption that civilization’s
advance has made nature irrelevant, yet more
than ever we are at its mercy.
Some of these social and economic forces are global. Ten thousand Central Americans lost their lives during Hurricane Mitch.
Many had been displaced from their original homes to make room
for coffee and banana plantations that serve export markets. They
moved to the unstable hillsides and were killed by landslides, or to
floodplains, where they were engulfed by floodwaters.
Even starvation has human causes. Though we often hear the
words “drought” and “famine” in the same breath, famine is far
more often the result of political and social disruption—including
war—than the simple failure of crops because of natural events.
keep costs down, they rely on fragile infrastructure. Furthermore,
most of these cities have been built on hazardous sites such as
floodplains and fault zones.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
28
nological change. When a tornado rips through a small town of
1,000 homes in the Midwest, flattening 10 houses, there’s pain,
anguish, and suffering. But the town’s activities can be said to be
about 1 percent impacted. The same percentage of destruction,
however, can have a far greater impact on a large city. In the 1989
Loma Prieta earthquake, 99 percent of San Francisco Bay–area
roadways came through unscathed, or at least usable. Damage was
limited to about 80 half-mile sections out of more than 4,000
miles of road. But the transportation system of the Bay area wasn’t
99 percent functional—it almost came to a standstill. The Bay
Bridge was knocked out. Ferry traffic tripled. Traffic on bridges
north and south of the city doubled. The commute time doubled or
tripled.
The root problem is a rise in population plus urbanization,
which has been made possible by the development of the networks
of electricity, gas, water, sewage, transportation, and communications needed to support urban life. Our dependence on this infrastructure has steadily increased our vulnerability to natural hazards, especially to single-point failures of entire systems. In turn,
this has changed the profile of economic loss, shifting it from property damage alone to widespread economic disruption.
Consider another example: During the 1993 Midwest floods,
high water in Des Moines, Iowa, was at first confined to the immediate neighborhood of the riverbanks. Only a few businesses located adjacent to the waterfront were affected. Later in the summer,
however, as the flooding progressed, the Des Moines River surmounted the sandbags and levees protecting the city’s water treatment plant. At that point, all 250,000 citizens had to suspend
AP/WIDE WORLD
Disasters are mutating as a result of social and tech-
Complicating this mutation are other—more technological—
advances. The 1998 ice storm in the Northeast, which paralyzed
much of New England for as long as a month, numbered thousands of dairy cattle among its casualties. Downed power lines
required that cows be milked by hand, but the cows were too
numerous and the laborers too few. Many cows developed mastitis,
reducing their productivity and, in some cases, leading to their
death. With the development of regional power grids and satellitebased telecommunications, even space weather—electromagnetic
storms caused by solar activity—has emerged as a hazard of formidable proportions.
Today’s heavy reliance on transportation also affects the disaster
profile. If you have ever been terrified by the weather, chances are it
wasn’t at home but rather in your car. You were driving along some
Interstate, minding your own business, and suddenly the storm on
the distant horizon was upon you. Rain was pelting the car. Wet
roads reduced your control of the vehicle. You lost your usual cues
as sheets of rain overwhelmed the windshield wipers, and because
the noise was deafening, you couldn’t hear well. You were in trouble
if you kept moving, and you were in trouble if you stopped. About
AFP/CORBIS
ONE OF THE TORNADOES THAT SWEPT ACROSS CENTRAL OKLAHOMA IN MAY
1,000 people die at home each year in the United States because
of weather extremes. But 6,000 lives are lost each year in automobile accidents in which weather was the cause or a contributing
factor.
1999 (LEFT) WAS MORE THAN A HALF-MILE WIDE. THE ENTIRE TOWN OF
Disasters aggravate preexisting social inequities.
F
WAS DESTROYED. THE STORMS KILLED MORE THAN 40 PEOPLE IN OKLAHOMA.
rom the perspective presented here,* it’s possible to see socalled natural disasters, epidemics and plagues, ecosystem collapse, industrial accidents, terrorist acts, so-called complex
emergencies, and even war on a single continuum. The bottom line:
We are not victims of natural extremes but rather codependents.
There’s more:
Human beings can dish it out
as well as take it.
Society can cause extreme events as well as endure them. In the
simplest and broadest terms, our new vulnerability is a result of our
recent success in increasing our population, our resource consumption per capita, and our technology. In so doing, we have set the
stage for a potential constellation of extreme events that could
threaten human society.
By achieving these gains in a very short period compared with
the time scales for significant climate change, with the normal
*Disasters by Design (Joseph Henry Press, 1999), edited by Dennis Mileti, with contributions from more than 100 authors, summarizes decades of research on the
social causes of disaster.
JUNE 2001
Research is very clear on this: Those already disenfranchised—the
poor or disabled, ethnic minorities, infants and the aged, and
women—are more at risk from natural hazards. For instance, nearly all of the 500 fatalities in the Chicago heat wave of 1995 were
elderly poor, and roughly 40 percent of tornado fatalities are persons who live in mobile homes.
There are political consequences to this. People recognize their
vulnerability and blame their leaders in the aftermath of disasters.
In January 1967, Chicago experienced a 2-foot snowstorm. Mayor
Richard Daley was unable to clear the streets and restore order for
days, and his career was threatened. A few years later, Mayor Jane
Byrne, not as popular as Daley, was toppled by a similar failure to
cope with a snowstorm. The inability of the Nicaraguan government to respond adequately to the Managua earthquake of 1972
spurred the efforts of Sandinista guerillas to oust dictator
Anastasio Somoza. It is also thought that the failure of the Bush
administration to respond quickly following Hurricane Andrew
contributed to his election loss in 1992.
MOORE, WHERE RESIDENT MITZI ROLAND SURVEYED THE DAMAGE (ABOVE),
29
Instead, we face a future whose challenges will not be chronic
and diffuse but acute and episodic. The earth’s systems will continue to do their business through extreme events, and our future will
be an unending series of local and regional crises—one atop the
other—exhibiting a complex interplay between environmental conditions and extremes, ecosystem adjustments, and social actions.
These are already happening, and increasingly they allow no
time for society to regroup and adjust. Earthquakes affect Taiwan’s
supply of computer chips, disrupting the information economy.
Drought in the Pacific Northwest interacts with deregulation to
aggravate California’s energy shortage. AIDS, ethnic conflict,
drought and famine, flood, threats to the food supply, water shortages, electrical power shortages.… Has anybody read the Old
Testament lately? Can anything be done?
The liberal arts:
An all-weather
education
ecause the effects of extreme natuB
ral events are so closely woven into
our geophysical, ecological, economic,
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
and social systems," says Bill Hooke
’64, “to unravel them—and to do something that makes the
world more resilient—can’t be done piecemeal. It takes a holistic approach, and that’s what I learned at Swarthmore."
Hooke was an Honors physics major, then received a Ph.D.
in geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago in 1967.
He worked first as a researcher, then as a research manager for
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), studying the geophysical nature of extremes for 20
years. For the next 13 years, he served as deputy chief scientist
at NOAA and as senior science adviser to the secretary of commerce, chairing the Interagency Subcommittee on Natural
Disaster Reduction. He is now a senior policy fellow at the
American Meteorological Society.
“My undergraduate education taught me that you can never
think about something deeply enough," he says. “Too many
people gain a superficial understanding of a problem, then
apply a superficial fix. I learned to look a little deeper, then
look a little deeper again."
This year, Hooke is a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, one
of about 30 leading-edge scientists nationwide who are chosen
for this honor by the 75,000-member research society. Among
the lectures he gives is a history of the National Weather
Service titled “America’s First Weatherman: How Cleveland
Abbe Founded an E-business 130 Years Ago and Addicted a
Nation to the Daily Forecast."
He says there's one other thing he learned at Swarthmore:
“How to deal with people who are smarter than I am."
30
AP/WIDE WORLD
recurrence interval between extreme events, and the emergence of
unintended consequences of our success, we can, therefore, expect
a future in which:
• Climate variation from whatever cause will produce negative
impacts because we have tuned our species’ success to the temporary conditions prevailing in the recent past.
• Pollution and related stresses on ecosystems and the environment will ricochet through the earth system in response to our
increasing numbers and newfound affluence.
• Extreme events will sorely test our social resilience.
The so-called global climate change issue is part of this scenario
but with one significant caveat: The way this issue is often discussed, we are invited to see the problem as confined to carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions. We’re encouraged to think that if we only
reduce CO2 emissions sufficiently, we will be able to restore climate
conditions to some preexisting state. But that’s not the option we
enjoy.
Absolutely.
Thanks to the same advances in wealth, scientific understanding, and technology that have created some of the
problems in the first place, the world in general—and the United
States in particular—has quite a few options. Here and abroad, a
large community of scientists, engineers, emergency managers, and
others are breaking down the problems into their component parts
and tackling each of them. Considerable progress is being made in
engineering practice, improved land use, and better warning systems. The financial community is also taking action to reduce risk.
Lending is becoming increasingly contingent on reduction of risk;
casualty and property insurers can reduce some of their exposure
through reinsurance but still more through newer instruments
such as catastrophe bonds. The Federal Emergency Management
Agency is increasingly emphasizing pre-event mitigation in all its
decisions. In business schools across the country, future executives
are studying risk management. Yet we also need important policy
changes. Four things would help:
Focus on responsibility at every level. Individuals who want
the freedom to live in the surf zone along North Carolina’s Outer
Banks should also have the “freedom” to self-insure their losses
rather than rely on a government bailout. Corporate leaders should
be more aware that disasters are not acts of God but predictable
events that should be part of the business plan—especially in vulnerable locations. According to news reports, the recent Seattle
earthquake disrupted the business of Microsoft, Boeing, and
Starbucks for a week. Government, too, must factor the inevitable
AP/WIDE WORLD
VOLUNTEER PAM CHRISTIAN LIES EXHAUSTED ON A SANDBAG DIKE IN WEST
DES MOINES (ABOVE) DURING THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY FLOODING OF JULY
1993. A QUARTER MILLION RESIDENTS WERE WITHOUT TAP WATER FOR TWO
WEEKS, AFTER THE FLOOD ENGULFED THE CITY’S WATER TREATMENT PLANT.
from natural hazards are mounting, but we tend to blame only God
or population growth. Yet in aviation, fatalities are decreasing even
as the number of passenger miles goes up. Why? Because after
every accident, the National Transportation Safety Board swarms
over the crash site asking, “How did this happen?”—then works to
prevent even a single recurrance. By contrast, after we lose a household to a flood, we say, “We’re going to rebuild just as before.”
Finally, we need to go deeper than policy—into our consciousness. We need to put aside outdated and erroneous notions of God
and nature and man’s inability to control his destiny. There are
great benefits to be found in individual and social awareness that
extreme events are the Earth at work, that disasters are a social
construct that mutates in response to social change, and that each
individual or institution must shoulder responsibility for disaster
prevention. If these simple concepts are allowed to inform our
actions, we will provide for public safety and immeasurably advance
the prospects of the human race. T
JUNE 2001
into its plans and policies.
Focus on building social resilience. We operate on the assumption that civilization’s advance has made nature irrelevant, yet more
than ever we are at its mercy. Nowadays, that dependence is threaded through our modern culture in ways quite different from a century ago. Social resilience would take on many faces, such as building redundancy into critical infrastructures to avoid single-point
failures such as the recent effect of drought in the Pacific Northwest on California’s energy crisis. As redundancy decreases, small,
unanticipated climate and weather variability—which never mattered before—becomes increasingly important.
Keep score. Right now, we can only give order-of-magnitude
estimates of the costs of disasters to the American economy. We
know, for example, that during the mid-1990s, disasters cost the
United States about $1 billion per week, but we don’t have uniform
accounting from place to place and hazard to hazard. Americans
traditionally do well at activities in which they keep score. Figures
on economic growth, inflation, and unemployment are used to
carefully steer fiscal policy. Let’s keep score of our losses to hazards
and watch the improvement.
Learn from mistakes. Consider the difference between our
approach to aviation safety and to natural hazards. Losses resulting
31
Homelands Around
the Globe
S
GRAPHIC MAP
International students
pus, Evans offers a special orientation for
immediately refer to
adjust to another culture.
first-year international students. Before the
our birthplace; oth-
B y Andrea Hammer
general freshmen orientation this year, the
ers just think of wherever our loved ones
P h o t o g r aphs by George Widman
new international students will arrive on
live. No matter where we travel or spend
Aug. 25 for a welcoming party and meeting
time, our bellies instinctively signal when
with members of the administration. As part
we are “at home”—with people and our environment. Here, we feel
of all-day sessions on Aug. 26 and 27, they will also receive assis-
understood and at peace, resting our eyes on familiar faces, family
tance with tasks such as getting a Social Security number, setting
photographs, and mementos that trace our heritage.
up bank accounts, and shopping. The group will then be invited to
For many of us, particularly college students, the comfort of
continue meeting weekly for dinner in Sharples Dining Hall, where
home is often far away. If you are 1 of the 170 international stu-
“there is lots of bonding,” Evans said. She also works closely with
dents at Swarthmore, your family, friends, and favorite foods are
the International Club in planning orientation as well as ongoing
even further away. This group—11 percent of the total student
activities to help ward off homesickness. “These students are
body—includes those with nonimmigrant visas, permanent resi-
extremely appreciative of receiving help with employment or
dents, and dual citizens hailing from 58 countries. According to
English problems,” she said of the 25-year service at the College.
Gloria Evans, the foreign student adviser
The following six international stu-
who answers many immigration questions,
about half of these are foreign students
with nonimmigrant visas from 43 countries.
To help ease their adjustment to cam-
dents, who have received this support at
SWARTHMORE CURRENTLY ENROLLS STUDENTS
FROM 58 FOREIGN COUNTRIES. THESE STUDENTS—
INCLUDING THE SIX PROFILED IN THIS ARTICLE—
CONTRIBUTE TO THE DIVERSE CULTURAL MIX AT
THE COLLEGE.
Swarthmore, describe some of the adaptations involved—and internal strength
developed—as they adjusted to life here in
the United States.
JUNE 2001
H
ome: Some of us
33
Olga Rostapshova ’02
Puschino, Russia
Languages: English and Russian
Studies: Engineering and economics double
major with public policy and environmental
studies concentrations
Activities: Information Technology Services
public-area computer consultant, economics and engineering teaching assistant,
environmental economics research assistant, The Phoenix circulation manager, varsity badminton, Forum for Free Press Committee, Ballroom and Swing Club, and
Russian Club
Plans: Attend graduate school in economics
or engineering; possibly law school
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
B
34
ecause her father was invited in
1991 to work for the National
Institutes of Health, Rostapshova attended
high school in Maryland rather than in her
small hometown near Moscow. She wanted
to attend a small liberal arts college and
thought that Swarthmore was the strongest
one with an engineering program. “When I
visited, I fell in love with the campus and
found the atmosphere here very friendly
and the students really diverse,” she said.
Rostapshova has actually found communication easier with people raised in a different culture. “In some ways, cultural differences encourage understanding of other
cultures,” she said.
Academically, Rostapshova, both a citizen of Russia and a U.S. permanent resident, has enjoyed more flexibility at
Swarthmore regarding the content of
papers. “The style of writing is very different here, including the lengthy lab reports
for the sciences and engineering, which was
a little hard to get used to,” she said.
Joining the Russian Club during her
freshman year and finding other international people helped Rostapshova adjust to
Swarthmore. “Until I came to college, my
family was on visas, and we didn’t receive
our green cards until about that time. So
that is when it began to set in for me that
we were staying here permanently and not
going back to Russia soon. Before that, we
thought we would leave,” she said.
Rostapshova still misses her family and
the close-knit community of Puschino,
which she left at age 11. “I also really miss
the extensive wilderness of my
country and going skiing or
mushroom gathering in the
woods,” she said.
Rostapshova tries to
go back to Russia every
summer. “It is frequently very strange,
especially because the
country is undergoing
much transition and
seems different every
time I visit,” she said.
“The hardest realization for me has been that
I now have an accent in
Russian as well as in
English. So every time I go
“The hardest realization
for me has been that I now
have an accent in Russian
as well as in English. So
every time I go back to my
home country, everyone
asks me where I am from.”
back to my home country, everyone asks me
where I am from. Yet this happens in the
United States as well. I almost have a feeling that I don’t really belong anywhere.”
Even though she still identifies Russia
as her home country, Rostapshova doesn’t
really think of a specific place as home. “I
think that it depends on the context of the
word for me,” she said. “I usually reply
United States when I am in Russia and
Russia when I am in the United States.
Funny, isn’t it?” she asked.
After finishing her education in the
States, Rostapshova wants to take a different set of perspectives and expertise back to
Russia. “I think it is a shame that many
well-educated people are leaving the country,” she said. “Thus, the country continues
to deteriorate and that encourages more
“MOST PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK I AM RUSSIAN
IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE OF MY BLONDE BRAIDS
AND I GUESS MY GENERAL LOOKS,” SAID OLGA
ROSTAPSHOVA, VISITING GURSUF ON THE BLACK
SEA. ROSTAPSHOVA WAS BORN AND RAISED IN
THE UKRAINE, SPENT A YEAR NEAR MOSCOW,
AND IS NOW A RUSSIAN CITIZEN AND A U.S.
PERMANENT RESIDENT.
people to leave. I really want to go back and
somehow help the Russian community get
back on its feet, and I need to have more
experience before I can accomplish this,”
said Rostapshova, who recently won the
Morris Udall Foundation’s award for
Scholarship and Excellence in National
Environmental Policy.
Languages: English, Nepali, Spanish,
Norwegian, and Hindi
Studies: Honors economics major and public policy minor
Activities: Admissions tour guide, WSRN
talk show host, computer lab consultant,
and International Club member
Plans: Will probably work for a couple of
years before attending graduate school in
the United States
D
uring his last two years of high
school, Silwal attended the United
World Colleges in Norway on a scholarship. When many of his friends came to
the United States for further studies, he
learned about U.S. academic institutions.
“I wanted to go to an equally diverse place
as my high school, a small school that was
academically rigorous and provided financial support for international students,” he
said. “Swarthmore clearly stood out!”
“Living away from home
has made me question
almost everything I know
and believe in.”
One of the primary adjustments that
Silwal faced involved an abundance of
choices. “I was overwhelmed by my first
shopping trip to Target,” he said. “I had
wanted to buy a comforter, but there were
40 different kinds of comforters there! I
wanted to get some washing liquid, but it
came in so many sizes, shapes, colors, and
forms that I just couldn’t decide which one
to get. Sometimes I still feel like there is a
tyranny of choices here.”
At first, Silwal also found it difficult to
start conversations with American students
because they had not watched the same
movies or television shows or done similar
activities in high school. But once classes
began and campus events started, he discovered common interests with others.
“The International Club has definitely
made things a lot easier. The three-day
international orientation that we had
before the normal orientation helped me to
get used to the College and climate,” he
said. “Gloria Evans is very warm and supportive. She has been of tremendous help
in adjusting to things here.”
Silwal has not been home since he came
to Swarthmore two years ago. But he plans
to return this summer, doing an independent research project on the impact of
microcredit on Nepal, with the
aid of a grant from the
College. He is sometimes frustrated by
the lengthy separation from his
family and
friends at
home. “Not
being able
to keep in
touch with
your near
and dear
ones is
always difficult. Even
though I’ve been
trying to keep in
touch with people via
e-mails, Internet phone,
MSN chat, and occasional
phone calls, nothing can equal each
other’s presence,” Silwal said.
He also misses Nepali food, such as rice
with chicken curry, which he can only make
with friends on breaks because of extensive
preparation time. “Not being able to communicate in the language I’m most comfortable with, not being able to read the
newspapers I always read, not seeing the
people I always saw, not seeing the mountains I saw every day was a bit discomforting and disorienting at the beginning,” he
said. “But, as they say, time is the big healer; you gradually get used to things. And
now I’m already preparing myself to get
shocked with things once I return home!”
Swarthmore has changed Silwal fundamentally. “Living away from home has
made me question almost everything I
know and believe in. As a result, I have
begun to appreciate some things such as
the value of nuclear families and the slower
pace of life and to question other traditions
and attitudes that I
always took for
granted,” he said. “I
have had a chance to see
and talk to people from so many
backgrounds and learn many new things.
All this has made me enthusiastic and
excited about all the opportunities in life.”
Silwal wants to complete his education
before deciding where to settle. “It would
be naive of me to say that I want to return
to my country to ‘serve her’ right after I
graduate,” he said. “But no matter what my
decision will be, Nepal will always be in my
mind and my heart.”
“HAVING STAYED AWAY FROM HOME FOR FOUR
YEARS, I FEEL LIKE MY SENSE OF BELONGING HAS
BEGUN TO CHANGE FROM THE PLACE I LIVE IN TO
THE PEOPLE I ASSOCIATE WITH. PLACES CHANGE.
WE MOVE ALL THE TIME, BUT FRIENDSHIPS
REMAIN FOREVER,” SAID ANI SILWAL, WHO FEELS
MOST AT HOME ON CAMPUS IN HIS DORM ROOM.
JUNE 2001
Ani Silwal ’03
Kathmandu, Nepal
35
Marina Boevska ’03
Sofia, Bulgaria
Languages: English, Bulgarian, German,
and Russian
Studies: Honors political science major,
Honors economics minor, and German
Studies concentration
Activities: Debate, treasurer of a CIVIC
group, International Club, and Alumni
Office intern
Plans: Work for the political and economic
improvement of Bulgaria
“It was strange for me
to order pizza at 11 p.m.
and then invite everybody
from the hall to share
it with us and watch
The Simpsons.”
B
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
oevska first learned about
Swarthmore when her
guidance counselor recommended the College, and
Polina Kehayova ’01,
who attended her
high school, said
she was happy
studying here.
“Most people
from my high
school apply to
colleges in the
United States,”
Boevska said.
Some of her
greatest adjustments at Swarthmore involved
36
learning slang expressions
and living with someone from a
completely different culture. “For
example, it seemed strange to order pizza
at 11 p.m. and then invite everybody from
the hall to share it with us and watch The
Simpsons,” which would never happen in
Bulgaria, she said.
Boevska particularly misses Bulgarian
food, including white cheese, yogurt, shopska salad, her grandmother’s pastries, and
her mother’s almost everyday cooking.
“Maybe I am biased, but there vegetables
and fruits taste much more natural,” she
said. Boevska also misses going out with
friends later in the evening, walking
around the city, and going to cafés. But
making new friends on campus, including
some of the staff she works with, helped
her feel comfortable at Swarthmore.
Returning home every winter and summer break, Boevska was concerned that life
in Bulgaria would feel very different after
so much time away. “But I have these feelings for only the first few days,” she said.
“Every time it just seems that there is a lot
of news to catch up with. I need to take a
few long walks around my city, see my
friends, and then it all seems like I have
never left home.”
As a result of her experiences at Swarthmore, Boevska now thinks of herself as a
more educated person who is increasingly
capable of making important decisions,
such as how to prioritize her life. She has
also allowed herself new experiences,
which “I guess you can call acquiring
open-mindedness,”
she said.
MARINA BOEVSKA (ABOVE, LEFT) MISSES HER
FAMILY IN BULGARIA (LEFT). BUT LEARNING
ABOUT SWARTHMORE FROM POLINA KEHAYOVA
(ABOVE, RIGHT) AND MAKING NEW FRIENDS ON
CAMPUS HELPED HER FEEL COMFORTABLE AT
SWARTHMORE.
Polina Kehayova ’01
Sofia, Bulgaria
Languages: English, German, and Russian
Studies: Biochemistry and economics double major
Activities: Voice lessons (Garrigues
Scholarship) and chorus; Admissions
Office ambassador for Eastern Europe;
writing associate; lab teaching assistant
and grader for organic chemistry, microbiology, microeconomics, and physics; clerical positions in Cornell Library, Mullan
Tennis Center, and Admissions Office
Plans: Attend Harvard Graduate School
B
ecause Kehayova has always loved
traveling, she wanted to study
abroad for several reasons. “I think that
immersing yourself in a foreign culture is
one of the most eye- and mind-opening
experiences,” she said. Thinking about her
future, Kehayova also considered the
decline in the level of graduate schools as a
result of the economic crisis in Bulgaria.
After arriving at Swarthmore, her great-
“I miss my mom’s meals,
my grandma’s tomatoes,
and very simple things
that you never realize
you value until you
lose them.”
est challenge involved slang phrases, such
as “kick ass,” that offered no clues to the
literal meaning. Conversations about Buffy
the Vampire Slayer also mystified Kehayova.
“Well, to be honest, I still don’t know anything about the shows,” she said, “but I
don’t care when I get lost in the TV conversations.”
Kehayova remembered freshman year as
a busy one—an antidote to homesickness.
She glided through the transition to the
States because of the “great company and
wonderful friends” she found on her freshman hall in the Mary Lyon Building.
Nonetheless, she misses her family and
get-togethers with neighbors and friends
in Bulgaria.
“Also, I miss my mom’s meals, my
grandma’s tomatoes, and very simple
things that you never realize you value
until you lose them,” she said. Kehayova
usually returns home about once a year.
“Well, it always takes me a while to get
used to the atmosphere as well as simply to
catch up with what’s happening in people’s
lives,” she said.
Despite her time in the States,
Kehayova does not think her personal
identity has changed. But because she has
been entirely responsible for herself—
including financially—Kehayova feels more
mature and wiser. “I think I am still the
same—or am I just fooling myself?” she
asked.
The senior, who said that others often
ALTHOUGH POLINA KEHAYOVA HAS MADE MANY
FRIENDS ON CAMPUS, SHE STILL MISSES TALKING WITH HER SISTER, AS THEY DID IN THE
SOUTHERN TOWN OF MELNIK, BULGARIA
(ABOVE, LEFT), AND SEEING HER DOG, ARGUS.
mistakenly identify Bulgaria as Bolivia in
South America, has two definitions for
home now. “Usually it means our little
apartment in the outskirts of Sofia,
Bulgaria. But if I am talking about the
United States, I mean Swat,” she said.
Kehayova currently plans to stay in the
States because of her interest in science
and the opportunities to advance in the
field of biochemistry. Her many friends
here also make that option appealing.
“I definitely think people from different
cultures can connect super well on a basic
level. After all, some of my best friends are
here, and they are American. Of course, we
have differences, but people from two parts
of the United States also do,” she said.
JUNE 2001
“At Swarthmore, I started identifying
myself as an Eastern European or just a
European; every time I was away from my
country before, I was just a Bulgarian.
Here, I see that people always associated
me with what is common for the region
that I come from, not really for the country
that I come from,” she said. “People also
often mistakenly think of Bulgaria as part
of the former Soviet Union.”
Boevska still identifies “home” as Sofia,
Bulgaria—a feeling that has never changed
for her. “Of course, sometimes when I am
on a trip to New York or another nearby
city, I refer to Swarthmore as home, but it
is not really the place that I belong to,” she
said.
Planning to possibly attend graduate
school in the States, Boevska is clear that
she does not want to stay here permanently. “I believe that cultural differences can be
overcome,” she said. “However, they do
present important barriers that often hinder the communication between two people from different cultures.”
37
Nii Antiaye Addy ’01
Accra, Ghana
Languages: English, Pidgin English, Fante,
Ga, Twi, and French
Studies: Economics major
Activities: Site manager of swarthmore.dailyjolt.com, co-director of WSRN, computer
consultant, Swarthmore Mentoring
Program volunteer, Swarthmore
Foundation Board of Directors student
member, International Club treasurer,
National Society of Black Engineers vice
president, Swarthmore African Students
Association secretary, and Engineering
Department research assistant
Plans: Work for some years and pursue
graduate studies in the States
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
A
38
Curtis Bok Scholar, UPS Minority
Scholar, 1999 Michael Keene Award
recipient, and Sigma Xi Honor Society
member, Addy read about Swarthmore
from a college guide after deciding to apply
in the United States. “I was greatly influenced in my decisions by speaking to
Joseph Armah ’98, Sylvia Kwakye ’98, and
Patrick Awuah ’89 about their own experiences at Swarthmore. Joseph and Sylvia
were in their junior year, and they
addressed an info session to applicants
while they were in Ghana for the holidays.”
Armah also lived up the street from
Addy in Accra, and Addy had attended the
same high school as Awuah’s younger
brother, Sam Awuah ’94. “The biggest coincidence was finding out that I was not to
be the first member of the extended Addy
family to come to Swarthmore. In conversations with other family members, my dad
found out that his distant cousin, Tralance
Addy, had graduated from Swarthmore in
1969.”
Since Addy’s sophomore year, two other
students with the same Ghanaian first
name as his have attended the College. “I
have had to explain to several people that
‘Nii’ is a very common name in Accra, the
capital city of Ghana. I explained that very
often people don’t just go by the name ‘Nii’
but rather by that first name and their second name,” he said. “In that case, I would
be ‘Nii Antiaye’ (pronounced Nee-An-tiye). Because most people could not pro-
NII ADDY, WHO WAS AWAY FROM HOME FOR
THREE YEARS UNTIL LAST SUMMER, MISSES HIS
FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND GHANAIAN PEOPLE IN
GENERAL. “FORTUNATELY, I HAVE SOME FAMILY
IN THE UNITED STATES, AND OFTEN, WHEN I VISITED THEM, ALL I ATE WAS GHANAIAN FOOD,” HE
SAID. ADDY LATER DISCOVERED STORES IN WEST
PHILADELPHIA TO BUY HIS FAVORITE FOODS SUCH
AS PLANTAINS AND WEST AFRICAN YAMS.
“Having attended an
all-boys boarding school
in Ghana for seven years,
you can bet I found
Swarthmore to be very
different. But the bigger
adjustments had to be made
culturally.”
nounce my second name right, I was used
to being known as just ‘Nii.’ Coincidentally, Nii Addy ’02 and I are from the same
Addy family—our dads are cousins—and
Nii Addo ’02 and I attended the same elementary school in Ghana.”
Once at Swarthmore, Addy, who was
not used to “having an accent,” also had to
explain the context of his words and
expressions. “For example, back in Ghana,
whenever somebody got hurt, we said,
‘sorry’—even when it was not our fault.
People found it strange when I said sorry
for things I was not responsible for,” he
said.
Addy made some good friends from the
International Club and the African Club,
who made life easier because of shared
experiences—and, sometimes, frustrations.
“I found the Black Cultural Center to be an
amazing resource to me as I was adjusting.
It can be confusing for a black student
“My true home will
always be the place where
my mother language
is spoken: Turkey.
But Swarthmore
made me more confident
of myself as a person
and restored my cultural
and national identity
and pride.”
Günes Bender ’02
Istanbul, Turkey
Languages: English and Turkish
Studies: Honors biology major
Activities: WSRN, flamenco and modern
dance, library assistant, and Annual Giving
Office intern
Plans: Attend graduate school in molecular
biology
F
ormer president of the Alumni
Association Elenor Reid ’67, Bender’s
college adviser in Istanbul, encouraged him
to apply to Swarthmore. Believing that
“there is a basic level of understanding and
human warmth that is enough to cross
boundaries of culture and language,” he
decided to study at Swarthmore.
“I have been exposed to a kind of diversity that would not have been possible or
acceptable in a Turkish university. For
instance, racial diversity or different sexual
orientations are things I would not have
been exposed to in Turkey,” he said.
At the College, Bender faced mostly linguistic rather than academic or social challenges. “It has taken at least two years to
feel fully comfortable with English,” he
said, referring to “unexpected glitches in
spoken and written English.”
Bender has also experienced academic
differences at the College. “In Turkey, social
sciences and arts are taught with a more
Eurocentric or Turkocentric perspective. At
ON CAMPUS, GÜNES BENDER FEELS MOST AT HOME
IN THE ROSE GARDEN, WHICH HE ENJOYS BECAUSE
“IT IS SO PRETTY!”
Swarthmore, there is a more global
selection of studies in arts and
humanities,” he said.
As someone used to living in a
lively and loud city, Bender has found
the suburbs a bit too tranquil. He also
misses Turkish music, the language, and
his family, although he talks with his parents as frequently as possible. Bender goes
home at least once every year and finds
most of his relationships unchanged—
except when people have died in the interim.
“My true home will always be the place
where my mother language is spoken:
Turkey,” he said. But “Swarthmore made
me more confident of myself as a person
and restored my cultural and national
identity and pride. It also taught me to be
more sensitive to a lot of issues that I
would not have confronted in Turkey,”
where he hopes to work after attending
graduate school. T
JUNE 2001
from a predominantly black population to
adjust to Swarthmore; within the black
community, I learned so much about the
similarities and differences between people
of the African diaspora,” he said. “The
upperclassmen I met were also very helpful
in the adjustment process as they shared
their experiences.”
The challenges that Addy has faced have
ultimately strengthened his religious and
personal beliefs. “As an active member of
the International Club, I have continued to
discover similarities that exist between so
many of the diverse experiences that we
have brought to Swarthmore,” he said.
The College has also broadened him
academically. When he arrived on campus,
Addy was comfortable in only the natural
sciences. But after taking some economics
classes, involving extensive reading and
writing, he had a better grasp of the economic issues affecting Ghana. “One of my
favorite moments at home was when I got
to meet and discuss some issues with a
leading Ghanaian economist and
politician, Kwame Pianim,” he said.
For Addy, home is still Ghana.
“When I visited last summer, I
realized just how much home
meant to me. I felt totally comfortable as soon as I got back to
Ghana.”
39
S WA R T H M O R E G AT H E R I N G S N E A R Y O U
UPCOMING EVENTS
Philadelphia: Supper Club le Swarthmore is
gaining momentum! The group meets once
a month, always at a different restaurant, to
enjoy tasty cuisine and good conversation.
Everyone is welcome. Check the Alumni
Events Web site for each month’s details, or
contact Connection Chairs Bruce Gould ’54
at brucegould54@hotmail.com or (215) 5634811 or Jim Moskowitz ’88 at jimmosk@yahoo.com or (610) 604-0669. Sign up for
the Philadelphia Connection listserv to be
informed electronically.
Pittsburgh: Connection Chair Melissa Kelley ’80 arranged for tickets to the Pirates/
Phillies game in June at the brand-new PNC
Park—quite a feat because the entire season
at this two-tiered, 38,000-seat stadium is
completely sold out. If you are interested in
attending, contact Melissa at mkhaver@aol.com or (412) 321-4932.
Swarthmore: A Swarthmore Alumnae
Women’s Tennis Match is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 6. Save this date for the firstever Women’s Tennis Team alumnae match.
If you have questions or want to sign up,
contact Rani Shankar ’98 at rani-shankar@yahoo.com or (617) 628-5075.
The Alumni Association
wants to hear from you!
Please contact President Richard Truitt ’66,
Swarthmore College Alumni Association, 500
College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
or alumni@swarthmore.edu.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
Candidates for Alumni Council:
________________
________________
40
Candidates for Alumni Manager :
________________
________________
Suggested speaker for Alumni Weekend
Collection and other campus events:
________________
Your name/class year:
________________
MEMBERS OF THE PHILADELPHIA BOOK CLUB (TOP) CLOSED
THE ACADEMIC YEAR ON MAY 23 WITH A TALK BY PROFESSOR
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE PETER SCHMIDT (RIGHT). UNDER
SCHMIDT’S GUIDANCE, THE GROUP HAD READ NOVELS WITH
THE THEME “BORDER CROSSINGS.” THERE ARE ALSO SWARTHMORE BOOK CLUBS IN WASHINGTON, D.C., AND BOSTON.
RECENT EVENTS
Boston: Saccos Bowl Haven, a ’50s-style
bowling alley featuring candlepin bowling,
was the site of a Boston Connection Event
in February. Connection Chair Leah Gotcsik
’97 and Ahna Dewan ’96 arranged this nostalgic event for alums and their families.
Chicago: For Connection members who
could not get to campus for Alumni Weekend, Marilee Roberg ’73 arranged for a
Swarthmore experience in Chicago instead.
The Connection attended the City Lit’s production of Jeeves and the Mating Season,
based on a novel by P.G. Wodehouse. After
the performance, there was a question-andanswer session with the cast, followed by
dinner at a local restaurant.
London: Lucy Rickman Baruch ’42 arranged
for Swatties to hear Serena Canin ’88 play
in the Brentano String Quartet at Wigmore
Hall. The group enjoyed an informal gettogether before the concert.
New York: Jazz guitarist Lou Garrett ’97
debuted his new quintet “Into the Fall" and
new compositions at one of New York’s premiere creative jazz venues The Jazz/Cabaret
Room at The Cornelia Street Café. Thanks
to Sanda Balaban ’94, Connection chair, for
making this event happen.
The New York Connection got some
PHOTOS BY BARBARA SEYMOUR ʼ63
ALUMNI DIGEST
Connections
exercise and raised money for a worthy
cause by participating in the AIDS WALK
2001 in May. Connection Co-Chair Debbie
Branker Harrod ’89 led the Swarthmore
team in this worthy event.
North Carolina: In April, Connection Chair
George Telford ’84 arranged for a Wildflower Hike in Eno River State Park with
Durham naturalist Milo Pyne. Pete Campbell ’62 summed up the event: “Thanks so
much for a wonderful Eno naturalist tour
reminiscent of Swarthmore springs wandering the woods of Crum Creek—but without
the anxiety of pending exams to diminish
our ability to enjoy every moment.”
Philadelphia: Co-chairs Bruce Gould ’54
and Jim Moskowitz ’88 sponsored several
events to keep the winter doldrums away
from Connection members. In February,
U.S. Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.) presented “A Swarthmore Perspective on Congress." Former Swarthmore Physics Professor Rush Holt was elected to the House of
Representatives in 1998. Last year, he was
re-elected from his largely Republican district in the second-closest major race in the
nation! (And the first was….)
In March, the Connection enjoyed an
evening of classical music featuring cellist
Lynn Harrell at the Curtis Institute of
Music. April showered the Philadelphia
SAGES SEE WRIGHT STUFF
C
© NATHAN FLORENCE
MEMBERS OF THE PHILADELPHIA CONNECTION
RECENTLY ENJOYED SEEING A SHOW OF PAINTINGS
BY NATHAN FLORENCE ’94 AT THE F.A.N. GALLERY.
“MARIAN AND THE SHADOWS, CAIRO” (ABOVE)
WAS ONE OF MANY NEW WORKS PRODUCED WHILE
FLORENCE AND HIS WIFE WERE LIVING IN EUROPE
LAST YEAR.
o-Supreme Sages Anne Matthews Rawson ’50 and James Fligg ’50 invited
Garnet Sages on a two-day spring outing to
explore two Western Pennsylvania homes
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright: Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob. Phil Gilbert ’48 made
the arrangements to visit these homes, and
the Sages are grateful for his efforts.
Forty-four Sages joined Director of
Alumni Relations Lisa Lee ’81 on this trip in
April. Although they departed while a spring
snow was flying, the weather cleared, and
the Sages were able to enjoy the first few
days of springtime in western Pennsylvania.
The group was delighted to be accompanied by Kaori Kitao, the William R. Kenan,
Jr., Professor of Art History. Professor Kitao,
who retired this spring, gave a talk during
the trip on “Architecture and Art."
A BUSY WEEKEND FOR THE ALUMNI COUNCIL
T
he last weekend in March was a busy
one at Swarthmore. Family Weekend,
the Lax Lecture, and Alumni Council’s
spring meeting brought many alumni
and visitors to campus. Clocks were
moved forward one hour, and students
ventured into the icy water of Crum
Creek for the annual regatta held on
April Fool’s Day—coincidence?
The Alumni Council convened its
spring meeting on Friday evening with a
reception and dinner, followed by a
presentation by Provost Jennie Keith
and members of the Athletic Review
Committee. The Saturday morning general session was composed mainly of
reports.
President Alfred H. Bloom gave the
Council an update on many issues
affecting the College, followed by a lively question-and-answer session. After
reports on the February Board of Managers meeting and recent activities in
Alumni Relations, the Council members
were delighted to hear of the success of
this year’s Extern Program from Cynthia
Graae ’62, national coordinator of the
Extern Program.
Many thanks to those alumni who
have sponsored an extern in their workplace or hosted an extern in their home.
Connection chairs reviewed their regional events for the year—it’s amazing how
many events took place all around the
country.
The Council’s three Working Groups
(College Advisory and Support, Alumni
Support, and Student Support) discussed
specific issues and determined action
plans for the coming months.
The Career Planning Office sponsored
a Career Networking Dinner on Saturday.
This dinner matches students with council members who shared their experiences in the workplace and is a wonderful opportunity for alumni-student interaction.
Steve Lin, the College’s Web editor
and Internet coordinator, showed a proposed new College Web site design and
fielded questions from Council members
regarding College Web services.
The meeting was adjourned by Elenor
Reid ’67, who served at her last spring
meeting as Council president. On Alumni
Weekend, she will hand over her duties
to Rich Truitt ’66, who will be Alumni
Council president for the next two years.
The College, and the Alumni Relations
Office in particular, greatly appreciates
all of Elenor’s fine work on and thoughtful guidance of the Alumni Council.
JUNE 2001
Connection with two exciting presentations
by Swatties. Tom Sgouros ’82 and Judy the
Robot answered the age-old question: If you
build a robot smart enough to do the dishes,
will it also be smart enough to be bored?
The group also enjoyed the Pig Iron Theatre Co.’s newest original work, Anodyne. Pig
Iron Theatre Co. is an international touring
dance-clown-theater ensemble based in
Philadelphia. The company’s four artistic
directors are Swarthmore alums—Solveig
Holum ’97, Daniel Rothenberg ’95, Fernando
van Reigersberg ’94, and Quinn Bauriedel
’94—as is managing director Lars Jan ’00.
In May, Jim Moskowitz ’88, who developed the Franklin Institute’s new Sports
Challenge exhibit, hosted an event for alums
and their families at the exhibit. Jim shared
his experiences of how the exhibit was created and helped everyone get the most out of
their visit.
Philadelphia Recent Graduates: This fledgling group is off to a terrific start! In February, the group’s first event was at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art. In April, Sarah
Keith ’94 graciously hosted an event at her
apartment in Philadelphia’s Old City.
Approximately 30 young alumni spent a few
hours mixing and mingling. A number of
them went on to two local clubs, where Graham Richmond ’95 and Meghan Hayes ’93
were performing. This event was the second
in what will, it is hoped, become an occasional outing for recent graduates living in
the Philadelphia area. For information, contact Ben Stern ’96 at benjaminstern@hotmail.com, Geoff Cline ’96 at geoffcline@alum.swarthmore.edu, or Kristen Lockwood
Cline ’96 at
kcline@morganlewis.com.
Seattle: This Connection literally
rocks. Connection
Chair Deb Read
’87 had to reschedule her wine-tasting event in FebruCENTENNIAL PROFESSOR
ary because of the
earthquake that hit
EMERITA OF CLASSICS
the Seattle area the
HELEN NORTH WAS
day the event was
HONORED IN JANUARY
scheduled. Don’t
AT THE FIRST ANNUAL
worry, Seattle, there
HELEN NORTH CLASSICS
will be more events
LECTURE.
in the future!
41
COURTESY OF FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
CLASS NOTES
A Bevy of Maid Marians?
P
osing on Cunningham Field, these members of the
Women’s Archery Club seem reluctant to face the cam-
era—on the lookout for incoming arrows, maybe? The wary (and
barefoot) archers are (standing, left to right) Anne Matthews
Rawson ’50, Ruth Pretzat Krusen ’49, Joan LeVino Ross ’49, and
Robin Cooley Krivanek ’51; (kneeling, left to right) Winifred
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
Witcraft Guerchon ’50, Betty Bassett Miller ’48, and Nancy
42
McDaniel Miller ’51. Photographers Karl Ihrig ’51 and Woodlief
Thomas Jr. ’51, along with Robin Krivanek and Nancy Miller, celebrated their 50th reunion this year.
M A R Y L O U R O G E R S M U N T S ’ 4 5 I S A L I F E L O N G AC T I V I S T.
T
hough my family escaped its worst ravages, the Depression formed my social
conscience,” says Mary Lou Rogers Munts
’45. “I became a Roosevelt admirer in 1932,
when I was 8.” Almost 70 years later, she’s
still a Democrat, and her lifelong commitment to social justice has brought many
accomplishments and honors.
Munts came to Swarthmore at a critical
time in the College’s—and the nation’s—
history. Two student groups started her on a
path of public service: the Swarthmore Student Union (SSU) and the Committee on
Race Relations, which convinced the Board
of Managers to open the College to black
students.
World War II gave Swarthmore women
unusual opportunities, says Munts, and in
1942, she was selected to attend the International Student Service Leadership Training
Institute at President Roosevelt’s summer
home on Campobello Island, Maine. Molly
Yard ’33 was a staff member at the institute
and became a lifelong friend and mentor.
After Campobello, Eleanor Roosevelt invited
several of the students to her New York
apartment, where Munts remembers spending the night in a “spacious nightgown” borrowed from the First Lady.
Munts’ sophomore year was busy. Elected executive secretary of the SSU, she scored
a coup when Mrs. Roosevelt accepted an
invitation to speak on campus. In May 1943,
she was elected president of the U.S. Student Assembly at its inaugural convention.
In the fall of 1944, Munts took a leave of
absence from Swarthmore to run the student campaign for Vernon O’Rourke, the
political science professor who was making a
second run against the Delaware County
Republican machine for a seat in Congress—this time in absentia. Though
O’Rourke was serving on a destroyer in the
Pacific, he lost only by a narrow margin.
After the election, Munts took a job in a
tank factory instead of returning to college.
After the war, she finished her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago, where
she not only received a master’s degree in
economics but met her future husband. Ray
Munts was then a graduate student in political science, later receiving a Ph.D. in eco-
TIM THEISEN
ALUMNI PROFILE
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
50
A Wisconsin Gem
MARY LOU ROGERS MUNTS CELEBRATES A LEGISLATIVE VICTORY IN 1984.
nomics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UWM).
After her marriage, Munts’ activism continued along themes established at Swarthmore. In the 1950s, she threw herself into
building a new Democratic Party in Wisconsin. The early 1960s found her in Bethesda,
Md., where she and Esther Ridpath Delaplaine ’44 led efforts to pass a groundbreaking public accommodations ordinance. The
Munts family—by then with four children—returned to Madison in 1966, where
Ray taught at the university’s School of
Social Work.
Battling her grief over the 1967 death of
their son, Roger, Munts entered the UWM
Law School in 1970. Again, she interrupted
her studies to win a seat in the Wisconsin
Assembly in 1972, 1 of 7 women in the 99member body. Her consensus-building talents produced many legislative successes,
including divorce reform, marital property
reform, solid and hazardous waste legislation, and reform of antitrust and mental
health laws. She earned her law degree in
1976, while a member of the Assembly.
Asked about her greatest legislative
accomplishment, Munts points to marital
property reform. She credits UWM Law
School Professor June Miller Weisberger ’51
as the “intellectual architect” of the bill that
made Wisconsin the first—and thus far
only—state to change long-standing separate property laws to become a community
property state. (Eight other states, largely
those with French or Spanish colonial legal
influence, have long had community property laws.) In 1984, after six terms in the
Assembly, she retired to take a seat on Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission, where
she became a leader in energy conservation
efforts, serving until 1991.
Ray’s death in 1992 forced Munts to
rebuild her life, assisted by her three children and seven grandchildren as well as her
passions for gardening and travel. Polly, her
lesbian daughter; Polly’s partner; and their
three adopted children of color have given
Munts a special opportunity to make her
civil rights advocacy personal.
In December 1999, hundreds crowded
into a 75th birthday party for Munts.
“Words like ‘tireless’ and ‘incredibly effective’ floated among the red and white balloons,” reported the Wisconsin State Journal.
The Madison Capital Times said, “Munts’
faith in democracy demanded a commitment
that was—and is—extremely rare.” Jonathan Barry, a former county executive who
served with Munts in the legislature,
summed it up for everyone when he said at
the party, “She’s just a Wisconsin gem.”
—Ralph Lee Smith ’51
W I L L I A M F R O H L I C H ’ 5 7 R E F L E C T S H I S VA L U E S I N T H E B O O K S H E P U B L I S H E S .
W
hat if Timothy McVeigh were not the
sole perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma
City bombing? Or if a window washer were
responsible for the 1954 beating death of
Marilyn Sheppard?
Both these contentions are discussed in
books by Northeastern University Press
(NEUP). We may never know the truth about
either event because both the window washer
and McVeigh are now dead. Yet, if the arguments presented offer different and significant viewpoints, then they have achieved
something important, says Bill Frohlich ’57,
founder and director of NEUP. He sees book
publishing as a gratifying way of investigating significant issues, of debating society’s
behavior, and of imparting values that were
strengthened in him during his years as an
Honors history major at Swarthmore.
Frohlich came to Northeastern University
in 1976, after 16 years in commercial publishing, as head of the institution’s Publishing
Group, which provided printing and publishing services to the university. The idea of publishing scholarly books appealed to him, and,
in 1977, the university approved his proposal
to start a university press. The university was
thriving financially, and its sympathetic president could afford to let him experiment.
Nonetheless, Frohlich knew that the press
could not grow on scholarly works alone, for
they garner little media attention and rarely
sell more than 600 copies per title. With a
small press budget and limited appeal to
scholars and other authors, the fledgling
press needed a mix of books that advanced
scholarship, sold into university courses, and
attracted more general interest—not to mention that of book review editors.
In the early years, university support and
the ability of Frohlich and his staff to find
promising niches in the market for highquality books brought rapid growth. Annual
sales rose in the first 10 years from $9,000 to
$355,000. Drawing on the strengths of the
university and its editors, the press developed
lists in American history (especially regional
titles), criminology, women’s studies, and
music. However, since that first glorious
decade, budgetary crunches at colleges and
universities reduced library sales from 1,000
to 300 copies per scholarly book.
DAVID LEIFER
ALUMNI PROFILE
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
56
Rolling the Rock Up the Hill
DESPITE CONSTANT CHALLENGES, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS FOUNDER WILLIAM FROHLICH ’57
SAYS, “WHAT KEEPS ME GOING AT 65 IS THAT, EVEN THOUGH IT NEVER GETS ANY EASIER, I ENJOY IT.”
By restricting its publishing to a few areas,
NEUP has done well. Frohlich admits that
growing is now a challenge. Still, he says, “If
I look at the books we published many years
ago, I can see a considerable difference, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. And I think
what keeps me going at 65 is that, even
though it never gets easier, I enjoy it.”
Speaking of the press’s success, Frohlich
prefers emphasizing specific items. He mentions a popular African-American fiction reissue series. The press has a strong music list,
and it also publishes widely in the area of
criminology, enjoying a fine reputation for its
books on capital punishment. A new book on
terrorism, In Bad Company by Mark Hamm, is
due in the fall; it suggests that McVeigh collaborated with the Aryan Republican Army, a
small terrorist group that robbed banks in its
quest to fund overthrowing the federal government. Mockery of Justice: The True Story of
the Sam Sheppard Murder Case by Cynthia
Cooper and Sam Reese Sheppard illustrates
injustice in the Ohio legal system and offers a
contribution to the quest for truth because it
uncovered the identity of the real murderer.
A contract with Hollywood-based Fox Studios will mean the filming of Final Confession
by Brian Wallace, an account of the exploits
of eminently successful Boston thief Phil
Cresta, now deceased. Rumor has it that
Robert De Niro is interested in playing Cresta.
Despite current sales of roughly $1.5 million, the press has yet to become profitable,
not unusual for a publisher as small as NEUP.
And, in any case, Frohlich wishes to focus on
more than commercially successful books. He
wants NEUP’s lists to address significant
issues like capital punishment and the corrupting nature of campaign finance. Often, in
his search for fine books, he’s discouraged by
what he learns. “But,” he says, “if you don’t
continue to roll the rock up the hill; if you
don’t continue to fight executing human
beings, often innocent; if you don’t try to
show the injustice of our system—such as
keeping two million people behind bars,
many on minor drug offenses and most of
them minorities—then you’re not doing anything significant or at least trying to improve
our society in some small way. So we try.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
LIFE AFTER 60
By R u t h C o o p e r L a m b ’ 5 6
W
hy would anyone choose to live 3 miles from a paved road, 5
miles from a neighbor, 6 miles from phone and electric
poles, and 11 winding miles from a store? Eleven years ago, when
my husband, Sandy ’55, and I retired to Wardsboro, an extinct
farming settlement in northern New York state, we did so because
of the death of a young AIDS activist. We chose to move to a newly
inherited, slate-roofed 1860 farmhouse in a wild, isolated valley
because he made us rethink what really mattered. We took early
retirement, not to retreat from our busy lives in the Boston area but
rather to pioneer in closer communion with nonhuman nature
before we were too old for such an adventure.
Sandy is chief problem solver as we face the challenges of living
without normal electricity, phone, furnace, and plumbing. When he
pauses in his firewood splitting to inhale the view of nearby Catamount Mountain, he can hardly remember his life as a public
health physician in Boston when the AIDS epidemic dictated his
days. I have emerged from my past life as a nutritionist and council-on-aging director to become his right-hand woman and chief
gardener. We take turns as cook (since Sandy has become an avid
chef), and I experiment, creating crafts from valley flora and document our environment with camera and pen.
The complexity of simple living keeps us on our toes. The elephantine cookstove in the kitchen and the tiny living-room burner
keep our four rooms warm in winter only as long as we feed them
wood. For summer bathing, we use the outdoor sun shower—a
plastic bag of water that heats up in the sun
all day. Hummingbirds keep us company in
our shower tucked behind the house, until
they leave, and cold weather sends us back
inside to the squat, claw-footed tub in one
corner of the white-walled kitchen. The sun
shower then dangles from a nail in the ceiling ready to spray me as I relax in the tiny
tub’s mixture of steaming water from woodstove pots mixed to sauna temperature with
cold tap water.
No doubt about it, our plumbing is peculiar. Sandy evolved from
doctor to plumber in 1990, as he struggled to install a cold-water
system emerging from a forest spring into a pipeless basement and
connected the unwieldy black snakes to tub and kitchen sink. No
pipes needed for the toilet; the outhouse suited us. Later, we shifted
to dry-composting toilets that produce rich mulch for the flower
gardens.
That first winter was a back-country adventure. We lived comfortably with propane refrigerator, auxiliary stove, and lights, while
a gasoline generator infrequently ran the vacuum cleaner. We crosscountry skied from the front door, tracked deer and coyotes, tried
snow-shoeing, and delighted in boosting our powers of observation. Our eyes and brains seemed better in tune, as we forgot the
past and future and really paid attention to the present. When the
CHARLES COOPER
IN MY LIFE
Retirement or Renaissance?
road flooded, we stayed put. When the water pipes froze, we carried
buckets of water from a nearby road spring, until the pipes thawed
a month later.
The sole problem that really has frustrated us over the years is
communicating with the outside world. We had purchased a cell
phone for our truck and promptly entered into a lottery-like phone
system. When incoming calls triggered the
truck horn, one of us rushed out, even on
frigid nights, to catch the caller. We could
communicate, but rain, fog, or leaves
seemed to interfere. Switching to other telephone companies didn’t help. This valley
was too far away from cell towers and had
too many intervening mountains. New technology has improved our phone, so now we
make calls from inside our house. But even
so, on some days, making or receiving calls requires the craft of a
magician.
By the time we both reached 60, it seemed the opportunities to
stretch our minds and bodies were endless. Everywhere we looked,
there was something new to learn and do. Tear down old plaster
walls upstairs, insulate, and install new paneling and create rooms.
Tap maple trees, turn a rusty barrel into a firebox, and boil down
maple syrup. Investigate making electricity from the sun, erect solar
panels, and wire the house with AC and DC power stored in golfcart batteries. Spy on beaver, watch turtles laying eggs, survey
migrating birds and those that stay as winter companions, and
identify and use wild valley plants.
As the urgency of our projects receded, I found myself increasingly diverted from our valley focus. Before I knew it, I was off on a
new adventure—this time into the past. After the death of my
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
The complexity of
simple living keeps
us on our toes.
58
we were ready for more stretching. When
Ray Hopkins, Swarthmore’s Richter Professor of Political Science, told us about his
dream of an international service (retirement) community based either in Sri Lanka
or Belize (formerly British Honduras), we
joined an exploratory trip to Belize. As we
visited agencies and toured this small country just south of Mexico, it became clear that
volunteers willing to return annually for a
month or so to assist with community
needs would indeed be welcome. His idea
has blossomed in Belize, where several of us
have returned each year since then for a
month. We become part of a settlement and
share our life experiences or professions
while enjoying the tropics. We live together
in a rented house, experiment with cooking
for ourselves, and work out functioning as a
“family.”
San Ignacio, a small city in the foothills
of the Mayan Mountains near the Guatemalan border, is home. Its sights and
sounds have become familiar: roosters crowing before dawn, chachalacas noisily greeting the sun, and parrots patrolling treetops.
Saturday market stalls feature eggs, chickens, housewares, Amish homespun, Guatemalan crafts, and an amazing wealth of
tropical fruits and vegetables. Well-baby
clinics impress us with breast-feeding
moms, infants screeching as vaccination
needles puncture flesh, and toddlers dressed
in cherished elegance smiling shyly. American school buses (retired like us) provide
bus service across a country the size of Massachusetts with the population of Boston.
We have worked with public health
clinics and staff, trying to help in small
ways, learning as we go what works and what doesn’t. Volunteers
are also sought for English-as-second-language classes and churchrun, state-supported schools. Other possibilities abound for
retirees interested in bringing their skills to another country in an
ongoing relationship. Each year, we return to Wardsboro at the end
of our Belizean month enriched by new friendships and exposure
to a culture that has much to teach us.
Now that we have passed that frontier year of 65, we look back
on the past 11 years grateful that we took the plunge into retirement
before we really had to. Each year seems to bring new aches or an
upsurge of chronic ailments. So far, keeping as active as we can
masks these health troubles. The words of that young AIDS activist
keep pushing us to set priorities. “Once I knew I was dying, life
became wonderful and rich. You, too, are dying, but you don’t know
when. Make sure you use your remaining days in ways that are truly
important to you.” T
MARY BACK, RUTH COOPER LAMB’S AUNT, SKETCHING IN THE FIELD BY WIND
RIVER NEAR DUBOIS, WYO., WHERE SHE LIVED HER ENTIRE MARRIED LIFE
(LEFT). RUTH COLLECTING MAPLE SAP (ABOVE). RUTH AND GEORGE
“SANDY” LAMB NEXT TO JOURNEY’S END IN 1991 (ABOVE, RIGHT).
JUNE 2001
BONNIE LAMB
CHARLES COOPER
By the time we
both reached 60,
it seemed the
opportunities to
stretch our minds
and bodies were
endless.
SANDY LAMB
aunt, Mary Back, I was drawn to learn more
about her history. She and her husband, Joe,
had pioneered in backcountry Wyoming in
the 1930s, before they became well-known
western artists. She wore many hats, including naturalist, artist, author, and theologian, and had been an important role model
for me. Boxes of her saved letters clogged
the living room, where I sat daily, reading,
captured by her vibrant written voice. As her
life unfolded before me, I knew that her stories and views about how all life fits together needed to be shared.
Her observations and deductions helped
me make more sense of the tangled interrelationships of life and death that I observed
in the valley. She wrote, for example: “The
body of life is immortal. Its parts are constantly changing shape. They grow and
change. They ‘die’, but that is only the word
used for their changing into other shapes,
within the one whole body of Life, which is
immortal. In all its parts, it is constantly
resurrected.”
“Yes,” I thought. “Deer turn into coyotes, frogs into snakes, mosquitoes into
bats, and garden produce into me. And
what will I become someday?”
Gradually, I put together a book, Mary’s
Way: A Memoir of the Life of Mary Cooper
Back, based on the wonderful letters. I
added my voice to Mary’s to tie the pieces of
her life together.
Although life in Wardsboro continued to
teach us and sustain me as the book took
shape, by 1998 (the year that I turned 65),
59
T H E L I N E B E T W E E N M O N OT H E I S M A N D P O LY T H E I S M I S N ’ T C L E A R
Barbara Nevling Porter ’68 (ed.), One God or
Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient
World, Casco Bay Assyriological Institute,
2000
I
n his book Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund Freud argued that the biblical figure of Moses was born an Egyptian. But
if Moses were raised in the polytheistic culture of ancient Egypt, how could he have
inaugurated the so-called monotheistic revolution for which the Hebrew Bible became
so famous? The answer, according to the
good doctor Freud, was that “the religion
Moses gave to his Jewish people was yet his
own, an Egyptian religion though not the
Egyptian one." What Freud had in mind
was this: In the period before Moses, Egypt
had undergone its own theological revolution under the rule of the Pharaoh Akhenaten (or, as Freud called him, Ikhnaton). For a
brief period before his changes were
reversed by those who had previously been
in power, Akhenaten radically transformed
Egyptian religion: “He raised the Aton religion to the official religion and thereby the
universal God became the Only God; all
that was said of other gods became deceit
and guile.... It is the first case in the history
of mankind, and perhaps the purest, of a
monotheistic religion."
Freud did not invent the claim that
ancient Egyptian culture developed its own
form of monotheism, nor did his book end
discussion on this complicated and still
controversial subject. Indeed, the past few
decades have witnessed a growing interest
in the relationship of polytheism and
monotheism in the ancient world. As Barbara Nevling Porter's excellent new edited
volume One God or Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World reveals, things are
even more complex and fascinating than
Freud ever imagined. Porter, a research associate at the Harvard Semitic Museum and
the director of the Casco Bay Assyriological
Institute, clearly and succintly spells out the
book’s main theoretical issues in its introduction. As she puts it, “The difference
between the monotheistic and polytheistic
conception of divinity as one or many rests
to a large extent on the participants’ defini-
tions of deity."
In other words, the line between polytheism and monotheism is not nearly as clear
or as rigid as many of us, including Freud,
would assume. For example, the three great
“monotheistic traditions," Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all posit the existence of
beings such as angels; devils; and jinni, a
class of spirits that, according to Muslims,
©RICHARD T. NOWITZ/CORBIS
BOOKS & ARTS
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
64
One God or Many?
Did the idea of
one god start with
Akhenaten, the
Egyptian pharaoh?
inhabit the earth, assume various forms, and
exercise supernatural power. Although they
are not considered gods within these religions, Porter points out that, "From the
point of view of an outside observer, however, these beings bear a strong resemblance
in their powers and functions to the minor
gods of many polytheistic systems." Indeed,
during the Middle Ages, Muslims and Jews
sometimes accused Christians of being polytheists because of their belief in the Trinity.
Scholars of the ancient Near East have
become increasingly interested in exploring
the relationship between the “one and the
many," to repeat a phrase employed by
Porter in her own contribution to the volume, an illuminating essay on concepts of
divinity in ancient Assyria, the northern
Mesopotamian culture best known to nonspecialists for its role in exiling the 10 “lost
tribes" of Israel in the eighth century B.C.E.
But, until now, studies devoted to the question of polytheism and monotheism in the
different cultures of the ancient Near East
have not been brought together in a single
volume. In One God or Many? Porter has succeeded in assembling an impressive group
of scholars in the fields of Assyriology, biblical studies, classical studies, and Egyptology.
Each has produced an essay that stands on
its own and also participates in a broader
cross-cultural discourse. One of the most
helpful and illuminating features of the volume is a final section that provides an edited transcript of discussions that took place
between the five scholars who contributed
essays.
Many readers will be surprised by some
of the provocative conclusions reached in
this volume. For example, in the lively
debate recorded in the final section,
Stephen Geller, a biblical scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary, argues that “true
monotheism is a philosophical doctrine and
not available before medieval philosophy....
It is very difficult to get monotheism out of
Israelite religion, let alone rabbinic religion." Whether or not you agree with the
claims made by Geller and the other scholars in this volume, after reading its clearly
written and accessible essays, you will never
again, as Freud might have put it, look at a
god as just a god.
—Nathaniel Deutsch
Associate Professor of Religion
Emily Abel ’64, Hearts of Wisdom: American
Women Caring for Kin, 1850–1940, Harvard
University Press, 2000. Drawing on public
health records, white farm women’s diaries,
and antebellum slave narratives, the author
examines caregiving in America.
Winifred Armstrong ’51, The Paper Trail:
Connecting Economic and Natural Systems, The
Sustainability Education Center of
The American Forum for Global
Education, 1998. This introduction to ecological economics focuses on understanding the earth’s
“household” and management.
dailies, the growth of newspaper chains,
competition for the advertiser’s dollar,
and other growing threats to free papers.
those interested in an in-depth understanding of the Sudanese conflict and the possible
options for resolution.
Annette Duchêne and Jacques JoussotDubien ’49, Les effets biologiques des rayonnements non ionisants, Flammarion Médecine-Sciences, 2001. The main properties of
nonionizing radiation and ultrasonic vibrations are described in relation to their biological effects and sanitary potential.
Jeffrey Escoffier and Matthew Lore ’88
(eds.), l’allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato: A
Celebration, Marlowe & Company, 2001.
Through photographs and essays, this book
commemorates Mark Morris’ evening-length
dance, which premiered in Brussels, Belgium, in 1988.
Bradley Mittman ’88, Nail the
Boards! The Ultimate Internal Medicine Review for Board Exams,
Frontrunners Board Review,
2001. This outlined review of
internal medicine will aid health
care professionals preparing for
medical boards.
John Brumbaugh ’48, Criminal
Law and Approaches to the Study of
Law, third ed., Foundation Press,
2001. This casebook presents the
elements of substantive criminal
law and helps students enter the
legal world.
Helene (Peet) Foley ’64, Female
Acts in Greek Tragedy, Princeton
University Press, 2001. Using an
anthropological approach and literary analysis, the author explores
gender relations in ancient Greece.
Carol (Thompson) Hemingway
’52, Oswald, an American Osprey,
Kilimanjaro Co., 2001. The author
describes osprey family life.
Leslie (Gillette) Jackson ’42, Poet
in Spain, Shank Painter Co., 2000.
A painter with a longtime interest
in the past and language of Spain,
Jackson created poems and drawings that convey the Spanish landscape.
PENNY PATCH ’66 LEFT SWARTH-
EMILY ABEL ’64 TEACHES PUBLIC
MORE AFTER THREE SEMESTERS TO
HEALTH AND WOMEN’S STUDIES AT
JOIN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA–
IN THE SOUTH.
LOS ANGELES.
Penny Patch ’66 et al., Deep in
Our Hearts: Nine White Women in
the Freedom Movement, The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
These first-person accounts illuminate the lives of nine young
women coming of age in the
’60s.
Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas
’69, and Sam Wineburg (eds.),
Knowing, Teaching, and Learning
History: National and International
Perspectives, New York University
Press, 2000. This book identifies
the current issues and problems
in history education.
Gonzalo Rojas, Velocities of the
Possible, John Oliver Simon ’64
(trans.), Red Dragonfly Press,
2000. Simon received a 2001
National Endowment of the Arts
literature fellowship for translating 12 poems.
Victor Jose ’44, The Free Paper in
LYDIA RAZRAN STONE ’64 IS A
AUTHOR HELENS PEET FOLEY ’64 IS
America: Struggle for Survival,
Carolyn Panzer Sobel ’60, The
Graphic Press, 2000. The author, FREELANCE TRANSLATOR BASED IN
Cognitive Sciences: An InterdiscipliPROFESSOR OF CLASSICS AT
who once owned a free weekly
nary Approach, Mayfield PublishALEXANDRIA, VA.
BARNARD COLLEGE.
paper in Richmond, Va., and has
ing Co., 2001. This text examines
defended the rights of owners of similar
the historical and contemporary issues and
publications around the United States,
Steven Wöndu and Ann Lesch ’66, Battle for findings of the core cognitive science discicovers the increase of paid-newspaper
Peace in Sudan: An Analysis of the Abuja Conplines, including cognitive psychology, neumonopolies, joint operating agreements
ferences, 1992–1993, University Press of
roscience, linguistics, philosophy, and artifibetween otherwise competing paid
America, 2000. This book is written for
cial intelligence.
JUNE 2001
Books
65
BOOKS & ARTS
Irina Ratushinskaya, Wind of the Journey,
Lydia Razran Stone ’64 (trans.), Cornerstone Press Chicago, 2000. Arrested for
her writing and sentenced to a Soviet
prison camp, Ratushinskaya continued to
write poems.
Elizabeth Strom ’80, Building the New
Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in
Germany’s Capital City, Lexingon Books,
2001. This work illustrates the relationship
between architecture and politics in a dialogue about whom Berlin should serve.
Helen (Ogden) Willis ’46, Night Window,
Janet Stanley Mustin ’45 (cover art),
Scopcræft Press, 2000. These poems shed
light on childhood and nature.
Stanton Wortham ’85, Narratives in Action:
A Strategy for Research and Analysis, Teachers
College Press, 2001. This work offers a concrete approach to analyzing narrative discourse.
CDs/DVDs
Carol Elkins ’55, Starting From CAT, 2001.
The “new anthem” in the March issue of
the Bulletin (p. 38) inspired Elkins to write
one of her own for a documentary film of
her work teaching children in West Harlem
to read. Her rendition in honor of learning, to the tune of “Simple Gifts,” may be
heard on this DVD, where she accompanies
herself on concertina.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
Jerome Goodman ’55, Stockbridge Overtones
and Selected Works, MMC Recorings, 2000.
The Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the
New York Chamber Symphony, and the
Seattle Symphony Orchestra perform.
66
Naomi Sokoloff ’75 and Monica Devens,
Speak Hebrew, SMiles Productions, 2000.
This interactive CD-ROM for modern spoken Hebrew teaches everyday conversation.
Film
Debbie Bennett ’79, The Connection, Steve
Yeager (director), 2001. Bennett is one of
the stars of this independent film with a
MATTHEW LORE ’88, WHO IS A SENIOR EDITOR AT AVALON PUBLISHING, CO-EDITED THIS COFFEETABLE–SIZED BOOK ABOUT THE FAMOUS MARK MORRIS DANCE, L’ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO ED IL MODERATO.
current dialogue about drugs, which was
featured during a world premiere at the
Maryland Film Festival in May.
ABOUT BOOKS & ARTS
This section of the Bulletin reviews books,
Gail Lerner ’92 and Colin Campbell,
Seraglio, 2000. This 13-minute comedy,
about an unhappy housewife who becomes
an unlikely seductress, was nominated for
an Oscar as Best Live-Action Short Film. It
was winner of the Best Live-Action Short
Film at the 2000 Deauville Festival.
compact disks, films, videos, Web sites, art
Theater
reviewed or noted in these pages. Send
Suli Holum ’97 has a new play, The Lollipop
Project, which opened recently at the Walnut Street Theater Studio 15 in Philadelphia.
lege Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarth-
shows, musical compositions, and public
performances by Swarthmore alumni. Let
us know of your latest public creative
endeavor. Books, videos, and CDs will be
donated to the College library after being
your work to Books & Arts, Swarthmore Colmore PA 19081-1390, or e-mail bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
ALUMNI PROFILE
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
68
An Affinity With Animals
T H O M A S G O L D S M I T H ’ 7 5 W O R K S O N B E H A L F O F Z O O S , E D U C AT I O N A L FA C I L I T I E S , A N D B R E E D E R S .
S
ometimes it looks like Noah’s ark in the
waiting room,” says Thomas
Goldsmith ’75,a private-practice exotic animal
veterinarian.Devoting more than 60 hours a
week to the care of animals,including all the
big cats,primates,and birds,Goldsmith says
it’s not unusual to see a 16-foot trailer pull up
outside his Bird and Animal Hospital of Pinecrest,in south Miami,and unload a 650-pound
male Bengal tiger with a tooth problem that
he must diagnose from a distance.To anesthetize the animal and get a closer look could
break its trust;so when sedation is necessary,
it is usually delivered through a blow dart.
“Projectile medicating can be tricky,” says
Goldsmith,who is frequently called on by
clients to use his blow-pipe skill.“You have to
determine whether it’s justified.You have to
consider all the options in terms of the animal’s psychology and physiology.”
Goldsmith,who is also the chief veterinarian for Monkey Jungle,a Miami tourist attraction and primate center with more than 400
primates and the back-up veterinarian for
Miami’s Metro Zoo,stresses the importance of
taking a holistic approach when caring for an
exotic animal,whether it lives in a zoo or private residence.In addition to his veterinary
degree from the University of Georgia,Goldsmith earned two degrees in animal behavior,
and has done graduate study at the Yerkes
Regional Primate Center in Atlanta.He has an
encyclopedic knowledge of each animal’s needs.
“If an animal doesn’t have emotional and
nutritional health,it can’t ever have physical
health,” he says.“Far too often I encounter
clients lacking the knowledge to properly care
for their animal.In order for them to properly
understand and appreciate the animal in their
care,a large part of my time is spent educating
my clients regarding the biology,psychology
and ecological origins of their chosen pet.”
Goldsmith,who shares his Coconut
Grove,Fla.,home with two cottontop tamarin
monkeys and two Irish wolfhounds,has traveled most of Africa and South and Central
America,working on behalf of zoos,governments, educational facilities,importers,breeders, and private business owners.But doing so
can often be dangerous.
In 1985,during an eight-week assignment
THOMAS GOLDSMITH ’75 EXAMINES A BLACK-AND-WHITE RUFFED LEMUR. HE SAYS WORKING WITH
ANIMALS HAS ALWAYS BEEN HIS DESTINY.
in Cameroon,he was imprisoned twice:once
for not having his passport while standing in
front of his hotel,and on another day while in
the bush,he was presumed to be a gun runner
from Nigeria and held in a hut for three days.
On a third occasion during this trip,he
was informed the army was looking for him.
With the help of a British Petroleum (BP)
engineer who was working in Cameroon,
Goldsmith was whisked out of the country
and put on a BP oil rig,from where he was
shuttled by helicopter to safety in Gabon.
Goldsmith believes this incident was instigated by a vindictive man whose animal
exporting business he reported as being unscrupulous.
“It’s a risk you must be willing to take,”
says Goldsmith nonchalantly.“You can be
nauseated and walk away from these commercial setups or swallow your pride and try to
make a difference.I can’t change the world,
but I can change a tiny corner.Somebody’s got
to try to put these people out of business.”
Because of this incident and concerns for his
safety,Goldsmith says,“it would not be wise
for me to return to Cameroon.”
Currently,Goldsmith is working on developing a sophisticated Internet conservation
portal with the help of Neil Gershenfeld ’81,of
the MIT Media Lab.Jane Goodall,with her
years of work with chimpanzees and dedication to environmental causes,is lending her
name and support to the project.
“The site will be a ground leveler for all
conservation sites.This portal will encompass
many of the world’s leading organizations as
well as innumerable lower -profile efforts.People will also find volunteer and employment
opportunities and information on ecotours
that don’t destroy the environment they bring
tourists to.It will also be a highly secure site
for charitable donations to all the organizations connected to the site,” he says.
“There’s great soul satisfaction in what I
do.You want to save all the animals.But you
get to the point where you stop celebrating the
successes because you can’t save them all.And
that’s hard.But it is what drives people in this
type of medicine—the wanting to,” says
Goldsmith.“I’ve always felt an affinity with
animals.They’ve always been my destiny.”
—Audree Penner
Continued f r o m p a g e 3
However, I do greatly question their judgment and the process, which, by all accounts, took place largely behind closed
doors. In America, when a group has its
rights threatened or is about to lose something of value, we have a basic concept of
fairness, involving notice and an opportunity to be heard. That was not the case here.
Certainly by involving all interested parties,
other viable, less draconian options could
have been found.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said
of the generation of leaders that came of age
during the Civil War: “In our youth, our
hearts were touched with fire.” Football, in a
lesser sense, provides similar tests to young
men, and fires their hearts and imaginations. Hundreds of Swarthmore players
have gone on to be leaders and contributors
in their communities. It is easy to let a tradition and a program die. It takes real conviction and vision to preserve and sustain it.
MARC PETERSON ’78
Media, Pa.
GET A GRIP
On its face, the Board’s decision to cap athletic recruiting (and thus drop football) is
obviously correct. Swarthmore is and has
always been about academics. Besides, this
decision doesn’t diminish, but rather guarantees, the continuation—and even enrichment—of a more broadly equitable (including for women) athletic program. Further, it
is also obvious from Dulany Ogden Bennett’s [’66] thoughtful letter (“Letters,”
March Bulletin) that the issue was dealt with
in a serious and deeply responsible way by
the Board, given the exigencies of timing.
So what is one to make of the not-somini-firestorm of controversy? The tone of
several letters in the Bulletin is not only
intemperate but genuinely bizarre. Take the
twisted argument made by more than one
alum that eliminating football somehow
vitiates Swarthmore’s commitment to
“diversity.” I know we were sometimes
myopic in the ‘60s, but I missed the part
where it explained how football players were
an oppressed minority.
The overheated tone of these cris de coeur
is striking: “Swarthmore’s reputation as an
effete institution is not its strongest asset.”
“[T]his college excludes and does not
esteem the physically robust.” And then
there’s the persistent undertone of wounded
defensiveness, as if maintaining an athletic
recruitment rate three times that of the University of Virginia were proof that Swarthmore treats student-athletes as “outcasts.”
Get a grip. A rational decision was made
to maintain appropriate balance. I, for one,
was shocked to read that football was eating
up 10 percent of the entering male student
body. The Board’s act was not an expression
of cloistered intellectualism, nor was it precipitous. It was high time.
MIKE WING ’70
Brooklyn, N.Y.
BIG FOOTBALL
I have read with a combination of embarrassment, pity, amazement, and amusement
of the ongoing football skirmish. It’s all over
but the shouting, but when will the shouting be over?
I write with what I hope is undisguised
impatience to comment on what the controversy really appears to be about. It is not
about the ennobling discipline, dedication,
and depth that come from participation in
athletics. On the contrary, the football
enterprise that Swarthmore has disengaged
from has been toxic to all other athletic
endeavors on most campuses.
Big football is good for big men. Big
football is also good for little men who
would like to be big men. It is good for
proud parents of big men. It might even be
good for their girlfriends. But big football is
best for middle-aged folks who get off on
injecting their own egos into a demolition
contest among the young men on the field.
It is critically important to the vocal
minority that big football be made to sound
more like “big” than like “football.” Otherwise, they are exposed as people advocating
that dozens of spaces in incoming classes be
reserved for large men willing to spend a lot
of time running into each other, while
women, smaller men, men culturally or temperamentally averse to running into other
people, the physically challenged, foreigners,
and geniuses in all categories compete for
the remaining slots.
Many have considered supporting the
football minority because they link football
with being “well rounded,” but football has
not been demonstrated to make anybody
well rounded. Some sports broaden the
minds of participants, but this is not a frequently observed effect of college football.
Even if it could be shown to do that, it
wouldn’t matter. Plenty of colleges are out
there looking for the well-rounded people.
The well-rounded always have someplace to
go, but the remarkably talented need someplace to go, too. Swarthmore has been dedicated to that unusual but vitally important
mission, and the football fuss is an attempt
to drag the College off that course.
Big football has an opportunity cost that
no one who values Swarthmore’s history
since 1930 and its promise for the future
can really condone. There are things that
matter in the world, like biology and chemistry and economics and language and religion and history and physics. And there are
things that do not matter, of which football
is the first that comes to mind. If football
had a fraction of the importance that the
minority is now claiming, there would be
endowed Professorships of Football at all
the Ivy League universities. There would be
a Nobel Prize for Football.
Because education means giving people
the skills to separate the trivial from the
important, Swarthmore cannot continue on
its educational mission without bidding
football a respectful but firm good-bye. I
congratulate the president and the Board of
Managers on having the courage to make a
necessary but personally troublesome decision—one that does not change Swarthmore’s historical trajectory but keeps it loyally on course.
PAMELA KYLE CROSSLEY ’77
Norwich, Vt.
CORRECTIONS
Wilma Lewis ’78, newly elected to the Board
of Managers, was incorrectly identified as
“an attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for
the District of Columbia” (“Collection,”
March Bulletin). In fact, Lewis served as the
U.S. Attorney for D.C. during the Clinton
administration—one of the most important
legal jobs in the nation.
In the same article, new Manager Salem
Shuchman was identified with the wrong
class. Shuchman is a Class of 1984 member.
In the Crum Woods illustration (“A Walk in
the Woods,” March Bulletin), Alligator Rock is
identified incorrectly as Wissahickon schist;
rather,it is a mafic gneiss,a metamorphic rock.
JUNE 2001
LETTERS
79
BOOGIE DOWN WITH THE ’70S ROCK BAND.
By To m S a h a g ia n ’ 7 4
hat obscure rock band has played
on the same stage as Bruce Springsteen and entertained college presidents,
federal prosecutors, and drunken lounge
lizards alike for the past 30 years?
The surprising answer: Swarthmore’s
own contribution to pop culture, the Narwhals. This Alumni Weekend, when the
first chords of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” chainsawed their way into the collective cortex of
the Class of 1976, the band marked its
30th anniversary—an occasion enough for
a brief history of the rise, fall, and rise of
these durable cetaceans.
Although the precise origins of the
band are now hazy, the story began in the
fall of 1970, when I joined roommates
Peter Jaquette ’74 and Jim Gish ’74 in
Wharton A-102 for some impromptu
recording sessions. In early 1971, Gish and
I played three songs in a truncated talent
show in the Rathskellar in the Tarble Student Center. I’ll never forget Linda Gibson
’73 complimenting me on my voice. I
couldn’t believe anyone would actually
enjoy hearing me sing. It gave me the confidence to continue, for better or worse.
In October 1971, a group comprising
Gish, Jim Kelly ’74, Dan Gibbon ’74, and
me as the vocalist; David Baskin ’74 on
drums; and a name lost to history on bass
played a dance at the Phi Sigma Kappa frat
house. Mimeographed flyers billed the
band as “Jim Gish, Jim Kelly, Tom Sahagian, and Friends.” Gish remembers: “The
audience was dancing so hard that you
could see the floorboards bouncing up and
down. That’s when I knew we had something special—in many ways, the band was
born that night.”
In fact, the Narwhals name had been
coined the previous spring, by Gish. While
perusing a booklet on whaling from hardrock band Mountain’s “Nantucket Sleighride,” I asked him, “Have you ever heard of
a narwhal?” In a moment of inscrutable
inspiration, Gish responded, “No, but why
don’t we call ourselves Nathan and the
Narwhals?”
In any event, Nathan and the Narwhals
made their stage debut
at the Talent Show in
the fall of 1972, with
Bruce Bond ’76 on
bass and Ed Frost ’73
on sax. Then-Phoenix
critic (and now federal
prosecutor) Jim Sheehan ’74 noted that “no
one has ever accused Tom of having a
good voice, but Lord knows it’s loud
enough.” Critical acclaim in hand, the
band went on to play a well-received
Christmas gig in Sharples, among others.
The transfer of Bond to Pomona and creative differences with the drummer resulted in a new rhythm section in the fall of
1973—Jed Hauck ’75 on bass and Frank
DeColvenaere ’75 on drums (in classic
rock-band fashion, Baskin learned he was
no longer the drummer when he found
the Narwhals playing in the Scott Amphitheater without him during orientation).
Along with the addition of Jaquette on
keyboards, the band acquired an agent
from nearby Media, who succeeded in
landing us several glamorous dates, including the Officer’s Club at the Philadelphia
Naval Yard and the Rendezvous Bar in New
Hope, Pa. “The Rendezvous was probably
one of our strangest gigs,” recalls Jaquette.
“It was a long drive to the middle of
nowhere and nearly impossible to find. The
audience consisted largely of one drunk
guy repeatedly yelling, ‘Play “Wipeout”!’”
Gibbon recalls another nightmare gig:
“We had somehow snared a gig at a frat
house at Franklin & Marshall. The room
was too small to accommodate both the
band and the audience, so we had to set up
in a small room across the hall. Most of the
time, I couldn’t actually see any of the people we were playing for. We might as well
have been on the radio.”
The band continued to play regularly at
the College,
building a fan
base (for lack
of a better
term) that
would last for
decades. Many
of their innovations, like
cross-dressing,
writhing on
the floor while
performing,
and playing
heavy-metal
versions of “Santa Claus Is Coming to
Town” and “Gilligan’s Island,” were imitated—without attribution—by others in
years to come. But soon after Don Jackson
’75 became the drummer in the spring of
1974, distractions such as Honors exams
and graduation eventually harpooned the
Narwhals.
In the early ’80s, the Narwhals, re-energized by groups like the Clash, triumphantly resurfaced to play a series of highly successful New Year’s parties in New York City
and played more or less annually at a
bewildering array of venues, including a
dentist’s backyard (the police stopped us
before the first song was even completed)
and the Christmas party of the U.S. AttorBOZ SWOPE
W
BOZ SWOPE
O U R BAC K PAG E S
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
80
Nathan and the Narwhals
BOND PLAYING BASS IN 1972. JACKSON IN
SHARPLES IN 1974 AND NEW YORK CITY IN 2000.
FROST IN NEW YORK CITY IN 2000. THE BAND
AND BOND PLAYING IN SHARPLES IN 1972.
them is one of the most fun things I can
think of.” Gray, whose solid bass playing
glues the band together, says, “I’ve played
with a lot of bands and with scores of really great players over the past 30 years or so,
and I have to say I’ve never enjoyed playing
with any group more than this one.”
Not that it’s all smooth sailing. There’s a
certain amount of bickering, of course—
you’ve got six guys who care about music
and who are used to getting their way a
good portion of the time. Conflict is
inevitable. Gibbon, now a partner at a
small law firm and no stranger to conflict
resolution, notes with amusement that,
“For some reason, when we enter the rehearsal studio, we immediately regress to
our teen personas and act as if we hadn’t
spent the last 30 years learning how to be
adults.”
What was that about Springsteen? Well,
it’s true; Springsteen and the Narwhals
both played in the Scott Amphitheater—
about 9 months apart. And, as for the college president—Gibbon explains: “When
we played for the classes of ’69 and ’74 in
1994, one of the most enthusiastic dancers
in the crowd was Nancy Bekavac ’69, who
just happens to be the president of Scripps
College. I’m sorry to say that we haven’t
been able to get Al Bloom to boogie down
with us yet, but we’re working on it.”
All of that is fine, but how good are
these guys, anyway? Observes Frost, “When
we first started, we were pretty raw. But we
had a lot of enthusiasm, and people
responded to that. Now, people tell us that
we actually sound pretty good. At the end of
the night at the Class of ’74’s reunion, the
crowd was chanting, ‘More! More! More!’
We must be doing something right.”T
Sahagian, a former journalist, is now with
Power Concepts, a consulting engineering firm
in New York.
JUNE 2001
BOZ SWOPE
CLOCKWISE (STARTING ABOVE, TOP): GIBBON IN
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YEAR’S WEEKEND 2000.
PILES AROUND THE PIANO IN 1973. FROST, GISH,
of a helicopter
company in
West Chester,
Pa., and an
experienced
bass player, has
been with the
band since
1999 as well.
One constant
from the beginning has been
ace guitarist
BOZ SWOPE
Jim Kelly. Not
only does he sit in on most Narwhal gigs,
but “Sri” Kelly also serves as the band’s
unofficial spiritual adviser. Jackson notes
sardonically: “As anyone who has ever been
in a band for more than 5 minutes will tell
you, the hardest part is the interpersonal
stuff, the politics. It’s a miracle that we’ve
stayed together as long as we have.”
The Narwhals repertoire
consists mainly of rock,
blues, and R&B material
from the ’60s and ’70s, but
we occasionally venture
into the waters of original
material. Jackson, a tenured
history professor at Lafayette College, plays with
student bands on campus
and writes songs; the Narwhals usually include one
or two at each performance.
Jackson is not the only
band member with outside
musical interests; Gibbon plays with two
other bands in Philadelphia. I formed a
band with other parents at my daughter’s
school and brought in Gibbon and Frost
on their respective instruments when local
parents were unavailable.
Why do these guys, all white-collar professionals pushing 50, still play together?
With Jaquette in Seattle, Frost and me in
the New York City area, Gish in Vermont,
and the rest in metropolitan Philadelphia,
the geographic barriers alone would be
enough to daunt most people. Yet “it’s the
biggest kick I’ve ever had as a grown-up,”
says Frost, a former journalist turned private investigator. “Rejoining this band has
changed my life.” Jaquette, an economist
with Weyerhaeuser, agrees: “It’s a great
bunch of guys, and playing music with
COMET/JOHN SCHUBERT
ney’s Office in Philadelphia. Most recently,
they played at the reunions of the classes of
’69, ’74, and ’75. This past December, they
successfully revived the New York City New
Year’s tradition, which they hope to perpetuate.
Despite the fact that at least 25 people
have performed under the banner of the
Narwhals during the past 30 years, the core
lineup remained remarkably stable: Gish,
Gibbon, and me, with Jackson the current
and longest-tenured drummer. Gish, now
in the throes of a Garboesque retreat from
band activity, is said to be in Vermont
working on a solo album tentatively titled
“The Narwhals’ Last Gig Was in 1999.”
Jaquette re-entered the picture in 1994 for
the Class of ’74’s 20th reunion gig and
then cemented his re-entry when he and
his family moved to the Philadelphia area.
He now lives in Seattle but still manages to
make rehearsals: “We are looking into having virtual rehearsals over the
Internet, so I don’t have to
use up all my air miles,”
Jaquette says, only half in
jest. Meanwhile, the band
uses e-mail extensively to stay
in touch, schedule rehearsals,
and argue about the set list
for the next gig.
Frost rejoined in 1999,
after a 25-year hiatus from
the band—and the saxophone. Steve Gray, manager
Calling All E d u c a t o r s
REFLECTIONS
ON EDUCATION AND
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Keynote Speaker: Herb Kohl
S
hare your experiences as an educator with other alumni
and current students, reflect on Swarthmore’s broad
impact in elementary and secondary education, and celebrate
UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO
A CONFERENCE CELEBRATING
SWARTHMORE’S PROGRAM IN EDUCATION
OCT. 26 AND 27, 2001
NOTED EDUCATION REFORMER HERB KOHL IS AUTHOR OF
the College’s Program in Education at a weekend conference
36 CHILDREN, THE OPEN CLASSROOM, AND NUMEROUS
featuring renowned education reformer Herb Kohl, workshops
BURN BABAR? ESSAYS ON CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AND
and discussions with fellow alumni in education, students, and
members of the faculty of the Program in Education.
The conference is free. To register, call (610) 328-8655 (press
“2," and leave your name and address), or visit the conference
site on the Web at www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/Education.
OTHER BOOKS ON EDUCATION, INCLUDING SHOULD WE
THE POWER OF STORIES. HE IS DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER
FOR TEACHING EXCELLENCE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOL OF EDUCATION.
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2001-06-01
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
2001-06-01
56 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.