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MARCH 2002
World
Vision
The Photographs of
Daniel Aubry ’57
Features
Te a c h i n g
t h e Te a c h e rs
Swarthmore’s Education program
approaches its subject as a field
of inquiry.
10
By Sonia Scherr ’01
Families
Strong as Oaks
Swarthmore’s lore branches
through the generations.
18
By Andrea Hammer
Wo r l d V i s i o n
Daniel Aubry ’57 has circled
the planet in search of great pictures.
24
By Jeffrey Lott
The
D o u b t i n g Wa r
Two Swarthmoreans have increased
public awareness of obsessivecompulsive disorder in children.
By Marcia Ringel
30
MARCH 2002
De p a r t m e n t s
Profiles
Letters
Living in
the Present
“War and Peace” correspondence
Collection
Catching up
Alumni Digest
Staying connected
Class Notes
Keeping up to date
Deaths
Remembering friends
B o o ks & A r t s
Thanks for the memoirs
In My Life
Living on the Chinese frontier
3
4
By Jeffrey Lott
36
40
A Socialist in Franco’s Spain
By Barba r a H a d d a d R y a n ’ 5 9
MELINDA LEE ’04 PERFORMS A DANCE
CHOREOGRAPHED BY JENNIFER PIKE ’02
AT THE FALL STUDENT DANCE CONCERT.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
COVER: CHILDREN ON A TRAMP STEAMER,
PHOTOGRAPHED BY DANIEL AUBRY ’57.
STORY ON PAGE 24
Professor
in Palestine
Roger Heacock ’62 and his
family live in the line of fire.
60
By Jessica Carew Kraft ’99
44
46
“M r . S e a r c h
a n d S e i z u r e”
M. Kelly Tillery ’76 protects
businesses from pirates.
By Carol Brévart-Demm
64
By Stephe n B ur n s ’ 7 1
B a c k Pa g e s
Erika Teutsch ’44 hasn’t
stopped making a difference.
52
80
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
D
on’t overlook Andrea Hammer’s “Families Strong as Oaks” (page 18), thinking
that it isn’t about your experience of Swarthmore. Although few can claim
three generations at the College, you will find that this article is about more than
legacies and memories—it’s about the complicated familial relationship that all
alumni have with the College.
One aspect of that relationship is how you feel about change. Through family
lore, students whose forebears went to Swarthmore may be more aware of how
things were in “the old days,” but everyone who passes through this place views
change from the dual distances of time and geography with understandable skepticism. The college experience is a snapshot in time, and any rearrangement of the
intellectual or emotional furniture can be jarring.
Change can be gradual, as in the evolution of curricula and social customs, or
abrupt, like the decision to end the football program. Although many alumni have
supported the flowering of the arts at the
College over the past three decades, others
The College is like
have expressed concern over the evolution
of the Honors program into a culminating
a family—we have
academic experience that some see as less
our quarrels.
academically rigorous than “their” Honors
program. A contrasting concern expressed
It’s in the nature
by others is that Swarthmore has become
“too academic” at the expense of the “whole
of the place.
college experience.” Although no one
expects a great college to remain trapped in
the amber of their era, there will always be such debates about change.
Change is particularly difficult to manage at Swarthmore because of the extraordinary sense of institutional ownership felt by alumni. This feeling is a great advantage to the College: More than half of all alumni contribute money each year, and
hundreds are involved in other ways—as class secretaries and agents; as admissions
interviewers; as Connection chairs, externship sponsors, and campus speakers; and
as members of the Alumni Council or the Board of Managers. Yet it also presents a
constant challenge to those who are charged with guiding Swarthmore into the
future. Swarthmore alumni have been taught to think critically and to communicate
their ideas and opinions. Because they care so deeply about this institution, they are
not reticent about doing so.
“Families Strong as Oaks” contains a powerful metaphor—that the many
branches of Swarthmore families have deep commingled roots. At the risk of
stretching both simile and sentiment, I think it’s possible to extend that metaphor
to all whose lives have been touched by Swarthmore. The College is like a family—
we have our quarrels. It’s in the nature of the place.
—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 LLC
Administrative Assistant:
Janice Merrill-Rossi
Intern: Stephanie Gironde ’04
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
XCVIV, number 4, is published in August,
September, December, March, and June
by Swarthmore College, 500 College
Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390.
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.
©2002 Swarthmore College
Printed in U.S.A.
to all war and armed hostility. They might
change their minds and then no longer be
pacifists, but they do not pick their fights.
I also found Kuperberg’s statement,
“This is not your daddy’s Vietnam War,” to
be patronizing if not insulting. He was
directing his remark to Swarthmore students who oppose the Afghan conflict and
whose parents might have opposed the
Vietnam War. Ergo, instead of thinking for
themselves, these students are only emulating their daddies. Ouch!
Of course, there are those of us whose
daddies were not alive during the Vietnam
War who not only opposed that war but are
opposed to the Afghan war as well. Who
are we emulating?
JESSICA HEIMBACH RAYMOND ’56
Cheyney, Pa.
“One could argue that terrorists are trying to hijack
our civilization. We may
have more time than the
Sept. 11 passengers did to
consider our response, but
the case for fighting back
looks pretty compelling.”
HIJACKING CIVILIZATION
I would like to commend the editors of the
Bulletin for attempting to put together a
balanced set of views on terrorism and
pacifism. I hope that at Swarthmore, people choose to engage opposing viewpoints
rather than talk past one another or
impugn others’ motives.
It might be helpful to imagine yourself
as a passenger on one of the hijacked
planes on Sept. 11. It seems difficult to
make a case for pacifism under such circumstances; the passengers had little to
lose and much to gain by fighting the
hijackers.
One could argue that terrorists are trying to hijack our civilization. We may have
more time than the Sept. 11 passengers did
to consider our response, but the case for
fighting back looks pretty compelling.
ARNOLD KLING ’75
Silver Spring, Md.
SHOCKED BUT NOT SURPRISED
I am writing in gratitude for the December
Bulletin, which I read almost cover to cover.
Of course, I was shocked by—but surprised by only the scale of—the attacks of
Sept. 11. I was not surprised by the chauvinism and belligerence of the official public
responses in the United States.
The diverse but generally thoughtful
views expressed in the Bulletin were most
welcome. From outside the United States,
it is not always easy to recognize that there
is debate over official U.S. policy. I continue to treasure the respectful intellectual
rigor and the tolerance of diversity I experienced at Swarthmore. I am relieved to see it
continuing to flourish. This reminder helps
me to separate my abhorrence of U.S. public policy from my admiration of the principles of democracy and free speech for
which the United States continues to be a
fine model.
BERTHA FUCHSMAN SMALL ’72
Ste.-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec
DADDY’S WAR?
The December Bulletin was timely and
thought provoking. I learned a lot, agreed
and disagreed with the authors, but appreciated the effort of each.
Two statements provoked me, both in
the interview with Professor of Economics
Mark Kuperberg: “Even pacifists have to
pick their fights.” No, pacifists do not have
to “pick their fights.” Pacifists are opposed
“There are those of us
whose daddies were not
alive during the Vietnam
War who not only opposed
that war but are opposed to
the Afghan war as well.”
FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE
AND IMAGINATION
Thompson Bradley (“Toward a New Foreign Policy,” December Bulletin) asserts
that the attacks of Sept. 11 were “a crime,
not an act of war.” “War,” he writes, “is the
very crudest of responses and reflects the
utter failure of imagination and intelligence in foreign policy.”
Bradley reverses the proper order of
these terms. In politics, intelligence is prior
to imagination. Intelligence discerns how
things stand, and imagination envisions
ways to do something about it. So how do
things stand with respect to foreign policy?
This question invites us to ponder the
basic facts of human existence. On the one
hand, philosophers from Plato to Hobbes
have taught that war is a direct consequence of human nature because man is a
depraved and violent animal. This is also
one of the first things we are taught in the
Book of Genesis. Human beings are created, sin against God, are expelled from
Eden, and commit murder. One inevitable
Please turn to page 79
MARCH 2002
The December Bulletin was the finest I
remember in the more than 55 years I have
been reading it. It made me proud to be a
Swarthmorean.
The magazine reflected an institution
that is committed to rigorous examination
of the most difficult and complex issues
facing the country today, unafraid to present and explore what may be generally
unpopular viewpoints for dealing with
them and dedicated to the College’s Quaker
heritage. It was well planned, stimulating
to read, and visually attractive.
All who participated in its preparation
have done the College and everyone associated with it a major service.
WALTER SCHEIBER ’44
Bethesda, Md.
LETTERS
PRIDE
3
N
N
ew attention is being focused on Swarthmore’s lowest-paid
staff members as a result of the student-driven “Living
Wage and Democracy Campaign” (LWDC) and the suggestions made by a staff committee set up to examine the College’s
compensation system.
Since fall 2000, the LWDC, composed of students and staff
members, has issued a series of petitions and proposals to the campus community. Their goal: to improve staff compensation, primarily with the implementation of a base wage that would allow “a
single-income family to provide for its own basic needs … without
government assistance.” The salaries of an estimated 100 to 150
people, mainly members of dining and environmental services,
would be affected.
“The living wage campaign challenges the College to live up to
its stated commitment to social justice,” says Sam Blair ’02, an
LWDC leader and math major with a peace and conflict studies
concentration. “The way to do that is not only to teach about social
justice in the classroom but also to model it in real life.”
Discussions of staff compensation are not new at Swarthmore.
However, the LWDC’s work, along with the 2000 hiring of Melanie
Young as associate vice president of human resources—a position
that had been unfilled for a year—provided the momentum needed
for the College to conduct a comprehensive study of wages and
related issues.
The Staff Compensation Review Committee (CRC), formed last
spring at the request of President Alfred H. Bloom, consisted of 13
staff members, including Young, with a broad range of jobs at the
College. Among its recommendations, made last fall: a $9 per hour
“Swarthmore minimum wage.” The current hiring minimum at the
lowest College job grade is $6.66 per hour; the federal minimum
wage is now $5.35.
Other recommendations included the following:
• Eliminating mandatory employee contributions to the College’s pension plan and increasing the College’s contribution from
7.5% to 10%
• Decreasing the cost gap between single and family health
insurance by freezing the benefit bank (the pretax expense account
offered with College employee benefits) at current levels and shifting new funds to support family coverage
• Increasing funds available for tuition reimbursement for staff
members taking courses for personal or professional development
• Establishing longevity awards in the amount of $100 per year
for staff members at 5-year anniversaries of their employment at
the College
According to Young, the overall compensation goal for College
staff should be comparable with that of the faculty. “That is,
Swarthmore should have a salary and benefit plan that is slightly
better than the average of market comparison groups,” she says.
Young explains that the College regularly compares its numerous
job classifications with both local and national benchmarks and
has spent considerable new funds in recent years to bring staff
compensation up to competitive levels.
“I thought two things going into this process: It must be inclusive, and it must be grounded in the facts,” Young says. “So we
worked hard to have a committee that was inclusive of lots of viewpoints and that studied a shared set of facts, not just opinions.”
Although filled with strong opinions, the debate over staff compensation at Swarthmore has been largely civil and unmarked by
hostility—unlike at Harvard University, where, last spring, student
activists made national headlines by staging a successful threeweek sit-in. That is no accident.
“We’re very concerned about not alienating anyone,” says Kae
Kalwaic, an LWDC leader and administrative assistant in the Education program. “People can come on board softly, without harsh
confrontation.”
For Kalwaic, who has worked on these issues for seven of her
nine years at the College, a living wage and other workers’ rights
are human rights issues. “We feel that you can’t run an institution
with resources and a huge endowment and not pay people a living
wage,” she says. “If the administration wanted to find the money
and live up to the College’s commitment to social justice, that’s
what they’d do.”
THE COLLEGE’S LOWEST-PAID WORKERS WOULD RECEIVE A RAISE TO
$9 PER HOUR UNDER A PROPOSAL FOR A “SWARTHMORE MINIMUM WAGE”
MADE BY A STAFF COMMITTEE THAT REVIEWED COMPENSATION. LIVING
WAGE ACTIVISTS DON’T THINK THE PLAN GOES FAR ENOUGH.
JIM GRAHAM
COLLECTION
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
4
J U S T C O M P E N SAT I O N
A
REX RYSTEDT/COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND
ward-winning author
and screenwriter Sherman
Alexie spoke to a
capacity crowd at
the Lang Performing Arts Cinema
last month. The
author of Reservation Blues, The Lone
Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven,
and the screenplay
for the film Smoke
Signals peppered his
talk, “Killing Indians: Myths, Lies, and Exaggerations,” with characteristically trenchant and witty observations about life after Sept.
11 as a “brown guy.”
Alexie's remarks were preceded by a five-song set
from Jim Boyd, a guitarist and singer/songwriter who
played selections from his album alterNATIVES and
the Smoke Signals soundtrack. Following the talk,
Boyd returned to center stage to sing two more songs,
including one he wrote about Alexie, appropriately
titled “Story Man.”
Alexie and Boyd’s visit was a highlight of the Intercultural Center’s (IC’s) yearlong celebration of its 10year anniversary. The center’s “Celebrating Growth,
Building Tomorrow" program honors what Acting
Director Meghna Bhagat calls its “growth and growing
pains" since it officially opened in April 1992. The first
event, a reception and history panel that featured
founding alumni and former directors, occurred in September; speakers such as noted gay rights activist Barbara Gittings, author Fernando Gonzalez, and awardwinning filmmaker Frank Abe visited campus last fall.
In addition to Alexie, speakers this spring include
Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams, and JooHyun Kang, an activist for gay people of color. Bhagat
is also organizing the IC’s first Alumni Day, which will
take place in April.
The IC originally consisted of three organizations—
the Hispanic Organization for Latino Awareness; the
Swarthmore Asian Organization; and Action Les-BGay, now the Swarthmore Queer Union. Last year, the
newly formed Native American Student Association
also joined the center.
Housed in the former Board of Managers room and nearby
offices in Clothier Memorial Hall, the IC provides offices for these
groups as well as a large meeting room that they share. The room’s
recent renovation provides much-needed space for the IC’s administrative offices and for its library, which will be named in honor of
former IC Director Annamaria Cobo, now the head of the Center
for Hispanic Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania.
—Alisa Giardinelli
MARCH 2002
Center celebrates
The CRC’s recommendations received the endorsement of top
administrators and the Finance and Trusts Committee of the Board
of Managers. However, LWDC members issued a response that
found fault with many of them. Among their counterproposals was
a minimum wage of $13 an hour and the maintaining of retirement
contributions as they are so that those funds could be used in other
areas, such as improving the College’s health insurance plans.
“The numbers [the CRC presented] are inadequate, and some
things, such as the suggestion to freeze the benefit bank for
employees taking single coverage, seem punitive and make no sense
to me,” says Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of
Social Theory and Social Action and an adviser to the LWDC steering committee. “You can’t give with one hand and take with the
other. These initiatives will cost money. The College should face it
and set a reasonable timeline.”
“We purposely created the recommendations as a unit,” Young
says. “They are meant to work together as a package. If you change
one or two, the whole changes. Not that we won’t look at suggestions, but we want people to look at the whole.”
As for a timeline, Young does not know how long it will take to
fully implement the recommendations, but she is sanguine about
the process. “Some people on the president’s staff think it will take
five years, but I hope three,” she says. “And there’s still work to do.”
Indeed, having recommendations in time to be included in next
year’s budget process was just one of Young’s goals. Another is to
have a new job-grading system designed and “ready to go” by the
end of this calendar year.
—Alisa Giardinelli
5
COLLECTION
JIM GRAHAM
Housing
crunch
”THIS IS DEFINITELY A CUT ABOVE THE AVERAGE DORM,” SAYS BRIAN
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
A
6
sharp drop in the number of students studying abroad this
spring—combined with a larger than usual number returning
from fall foreign study—caused a scramble for student housing. So many students signed up at the December housing lottery,
looking for rooms for the spring semester, that the College was
forced to exercise what Myrt Westphal, director of residential life,
calls “the overflow option.”
“Before each school year begins, we always hold 400 beds, 375 of
which are taken by freshmen. The remaining 25 are shifted to the
waiting list, which usually consists of sophomores,” Westphal says.
“If the new class—or overall enrollment—is larger than expected,
we go to the overflow option. This spring, the overflow mainly consists of juniors returning from foreign study.”
Students with low lottery numbers had to select rooms in the
Strath Haven Condominiums, on the corner of Yale and Harvard
avenues—rooms usually reserved for visiting professors and guests
of the College.
Strath Haven was first used for overflow student housing during
the 1996–97 academic year when the classes of 1997 and 2000—
two of the largest in College history—pushed the student population to a record high. But no students have lived there for a year and
a half, Westphal says. This spring, however, there are about 1,375
students studying on campus, out of a total tuition-paying student
body of 1,432, which includes students on exchange programs or
studying abroad.
“Our class sizes have stablized now,” Westphal says, “but having
enough housing still depends on 7 to 8 percent of students living
off campus or being on leave.” That percentage dropped this semester, mainly because only 57 students are studying abroad, compared
with the average 85 to 90 of recent spring semesters. Westphal
attributes the decline to “students choosing not to go abroad
BYRNES ’02 OF HIS SPRING-SEMESTER ROOM AT THE STRATH HAVEN CONDOMINIUMS. BYRNES, WHO IS RESIDENT ASSISTANT FOR STUDENTS IN THE
“OVERFLOW” RESIDENCE HALL, RETURNED TO SWARTHMORE AFTER AN
EXCHANGE SEMESTER AT POMONA COLLEGE LAST FALL, WHERE HE PLAYED
FOOTBALL.
because of world conditions” but adds that no students have spoken to her about this particular concern. “We’re not alone in this,”
she adds. “My counterpart at Haverford is having the same problem.”
Foreign Study Adviser Steve Piker says he is not convinced that
recent events caused the decline. “The number is certainly down
significantly from last spring,” he says, “but we don’t know that it’s
due to the crises.” He points out that the total number of Swarthmore students studying abroad this academic year is 151, which is
normal. “The difference is that 94 students studied abroad in the
fall compared with an average of 65,” he explains. “There is always
an imbalance between semesters, but I can’t remember it not being
in the other direction.”
“I don’t think any student mentioned the crises to me in talking
about foreign study,” he adds. “Of course, the students who come in
to talk to me are those who want to study abroad. There is a good
possibility that I didn’t speak to those who chose not to for that reason.”
One factor in the large number of students choosing to study
abroad last fall may be a change in College regulations allowing
first-semester seniors to participate in foreign study for the first
time; 12 seniors studied abroad last fall. Whether some juniors
decided to take advantage of the new rule and delay foreign study to
fall 2002 or opt out altogether will not become evident until students begin to apply for fall programs.
—Cathleen McCarthy
Multifaith tribute
W
STEV
EN
GO
LD
JIM GRAHAM
BL
e have much healing to do, and we
Grace,” offered by the student a cappella
gather tonight to do that and to
group Sixteen Feet.
mourn those lost. We lost alumni, we lost
Two students from New York City shared
family, and we lost dear friends,” Pauline
their thoughts, including Katherine Bridges
Allen, Protestant adviser, told
’05 who read a touching poem
a somber group gathshe had written about
ʼ67
T
ered in Lang Conher brother-in-law, a
AT
cert Hall on Dec.
firefighter who
11, for a memoridied on Sept. 11.
al service three
Faruq Siddiqui,
months after
professor of
the terrorist
engineering, read
attacks.
with feeling from
“On Sept. 10, if
the Quran: “Whososomeone had told us
ever killeth a human
what would happen the
being … it shall be as if
PROTESTANT ADVISER PAULINE ALLEN
next day, we would have
he had killed all mandismissed it as a fair piece
kind, and whosoever
of science fiction—or as a bad dream. Yet it
saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had
happened,” said President Alfred H. Bloom, saved the life of all mankind.”
who witnessed the World Trade Center
Siddiqui, a Muslim, then added his own
attack with his wife, Peggi.
words: “Muslims all over this country have
Students, staff, and faculty members read prayed to Allah for healing the wounds
from the Buddhist, Hindu, Quaker, and
opened up by this monstrous act, for bringMuslim traditions and offered hymns and
ing the people of this country together, for
songs from the Jewish, Catholic, and Bahá’í letting the better angels of our nature take
faiths. Music expressed the emotions of the over our thoughts and deeds so that we may,
occasion, from the drama of Fauré’s
as people of various faiths and beliefs, make
“Requiem,” sung by the College chorus, to
this world a better and safer place to live in.”
the comforting familiarity of “Amazing
—Cathleen McCarthy
Bonnie Harvey, former assistant to
the health science adviser, died on
Nov. 17. Harvey worked at the College
for 24 years, helping countless students navigate the medical school
application process, before retiring in
1996. Professor Emerita of Biology
Barbara Yost Stewart ’54, who served
as health science adviser from 1985 to
1996, said of her friend and classmate, “She knew every student by
name and shared their ups, their
downs, their joys, and their woes.”
Although the acceptance rate for Swarthmore students and alumni
applying to medical school is twice the national average, inevitably
some applicants are rejected. It was with these students, said Stewart, that “Bonnie was at her best. She was so sympathetic and
compassionate. She commiserated with them but also tenderly
encouraged them to go on with their lives.”
T
hanks to recently designed and
installed signs, visitors to the
College are finding it easier to navigate their way around these days.
“There was an old-style attitude that
if you don’t know your way around
the campus, you don’t belong here,”
says Janet Semler, director of planning and construction for Facilities
Management, who has overseen the
sign project since it began in January
2000. “But more than 20,000 people
visit this campus each year, most of
whom are not part of our College
community. We want to welcome these
visitors by making the campus more
user friendly.”
New Alumni Managers
The Board of Managers elected three new members at its December
meeting: Cynthia Graae ’62 and Bennett Lorber ’64 are Alumni
Managers, and Tanisha Little ’97 is a Young Alumni Manager. They
will serve four-year terms.
Graae is a Washington, D.C., freelance writer with a lengthy
public service career, working mainly on civil rights issues. Lorber is
Thomas M. Durant Professor of Medicine and chief of the Section
of Infectious Diseases at the Temple University School of Medicine
and Hospital. Little is a corporate law attorney for Stroock , Stroock
& Lavan in New York.
CYNTHIA GRAAE ’62
BENNETT LORBER ’64
TANISHA LITTLE ’97
MARCH 2002
In Memoriam: Bonnie Brown Harvey ’54
User-friendly signs
7
8
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
COLLEC-
Winning
combination
TOP SCORERS HEATHER KILE ’02 (TOP LEFT) AND KATIE ROBINSON ’04 (TOP RIGHT) LED
THE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM TO A 20–7 RECORD AND THE CONFERENCE FINALS.
S
warthmore women’s basketball has
attracted many fans in the past couple
of years. Lately, they’ve been coming to
watch Heather Kile and Katie Robinson vie
for points. Kile, a senior forward, set new
standards for the team from the very beginning of her Swarthmore career, leading her
teammates to three Centennial Conference
play-offs, including a run for the championship in this year’s final game against
Western Maryland.
After defeating Franklin & Marshall
61–56 in the semifinal game, Swarthmore
could not get its offense moving and managed only 12 points in the first half against
Western Maryland and lost 66–38. The
team’s season record was 20–7 overall and
12–3 in conference play.
Kile was named Centennial Conference
Player of the Year in 2000 and was the first
woman in conference history to be named
First Team All-Conference for four years. In
January, Kile broke the College’s scoring
record, finishing the regular season with a
career total of 1,921 points.
This year, Kile shared the spotlight with
sophomore guard Robinson, who earned
four conference Player of the Week honors
and was later named Centennial Player of
the Year. On Feb. 6, she scored a schoolrecord 40 points in an 85–82 double overtime victory over Johns Hopkins.
“She and Heather both had an amazing
season,” says Adrienne Shibles, assistant
professor of physical education and head
coach of women’s basketball. Robinson led
Swarthmore to the Seven Sisters Tournament championship with 29-point games
against Vassar and Wellesley and 18
rebounds against Vassar. She was named
outstanding defensive player of the tournament and earned All-Tournament honors.
“Heather is probably the best basketball
player ever to come through Swarthmore.
We will really miss her next year. Katie is a
crowd favorite. She’s so fun to watch,” says
Shibles. “These women have come to expect
to win—which is nice. They’re confident,
and they play well together.”
—Cathleen McCarthy
CLOTHIER FIELDS TO BE MODERNIZED
JIM GRAHAM
G
oal posts are conspicuously absent
from Clothier Fields these days.
Football games and practices have
given way to soccer, lacrosse, field hockey,
and intramural sports.
Now the College’s stadium field is about
to undergo more dramatic changes. At their
February meeting, the Board of Managers
approved a $2 million plan to upgrade
Clothier Fields, including adding lighting
and artificial turf and resurfacing the outdoor track.
Lighting the field will extend the hours
for outdoor sports. “The ability to practice
in the evenings should lessen conflicts with
academic demands, especially for intramural teams,” says Adam Hertz, associate
director of intercollegiate athletics.
Artificial turf is also expected to increase
outdoor play by extending the season itself.
“In early spring, our teams are normally
forced to go indoors because of bad weather
or wet conditions,” Hertz says. “With artificial turf, if there’s snow on the ground, you
AFTER CLOTHIER FIELDS RECEIVE THEIR NEW
ARTIFICIAL TURF, SNOW CAN BE SHOVELED OFF,
ALLOWING ATHLETES TO PRACTICE YEAR-ROUND.
can shovel it off and start playing. Turf also
maintains its quality through summer
droughts.”
The technology of artificial turf has
improved substantially in recent years,
Hertz says. “It’s not like the old Astro Turf,
which was like green carpet. Many think it’s
better than natural grass now. Artificial turf
doesn’t rut or develop bare spots, which can
cause injuries,” he says. That durability has
an economic advantage as well, says Larry
Schall ’75, vice president for Facilities and
Services. “If you’re on a grass field too
much, you ruin it,” Schall says. “This you
can’t ruin.”
Combined with recent improvements to
indoor athletics facilities, the Clothier Fields
project will give the College “a showplace
athletics complex,” Hertz says. “We hope
these changes will not only improve facilities for our current athletes but attract new
ones as well.”
—Cathleen McCarthy
In other winter sports ...
Men’s swimming (5–4, 3–3) set three
school records en route to a fourth-place
finish at the Centennial Championships.
Mike Dudley ’03 won the 200 individual
medley in 1:56.28. John Lillvis ’03 captured
the 400 individual medley in 4:11.49. This
duo teamed up with Jacob Ross ’05 and
Mike Auerbach ’05 to set a school record in
the 200 freestyle relay with a third-place
finish of 1:28.24.
In women’s indoor track, Imo Akpan ’02
won six gold medals at the Centennial Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships to earn Outstanding Female Athlete
of the Meet honors. Akpan won the 55meter dash in a school-record time of 7.20
seconds, which automatically qualified her
for a trip to the NCAA Division III Championships. She set school and meet records in
the long jump with a leap of 18’0.5”. Akpan
also won the 200-meter dash with a school,
conference, and meet-record time of 25.51
and crossed the line first in the 400-meter
dash in a meet-record time of 58.34. Earlier
this season, Akpan set the school record in
the 400 with time of 57.4. Akpan also
teamed with Njideka Akunyili ’04, Elizabeth
Gardner ’05, and Claire Hoverman ’03 to
capture gold in the 1,600-meter relay and
the distance medley relay. The 4 x 400 relay
team set a school record of 4:07.60, and the
distance team set a school and meet record
with a time of 12:37.97. Sarah Kate Selling
’03 broke her school record in the pole vault
by clearing the 7-foot mark at a meet earlier
in the season.
The badminton team captured its first-ever
Northeastern Collegiate Tournament Championship. Karen Lange ’02 was the women’s
singles champion, and Brendan Karch ’02
captured the men’s title. Karch teamed up
with Chris Ang ’04 to win the men’s doubles
title, and Ang paired up with Olga Rostapshova ’02 to win the mixed-doubles championship.
In men’s basketball (6–19, 2–11), Jacob
Letendre ’04 set the school record with 44
steals this season, and he ranks fifth on the
career list with 84 steals. Matt Gustafson
’05 led the Garnet in scoring, averaging
14.2 points per game. Gustafson’s 55 threepointers rank him third on Swarthmore’s single-season list.
—Mark Duzenski
MARCH 2002
Women’s swimming (9–2, 5–2) captured its
second consecutive Centennial Conference
Championship, outdistancing runner-up Gettysburg, 707–604.5. Three relay teams and
three individuals provisionally qualified for
the NCAA Championships. The Garnet closed
the conference meet on a high note, as the
400 freestyle relay team of Melanie Johncilla ’05, Amy Auerbach ’02, Davita BurkheadWeiner ’03, and Natalie Briones ’03 won in a
meet with a school-record time of 3:37.68.
The 800 freestyle relay team of Johncilla,
Katherine Reid ’05, Burkhead-Weiner, and
Auerbach were victorious in a school-record
time of 7:55.78. Briones and BurkheadWeiner teamed with Kathryn Stauffer ’05
and Leah Davis ‘04 to win the 200 freestyle
relay in a school-record time of 1:39.16.
Broines came home from the three-day meet
with team-high of six medals.
9
Te a c h i n g
the
Te a c h e r s
By S o n ia S ch e rr ’0 1
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
P h o t o g rap h s b y R ay St an y a rd
a n d G eo rg e Wi dm an
10
S
eated at desks arranged in a large circle, about 25 students in
Professor of Education Lisa Smulyan’s class are about to put
psychologist B.F. Skinner’s theory of education to the test.
Skinner viewed learning as a process of making a desired behavior
more likely to recur through reinforcement, both positive and negative.
The class—Introduction to Education—is quickly transformed
into a “Skinner box.” One student volunteers to leave the room
while the rest of the class chooses a behavior they would like him
to exhibit. Suggestions include singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
and doing a headstand, but the students ultimately decide that he
should erase the chalkboard.
When the subject of the experiment returns, the class “reinforces” his behavior by saying “yes” when he approaches the chalkboard at the front of the room. After a few missteps—such as turning off the lights and clapping the erasers together—the student
responds to a chorus of yeses and erases Skinner’s definition of
learning that Smulyan had written on the board.
But this is only the beginning of the class’s work with Skinner’s
ideas. For the next hour, Smulyan leads her students through various aspects of Skinner’s views on learning. Lecture blends with discussion as she encourages students to think about how they have
seen his theory applied, both in their own educational experiences
and in the classrooms where they are observing as part of the
course’s required field placement.
Soon it becomes clear that the students are skeptical of Skinner.
Although Smulyan occasionally plays devil’s advocate, pointing out
ways in which aspects of Skinner’s work might be
useful for teachers, the students question Skinner’s rote, step-by-step method of learning, which
they say stifles creativity, fails to allow for different learning styles, and does not promote an
understanding of the concepts that underlie a
particular skill.
Still, the students have no trouble recognizing
that Skinner is describing the real world of education. One student saw Skinner’s ideas reflected in
a Chester kindergarten classroom, where children are learning to
read in incremental, mechanical steps. Another student recalls helping a child with a math worksheet that broke down fraction writing
into a sequential series of more basic skills.
P
roviding students with a grounding in theory and an opportunity to observe in Philadelphia-area schools, Smulyan’s introductory course is in many ways representative of the entire Education program at Swarthmore, which aims above all “to help students
learn to think critically about the process of education and the place
of education in society,” according to program literature.
When most people think of Swarthmore, the Education program
is not what first comes to mind. Although in 1996–97, the third
highest number of bachelor’s degrees awarded nationally went to
education majors, and, at the graduate level, there were more master’s degrees in education than in any other discipline, educating
teachers has traditionally been regarded as the province of large
MARCH 2002
Swarthmore’s Education
program approaches its subject as
a field of inquiry, not a career.
11
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
12
CREDIT
universities and teachers’ colleges, not liberal arts institutions such as Swarthmore.
Although Swarthmore’s program may be
small—with three tenured faculty members,
one additional full-time professor, and generally one or two part-time adjuncts—one
out of three Swarthmore students takes
Introduction to Education sometime during
his or her undergraduate career, and several
hundred students enroll in one of the other
15 or so education courses and seminars
offered each year.
As a result, many Swarthmore students
who had not considered teaching discover
education at the College. According to Professor and Program Director Eva Travers,
only three or four incoming students per
year express interest in the program on their
applications. “But I think Intro to Educa-
tion has such a good reputation that people hear about it, take it,
and get interested in education,” she says. She described it as a “polished” course that over the years has remained similar in terms of
structure and core readings. Focusing on teaching and learning during the first half of the semester and education and society during
the second, the course “has its own kind of energy.”
Allison Young ’87, now an assistant professor of education at
Western Michigan University, recalls that she “pretty much stumbled
into the education program” at Swarthmore. During the spring
semester of her sophomore year, she needed a fourth credit and
decided to take Intro to Education because it fit into her schedule.
“For the first time in my Swarthmore experience, I felt like I actually knew some things and that I had something to say in class,” she
says. “I had Eva Travers for that course, and it kicked my butt in a lot
of good ways.”
For Thomas Crochunis ’81, Intro to Education deepened an existing interest in the field. Crochunis earned a degree in English with
teaching certification, went on to teach first high school English and
then college writing and literature courses before entering the field
of education research publishing. Although interested in education
in high school, he became “engaged” in the field after taking Intro to
Education and teaching physical education during his field placement at a school for children with special needs. “That hooked me,”
he says.
L
ike many aspects of Swarthmore, the study of education is
linked to the College’s Quaker roots. In An Informal History of
Swarthmore College, Richard Walton writes that part of the founding
mission of the College was to train Quaker teachers for elementary
and secondary schools. Friends such as Martha Tyson, one of the
College’s founders, feared that Quakers would assimilate into the
larger culture if their children were not educated by teachers who
shared the values of the Society of Friends.
Then, in 1969, a change in Pennsylvania law made it possible for
small, liberal arts institutions like Swarthmore to award teaching
certification. Previously, only large universities and specialized
teacher training programs could offer the range of courses needed
for certification.
Swarthmore’s program expanded in the 1970s with the arrival of
Travers, who specializes in educational policy and urban education,
and Bob Gross ’62, now dean of the College. Joining the program in
the 1980s were Ann Renninger, with a specialty in educational psychology, and Smulyan, a 1976 graduate of Swarthmore whose
expertise is in social and cultural perspectives on education. Diane
Anderson, now a full-time nontenure-track professor, specializes in
literacy and is also the faculty adviser for Learning for Life, a volun-
The study of education is informed by
other disciplines in the liberal arts.
teer program that encourages students to work with staff members
on topics such as literacy and computer skills. In addition, adjunct
faculty members teach two or three electives each year, including
Environmental Education, Counseling, and Special Education.
Despite this growth, the study of education at Swarthmore
CATHY DUNN ’93 (ABOVE) TEACHES
ENGLISH AT STRATH HAVEN MIDDLE
SCHOOL IN WALLINGFORD, PA.
SHE RECEIVED “HUGE AMOUNTS
OF HELP,” SHE SAYS, FROM HER
SWARTHMORE EDUCATION
PROFESSORS DURING HER FIRST
FEW YEARS OF TEACHING: “A
COUPLE OF SUNDAYS A MONTH,
ANOTHER NEW SWARTHMORE
EVA TRAVERS’ HOUSE FOR DINNER
AND HELP WITH OUR CLASSES.”
Although Swarthmore dropped education courses from its curriculum in the 1930s, the program was revived in the 1950s by the
late Alice Brodhead, a Friend and the former head of a Quaker
school. Brodhead became the first director of the new Education
program at Swarthmore; she and one other professor were the only
faculty in the program until the early 1970s.
remains within a program rather than a department. Students cannot major solely in education. Travers says the reason is primarily
philosophical. “We think that education informed by another discipline is a more effective way of thinking about education,” she says,
“especially at the undergraduate level.”
Gross, who taught in the program for six years before leaving the
MARCH 2002
PHOTOGRAPHS BY GEORGE WIDMAN
TEACHER AND I WOULD STOP AT
13
MELANIE HUMBLE ’86 (LEFT)
TEACHES ENGLISH AND DRAMA AT
CARABELLE HIGH SCHOOL IN RURAL
CARABELLE, FLA., WHERE SHE HAS
BEEN HONORED TWICE AS
TEACHER OF THE YEAR. HUMBLE
SAYS THAT THE APPROACH TOWARD
TEACHING THAT SHE LEARNED AT
SWARTHMORE HAS PLAYED A
GREATER ROLE IN HER SUCCESS
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
THAN ANY SPECIFIC SKILL.
14
College from 1983–89, expressed a similar
sentiment. “I’m not keen on a major in education,” he says. “I would argue there’s a
power and relevance in connecting [the
study of] education with the rest of a student’s educational program.” The study of
education “forces students to go further,”
says Gross. “They must become self-conscious learners—more effective learners
across the board.”
In this regard, Swarthmore is similar to
other institutions belonging to The Consortium for Excellence in Teacher Education,
which was founded in 1983 and whose 20
members are selective, private liberal arts
institutions in the Northeast. Unlike many
universities and teachers’ colleges, consortium members generally do not offer education as a major; instead, work in education
is integrated into the broader liberal arts
curriculum.
But Swarthmore differs from most consortium schools in that
teacher certification is not the primary or sole focus of its education
program, according to Travers. Instead, the College offers more
broad-based studies in educational theory, policy, and practice. Students may develop a special major that combines education and a
second discipline—an option that involves a culminating exercise,
such as a thesis, that brings together both areas of study.
Still, an important component of Swarthmore’s education program is teacher certification, which requires practice teaching. For
half a semester, students teach full time, develop lesson plans, and
assess curricula. According to Travers, supervised practice teaching
enables them to “have a much more effective beginning teaching
experience…. Teaching is not all intuitive; some teachers can be
made much better. Knowing the discipline is necessary, but it is not
sufficient, especially in elementary and secondary schools with students from a variety of backgrounds.”
Travers says, in a typical year, the Education program generally
has 20 to 25 special majors, 6 to 8 Honors students, and 12 to 16
student teachers seeking certification. Most Swarthmore education
students earn certification in social studies or English; a few get certified in science and math and occasionally in a foreign language.
Approximately one-quarter of students earning certification do so in
elementary education through a joint program with Eastern College.
R
ecently, Travers says she has seen increased student interest in
the Education program. The number of special majors has risen
in the past 10 years, though it is difficult to make comparisons with
Gil Rosenberg ’00, a math major who earned teaching certification, is currently a graduate student in math and a teaching assistant. Rosenberg highly recommends undergraduate work in education for students who intend to become teaching assistants in
graduate school and then professors at a college or university.
“There is little official educational training for these positions,” he
says, “so having some theory and practice really goes a long way. I’m
sure we’ve all had professors who we wished had taken an education course or two at Swarthmore.”
Barbara Klock ’86, a psychology major who received certification
in elementary education, taught at Swarthmore’s elementary school
for several years before going to medical school. Now, as a pediatrician, Klock says she finds herself teaching “every day.”
Those who do choose the elementary or secondary school classroom have all felt the widespread attitude that teachers are under-
education classes is at least as high as that in the College as a
whole, where about a third of the student body is nonwhite. Yet
just as women teachers continue to outnumber men in elementary and secondary education, the ratio of women to men in most
of Swarthmore’s education classes is generally two to one.
Students who receive certification graduate with excellent job
opportunities, Travers says. In recent years, all who wanted to
teach, no matter the subject, have been successful in finding jobs
immediately after completing the program.
Although the study of education often leads to a job teaching in
an elementary or secondary school, this is not always—or even predominantly—the case for Swarthmore alumni. Many students take
education courses with an eye toward a broad range of careers and
life experiences, from public policy to parenting.
valued by society. But, says Kate Vivalo ’01, who graduated with a
special major in sociology/anthropology and education, “Swarthmore students and students of that caliber are exactly who you want
in a classroom.”
Vivalo experienced firsthand prevalent attitudes toward teaching
when she returned to her hometown recently. People asked about
her plans for the future, and their response was: “‘You’re just going
MARCH 2002
Students who receive teacher certification
graduate with excellent job opportunities.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAY STANYARD
the early years of the program, when certification was the main
goal for students. Moreover, changes made in the Honors program five years ago have allowed students pursuing Honors
majors in other disciplines to incorporate a minor in education
into their programs.
Education courses tend to attract a fairly diverse group of students. According to Travers, the percentage of students of color in
15
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
Overcoming the “Endemic
Uncertainties”of Teaching
B y Li s a S m u l ya n ’ 76
P rof ess o r of E d u c at io n
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
M
16
y first few months of teaching seventh grade in
Brookline, Mass., were not a huge success. Classroom
discipline did not come naturally to me, and my students had to learn that they could respect a teacher who was
small, female, and not terribly loud. By January, I was no longer in
danger of being fired and even had days I enjoyed. Then, a few
months later, I got a note from the mother of one of my students.
It said:
I was going to send you a note today to tell you about
“Babies and Banners” a propos of the article you gave out
on women and unions. Then Daniel comes home to tell
me you showed them the movie! How wonderful! I just
can’t tell you how much it means to me to have Daniel
exposed to such an imaginative, perceptive, and kind
teacher.
That day, I realized that my fellow teachers and I were rarely
recognized for what we did. Teachers at all levels teach because
they think it is important work—work that can make a difference.
But, given that our students keep moving on, we don’t often see
the fruits of that labor. Dan Lortie, in his classic sociological study
Schoolteacher describes the “endemic uncertainties” of teaching
that lead to few tangible rewards.
On Oct. 26–27, Swarthmore hosted a conference called Reflections on Education and Social Justice: A Celebration of the Program in Education. Four Swarthmore alumni (Jack Dougherty ’87,
Esther Oey ’87, Betsy Swan ’86, and Allison Young ’87) planned
and organized the conference with the help of the Alumni Office
and the Education program faculty and staff. More than 200
Swarthmore alumni involved in education, current students and
faculty, and local educators gathered to discuss issues of importance in the field and to reflect on the ways in which Swarthmore
has influenced their work. It was a truly amazing event, one that
swept away those endemic uncertainties and left us all feeling
rewarded, inspired, and appreciated.
The conference began with a keynote address on Friday night
by Herbert Kohl, whose book 36 Children has been central to the
Introduction to Education syllabus for a generation of Swarthmore students. The conference included a full day of concurrent
sessions on Standards and Student Assessment, Urban Schooling, Mindful Technology, Reaching Adolescents Outside of the
Traditional Classroom, Special Education, Social Justice in the
Classroom, and others. In a session on Educators’ Responses to
Sept. 11, three alumni led a discussion of questions that ranged
from how the content of classrooms may change to how we construct and teach about notions of conflict and social justice. In
another session called The Practical Life of Teaching—and How
to Balance It With the Rest of Your Life, presenters and session
participants talked about how to maintain our intense commitment to teaching without sacrificing other aspects of our lives.
“How,” one participant asked, “can you go on a date when you
always fall asleep at 9 p.m.?” The conference closed at the Friends
Meetinghouse with a collection dedicated to Swarthmore’s Education program.
An incredible energy, all focused around education, emerged
from this conference. We have materials and bibliographies and
phone numbers of like-minded people who we know share our
concerns and interests. We have alumni interested in sponsoring
another conference in five years.
The conference demonstrated that Swarthmore graduates, in
teaching and the other fields represented at the conference, are
leaders in their communities; although they, like most educators,
sometimes struggle to see where they are making a difference.
Many of the conference participants talked about how the excitement, the commitment, the “spark” they want in their work had
been renewed through the presentations and the informal interactions at the conference. They also recognized the role of the College’s Education program in initiating, nurturing, and continuing
to support that spark.
When I got that letter from Daniel’s mom 24 years ago, I started a file labeled “Kudos.” The conference program will go in there.
I haven’t felt so rewarded in years.
to teach? You had so much potential,’” says Vivalo, who is now
working for Youth, Inc., a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that
provides event planning and management services to nonprofit
organizations that serve the needs of children.
For some students who choose not to teach, one issue is the relatively low pay teachers receive versus the high cost of education at
schools like Swarthmore. Allison Young says that when she called
home from college to tell her parents—who were teachers themselves—that she planned to
earn her teaching certification in social studies, her
father hung up on her. “He
really didn’t want me to be a
teacher, and he was pretty
angry,” she says. “I wonder
now if the issue was about
the financial stuff—going to
Swarthmore to become a teacher is an expensive proposition,
whereas most states have a couple of local universities that deal
mostly with teacher education.” But while saying she “understands
his response much more now,” Young also says she learned things
at Swarthmore that could not have been duplicated at a state university.
tion in schools,” as a course in which this synthesis could occur.
But the study of education is also integral to the liberal arts curriculum, according to those interviewed, because it allows students
to reflect on their own education and to learn about the educational experiences of others. Although easy to take for granted, students’ educational experiences have played a significant role in
their lives for the past 15 years, shaping who they are and their outlook on the world.
“At the end of the day, Swarthmore gave me the
tools to do a job that seems significant to me.”
any students and alumni also say that education fits into
their liberal arts curriculum because of the way it is taught at
Swarthmore.
“I see it as a discipline,” says Eve Manz ’01, a psychology and
education special major who is now student teaching in Philadelphia. “The department teaches education not as a career but as a
field of inquiry.”
“It’s a much more intrinsic perspective on education,” Young
says, “studying education for the sake of studying it and maybe
having ideas about how to make it better.” Even the certification
process uses the metaphor of “‘teacher as thinker’ as opposed to
‘teacher as technician,’” Young added. “This is so powerful because
in the teacher-thinker model, you keep learning.”
The interdisciplinary nature of education at Swarthmore brings
together many different disciplines in the social sciences and even
humanities. About a third of the education courses listed in the
College catalog are cross-listed with other departments. In addition, the program provides an opportunity to combine theory and
practice because most education courses include a field placement,
which may involve observing, tutoring, teaching, or research.
“This is where the theory is lived,” Gross says. “It functions in
the way that a lab in science does. How do you know how the theory works unless you see kids struggling with it and preferably struggle along with the kids?”
Now an assistant professor of education at Trinity College, Jack
Dougherty ’87 majored in philosophy and earned teaching certification in social studies. “Sometimes I felt like a misfit at Swarthmore,” Dougherty says. “The book learning seemed so distant from
the reality learning, and I felt that the world didn’t make sense
unless I could merge the two, and that wasn’t happening in my
term papers and blue-book exams.” Dougherty saw Intro to Education, with its “combination of academics and participant-observa-
T
here is not even a stoplight in the rural Florida town where
Melanie Phillpot Humble ’86 has taught for much of her
career. “The kids I teach will probably not get the chance to go to a
Swarthmore,” says Humble, who majored in English and earned
teacher certification. “I can bring a little bit of it to them. I can
bring those great books, those great professors, the lessons I
learned from my peers, the critical thinking to them. It seems a
serious responsibility of elite colleges and universities to spread the
intellectual wealth that way.”
Humble says she has been teacher of the year both on the
school and county level and believes these accomplishments are “a
direct result of the preparation I got from Eva and Lisa.”
The approach she learned toward teaching has played a greater
role than any specific skill, Humble says.
“You must be willing to look at [teaching] from many different
perspectives, to analyze and think creatively,” she says. “You must
be willing to collaborate but also to challenge the status quo. You
must be willing to see that the process is the product. And what I
learned about teaching is that it is worth doing.”
Pointing to the difficulties of teaching, such as the low pay and
constant criticisms from government officials, Humble says, “I’m
not a Pollyanna about education, far from it—but, at the end of the
day, Swarthmore gave me the tools to do a job that seems significant to me.” T
Sonia Scherr is a reporter with The Valley News in Norwich, Vt. This
article first appeared in The Phoenix (March 1, 2001) and is reprinted
with permission.
MARCH 2002
M
Chela Delgado ’03, an Honors history major and education
minor, says, “You’re able to look back at your experience and compare/contrast that with what you’re actually learning in terms of
theory.”
Education courses have also enabled students to examine their
more recent experiences in Swarthmore classes. Nicole Bouttenot
’01, a math and education special major, says she had “a bad experience with the math department at Swarthmore,” and her education
classes helped her understand why she struggled in some math
classes.
17
S WA R T H M O R E ’ S L O R E B R A N C H E S T H R O U G H T H E G E N E R AT I O N S .
By Andrea Hammer
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
18
Like the intertwining oak branches forming an archway over Magill Walk, the latticework
of multigenerational families at Swarthmore fans out from a solid trunk of family and College history.
These interwoven offshoots of relatives within the larger College family remain rooted in past
memories while stimulating further growth at Swarthmore.
According to Jim Bock ’90, dean of admissions and financial aid, “legacies are typically admitted at a
slightly higher rate than other students in the applicant pool, and they also tend to be a bit stronger
academically.” The “strongest preference" is given to applicants with parents or siblings who are alumni,
he says. Although “every consideration is given to legacies, it doesn’t necessarily make or break
a decision," which is based on many student skills and interests.
As one current student from a multigenerational family says, “I rarely run into people
who know other members of my family, and I prefer to be known for who I am, not just who I’m related to."
But Bock’s experience is that students with “legacy ties have a good sense of Swarthmore that
is transferred to the student and a common bond of intellectual passion and a love of learning."
Although changing times have shaped individual experiences for each generation, the insights of
the following three Swarthmore families—representative of the 117 with three or more generations—open
windows on the essence of Swarthmore that endures, along with the age-old oaks first planted in 1881.
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS/COURTESY OF THE SCOTT ARBORETUM
Families
Strong
as Oaks
each other with untold
stories.”
PEYTON HOGE
ared Thompson ’05, the fourth consecutive generation on his father’s side to
attend Swarthmore, mined his family’s rich
history during the winter holidays. Before
traveling from his West Hartford, Conn.,
home to visit grandmother Jean Maguire
Thompson Seely ’40 and aunt Marjorie
Thompson Mogabgab ’74 in Nashville,
Tenn., Jared described maternal grandparents Edmund ’39 and Adalyn Purdy Jones
’40 as “loyal members of the Swarthmore
College community." He also mentioned
cousin Guian McKee ’92 and carried
thoughts of now-deceased great-grandmother Marjorie Gideon Maguire ’14,
whose spirit still guides his family’s story.
When Jared asked grandmother Jean
why she attended, she said: “Well, Mother
had a whale of a good time at Swarthmore,
and that certainly influenced it. I also knew
it was intellectually a top college."
In turn, Marjorie was similarly influenced by her grandmother’s and mother’s
memories. “My grandmother told wonderful stories about her life at Swarthmore that
have been part of family lore for several generations," she said. “They were mostly about
boyfriends and clever circumventions of
Parrish house mothers."
Also encouraged by Jean’s experience,
shaped as a swim team and Outing Club
member, Marjorie’s college choice was complicated by having spent grades 4 to 12 in
Swarthmore. “I wanted to attend college
somewhere other than my hometown, to
‘expand my horizons’ and establish independence from home. However, I was well
aware that Swarthmore was the cream of the
five excellent colleges I had applied to; when
a fine scholarship offer was made, I had no
further hesitation," she said.
Family stories also convinced Jared about
the benefits of choosing a small liberal arts
college. “I was more influenced by my own
experiences visiting Swarthmore than by the
stories I have heard from relatives," he said.
“However, hearing how much they all enjoyed
being at Swarthmore was certainly another
factor that made the College appealing."
Jean told her grandson, “Mother knew
my friends, and they all really liked her. They
even had a pet name for her," Chappie, created after she chaperoned a shore trip. “I knew
some of Marjorie’s friends," she added. “There
is a common bond that comes from knowing
the friends of different generations."
ABOVE: JARED (RIGHT) MINED HIS FAMILY’S
SWARTHMORE HISTORY WITH HIS AUNT MARJORIE
(CENTER) AND GRANDMOTHER JEAN (LEFT).
BELOW: “IT WAS FUN TO GO TO REUNIONS WITH
CHAPPIE,” SAID JEAN (CENTER) ABOUT HER
MOTHER (LEFT), ATTENDING THE 1984 REUNION
WITH DAUGHTER MARJORIE (RIGHT), “AND HAVE
A PLACE IN COMMON THAT WE ALL REALLY LOVE.”
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
J
For Marjorie, who traveled with her
mother on a seven-month round-the-world
trip after graduation and worked with artist
Georgia O’Keeffe for four months in New
Mexico before attending McCormick Theological Seminary, this family interconnection
is beneficial: “It strengthens our common
bond, and it’s interesting to compare notes
on our experiences. It fosters a sense of loy-
alty to the College and its well-being. Now,
with Jared beginning his college experience,
it will enter our conversations more frequently."
A National Merit Scholar and singer in a
choral group that has toured Europe, Jared is
considering a biology major or possibly a
minor or double major in Spanish. “It’s been
especially fun to try branching out," he said.
“I was a bit concerned before I arrived
about not knowing anyone, but it has been
really fun to make new friends and get
involved with things at the College," Jared
said. “Living with other students in the
dorm is a much more social experience than
life at home was, and it’s been great getting
to know new and interesting people."
Jared has been singing in the College
chorus and with Sixteen Feet, the all-male a
cappella group. “Feet has been one of the
most enjoyable things I’ve ever done," he
said. “My aunt was very involved in singing
at College concerts, which I am doing now."
According to Marjorie, “The common
bond of Swarthmore is significant in both
our immediate and extended family. The
College is certainly a common point of reference for our families," she said. “In our case,
the bond to Swarthmore includes the experience of ‘village life’ as well. The senior
Joneses still live in Swarthmore, and both
my mother and I still have friends who live
there. My husband and I were married in the
Swarthmore Presbyterian Church.
“Memories abound for all of us, yet our
memories of both village and College differ
depending on our specific experiences," she
added. “We can still surprise each other with
untold stories, and it is fun to watch old
connections come gradually to light for the
new generation."
Jared said that “Sometimes talking about
my experiences will inspire others to tell stories about similar or related things. The common connection to Swarthmore does lead to
some interesting conversations, most often
about the way things have or haven’t changed."
For example, his grandparents remember
“more formal, family-style meals” and the
“linen and cleaning service for men, although
not for women," Jared said. “I was a bit surprised by that, but it seems like the College
has changed as society has changed over the
years. Still, some things—especially the
types of people at Swarthmore and the general experience of being here—seem to be
more or less the same."
MARCH 2002
“We can still surprise
19
1939 HALCYON
1940 HALCYON
JARED’S OTHER SWARTHMORE RELATIVES INCLUDE
HIS MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS ED ’39 (TOP
RIGHT) AND LYN PURDY
1992 HALCYON
With similar impressions, Marjorie
echoed her nephew’s observations: “Swarthmore has certainly changed over the years,
as most colleges have. It has grown a great
deal since my grandmother’s time, both in
size of student body and in physical plant,"
she said. “Its requirements and regulations
have changed—for example, since the time
that ‘three feet on the floor’ applied to a man
and woman in the same room! What has
changed little are Swarthmore’s basic values:
commitment to excellence in academics,
top-flight faculty, low faculty-to-student
ratios, balance in extracurricular activities,
needs-blind admissions policy, the unique
Honors program, and commitment to
essential values of the Quaker tradition,"
said Marjorie, a Presbyterian minister and
director of the Pathways Center for Spiritual
Leadership for Upper Room Ministries near
Nashville. She has been particularly heartened by the College’s increasing support of
campus religious advisers from various
faiths since the 1970s.
Jean also marveled at changes on campus
since she was a student. “Martin was the
new building when I was there, housing
biology, zoology, and psychology. Our
women’s gym was where the library is now,
and the dining facility was where the Admis-
JONES ’40 (TOP LEFT) AND
COUSIN GUIAN MCKEE ’92
(LEFT).
sions Office is. Wharton was there, and
Worth was there—I lived there—but there
are new dorms over on what we knew as the
men’s side of campus [Dana and Hallowell].
“We had separate dorms for men and
women. We had to sign out in the evening
and certainly if we were going anywhere
overnight," she added. “We had fresh whole
milk and cookies or crackers delivered every
night at 10 to our dorms. Fraternity boys
would come to sing under our windows."
Jean has also previously noted her concern about the increasing costs at the
College through the generations. “When
Mother attended Swarthmore, it cost $400
a year; when I was here, it cost $1,000 a
year; for Marjorie, $3,000-plus a year; and
now Jared, $34,000-plus."
But she also recognized the ways that
her Swarthmore education later supported
her family—particularly after they returned
from living in Thailand, Marjorie’s birthplace.
“When I really needed a job, after arriving in
Swarthmore with three kids, I really think
that being a Swarthmore graduate helped
me get the job I managed to get," she said.
Remembering this pivotal time after her
father’s death, Marjorie said: “His death
occasioned our move to Swarthmore from
overseas, where he had been a missionary in
Thailand: “His loss was a terrible trauma
that drew us even closer together. My mother poured her life into her children, even as
she labored to make herself fit for a job in
guidance counseling and later as a school
psychologist.
“As children, we knew we were deeply
loved," she continued. “We learned the
meaning of sacrifice and simplicity early on.
In my view, faith was essential to our survival. These are enduring values that have
permeated our marriages and family life ever
since. We all know the value of human life
and love."
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
D
20
escending from five generations of
Swarthmoreans, Sarah Fritsch ’04
thinks that Swarthmore keeps her close to
the family’s Quaker roots. “I do feel that
walking the same paths as my family before
me has made me feel a stronger connection," she says.
These family ties trace back to 1868,
when Sarah’s great-great-great aunt Lydia
Hart Yardley invested in Swarthmore
College by purchasing one share of stock in
November of that year and a second share
several months later in 1869. In the following years, members of the family became
students at the College. The first was apparently a great-great-great uncle of Sarah’s:
Seymour Yardley Cadwallader, who attended the College in 1890 but died from tuberculosis as a student. He was followed by his
niece and Sarah’s deceased great-grandmother Elizabeth Cadwallader Wood ’11,
whose daughter is Sarah Wood Fell ’49 and
son John H. Wood Jr. ’37.
“The choices that we
have made are very
different—each of us
has gotten a completely
different experience
from the same place.”
THIS 1869 STOCK CERTIFICATE, SUBSCRIBING TO
THE COLLEGE CORP., WAS DISCOVERED WITH THE
PAPERS OF ELIZABETH CADWALLADER WOOD ’11D
AND BELONGED TO JOHN H. WOOD’S [’37] GREATAUNT LYDIA YARDLEY.
Other relatives include Elizabeth’s
deceased brother J. Augustus Cadwallader,
Class of 1913. His son is T. Sidney Cadwallader ’36, who is class co-secretary with wife
Carolyn Keyes Cadwallader ’36.
Further lengthening the family line,
three of John H. Wood’s children are also
Swarthmore graduates: John C. Wood ’67;
Roger Wood ’69; and Elizabeth Wood
Fritsch ’73, Sarah’s mother. Susan Yardley
Wood (Tufts University ’79) was an exchange
student at Swarthmore in her junior year.
Supporting their Quaker roots, Sarah’s
grandfather, an attorney and partner at
Wood and Floge in Langhorne, Pa., is very
active in various Quarterly and Yearly
Meeting activities. Her mother is an attorney and co-director of Legal Aid of
Southeastern Pennsylvania. Her uncle
Roger, an attorney at Dilworth Paxson LLP
specializing in business and banking law,
also does committee work for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
SARAH FRITSCH ’04 (FRONT); MOTHER ELIZABETH
WOOD FRITSCH ’73 (BACK); AND GRANDPARENTS
JEAN (LEFT) AND JOHN H. WOOD ’37 (RIGHT)
GATHERED DURING THE WINTER HOLIDAYS IN THEIR
LANGHORNE, PA., HOME. IN JANUARY, JEAN AND
JOHN WOOD TRAVELED TO THE HIGHLAND PARK
rocketing costs" of higher education.
Traveling from his Langhorne, Pa., home
in January, Sarah’s grandfather visited with
some of these classmates at the Highland
Park Club in Florida. The club, started
around 1925 by a group of alumni, offers
snowbirds a haven during the winter
months for playing golf, bridge, and croquet
together.
“I don’t think Swarthmore has changed
very much because my mother, grandfather,
and uncles seem to recognize most of the
things I talk about in reference to school,"
says Sarah, whose work at the College is
sometimes compared by family members
with her relatives’ performance. “I do,
however, think the choices that we have
made are very different—each of us has
gotten a completely different experience
from the same place."
COURTESY OF THE SCOTT ARBORETUM
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
CLUB IN FLORIDA, STARTED AROUND 1925 BY A
1936 HALCYON
1913 HALCYON
BARBARA JOHNSTON
MEMBERS OF THIS FIVE-GENERATION SWARTHMORE
FAMILY INCLUDE (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) JOHN
H. WOOD’S [’37] MOTHER, ELIZABETH CADWALLADER
WOOD ’11D, HIS UNCLE J. AUGUSTUS CADWALLADER
’13D; SISTER SARAH WOOD FELL ’49; SONS JOHN
’67 AND ROGER ’69; AND T. SIDNEY CADWALLADER
’36, A COUSIN WHO IS CLASS CO-SECRETARY.
MARCH 2002
education of the whole person, including
the development of leadership skills.
Although this change has earned Swarthmore a preeminent national reputation as
an elite academic institution, I think it represents a departure from the college that
earlier generations knew."
Sarah is able to share some of this
knowledge about the past, gleaned from
family stories, with current classmates. “I
can provide a historical perspective for students sometimes, when they have a question about why certain college policies are
the way they are now," she says.
Sarah’s impression is that “Swarthmore
always comes up at family gatherings on my
mother’s side," she says. “Among my relatives who are alumni, it has created a sense
that I am experiencing things that they also
have, which is comforting."
Another advantage of this commonality
is that “when I mention events or places at
Swarthmore, people understand me. I think
it’s nice for my relatives to be able to check
up on how Swarthmore is functioning since
they left and the changes that have occurred,"
Sarah says.
Her grandfather hopes that “Swarthmore will always encourage its students to
be active in community service either directly or indirectly," which was his own personal dream. Like others from his generation,
he has also vehemently objected to the “sky-
1911 HALCYON
GROUP OF SWARTHMORE GRADUATES.
1949 HALCYON
Sarah admits that her relatives’ “pleasant
experiences at Swarthmore" influenced her
to apply. “However, its academic reputation
was probably the biggest factor and the location as well—not too far from my home,"
she says.
Planning to pursue a career in diplomacy
and international relations, specifically
involving French-speaking nations, Sarah
also wants to explore musical production
and composition when she graduates. This
musical interest is shared by her mother,
who sang in College concerts with Marjorie
Thompson ’74 (see the first family in this
story).
Roger, Sarah’s uncle, was particularly
drawn to Swarthmore because of the way it
supports individual differences. “I had been
on campus many times as a child and felt
very comfortable with the atmosphere there.
As a result of conversations within the family, I believed that Swarthmore had many of
the same values that were important in our
family, including a social awareness and tolerance for individual differences, and I felt
that it would be a good fit for me," Roger
says.
John C. Wood, Roger’s older brother and
senior consumer protection attorney at the
Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.,
was an economics major—following the
same path as his father, which was later
continued by his brother. The author of articles that have been published in the Federal
Reserve Bulletin and ABA Bank Compliance,
he has also cultivated leisure interests such
as skiing, sailing, and tennis.
Sharing some of these interests, Roger
was a resident assistant on campus who
drove 350 miles to Vermont, during the
winter break in 1967, with Dean Robert Barr
’56 and two other proctors to discuss student life and to ski. As a student, he also
was a member of Student Council and of
Delta Upsilon. Today, Roger believes that
the College should continue to encourage
the development of leadership abilities in
students.
“My general impression is that Swarthmore has remained the same with respect to
its core liberal, social, and political values,"
Roger says. “But that in recent years, it may
have changed its educational mission by
placing greater emphasis than ever before
on scholarship and academic achievement
and possibly placing less importance on the
21
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
22
n another curving Swarthmore branch, Ruth Feely
Merrill ’38 passed her love of
the College on to three of eight
children: Suzanne ’63, who
married David Maybee ’62;
Barbara ’69; and Chip ’71. “I
have always loved going to
Swarthmore and have included
my family in these visits," Ruth
says.
Suzi, director of communications at Holton-Arms School
in Bethesda, Md., recalls: “I
probably made my first trip to
Swarthmore when I was 6 or 7
years old. My parents had just
built their home under the G.I.
Bill and were picking out plantings. We spent several hours in the lilac
grove near the Friends Meetinghouse, finding just the right color and scent for the
lilacs we would plant at our new home. In
subsequent years, my mom seldom missed a
reunion or a Somerville Day…. Swarthmore
became equivalent with college."
Suzi’s college years shaped her own priorities. “My values and attitudes were chosen because they had meaning for me and
the adult I was becoming," she says. “In
some cases, family values were reinforced;
however, by sending me to Swarthmore, my
parents encouraged me to develop my own."
The friendships formed on campus are
still the most important ones for Suzi and
husband Dave, a clinical reviewer at the
Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “My husband’s college roommates
are our closest friends—‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’
to our children; my Robinson housemates
still gather to share important days; lacrosse
and badminton coach Pete Hess welcomed
me back to campus on my first day as a
Swarthmore parent," Suzi says. “It was the
manner in which people on campus interacted with each other that had the greatest
impact on me as a person."
The College’s academic and athletic program also attracted four of Suzi and Dave’s
five children: Beth ’88, David Jr. ’89, Lynne
’91, and Jill ’96. Interlacing Swarthmore
families again in the third generation, Beth
married David Allgeier ’86 at Swarthmore’s
United Methodist Church; they had daughter Elizabeth in 1999 and son Matthew in
2001. Extending this horizontal expansion,
THE MAYBEE-NATHAN-ALLGEIER CREW GATHERED
FOR THIS PHOTO IN OCTOBER 1999. BACK ROW, LEFT
TO RIGHT: LEN NATHAN ’92, LYNNE MAYBEE NATHAN
’91, DAVID MAYBEE JR. ’89, BETH MAYBEE ’88, AND
DAVE ALLGEIER ’86. SECOND ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT:
JILL MAYBEE ’96 AND GEOFFREY MAYBEE. SEATED:
DAVID MAYBEE ’62, HOLDING ALYSSA NATHAN,
AND SUZI MERRILL MAYBEE ’63, WITH ELIZABETH
ALLGEIER. MATTHEW ALLGEIER AND DANIELLE
NATHAN, BORN LAST SUMMER, ARE NOT SHOWN.
Lynne married Leonard Nathan ’92; daughters Alyssa and Danielle were born close to
their cousins’ births.
“Each of our children was an individual—and their own person. I knew from the
day they expressed interest in Swarthmore
that they would find their own way—their
own values and friendships—at the College.
Their father and I needed to stand back,"
Suzi says. “So we waited for invitations to
visit, and in all four cases, we were invited
and welcomed whenever we came. It would
have been wrong for us to expect our memories and experiences to be the same as
theirs—but in the end, they have proved to
be quite similar."
David Jr., who grew up surrounded by
Swarthmore paraphernalia, thinks his family’s priorities of “autonomy, frugality, pursuit of intellectual interest, and belief in the
positive qualities of diversity of opinion"
were reinforced by the College. But his generation did not implicitly believe in “the wisdom of our elders and leaders" as did his
parents and grandparents’ classmates.
Grandmother Ruth has “witnessed the growth of the children as they mark their trails in
each of their separate ways."
Changes she notes over the
years include Swarthmore’s larger student enrollment, exchange
programs, and new buildings.
But Ruth still thinks “The
essence of the College has
remained the same."
Living on a 200-year-old
farm in Stanton, N.J., for 30
years—where the family often
gathered for reunions—Ruth
values “the wonderful opportunities offered the Garnet Sages"
at the College. Some of these
include Alumni Weekend reunions, during which granddaughter Lynne
has driven golf carts. She also relishes memories of 1988, the year of her 50th reunion
and Suzi’s 25th—when Beth graduated
from Swarthmore.
Swarthmore’s Education professors
influenced Lang Scholar Beth, who taught
middle school for seven years. “They were
wonderful mentors and models under
whom to develop a philosophy of education," she says. Husband Dave, who worked
in Swarthmore’s Alumni Office for five
years, is now a veterinarian. He strongly
opposed the College’s decision to eliminate
football, voicing his anger in a letter to the
Board. Despite his disappointment, he also
says that “classmates, teammates, professors, coaches, and colleagues at Swarthmore
had a huge effect on who I am and how I
conduct myself professionally and personally. Save my family and my church, Swarthmore probably shaped me more than anything else in my life."
A certified athletic trainer now working
at the College, Lynne played soccer for four
years as a student. Husband Len, an officer
at MBNA America in Wilmington, Del., describes soccer on campus as “the nonacademic activity that meant the most" to him.
“Once you are accepted to Swarthmore,
the real work begins," Lynne says, relating
glowing high school memories. “Then I
came to Swarthmore, where I was surrounded by the brightest from all over the world.
If I hadn’t had faith in my own personal
worth to carry me through, I could have
been entirely eclipsed here."
COURTESY OF THE SCOTT ARBORETUM
I
home were reinforced
at Swarthmore: to be
myself, respect my
peers, take responsibilty
for my words and
actions, play hard and
work harder, and value
my friendships with
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
others.”
IN 1988, GRANDMOTHER RUTH (LEFT) CELEBRATED
HER 50TH REUNION, WHILE DAUGHTER SUZI
(RIGHT) ENJOYED HER 25TH AND GRANDDAUGHTER BETH (CENTER) HER GRADUATION FROM
SWARTHMORE.
very unique, intelligent people; I think the
same qualities that led us to all have such
different interests at Swarthmore are what
continue to make us interesting to each
other. Whenever we have a discussion over a
topic, we each have our own slant on the
issue, and we are all capable of disagreeing
all night long if the mood strikes us."
Reflecting on her own experience with
classmates and College life today, Suzi says:
“It was the fellow students who were the
essence of the College for me. There was a
mutual respect—for ideas, talents, opinions,
diversity—among the people I knew at
Swarthmore. We were all individuals. It was
OK not to conform, to think independently,
and to explore new directions. I believe that
this is still true today,"
Suzi, who has served as an extern sponsor as has husband Dave, says: “But Swarthmore, like society, has its own particular
growing pains and its own challenges; these
show themselves in the controversies that
swirl through the campus from time to time.
If the essence of Swarthmore remains as true
today as it was in the 1960s, then it is the
process—the listening, the discussion, and
the resolution of these issues—that will ultimately endure…. Sometimes the controversies overwhelm the basic mutual respect on
campus; we seem to be going through just
such a time now. But I expect that, in the
end, mutual respect will come through."
Son David, now at the University of
Maryland School of Dentistry, agrees:
“Many friends are very disappointed that a
traditional sport that they held dear flew the
coop one night.... But graduates of
Swarthmore are purists and traditionalists,
and they hold certain common values that I
think are positive and constant—the most
significant is the validity of their voice."
Despite any reservations, he would still
encourage the next generation to attend
Swarthmore, valuing the “writing and reasoning skills" he developed as a student.
Pondering her family’s continuing legacy
at Swarthmore, his grandmother says, “I certainly hope that they all will follow their
hearts and go somewhere that they can be as
happy and fulfilled as we have all been who
attended Swarthmore." Ruth adds, “The
uniqueness of Swarthmore and its willingness to change has been experienced by each
in their own way."
But the family’s still-mending wound
gives Suzi pause. “Certainly, the recent ‘flap’
over athletics and the impression that somehow athletes are undervalued as contributing members of the student body or that
they are less qualified academically certainly
leaves a ‘bad taste’ for our family, where each
member was involved in athletics to some
degree," she says. “Being an alum legacy
sometimes carried similar implications."
Ultimately returning to the love of
Swarthmore that was instilled in her childhood, Suzi says, “My hope is that this will be
resolved in a positive way so that at some
time in the next generation, one of my
grandchildren might find that Swarthmore
is just the right place to grow into adulthood and to develop his or her particular
potential." T
MARCH 2002
“The values learned at
Prepared for bumps, Lynne learned to
cope with the challenges. “Having it so
tough is part of what makes the Swarthmore experience such a worthwhile one,"
she says. “I think you could ask any member
of my family if they would make the academics less challenging, and we would say
no. We weren’t any of us looking for easy.
Easy doesn’t teach you about your own
potential," she adds.
“The values and priorities that I learned
at home were reinforced at Swarthmore: to
be myself, to respect my peers, to take responsibility for my words and actions, to
play hard and work harder, and to value my
friendships with others," she says.
The same qualities have carried into her
work life at the College, although disillusionment and questions have shadowed her
love of Swarthmore since the athletics decision. “When did it become so important to
meet the standards set forth by others
instead of walking our own path?" she
asks. Searching for renewed respect, Lynne
hopes the administration will place students first by “giving them every opportunity to achieve their highest potential academically, artistically, and athletically."
The campus first enchanted sister Jill
after her family returned from Hawaii,
where they lived from 1976 to 1983. The
summer they returned to the mainland,
Jill’s grandmother took her on a campus
visit, when she discovered the amphitheater.
“I left Swarthmore that day feeling like I had
left my home," she says.
Later College visits sustained this impression. “What amazes me most about Swarthmore is that every relative … had a different
and unique experience. My siblings all
attended the College at the same time and
hardly saw each other unless they were trying to," she says. “We all found different
subjects and activities that interested us, and
yet we can talk about Swarthmore and
remember very similar experiences." Now in
her fourth year at Temple University Medical
School, Jill played lacrosse at the College like
her mother and soccer like her sister. Despite
changes in Swarthmore’s “very dynamic
community, where ideas are constantly
debated by intelligent people," Jill thinks
that the College continues to draw students
“with a passion for learning, a balanced
approach to life, and a unique sense of self."
She adds: “I find all my siblings to be
23
WORLD
VISION
Dan Aubry ‘57 has circled the planet in search of great pictures.
H
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
igh Honors in history didn’t mean much in Hollywood,where Dan Aubry headed after graduation.
He’d caught the film bug in college, where he and
friends made an 8-minute movie about a Ville barber
whose refusal to cut a black student’s hair became a
cause celebre on campus.
After studying film at UCLA, Aubry worked in the
movie industry, which he calls a “rough school where I
learned a lot.” By 1960, he was in Spain, doctoring the
24
script of El Cid, the three-hour epic starring Charlton
Heston. He later worked as a writer on projects with Billy
Wilder and Orson Welles, always yearning to be a director. “In hindsight,” he says matter-of-factly, “I blew a
lot of important opportunities in those years.”
In the 1970s, Aubry left Hollywood for Spain, where
he first sold real estate and later became head of the
tourism board for Alméria, a province on the Andalusian
coast. “In the early post-Franco days, our organization
was dirt poor,” he recalls. “If we wanted to do a
brochure, I had to take the pictures. I’d always thought
of myself as something of a photographer but had never
considered doing it professionally. When tourism boards
in neighboring provinces started asking me to photograph for them, and the government in Madrid started
calling, I discovered it was a lot more fun than sitting
behind a desk.”
Returning to the United States in 1980, Aubry devoted
himself full time to photography. He has traveled the
world in search of pictures, which have appeared in
advertising, magazines, and three of his own books. The
Spanish government remains one of his best clients.
Another client—Sheraton Hotels—commissioned him to
photograph 33 of its properties in the Middle East and
Africa, a project that took two years and resulted in
another book. Aubry has also pursued fine-art photography and has had two one-man shows at the Monique
Goldstrom Gallery in New York.
For Aubry, photography is more than light, color, and
composition. In his pictures—and recently in new media
such as video and digital photo-collages on glass—he
tells stories. Taken together, his photographs tell a larger
story—his own.
—Jeffrey Lott
Left: Petrified wood in a desolate landscape, Patagonia, Argentina.
Top right: One of the famous flying horses (cabriola) in Jerez, Spain.
Right: Banana vendor, Abuja, Nigeria. Far right: A rare white gorilla
in the Barcelona zoo.
25
MARCH 2002
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS © DANIEL AUBRY
26
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
Left: The Miramar Resort in El Gouma, Egypt, designed by the
American architect Michael Graves. Right, top to bottom: Folk
dancer in Mexico City. Indian girl, Sultanate of Oman. Child
and her nanny, St. Bart’s, Caribbean. Below: A warrior in the
Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea.
MARCH 2002
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS © DANIEL AUBRY
To see more Daniel Aubry photos, visit his Web site
at www.danielaubrystudio.com.
27
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
28
On Sept. 11, 2001, Dan Aubry was in his
23rd Street studio in Manhattan. “I’m not a
journalist,” he says, “so I didn’t run out with
my camera when I heard the first news. We
watched from the roof of our building as the
Trade Centers collapsed.” Like many New Yorkers in the weeks following the terrorist
attack, Aubry was moved by stories of individual heroism and loss—stories that were made
painfully real by thousands of homemade
missing posters that appeared throughout the
city. He decided to design a visual memorial
to the victims. Since September, his idea for a
World Trade Center Visual Memorial—a walkthrough multimedia exhibit—has gathered
support. To learn more about the memorial
plans, use Internet Explorer to visit www.wtcvisualmemorial.org.
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS © DANIEL AUBRY
MARCH 2002
The Parthenon, Athens
29
The
Doubting
War
Two Swarthmoreans have increased
public awareness of obsessive-compulsive
disorder in children.
30
© LAURA STOJANOVIC
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
By Marcia Ringel
For a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder,
overwhelming worries make the already strange maze that leads to
adulthood even more difficult. Life is ruled by intrusive, disturbing
thoughts (obsessions), acts (compulsions), or both.
In health class, a 13-year-old girl learns about issues such as suicide and date rape. She becomes tormented by thoughts that she
wants to do these things herself.
An 11-year-old boy learns from a drug prevention unit at school
that people can get high from sniffing felt-tipped markers. Convinced
that he will get brain damage and die from his mother’s hairspray or
nail polish, he barricades
himself in his room and
opens the windows whenever
she uses them.
A 12-year-old girl fears that
her food is full of glass that
will hurt or kill her. Refusing
any complex foods, such as
sauces and casseroles, she
takes two hours to finish a
meal as she painstakingly
inspects each morsel, then
chews tiny shreds of food with intense concentration.
Children with OCD may repeatedly count, check, touch, hoard, or
decontaminate. They may imagine life-threatening dirt or infection
in ordinary items. They may be afraid that they will unwittingly kill a
family member or that their thoughts are evil or sinful. They may be
preoccupied by a need for symmetry. Incessant thoughts about certain images, words, numbers, or sounds may trouble them.
It’s essential to understand the intense distress felt by children
with OCD, says clinical psychologist Tamar Chansky ’84, founder
and director of the Children’s Center for OCD and Anxiety in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., and the therapist of the children described earlier. “Unless you know how it feels to have OCD, the behaviors on the
surface seem stoppable, silly, and annoying, but not torturous.”
Although each child’s needs for reassurance trigger specific
actions, they vary from one child to another. And each child’s needs
and actions may mysteriously change over time. Rituals, which may
be performed to relieve the worry (briefly) or in response to an inner
sense of pressure to do things in a particular way, may grow increasingly complex and time-consuming. To “feel right,” a child may
arrange toys in a precise order, count squares in the wallpaper, or flip
a light switch 13 times. Especially common, and often most telling, is
excessive hand washing, the habit that gave a name to the book that
revealed OCD to the world.
In 1989, Dr. Judith Livant Rapoport ’55,
now director of childhood research at the
National Institute of Mental Health, published The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing:
The Experience and Treatment of ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder (Dutton). The book’s
gripping case histories reveal how pervasively OCD can disrupt children’s lives—and
their families’. Never out of print and issued
in paperback in 1997, the groundbreaking
book continues to sell 10,000 to 15,000
copies a year, Rapoport says.
Rapoport has treated nearly 1,000 children and adolescents with OCD in the past
20 years. She wrote her first paper on OCD
as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, for
It’s essential to understand the intense
distress felt by children with OCD.
Otherwise, their behaviors seem stoppable,
silly, and annoying—but not tortuous.
Peter Madison’s Honors seminar in psychopathology. In those days, however, only
psychological theories were covered.
“What I’m most proud of,” she continues, “is that the book demonstrated that
OCD, which had been considered very, very
rare, was more common than bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.” When Rapoport
began her work in 1976, she says, few articles discussed OCD; now there are thousands. Moreover, today, “just about every
psychology and psychiatry department
across the United States and Canada offers
treatment for OCD,” she says.
Helping Kids With OCD
About 2 percent of the U.S. population—
some 4 million people—have OCD,
Rapoport says. More than a quarter of them
are children. Sadly, many who could be
helped never find the appropriate resources.
For those who are fortunate enough to
obtain an accurate diagnosis, much can be
done, Chansky says. Yet like adults, kids with
OCD typically consider their compulsive
behavior shameful and hide it. Although
OCD is far better understood than ever, it is
MARCH 2002
F
The Boy Who Started It All
31
PHILLIP STERN ʼ84
often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed as
another mental disorder, such as schizophrenia.
“We are in a crisis situation in this country,” Chansky says. “So few people know
how to treat OCD. I advise on an e-mail list
all over the country. Many people have to
drive for three hours or go for intensive
treatment during the summer because there
is no help nearby.”
Treatment is crucial, Chansky says, and
tailored to the child. For the girl who feared
that she wanted to kill herself or rape someone, Chansky made an audiotape containing
statements such as “I’m a rapist. I want to
hurt people. I don’t care how people feel.”
The opposite was true, Chansky says. “This
is a girl who embodies all that is good in the
world—bright, creative, caring.” The girl was
instructed to listen to the tape for 15 minutes every night. Its constant repetition
habituated the child to her fears until they
grew less compelling. “After a while, the anxiety comes down,” Chansky says. “The parents were doubtful, but this method is the
cutting edge. It works.”
Chansky describes a young boy who
stopped answering questions because he was
afraid that he might respond with a lie. His
reluctance to speak “made therapy sessions
very difficult,” she says. In therapy sessions,
she taught him to “boss back Brain Bug,” as
he has named his OCD, so that he can be
“normal and free and not have this problem
any more,” she says.
PSYCHOLOGIST TAMAR CHANSKY ’84 SPECIALIZES
IN THE TREATMENT OF OCD. HER BOOK FREEING
YOUR CHILD FROM OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER PROVIDES PRACTICAL TREATMENT ADVICE TO
PARENTS.
“Parents want and need information,”
continues Chansky, who feels that being the
mother of two has deepened her understanding of parents’ frustration. “Too often,
parents are left in the waiting room and not
brought into the process, even though they
have the most time and influence with their
kids and can expedite the recovery process if
they are included in the treatment.”
An early hope is that no treatment is
needed. “The million-dollar question for a
parent of a kid with OCD is: ‘Will it go
away?’” Chansky says. The answer is: Probably not. “We don’t know why some kids outgrow it, and others don’t,” she says. For
most children with OCD, symptoms will
wax and wane throughout their lives. For
those whose OCD persists, Chansky notes,
“we don’t talk about cure because the condition is chronic. But especially with early
intervention, we can get good results.” With
treatment, symptoms can be reduced by 50
to 80 percent.
It was, in fact, the gratifying ability to
help children with anxiety disorders that
lured Chansky to the field. First, her Swarthmore adviser Jeanne Marecek, for whom she
did research in her senior year, acted as a
role model for “finding work that means
something to you and enjoying it.” Later, as
a doctoral student in clinical psychology at
Temple, Chansky began working with anxious children. “I loved it right away because
the kids were really getting better,” she says.
Who Gets OCD and Why?
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
Finding the Right Help
32
Even when an experienced therapist is
found, Chansky has observed, the parents’
role is seriously underappreciated. Eager to
communicate with concerned parents she
couldn’t reach in person, Chansky wrote
Freeing Your Child From Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder: A Powerful, Practical Program for
Parents of Children and Adolescents (Three
Rivers Press, 2001). “My book is the first to
be written for parents about their role,” says
Chansky.
The response has been strong and farflung—from Canada, France, and all over
the United States. On a typical day last fall,
Chansky received calls from parents in three
distant states. “They felt the book had ‘saved
their lives’ by explaining what was wrong
with their child and what they could do to
help,” she says.
The average age of onset of OCD is young
adulthood—19.5 to 22 years—but it can
start much earlier. Case studies exist for chilDISTINGUISHING OCD FROM HABITS OF CHILDHOOD
O C D B e h a v i o rs
Are time-consuming
Non-OCD Habits
Are not overly time-consuming
Are disruptive of normal routine
Do not interfere with routine
Create distress or frustration
Create enjoyment or a sense of mastery
Make child believe he has to do them
Make child want to do them
Appear bizarre or unusual
Appear ordinary
Become more elaborate and
demanding with time
Become less important and
change over time
Must be executed precisely to
prevent adverse consequences
Can be skipped or changed
without consequence
Adapted with permission from T. Chansky, Freeing Your Child From Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:
A Powerful, Practical Program for Parents of Children and Adolescents. New York, Three Rivers Press, 2001.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
dren as young as age 2, says Chansky. More
boys than girls are affected, although
women seem to catch up by adulthood.
As with most mental disorders, causes
are elusive. As Chansky describes it in her
book: “OCD comes from a biochemical
mishap in the brain. Part of the brain sends
out a false message of danger and rather
than going through the proper ‘screening
process’ to evaluate the thought, the brain
gets stuck in danger gear and cannot move
out of it. The emergency message circuit
keeps repeating and is ‘immune’ to logical
thought.”
The neurotransmitter serotonin carries
information from one nerve cell in the brain
to another. An insufficiency of serotonin
causes message circuits to malfunction, so
that the circulating message never stops.
One receptor site for serotonin is in the
basal ganglia, the part of the brain that contains the thought-filtering station. An injury
to the basal ganglia results in OCD symptoms. Medications that treat OCD help
keep serotonin available, expediting message delivery.
Research sponsored by the National
Institute of Mental Health has found an
intriguing link between OCD and strep
throat. Antibodies to streptococcal infections, investigators learned, harm the same
parts of the brain that are affected in OCD.
They named this phenomenon pediatric
autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders
associated with streptococcal infections
(PANDAS). Occurring between age 3 and
puberty, PANDAS may account for onethird of cases of OCD in children—the
same proportion, as it happens, that Chansky sees in her practice.
JUDITH LIVANT RAPOPORT’S [’55] BOOK THE BOY
WHO COULDN’T STOP WASHING BROUGHT NATIONAL ATTENTION TO OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER. DR. RAPOPORT IS CURRENTLY DIRECTOR OF
CHILDHOOD RESEARCH AT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH.
“is to help children and parents see that all
the symptoms distill down to the same
issue: They are about doubt that seems
unbearable instead of uncomfortable.”
That’s true of adults, too, but “because kids’
experiences are different, they don’t latch
onto the same things,” thus making it more
difficult for parents to understand their
motives. In situations that might lead an
adult with a contamination obsession to
worry about “germs,” a child might worry
about a color (such as red, the color of
blood), a texture, or people. Such fears may
be incomprehensible to the parent yet make
perfect sense to the child—who may be
unable to articulate his feelings.
Tre a t m e n t s T h a t Wo r k
For many years, OCD was presumed to be a
purely psychological problem. The condition’s physiologic basis became clear, however, when 70 percent of people with OCD in
a 1986 Columbia University study improved
dramatically while taking the antidepressant
clomipramine (Anafranil). In the 1990s,
positron emission tomography (PET scans)
revealed that either medication or behavior
therapy alters metabolic activity in the
brains of people with OCD.
Five drugs, including fluoxetine (Prozac), are now used for OCD. “All the drugs
Even when an experienced therapist
is found, the parents’ role is seriously
underappreciated. Often, the whole
family must be involved in the therapy.
How can a parent tell whether a child’s
habits are normal? The extreme and repetitious behavior of a child with OCD is usually fairly obvious (see “Distinguishing OCD
From Habits of Childhood”). Spending
more than an hour a day on rituals and feelings of deep distress also indicate that treatment is warranted. The child who must endlessly pack and repack her book bag every
day before going to school or the one who
sprays his books with Lysol when he gets
home—both patients of Chansky—needs
help.
“My job as a therapist,” Chansky says,
approved in adults seem to work in children,” Rapoport says. If a medication hasn’t
started to work within a few weeks, the
dosage may be increased. If that doesn’t
help, another medication may be tried.
With or without medication, OCD is
usually best treated with behavior therapy.
The goal of behavior therapy is to empower
people with OCD to transform their own
behavior, rendering the intolerable endurable. With the help of a trained therapist—whether a psychiatrist, psychologist,
or other mental health professional who is
experienced in treating children with
MARCH 2002
I d e n t i f y i n g a n d T r e a t i n g O CD
33
Normal
Control
In people with OCD—as with no other psychological or physical disorder—two
areas of the brain “light up” simultaneously and abnormally in PET scans of the
brain: the basal ganglia, a core of cells at the center of the brain, and the orbital
frontal region, a large area behind the forehead. These differences are apparent
when people with OCD are at rest and are intensified when they are performing
compulsive rituals. Yet treatment with either medication or behavior modification
reduces or eliminates these abnormalities. Such demonstrations showed dramatically that OCD is a neurobiological disorder, not a psychological one.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
For many years, OCD was presumed
to be a purely psychological problem.
But science has discovered physiologic
causes in both children and adults.
34
says. “He put on his shoes with his eyes
closed and did not retie them in the car. His
anxiety went up at first, but it will go down
by itself.”
The child himself must feel in charge of
the symptom that is being worked on. “If I
tell him what to do,” Chansky explains, “I
become just like the voice of OCD, bossing
him around.” Therapy should not replicate
the feeling of being out of control, she says.
“The number one thing that needs to
happen for kids is recognizing that their
ObsessiveCompulsive
OCD thinking is different from their other
thinking,” Chansky continues. “Even 4 year
olds can identify OCD thought. It gives
them a different feeling in their stomach or
elsewhere in their body. They need to make
that identification so that they won’t invest
the same amount of energy in that as in a
math problem.” Once the feeling has been
identified, “They should get involved in
something else so that the feeling will pass.”
Kids are taught to “relabel the situation and
wait it out,” she says.
Treatment lasts for four to six months,
on average, but can be much shorter. “I’ve
had kids who just needed a handful of sessions to get through it,” Chansky says.
Beyond quelling OCD symptoms themselves, treatment “has implications spilling
over into self-concept,” she observes. Children may attribute their OCD symptoms to
being “crazy, perverted, or sick” and withdraw from society. “That’s a mistake you
don’t want to leave uncorrected,” she warns.
For the youngest OCD patients, “a more
UCLA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE/© AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
OCD—the child identifies his or her obsessions and compulsions, rates them by severity, and learns how to reduce their regularity
and power.
Chansky has had success with behavior
therapy techniques in children as young as
age 4. She notes a growing consensus that
such therapy can teach children to resist
their OCD. Children learn to “boss back”
these impulses, to name and defy them
(“You can’t get me, Repeater Man”), to
“break the rules” of the OCD. “Behavior
therapy prepares children for slips or recurrences,” Chansky says. “The relapse rate
with medications is higher.”
“The initial techniques of exposure and
response prevention are still best,” Rapoport says. Children are exposed to the
sources of their obsessions or to situations
that trigger them, then encouraged not to
employ their usual compulsions to calm the
resulting anxiety. The child observes that no
harm results. Over time, the child develops a
tolerance for the presence of what causes
the fear.
Last spring, Chansky treated an 11-yearold boy, obsessed by symmetry and perfection, who typically spent an hour tying his
shoes and arose at 4 a.m. to iron his clothes.
His assignment: to come to his next appointment wearing clothes that hadn’t been
ironed. “This was torture for him,” Chansky
the child who is ruining the family fun.
Almost always, information and openness
are better than not. Siblings take the situation personally and negatively.” Yet when
enlisted to help, they tend to seize the
opportunity. If sisters or brothers are suffering because of a sibling’s OCD, Rapoport
says, she may ask the parents to bring them
to family therapy sessions.
Families may feel encouraged to know
“The number one thing that needs to
happen for kids is recognizing that their
OCD thinking is different from their
other thinking. Even 4 year olds can
identify OCD thought.”
P R AC T I C A L M AT T E R S
• Free professional screening for OCD, other anxiety disorders, and depression
will be available at many locations nationwide on May 1. The annual event,
National Anxiety Disorders Screening Day, is organized by Freedom From Fear
(http://www.freedomfromfear.com), a national nonprofit mental health illness
advocacy organization.
• Hundreds of support groups for people with OCD (and, sometimes, their families) are active in the United States and Canada. Some of the major ones are
listed on the Bulletin Web site: www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
• For a referral to a behavior therapist, suggests Judith Rapoport, M.D., consult
the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation, a highly regarded national nonprofit
group.
• Health insurance companies do not consistently reimburse for OCD (or other
mental health) treatment. On Dec. 18, the House of Representatives rejected a
hotly debated Senate proposal requiring health plans and insurance companies
to cover mental illnesses no less fully than physical ones.
that overcoming OCD can increase a child’s
empathy toward others. “Many of my ‘graduates’ who are now in college,” Chansky
says, “are going into psychology.”
Chansky stresses the poignancy and seriousness of OCD and the struggle required
to resist it. She taught the girl who imagined glass in her food to recognize the difference between a “good warning” and an
“OCD warning”—“mistakes that the brain
is making”—and how to respond to both.
Chansky explained that food wasn’t really
full of glass but full of the girl’s ideas about
glass. Taking containers of formerly rejected
foods to her therapy sessions, the girl slowly
began to eat increasingly complex and hard
foods.
The boy who feared chemicals was eventually able to put nail polish on his own
nails in Chansky’s office. “He was an athlete
with a shelf full of soccer and baseball trophies,” she says. As he used the polish,
she reports, he gave her a rueful look and
said, “‘You see how much I want to get
better?’” T
Marcia Ringel, a writer and editor in Ridgewood, N.J., is a regular contributor to
the Bulletin. Her most recent article was the
September cover story on high-stakes
testing.
MARCH 2002
purely behavioral tack is taken,” says Chansky, whose center treats many 3 year olds
and their families. Parents are taught to
address the child’s symptoms. In a child
who often complained of feeling sticky or
dirty, for example, parents might prevent
routine hand wiping or washing. “The parents orchestrate the approach,” Chansky
explains.
“Most important when OCD is noted in
a young child,” she says, “is to consider the
possibility of PANDAS and have the child
evaluated.” A significant sign of PANDAS,
Chansky notes, is the sudden onset of
symptoms or tics in a child who has shown
no OCD tendencies before. Because OCD
develops more typically around ages 10 to
12, its appearance in very young children
signals a greater likelihood of a physiologic
trigger such as strep or Lyme disease.
Because children with OCD are in distress, their families, striving to adapt to the
demands of the disorder, may arrange their
lives around protecting the child. A trained
therapist can help them to stop “enabling”
and effect constructive changes.
“A lot of times, families are bewildered,”
Rapoport says. With therapy under way,
“siblings are reassured instead of resenting
35
ALUMNI DIGEST
Connections
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
Metro DC/Baltimore: The exhibition Our
Expanding Universe takes visitors on a journey through 100 years of science at the
Carnegie Institution. Its story follows
Carnegie explorers through the extremes of
nature and the chaos of political revolution
as they unravel great questions of science
ranging from the structure and function of
the genetic code to the origin and final destiny of the universe. Connection members
will be able to explore the exhibition firsthand on April 11, from 6–8 p.m., at the
Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1530 P
Street NW. The cost is $5, and drinks and
munchies will be provided. Please R.S.V.P. to
Connection Chair Sampriti Ganguli ’95 at
(202) 545-0835 or sampritig@hotmail.com.
“Christmas in April”: The Swarthmore
Connection will join Rebuilding Together
with Christmas in April of Washington,
D.C., to renovate the house of an elderly or
disabled homeowner in the district on Saturday, April 27. Volunteers of all experience
and skill levels are needed. Last year, a group
of about 40 alumni and friends cleaned up,
painted, and made repairs to an aging house
in northeastern Washington, helping to
make it warm, safe, light, and dry for the
family. They worked hard and had a lot of
fun, with old and new friends. With your
help, this year’s project will be just as suc-
cessful. If you’d like to join us this year, contact Kay Gottesman as soon as possible at
(301) 530-5504 or gottes@attglobal.net.
Philadelphia: Orienteering is the sport of
navigation with map and compass. The
object is to run, walk, ski, or mountain bike
to a series of locations shown on a map and
finish in the shortest amount of time. Orienteering is often called a “thinking sport”
because it involves map reading and decision making as well as a great workout. The
Philadelphia Connection will attend an
event hosted by the Delaware Valley Orienteering Association on Saturday, April 20, at
Core Creek Park near Newtown, Pa., at 11
a.m. The cost is $7. Details are available at
www.dvoa.us.orienteering.org. You may also
contact Connection Chair Jim Moskowitz
’88 at (610) 604-0669 or jimmosk@alum.swarthmore.edu.
Pittsburgh: Melissa Kelley ’80 is retiring as
Pittsburgh Connection chair because a new
job is taking her to Erie, Pa. However, she
leaves the Connection in the able hands of
Barbara Taylor ’75 and Michelangelo Celli
’95, who have volunteered to take over this
Connection. We welcome Barbara and
Michelangelo and thank them for keeping
this busy Connection going. Melissa will
continue to serve on Alumni Council as
president designate, and we thank her for
her fine work as Pittsburgh Connection
chair. Knowing Melissa, we expect there will
be an Erie Connection before too long!
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
RECENT EVENTS
36
In a smashing reunion, members of the
women’s tennis team, young and old, took
to the courts of the Mullan Tennis Center
in October for an alumni tennis match. In
the spirit of friendly competition and with
Coach Dan Sears umpiring, the alums and
current women’s tennis team members
played a series of round-robin matches. In
one lively match, Kim Crusey ’95, a star in
her own time, played current captain
Anjani Reddy ’04, who took the set in a
close 7–5. Judy Eagle ’66 dusted off her
racket and showed up the younger ladies
with her classic volleys in the doubles.
Wendy Kemp ’99, always consistent from
the baseline, challenged the other queen
of the ground strokes, Rebecca Katz ’95.
The next annual alumni tennis event is
already anxiously anticipated. Others in
attendance were event organizer Rani
Shankar ’98, An Bui ’05, Michaela DeSoucey ’00, Pamela Duke ’84, Sarah Fritsch
’04, Apanar Kishor ’05, Nga Lai ’97, Kristin
Parris ’86, and Elena Rosenbaum ’98.
Alaska: Alden Todd ’39 arranged for a recent
Connection event in Alaska. Dan West, vice
president for development, alumni relations,
and public relations, met with several alumni, parents, and one current student in
Anchorage in January—yes January!—to
discuss life at Swarthmore today.
Chicago: As the leaves changed color in the
late fall, Chicago-area alumni enjoyed an
afternoon at the Morton Arboretum. Jeff
Jabco of the Scott Arboretum joined the
group and provided color commentary.
Professor Ray Hopkins, Richter Professor
of Political Science, visited the Chicago Connection to guide a discussion titled “Constructing Responses to Sept. 11.” Before the
program, Professor Hopkins communicated
with alumni by e-mail to gain an understanding of the issues of major concern to
alumni. Many thanks to Chicago Connection Chair Marilee Roberg ’73 for arranging
both of these events.
Seattle and San Francisco: Barry Schwartz,
Swarthmore College Dorwin P. Cartwright
Professor of Social Theory and Social
Action, visited the Seattle and San Francisco
Connections in early March to present a lecture titled “Too Many Choices: Who Suffers
and Why.”
Intercultural Center’s
Celebration on April 6
All alumni are invited to return to
Swarthmore for the Intercultural Center’s (IC’s) 10th Anniversary Alumni
Gathering on April 6, from 10 a.m. to
4 p.m. The anniversary celebration
will allow alumni to meet with current students and explore opportunities to get involved with the ongoing
activities of the IC. Please join the
IC community in our newly renovated
offices in Tarble near the Fragrance
Garden. For information, please contact IC Acting Director Meghna Bhagat at (610) 328-7360 or mbhagat1@swarthmore.edu.
ENTREPRENEURS MICKEY HERBERT (LEFT), MAJORITY OWNER OF THE BRIDGEPORT [CONN.] BLUEFISH
BASEBALL CLUB; AND TRALANCE ADDY, FOUNDER AND CEO OF PLEBYS INTERNATIONAL, A TECHNOLOGY
FIRM, WILL BE KEYNOTE SPEAKERS AT THIS SPRING’S LAX CONFERENCE ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
CALLING ALL ENTREPRENEURS
A
ccording to Webster’s, an entrepreneur is defined as, “One who undertakes to start and conduct an enterprise or business, usually assuming full control and risk.”
The Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship, to be held on April 7, beginning at
noon, focuses on the business of business
from the perspective of several alumni who
followed their entrepreneurial spirits after
graduating from Swarthmore. Tralance
Addy ’69, founder, president, and chief
executive officer (CEO) of Plebys International LLC, and Michael “Mickey” Herbert
’67, president, CEO, and majority owner of
the Bridgeport Bluefish Baseball Club,
headline the conference with their keynote
addresses.
Tralance oversees innovative technology
ventures targeting underserved populations
worldwide. He is the former international
vice president of Johnson & Johnson, where
he led the establishment of technologybased business ventures. Mickey is a
nationally recognized expert on health
plans and is the former founder and CEO
of a publicly traded health maintenance
organization. In addition to his baseball
team, he is currently the general partner of
a major league lacrosse team and a sports
and entertainment company.
The conference will also feature panel
discussions on social entrepreneurship and
venture philanthropy, thoughts on becoming an entrepreneur, and the nuts and bolts
of a successful business venture. Panelists
include Eric Adler ’86, Richard Barasch ’75,
Caroline Curry ’90, Kevin Hall ’89, Ethan
Klemperer ’94, Arnold Kling ’75, Emily
McHugh ’90, Seth Murray ’98, Timothy
Sibley ’98, Robin Shapiro ’78, Brian Smiga
’76, and Thomas Snyder ’72.
The Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship is funded by an endowment created by
a bequest from the late Jonathan Lax ’71.
Jonathan was class agent and a reunion
leader. It is co-sponsored by the Swarthmore Business Society, the Office of Career
Services, and the Alumni Relations Office.
For additional information or to sign up
for the conference, call the Lax Conference
Response Line (voice mail) at (610) 6906887, or visit the conference Web site at
http://lax.swarthmore.edu.
MARCH 2002
Pasadena, Calif.: In January, President and
Mrs. Bloom hosted “A Conversation With
the President.” Connection members discussed a variety of topics of interest to the
College community, including the Board of
Managers’ athletics decision, diversity on
campus, instituting an Islamic studies program at the College, and several funding
issues. Thanks to Suzanne ’72 and Walter
Cochran-Bond ’70 and David ’45 and Mary
Joann Lang for making this event possible.
37
ALUMNI DIGEST
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
38
Alumni Council Continues
Healing Efforts at January Meeting
T
he Alumni Council is continuing
and to explore ways to be supportive in
efforts begun last fall to increase
these initiatives.
understanding and to establish a
Participants asked that Council continue
framework for healing among alumni folto take the lead in monitoring the actions
lowing the College’s December 2000 deciagreed to and in reporting periodically as
sion to restructure the athletics program.
planned to the Swarthmore community. The
Representatives of the administration,
parties acknowledged that agreement on
Board of Managers, Alumni Council, and
certain matters such as the restoration of
Mind the Light met on campus for a third
the sports affected and the exact events in
time on Jan. 18. These included President
the process by which the decision was made
Alfred H. Bloom; Managers Fred Kyle ’54
may not be possible but agreed that all share
and Barbara Weber Mather ’65; Dave Rowin their dedication to Swarthmore College.
ley ’65, Rob Steelman ’92, and Diana Judd
No other formal actions were added to those
Stevens ’63, representing Mind the Light;
listed in the Joint Communiqué, but addiand myself. Jack
tional efforts to proRiggs ’64, who parmote healing—and
Three actions will be taken:
ticipated in two
to provide leadership
meetings last fall,
within the Centenniwas unable to attend • Addition of two Alumni
al Conference in dealCouncil members to the
in January.
ing with pressures to
The tone of the
increase specializaAd Hoc Athletics Review
conversation was
tion and competiCommittee of the Board
respectful and contion—were disstructive. During the • Participation of Alumni
cussed. There is an
meeting, participants
understanding that
Managers in meetings of
reviewed progress on
such efforts will be
the Alumni Council
the three actions
initiated by the Colagreed to earlier and
lege at appropriate
• Review by Council of
described in our
times. The parties did
consensual decision-making
Joint Communiqué
not set a date to meet
in December, includagain but left open
processes at the College
ing the addition of
the possibility of
two Alumni Council
additional meetings if
members to the Ad Hoc Athletics Review
they were anticipated to be helpful.
Committee of the Board, the participation
The leadership of Alumni Council will
of Alumni Managers in meetings of Counfulfill its responsibilities to the Swarthmore
cil, and the review by Council of consensual College community as agreed in the Joint
decision-making processes at the College.
Communiqué and will continue to make
All were pleased to hear about the active
themselves available to support any addiparticipation by Council members Jenneane tional efforts to increase understanding and
Jansen ’88 and Rick Ortega ’73 in a conferpromote healing.
ence call and meeting of the Athletics
We are grateful to all those alumni who
Review Committee; Council’s interactions
have offered comments and counsel. Your
with Managers Catherine Good Abbott ’72
input is important to us, and we will
and Alan Symonette ’76 at our October
respond to each of you as time permits. We
2001 meeting; and the development of a
also want to thank those who have agreed to
draft charge and a list of potential members serve in efforts to rebuild. We commit to
of the team to review consensual decision
providing periodic updates as these efforts
making. Participants also heard about the
proceed.
productive meeting held on Dec. 8 with the
—Richard Truitt ’66
Executive Committees of the Board and
President, Alumni Association
Council to learn of each group’s priorities
rich_truitt@alum.swarthmore.edu
JANSEN
ORTEGA
Two Join Board’s Ad Hoc
Committee on Athletics
A
lumni Council members Jenneane
Jansen ’88 and Richard Ortega ’73 have
been appointed the Board of Managers’ Ad
Hoc Athletics Review Committee. The committee, chaired by Catherine Good Abbott
’72, was created in 2000 to act as a Board
liaison with the campus Athletics Review
Committee. According to Abbott, the ad hoc
group “will ensure that the recommendations of the original Athletics Review Committee are implemented. In consultation
with others, we will also develop criteria to
monitor, on an ongoing basis, the future
health of the athletics program.”
Jansen, who was elected to Council last
year, is an attorney with the Minneapolis
firm of Meagher & Geer, specializing in
appellate law. A lifelong athlete and longdistance runner, she was captain of women’s
cross-country for three years at Swarthmore,
staying on to help coach running during a
fifth academic year at the College. She says
she is “interested in trying to mend some of
the rift with alumni who are deeply troubled
by the College’s restructuring of the athletics
program.” Jansen can be reached by e-mail
at jjansen@meagher.com.
Ortega, who lives in Glen Mills, Pa., has
served on Alumni Council since 1999. He is
a self-employed structural engineering consultant specializing in historic preservation—a vocation that blends both sides of
his unusual Swarthmore double major in art
history and engineering. Although he was
not a varsity athlete in college, he is an
active coach in youth soccer, basketball, and
baseball. Ortega sees his role on the committee as “providing the Ad Hoc Committee
with input from the Alumni Council and, by
extension, from all alumni.” His e-mail
address is rickortega@aol.com.
Extern Program Continues to Grow
T
national extern sponsor; Allison Anderson
Acevedo ’89; Robin Shiels Bronkema ’89;
Jim DiFalco ’82; Elizabeth Killackey ’99;
David Maybee ’62; Lauren McGrail ’98;
Emily Rice-Townsend ’99; and Margaret
Kaetzel Wheeler ’62. Many thanks to all of
the other volunteers who helped organize
Extern Week, who offered housing to student externs, and who took time from their
work lives to teach Swarthmore students
about a career they may wish to pursue.
Gatherings Extend Experience
MARY-MACK CALLAHAN ’77 (LEFT) AND AMY WHITE
’00. AMY’S EXTERNSHIP TWO YEARS AGO WITH
CALLAHAN’S PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM COMMUNICATION WORKS LED TO A FULL-TIME JOB AFTER
GRADUATION. COMMUNICATION WORKS SPONSORED
THREE EXTERNS THIS YEAR.
UPCOMING CAMPUS
EVENTS
Intercultural Center
10th-Anniversary
Alumni Gathering
April 6
Fa m i l y We e ke n d
April 12–14
Alumni College
June 4–6
A l u m n i We e ke n d
June 7–9
Alumni College Abroad
June 22–29
Fa l l We e ke n d
Sept. 28–29
For more information:
www.swarthmore.edu/alumni
In addition to the externships themselves,
evening events were held in two cities to
allow externs and sponsors to meet each
other. In New York, students and alumni
were invited to a panel discussion called
“Making a Difference and Making a Living.” Panelists Laura Gitelson ’97, J.P. Partland ’90, Thomas Sahagian ’74, Theodore
Silver ’94, Erika Teutsch ’44, and Noël Theodosiou ’94 spoke about their personal and
professional paths post-Swarthmore. Anna
Staab ’02 commented in her program evaluation that “It meant so much to me to hear
that a community could extend beyond
one’s years at Swarthmore and that fellow
grads can support each other in making
career decisions that may be unconventional.”
The Boston event was hosted by Roberta
Chicos ’77 and provided an informal opportunity to put faces with e-mail names, share
stories, and discover connections.
P l a n s fo r N ex t Ye a r
Graae notes: “This year, for the first time,
the extern organizers solicited volunteers by
e-mail only. This worked very well and saved
on postage and paper.
Please make sure that your e-mail
address is up to date with the College if you
are interested in participating in this, and
other, College programs.” To update e-mail
addresses, contact the Alumni and Gift
Records Office at records@swarthmore.edu.
Even if it is not feasible for you to provide an externship at your place of employment, you can still be involved in the program by offering housing to a Swarthmore
student during the extern week, which is
tentatively scheduled for Jan. 13–17, 2003.
MARCH 2002
BARRY MYERS
his year’s Extern program was a huge
success. As usual, it allowed alumni
and students to interact with and learn
from each other. The College had more than
125 alumni volunteers, just slightly more
than last year. On the other hand, student
interest increased by approximately 30 percent. In Philadelphia, the number of student requests for externships doubled. Students were offered externship opportunities
in Boston; New York; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; and through a pilot program
in San Francisco.
Alumni volunteers represented a wide
range of careers, including research medicine, public defense, university administration, investment banking, labor arbitration,
government, public policy, psychology, management consulting, technology, law, and
arts management. One student was able to
work in the frozen tissue collection of the
Museum of Natural History, a great way to
combine interests in science and the
humanities.
The Extern program is extremely important to the College, in part, because of its
benefits to both alumni and students. The
evaluations from both student and alumni
participants confirm their enjoyment of the
activity. Sponsor James Sailer ’90 said: “[My
extern] was motivated, engaged, curious,
and productive. If all of your externs had
such positive attitudes, I am sure you are
dealing with a set of very happy sponsors.”
Emily Chavez ’03 said: “Everyone made
me feel very welcome and was available for
answering any questions I had…. Even if I
don’t choose to pursue nonprofit work in
this particular area—homelessness and lowincome housing issues—I have a sense of
the structure of the organization, which I
think I could apply to other areas.” And
finally, Mary-Mack Callahan ’77 said, “The
talents and enthusiasm of the Swarthmore
students who come into this office consistently surpass our highest expectations—
and the midwinter boost of the energy in
our company benefits all of our work.”
What makes the Extern program even
more impressive is that it is almost entirely
organized by alumni volunteers. We congratulate and offer sincere thanks to this
year’s coordinators: Cynthia Graae ’62,
39
CLASS NOTES
UNTOLD
STORIES
MARTIN NATVIG
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
[1977]
40
Demonstrating that Playboy
bunnies also have an academic
side, this mortarboard-bedecked
Leporida appeared at Commencement 1977. Who can reveal how
the brainy bunny came to adorn
the Bell Tower? And, while you’re
at it, share your recollections and
photographs of other campus
pranks by contacting the Bulletin
at 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 or bulletin@swarthmore.edu. We know
there are lots of untold stories.
C L A R K K E R R ’ 3 2 R E C O U N T S S T E WA R D I N G T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A AT B E R K E L E Y.
then already a complex and daunting university. One of his first
lessons was that power in a complex system is shared, unless and
until the decision is “no”; that is, when the final say is final. He
introduces the reader to this in two utterly different spheres: his
hose of a certain age or younger will remember Clark Kerr as
quick decision not to erect maintenance yards on an attractive piece
the dapper, balding man in black-and-white films who, we
of property because of its scenic beauty (it is now a park); and, ultithought, failed to understand the consequences of the free
mately much more important, his decision against granting tenure
speech movement in Berkeley and then, perversely, was fired by
to certain faculty of less than certain promise. Both of these
Governor Ronald Reagan for failing to contain student demonstraspheres of decision—one administrative, one academic—are
tions. His role as the decent, classic “man in the middle” at the
fraught with personal and political dangers. Woe be to the new
beginning of the tumultuous period of student activism and unipresident who is timid about making the choice; woe be to the
versity response began in the mid-1960s and lasted, in its acute
president who makes the decision too quickly; but greatest woe be
phase, through 1974. The
unto the president who makes
images are indelible and
the wrong decision. From the
wholly inadequate.
evidence of his own words,
This volume, the first of
Kerr appears to be, like the
two written by nonagenarian
final bed in Goldilocks and the
and Swarthmore alumnus
Three Bears, “just right.” DeciKerr, deals not with the politisive but not abrupt, calm and
cal battles that raged around
deliberate, he grew with the
his stewardship of the Univeruniversity, and beyond.
sity of California at Berkeley
Although Kerr has left for
as its first chancellor but with
the second volume the story of
the academic struggles and
the political issues that threattriumphs that led to the creened to swamp his work at the
ation of the greatest universibeginning and succeeded in
ty in the world—the comdoing so in the end, this
bined intellectual power of
recounting of his administrathe campuses of the Universitive accomplishments
ty of California. It was in the
describes, in the most propost–World War II era of
found sense, the record of a
prosperity and institution
great political career within a
building that the University of
great political institution.
California, founded in 1868,
From the perspective of higher
came to the prominence of
education, Kerr’s book is the
world influence.
equivalent of Churchill’s memThrough Kerr, the emergoirs or those of any other
ing forces of technical
leader in a republican form of
STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA–DAVIS PRESENT CLARK KERR WITH A
research and innovation, gov- BOWL OF FRUIT DURING INAUGURAL CEREMONIES HELD IN 1958, WHEN KERR
government. The Chancellor’s
ernment financing, and nearOffice was like No. 10 DownBECAME PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. HE HELD THE POST UNTIL 1967,
universal higher education
ing Street or the White House,
WHEN HE WAS FIRED BY THEN-GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN.
reshaped the arts-and-letthe seat of secular power in a
ters–focused universities of
system of shared governance.
the prewar era. This volume concentrates on the building of BerkeNot only did Kerr serve as an executive by virtue of the appointley into a powerhouse of both science and technology as well as the
ment of the Board of Regents of the University of California, but
broader range of intellectual endeavors.
he also needed the assistance or at least the compliance of the powAlthough the book is first and foremost an institutional history,
erful faculty, both in its more or less organized form of the faculty
it is also an autobiography. In a forthright and modest way, Kerr
and its less formally organized but much more potent cliques,
describes his childhood and personal history to the time of his
departments, or coalitions. The temperament that led him to work
appointment as chancellor in 1947 at age 37. Swarthmore graduates
as a labor negotiator and the skills he honed in his early career as a
will recognize his self-description and identify with his hymn of
faculty member and practitioner of a very pragmatic art both served
praise for what the College meant to him.
him well.
Kerr recounts his learning curve as the new head of what was
—Nancy Bekavac ’69, President of Scripps College
Clark Kerr, The Gold and the Blue: A Personal Memoir of the University
of California, 1949–1967: Volume 1, Academic Triumphs, University of
California Press, 2001
T
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BOOKS & ARTS
Man in the Middle
46
David Kennedy ’80 et al., Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project’s Operation
Ceasefire, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001.
This research publication describes the
Boston Gun Project’s Operation Ceasefire,
which Kennedy designed and directed.
Ethan Knapp ’88, The Bureaucratic Muse:
Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late
Medieval England, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. The author investigates
the autobiographical poetry of Hoccleve and
his life as a clerk of the Privy Seal, providing
insights into the early 15th century and
Middle English literature.
DANIEL MONT, AUTHOR OF A DIF-
Christopher LeRoy Maloney ’93, The Uniter
Arises, Unlimited Publishing, 2001. For
young adults, this Fairyland story is about a
girl—who isn’t just a girl but thinks she
is—and a dog that is an ogre.
Daniel Mont ’83, A Different Kind of Boy: A
Father’s Memoir on Raising a Gifted Child With
Autism, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2002. In
this memoir, the author describes the emotional roller-coaster ride of raising an autistic son, the impact on his family, and the
lessons he has learned about life.
Yongsoo Park ’94, Boy Genius, Akashic
Books, 2002. This odyssey of a
boy seeking to avenge the
wrongs perpetrated by the South
Korean government on his parents continues as he rebels
against all symbols of authority
when he is banished to America.
Bruce Robertson ’76 and
Kathryn Hewitt, Marguerite
Makes a Book, the Getty Museum, 1999. This children’s book,
the story of a young French girl
who carries on her father’s bookpainting tradition in 15th-century Paris, was named one of the
10 best by the Los Angeles Times
last year.
CHRISTOPHER LEROY MALONEY,
FERENT KIND OF BOY, IS AN ECON-
AUTHOR OF THE UNITER ARISES,
OMIST SPECIALIZING IN DISABILI-
WROTE THIS STORY TO FILL A VOID
TY AND WELFARE ISSUES AT THE
FOR HARRY POTTER FANS. WHEN
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SOCIAL
HE’S NOT WRITING, MALONEY STUD-
INSURANCE. HE IS ALSO AN ACTOR
IES NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE IN
John Bartle ’79 and J. White, Evolving Theories of Public Budgeting, Elsevier Science,
2001. This volume examines seven theoretical perspectives of public budgeting: incrementalism, budget process model, organizational process model, median voter model,
the “greedy bureaucrat” model, postmodern
model, and transaction cost model.
Ann Abramson Berlak ’59 and Sekani
Moyenda, Taking It Personally: Racism in the
Classroom From Kindergarten to College, Temple University Press, 2001. This account
offers possibilities for fighting
racism in our schools, chronicling two teachers and their own
educational progress.
Joan Jessop Brewster ’46, with
photographs by William Grade,
The Stained Glass of All Saints’,
Sim’s Press, 2001. Photographs
of the 26 stained glass windows
of All Saints’ Parrish in Peterborough, N.H., are accompanied
by text describing the layout,
symbolism, and evolution of
each window.
Roane Lovett Carey ’82 (ed.),
The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s
Apartheid, Verso Books, 2001.
This collection of essays on the
Israel/Palestine conflict includes
work by Edward Said, Noam
Chomsky, Robert Fisk, and others.
Peter Kimuyu, Bernard Mbui
Wagacha ’73, and Okwach Abagi
(eds.), Kenya’s Strategic Policies
for the 21st Century: Macroeconomic and Sectoral Choices, Institute of Policy Analysis and
Research, 2001. This reprinted
work, first published in 1999,
explores macroeconomic and
sectoral decisions in Kenya.
Jill Coleman ’52, WaterYoga:
OREGON, GOES FOR LONG HIKES,
AND WRITER WHOSE PLAYS HAVE
Water-Assisted Poses for Posture,
AND PRETENDS TO BE A LARGE CAT
Flexibility and Well-Being, 2nd ed., BEEN PRODUCED IN THE WASHINGFOR HIS 2-YEAR-OLD SON.
TON,
D.C.,
AREA.
Eglantine Press, 2002. This edition includes reports of scientific
Rolfe Larson ’77, Venture Forth! The Essential
research—confirming the author’s positive
Eric Wasserman ’79 et al. (eds.), Handbook
Guide to Starting a Money-Making Business in
experience of immersing the body in
of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Arnold
Your Nonprofit Organization, Amherst H.
water—and new poses designed for home
Publishers, 2001. This handbook explains
pools, spas, and hot tubs to increase flexibil- Wilder Foundation, 2002. This practical
the science, principles, and procedures of
step-by-step guide offers ways to negotiate
ity and range of motion, improve posture,
this technique.
the nonprofit world for assistance in
and manage pain.
Eric Arnould, Linda Price, and George
launching sustainable ventures.
Deborah (Smith) Cumming ’63, The
Zinkhan
’74, Consumers, McGraw-Hill,
Descent of Music: Stories, Plum Branch Press, Catherine Lutz ’74, Homefront: A Military
2002.
This
textbook, with supporting mateCity and the American Twentieth Century, Bea2002. These tales about women at the
rial
for
instructors
and students on the Web,
con Press, 2001. Through the experience of
advent of the Peace Corps and the civil
includes
information
on consumer behavior,
rights movement are colored with references the people in Fayetteville, N.C., neighbors to consumption, purchase and acquisition, and
Fort Bragg, this story focuses on the blurred
to art and music.
postacquisition.
boundaries of civilian and military worlds.
MARCH 2002
OTHER RECENT BOOKS
47
BOOKS & ARTS
Two Memoirs
I
sometimes dream of projects I will undertake when I retire. I’ll
go back to painting. I’ll set up the model trains again. My garden
will grow better with more attention. I’ll travel. Maybe I’ll write a
book—everyone’s thought of that. Fortunately for us, Kenneth
Brown ’47 and Peter Karlow ’41 have used their retirements well.
Brown’s Marauder Man: World War II in the Crucial but Little
Known B-26 Marauder Medium Bomber (Pacifica Military History,
Pacifica, Calif., 2001) is explained by its subtitle. His love affair
with the sturdy twin-engine Martin bombers that carried him over
German-occupied Europe in the last year of the war makes his
book an important history of that aircraft—as well as the story of a
young Quaker who decided that the fight against fascism outranked his pacifist beliefs.
At the climax of the European war, Brown served as bombardier
and navigator with the 391st Bombardment Group. He flew 43 missions—more than half of them as a lead navigator for a flight of six
planes.
Feb. 24, 1945, was particularly memorable. Brown’s bomber
group was to attack a railroad bridge deep in German territory.
Heavy antiaircraft fire over the target brought down three of the
bombers, with heavy loss of life. After bombing a secondary target,
Brown’s flight of seven B-26s endured 45 minutes of relentless German flak as they zigzagged back to Allied territory. Several planes
were badly damaged, and two—including Brown’s—crash-landed
at the air base. Of the 27 planes that had participated in the attack,
7 were destroyed and 14 damaged.
In Marauder Man, Brown relates tales of great danger with a
cool confidence, but it is clear that the mayhem and destruction all
around him were deeply affecting. At the end of the book, he
writes: “When I reflect now upon World War II, my mind still
floods with feelings. I well remember how the blood ran rich and
full, and every moment was cherished, an oft-remarked reaction to
death seeming imminent…. I am overwhelmed with humility and
gratitude, to whatever powers rule our lives, that I survived the war
intact.”
A brush with death is also a turning point in Peter Karlow’s
memoir Targeted by the CIA: An Intelligence Professional Speaks Out on
GABRIEL CUMMING ’00 TOOK THE
COVER PHOTO OF MOTHER DEBORAH
CUMMING’S [’63] BOOK THE DESCENT
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
OF MUSIC. THE AUTHOR, WHO CUR-
48
RENTLY LIVES IN DAVIDSON, N.C.,
HAS TAUGHT IN INDIA, THAILAND,
NEW YORK CITY, AND SOUTH CAROLINA. SHE WON THE SOUTH CAROLINA ARTS COMMISSION FELLOWSHIP IN LITERATURE IN 1995–96.
SHE IS THE CO-EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR OF A PREMIER BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY THAI VERSE.
the Scandal That Turned the CIA
Upside Down (Turner Publishing,
Paducah, Ky., 2001). Karlow held
a Navy commission during the
war but was actually an intelligence operative with the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). In February 1944,
he was off the coast of Italy, delivering a radar set to an intelligence
outpost, when his PT boat struck
a mine. It cost him his left leg.
After the war, Karlow helped
write the operational history of
the OSS and joined the CIA
almost at its inception, rising
through the ranks in analytical
and operational jobs. In 1963, at
the height of the Cold War, he
became the target of a “molehunt” within the agency. A Russian defector, Anatoly Golitsin,
had hinted that there was a KGB
agent within U.S. intelligence
whose last name began with “K.”
Although a four-month investigation proved nothing, he resigned
from the agency. It took him more
than 25 years to clear his name.
(The story of his vindication, as
previously told in the December 1992 Bulletin, can be found at
www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/mar02/books.)
Karlow’s defense of his integrity—and his indignation at having
it questioned—is only part of a warm, expansive memoir of an
extraordinary life. He and Ken Brown are the real thing. Reading
about their lives makes me think that if I ever get around to writing
my own memoir, I probably ought to try fiction.
—Jeffrey Lott
CALENDAR
Jeremy Simes Schomer ’76 contributed the poem “Dove Call” to
the United Nations’ 2002 Calendar for Peace. Free copies may be
obtained by contacting Ruth Steinkraus-Cohen at (203) 227-2253 or
info@una-connecticut.org.
SCREENPLAY
Asbed Pogharian ’84, Swallow Got Canned. This comedy, a second
screenplay, was optioned by a director who has a two-picture deal
with MGM.
WEB SITE
Ben Fritz ’99 and Brendan Nyhan ’00 have helped launch a Web
site called spinsanity, which Fritz says “deconstructs spin in political
media with daily posts and weekly columns.” Get the story behind
the story at www.spinsanity.org.
AT 7 8 , E R I K A T E U T S C H ’ 4 4 S T I L L WO R K S F U L L T I M E TO M A K E A D I F F E R E N C E F O R P E O P L E .
I
n the lobby of an Upper West Side senior
center,a dispute has erupted.The daily
domino game is being displaced by the
monthly art opening.Even though this scheduling conflict also happened last month and
the month before that,the domino players are
upset.
Erika Teutsch quietly intervenes.The
domino players relent,picking up their blackand-white tiles and moving to the dining
room. “We worked it out,” Teutsch says,gesturing like a shuttle diplomat delivering a
communiqué.
At 78,Teutsch is older than the typical person at the busy senior center,which occupies
the ground floor of the Goddard Riverside
Community Center.She moves easily among
the dozen or so elderly artists and onlookers
who sip juice and munch potato chips at the
art exhibit,and she speaks to several by name.
Almost all of them seem to know her name—
because Teutsch is the full-time director of the
center.
“It’s my retirement job,” she explains.“I
still get excited about what I’m doing,and I
like the seniors.I figure I’ll keep going until I
can’t remember anybody’s name;then I’ll stop
working.”
Erika Teutsch has always worked.Her
resume includes a stint at the Office of Strategic Services (the World War II intelligence
agency) and postwar jobs with the Reparations Commission in Paris and the U.S.military government in Berlin.After studying economics at Columbia University,she worked at
the Federal Reserve and then spent 10 years
doing research on foreign economic policy
and development for the Rockefeller family.
She then worked in Washington,D.C.,as
chief of staff for Democratic Congressman
William Ryan,who represented the Upper
West Side.“This was the most meaningful
and exciting work I ever did,” Teutsch says.
“He was a committed liberal who saw government policy and programs as a way to make a
positive difference in the lives of his constituents.”
In the 1970s,she served as director of
Governor Hugh Carey’s New York City office
and as regional director for adult services in
the New York State Department of Social
Services,where she helped regulate,monitor,
JEFFREY LOTT
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
52
Living in the Present
ERIKA TEUTSCH RUNS A BUSY SENIOR CENTER IN NEW YORK’S UPPER WEST SIDE. SHE SAYS SHE’LL STOP
WORKING WHEN SHE “CAN’T REMEMBER ANYBODY’S NAME.”
and provide technical assistance to adult
homes and shelters for the homeless.
Since 1991,she has been at Goddard Riverside as director of senior services—where she
develops programs,plans services,and represents the agency on issues relating to the elderly. The center offers social services,meals,
classes,exercise programs,outings,and—perhaps most important—a place for interaction
and companionship.
Not everyone who needs senior services
comes to a community center,however. In
New York City,says Teutsch,about a third of
the elderly live alone,many in what have come
to be called “naturally occurring retirement
communities”—buildings or housing developments where a generation has aged together. State and city agencies,working with settlement houses and community organizations
such as Goddard Riverside,are starting to provide social services and community activities
to these residents right in their buildings.
“Just having a part-time social worker in a
building can make an enormous difference in
these folks’ quality of life and sense of community,” says Teutsch,who has helped organize such efforts.“Organized retirement com-
munities are great for people who can afford
them,but what most people want is just to
stay put.This program helps them stay in
their own homes.”
“Retirement is changing,” she observes.
“For many,retirement just means changing
the nature of your activity,doing more of the
things that interest you.Everyone has their
own way of approaching it.”
At Goddard Riverside,she says,“We spend
our time living in the present.Some people
spend the whole day here every day—that’s
their life now.Their friends are here,and they
find a role to play at the center.Others just
come in for a class or a trip or for lunch.In the
present,it doesn’t matter much what you did
before.”
Still,experience counts,and Teutsch is
pleased by the changing attitudes toward
older people—attitudes that have made it
possible for her to continue working in her
late 70s.“People are looking for the experience that older people bring.We may not be
able to fix the computers,but there are important areas where age and experience are welcomed.”
—Jeffrey Lott
ROGER HEACOCK ’62 LIVES IN THE LINE OF FIRE.
I
n late 2000,Palestine was at the beginning
of a new crisis.After years of working
toward a final settlement agreement with
Israel,and nearly achieving it at Camp David,
the hope of peace was shattered in an explosion of violence—the al-Aqsa Intifada.Roger
Heacock,a professor of history at Bir Zeit University in Palestine,was upset by the response
to the renewed conflict by foreign nationals
living in Palestine.Most of them began to
leave,many directed by the United Nations
and other international agencies that employed them.
Heacock set about to rally the remaining
foreigners.In his November 2000 Manifesto
of Foreign Nationals Living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,Heacock and other co-signers
asked why so many foreigners had “abandoned the Palestinians to their fate at the very
time when they are most in need.” Despite the
constant security threat,Heacock’s alliance
proclaimed that they would “remain … as
workers and witnesses to the struggle and the
hardships of the Palestinian people.”
Heacock has been living outside the United States since 1970.He was teaching at Colorado College at the time and says he “turned
against U.S.policy” in Vietnam and became
part of a quixotic movement for a “reverse
brain drain” to protest American military
action.A birthright Quaker,he had been a
conscientious objector since the early 1960s
and increasingly identified with the internationalist movement,which Heacock says “supports the liberation struggles of occupied people everywhere.” Arriving first in Geneva,he
took up a teaching position at the Graduate
Institute of International Studies and later
taught at the American University in Cairo
and the University of Paris,where he met his
wife,Laura Wick.He even brought his family
to Nicaragua for a while during the Sandinista
era in an act of solidarity with the ongoing
socialist revolution.
As a child of an American diplomat who
grew up in several Western European countries, Heacock always had a more international outlook than his American-bred classmates.
Yet he admits that he stayed more on the
political sidelines during his time at Swarthmore, when “the movements for integration,
peace,socialism,and communism were rife in
JESSICA CAREW KRAFT ʼ99
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
60
Professor in Palestine
ROGER HEACOCK (FAR RIGHT) MOVED TO OCCUPIED PALESTINE IN 1983, IN THE WAKE OF U.S. AND
ISRAELI ACTION AGAINST PALESTINIANS IN LEBANON. HE AND HIS WIFE, LAURA WICK (SECOND FROM
RIGHT), WANTED TO “BEAR WITNESS AND LIVE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIANS.”
THEIR THREE CHILDREN, LIVIA, JAMAL, AND ALEXIS, HAVE BEEN RAISED THERE.
the ‘Kremlin on the Crum,’ which was regularly visited by the likes of Pete Seeger and Gus
Hall,head of the U.S.Communist Party.” He
participated in attempts to integrate white
establishments in Chester and rallied against
the embargo on Castro’s Cuba.He also
remembers attending a rally for John F.
Kennedy and,“along with others,holding up
a sign that read,“Mr.Kennedy:What is your
Program for Peace?” Given that his family’s
Philadelphia Quaker roots stretch back to the
17th century,his later interest in peace action
after college does not seem surprising.
Heacock’s academic works are similarly
focused,ranging from an assessment of 18thcentury European landscape design and its
influence in the Middle East to overarching
reviews of American foreign policy.He manages to use his fluent German,French,and
Italian in his published work.Heacock also
teaches and consults with students in Arabic,
which he learned during his time in Cairo.
Heacock came to Palestine in 1983,in the
wake of U.S.and Israeli action against Palestinians in Lebanon.He and his wife wanted to
“bear witness and live in solidarity with the
occupied Palestinians.” They settled in Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem,and have stayed
there through the 1987 intifada,the Gulf War,
and now the second intifada.Their three children have all grown up there,which Heacock
says has led them to question their identities,
as they are truly global citizens—half-French,
half-American residents of Israeli-occupied
Palestine.
His 16-year-old son Jamal,the youngest
child,attends the French school in West
Jerusalem.A little more than a year ago,the
commute to school from Ramallah was safe
and quick,but it is now an intense,often dangerous journey through two Israeli border
checkpoints.In early September of this year,a
bomb exploded in front of Jamal’s school.No
students were hurt,but Heacock admits that
“it has been infernal every day worrying about
my son;it’s been a terrible year.”
In these heavy times,he keeps a copy of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in his book bag,a
rather erudite choice for “escapist literature.”
But he claims that “it is actually quite funny”
and then comments about Chaucer’s racier
themes that are edited out of classroom editions.
It is this kind of delightful humor and congenial outlook on life that contribute to Heacock’s optimism regarding eventual peace and
the establishment of democracy in Palestine.
Yet he maintains that “the current violence
will never end until the occupation ends.” And
as he wrote in his Manifesto,he intends to remain to see that happen.
—Jessica Carew Kraft ’99
IN MY LIFE
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
64
Living on the Chinese Frontier
A GWEILO COUNTS TO 20 WITH XIAO ZHANG.
By S t ep h e n B u rn s ’7 1
I
returned not long ago from a posting in Shenzhen, a large and
sprawling industrial city in Guangdong province, China. Locate
Hong Kong on a map, and you’re almost there; a golf pro could
drive a ball south across the irrecoverably polluted Shenzhen River
to the New Territories, as I myself often tried to do in my leisure
moments until the border patrol sternly warned me to stop. Despite
the proximity to this former outpost of British civilization, I might
as well have been living on a desert island (minus the associated
amenities), so isolated is this Chinese city—culturally, socially, and
logistically—from the outside world. A two-hour wait at the border
customs post typically faces the unwary traveler who would venture
in by train from Hong Kong for a peek at the mainland. An electrified fence with checkpoints manned by
the internal immigration police has kept
Shenzhen divided from the rest of the
mainland ever since its inception as a
"special economic zone" in Chinese
bureaucrat-speak, as if that would prevent Deng Xiao Ping’s fledgling experiments with capitalism in this former
fishing village from contaminating the
politically correct socialist thinking of
the interior.
Although I lived through some defining moments in Chinese history—the
death of Deng, the ascension of Jiang,
the retrocession of Hong Kong and
Macao—my personal life was microcosmically centered around maintaining my
own equilibrium in this most chaotic
and uncharming corner of China. I
sought to insulate myself from the environment by slipping into comfortable
invisibility rather than interact and risk getting caught up in the
madness that surrounds unrestrained economic development in a
moral and intellectual vacuum.
My Chinese business partner had, after searching extensively,
found a family that not only was willing to accept a gweilo (foreign
devil) boarder but also had an apartment with a spare room, a rarity
in this overcrowded city. I paid a few hundred dollars a month to
live with Ho Bing and, in so doing, increased his household income
substantially. The mainland Chinese save a larger portion of their
small salaries than most any other people; however, in the course of
my first few months with the Ho family, I started to notice some
subtle effects brought about by the extra revenue. Mr. Ho bought
several new shirts, the son cut his hair more frequently, the supply
in Mrs. Ho’s pantry grew—but that was only the beginning. After I
took home leave one summer, I returned to learn that the family had
taken their first vacation ever and, prompted by my beaming host,
noted approvingly that the old and temperamental hot water heater
in the bathroom had been replaced by one that functioned without
the strategic application of chewing gum or rubber bands.
As part of my daily routine, I was always out of the apartment
and on my way to work before sunrise; thus, the streets were not as
packed as they would become an hour later with hordes of bicyclists
and pedestrians, swarms of scooters, columns of dilapidated
minibuses spewing smoky exhaust, and army trucks asserting their
priority over all the latter. I soon became oblivious to the stares of
the passersby and started to feel that I was just one of the 1.2 billion
people who call this most populous of all nations their home. In
reality, as the only gweilo in the quarter, I probably stood out as if I
glowed with neon.
SHENZHEN IS A SPRAWLING INDUSTRIAL CITY IN GUANGDONG PROVINCE,
CHINA. LOCATE HONG KONG ON A MAP, AND YOU’RE ALMOST THERE.
On occasion, some of the passersby, conscious of my unchanging
daily route—which, of course, my security personnel strongly
advised me not to have—took the initiative to say a word or two in
English to me, if only “good morning" (which usually ended up
sounding like guji maji) and then sped on their way without awaiting my reply. My favorite of all was a child of some 4 years of age on
his way to preschool with his parents. How we got into the habit of
doing so, I don’t recall, but this invariably cheerful youngster and I
together counted to 20 in English most every morning, to the admiration of the crowd that spontaneously formed. Prodded by his
proud parents, he even gave a credible shot at the alphabet. My
young pupil was as austerely clothed as his elders, so during a busi-
received an M.B.A. from one of the numerous third-rate American
schools that specialize in the lucrative niche of educating the privileged youth of developing nations. Han Ping, my second-in-command, was as devious a colleague as I’ve encountered anywhere, and
I still chuckle at the recollection of his escapades. Not too many
accountants of my acquaintance rifle through the office trash bins
after office hours to report their contents to their party bosses. Yet,
in the end, we accomplished our mission of starting up a joint venture and parted ways, if not best friends, then at least with a better
understanding of each other’s Weltanschauung.
While growing up, my grandparents’ idea of exposing me to foreign culture was taking the family to dinner in Paris’ Chinatown one
Sunday a month. Remarkably foreshadowing future events in my
life, I developed an unusual facility with chopsticks as a child, which
was to earn me great admiration in Asia decades later. In most any
business dinner where East meets West, the Asians will use silverware, and the Europeans will use chopsticks—each in an effort to
impress the other with their multicultural agility. Indeed, at one
such dinner, my nimbleness with these instruments was rewarded
with breaking a deadlock with a recalcitrant customs inspector who
had been needlessly holding up the import of a critical piece of production machinery for our factory.
For fun, I regularly taught conversational English at the local
night university, and hundreds attended my two-hour–long classes.
After a day’s work, there was scarcely one tired face in the lecture
hall, excepting perhaps my own, although Mr. Ho—an occasional
Stephen Burns is currently a consultant who lives in suburban
Philadelphia.
MARCH 2002
I developed an unusual
facility with chopsticks
as a child,
which was to earn me
great admiration in Asia
decades later.
attendee despite his
10-word vocabulary—informed me
that my students
most likely napped
during office hours
while at their mindmummifying jobs.
Nonetheless, and
even though individual skill level varied, they devoted
themselves to my
lessons with the single-mindedness of
purpose typically
associated with the
success of many
overseas Chinese,
once liberated from
STEPHEN BURNS, WEARING TRADITIONAL CHINESE
the repressive enviGARMENTS, ASSUMES A "SUITABLY ASIAN POSE."
ronment of their
homeland.
I started my
sojourn in this very foreign corner of Asia with the expectation—
indeed, the intent—of remaining an outsider. I had expected the
cultural and linguistic barriers to be simply insurmountable, even
over a period of years. But in examining the evolution of my life over
the course of my posting, I see that I finally did integrate myself
into the society, even if in a very special and transitory way. Mr. Ho
often proclaimed me his brother after a night of drinking Tsingtao
together. The Hos’ son and I slowly advanced our way together
through the belt rankings of kung fu. I developed a large circle of
friends among my English students and have received numerous emails from them. Through my business connections, I got to know
several of the very few personalities of any cultural attainment in
Guangdong province. A calligraphy painted for me by one of them,
Gin Long, hangs in my study. And most important to me, Xiao
Zhang, encouraged by his parents, started calling me “Uncle," a title
expressing both respect and affection.
Inevitably, the end of my stay in Shenzhen approached. Just as
well, as the Hong Kong fiscal authorities had inexplicably decided
that part of my income was taxable in what had then become the
Special Administrative Region, and I had no intention of enriching
Mr. Tung’s bloated coffers. For me, it was just a transition point
from one job to the next, and I have returned to a quiet existence in
Pennsylvania. For the Ho family, however, it marked the end of the
good life, as they have had to adapt to half the income they enjoyed
while I was their guest. Perhaps my young star pupil has forgotten
both me and the English alphabet. But if I ever do return to
Shenzhen and search hard enough, I hope to see some other small
child proudly sporting a colorful, if now faded, T-shirt with the seal
of the canton of Geneva. T
LAURYN BURNS
ness trip to Switzerland, I bought him a bright red and yellow Tshirt. The day Xiao (little) Zhang first wore it, he was surely the
most conspicuous child in a city whose dominant color is the gray of
unfinished concrete.
But sooner or later, I had to abandon my role of private English
tutor and start the daily grind.
I worked alongside a privileged class of young Chinese “cadres,"
as finance director of a Sino-European joint venture. Most of my coworkers had university degrees; some had even traveled overseas.
One—the deputy communist party leader of our joint venture—had
65
L AW Y E R M . K E L LY T I L L E R Y ’ 7 6 P R O T E C T S A L L K I N D S O F B U S I N E S S E S F R O M M O D E R N - D AY P I R AT E S .
F
or attorney Kelly Tillery,a day’s work might
easily—and actually did—involve representing an extreme right-wing organization in
the morning,defending The Grateful Dead in
the afternoon,then partying late into the
night with the “Dead” and members of the
Carter administration.
As a youth,Tillery dreamed of being a
drummer in a rock band—but he didn’t consider himself talented enough.Later,after
graduating from Swarthmore with High Honors in history,he wanted to indulge a passion
for history and love for his alma mater by
becoming a Swarthmore history professor—
but academic jobs in his area were scarce.So,
following in his father’s footsteps,he became a
lawyer,specializing in intellectual property,
with an emphasis on anti-counterfeiting.
“Unable to be an artist myself,” he says,“I
consider myself very fortunate to be contributing to the artistic,intellectual,and scientific
development of this country by protecting the
art and discoveries of those who do have creative abilities.”
Chair and senior partner of the Intellectual
Property and E-Commerce Group of the
Philadelphia-based law firm of Leonard,
Tillery,and Sciola LLP,Tillery,affectionately
known as “Mr.Search and Seizure,” has garnered a national reputation chasing down
bootleggers from the music,movie,computer
software,pharmaceutical,and fashion industries. His haul of confiscated products
includes phony Rolex watches,counterfeit
photos and posters of stars like Ricky Martin
and The Backstreet Boys,Power Ranger and
Jurassic Park action figures,bootlegged sneakers, and copied concert T-shirts.His clients
range from Madonna to Meatloaf,Barney to
Bruce Springsteen,The Who to U2,The
Rolling Stones to Rod Stewart,Adidas to
Nike,Microsoft to Mobil Oil,The Wharton
School to Warner Brothers,and Bill Graham
to Bill Gates.
Since his first case in 1979 representing
heavy-metal rockers Black Sabbath,he says,
“I’ve represented virtually every major pop or
rock-and-roll artist in a variety of intellectual
property matters.” Using informants,investigators, and lawyers or the victims themselves,
who see their pirated products being sold on
the street,he roots out the counterfeiters,
KEN YANOVIAK
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
“ M r. S e a r c h a n d S e i z u r e ”
"THE INTERNET IS A VAST WILD WEST OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INFRINGEMENTS," SAYS KELLY
TILLERY. COMPARING COUNTERFEITERS TO VERMIN, HIS GOAL IS, IF NOT TO ERADICATE, AT
LEAST TO CONTROL THEM.
comparing them to roaches—tenacious and
pervasive vermin who can never be completely
eliminated.“But when the light goes on,you
can see them,and then you can stamp on
them,and that’s a large part of what I do.”
Vehement in his condemnation of electronic copyright infringement,he agrees
wholeheartedly with the injunction upheld by
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against
Napster.“Quite clearly,based upon the case
law and the statutes,it is theft of intellectual
property and should have been stopped from
day 1,” he says.Although the current development of new systems will enable the artists
and the people who create the artistic material
to be appropriately compensated,he adds:
“The Internet is a vast Wild West of intellectual property infringements and violations of
lots of laws otherwise,and that’s going to continue for a while.It is controllable,by a combination of both law and technology.Neither
one alone will be sufficient to stop it.”
Describing legal activities “that can range
from the sublime to the ridiculous,” Tillery
recalls appearing before a federal judge then,
later that night,while backstage after a Grateful Dead concert,clothing a naked Jerry Garcia
groupie by offering her a counterfeit T-shirt.
He has also defended both a major religious
institution and an adult entertainment organization, all in one day.
Life can be dangerous,too.“My life has
been threatened on several occasions,” he
says,“and my tires slashed by people in the
counterfeiting industry who know I’m after
them.” Wearing a wire and a bulletproof vest
and accompanied by large men “with big muscles, big guns,and big badges,” he orchestrates raids on warehouses,homes,or trucks
that result in the seizure of millions of dollars
worth of bootlegged goods.
For someone claiming to be uncreative,
Tillery has carved himself quite a colorful
niche in the legal world.“I enjoy it immensely,” he says,“and it’s certainly different from
doing wills or mergers and acquisitions.”
Comments about the College drift through
the conversation.“Excluding the last eight
years of my life as a husband and father,my
four years at Swarthmore were the most wonderful of my life,” he says.He credits his
Swarthmore professors with teaching him to
think critically and analytically and dissect evidence and argument and reassemble them
into cogent thought.“Swarthmore also greatly
reinforced my passion for truth,equality,and
justice.It was an invaluable time.” As a native
of the Deep South,he sees himself as a beneficiary of the College’s striving for a diversified
student body,saying,“The College hasn’t had
many students from the bayous of Louisiana.”
Tillery likes to laugh,and he does it a lot.
He feels grateful and privileged to be leading
such a full and successful professional life.Yet,
the real joys in his life are his wife,Susyn,and
three young children,Alexander,7;Erin,4;
and Kate,2.His leisure time is spent primarily
with them,teaching them to read and ride
their bikes,and,recently,giving Alexander
drum lessons.He even took the two older
ones to a concert of his clients ’N Sync.
Because of a delay,by the time the concert
began,both children were fast asleep.“But
they got their T-shirts and little lights,” he
says,“so they were happy.” Just like their dad.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
Continued f r om p a g e 3
consequence of this depravity is that human
beings band together in communities for
the purpose of pillaging others or for the
purpose of self-protection—often for both.
And as soon as one organized group of
human beings appears on the scene, the
large-scale violence that we call war becomes
possible. All others must thereupon band
together to meet violence with violence.
They must do this or risk being destroyed.
As a Marxist, Bradley implies that it is
wrong to attribute evil to human beings
because the word “evil” implies the existence of an indelible badness in at least
some of us. Criminal violence, therefore,
does not follow from human nature but is
caused by defects in the organization of
society. Violent aggression—including ter-
“The most fundamental
task of the nation-state is to
protect its members by
waging war when necessary
against outside aggressors.”
rorism—can be explained by some social
grievance, and every social grievance is, at
least in principle, correctable. This is why
Bradley insists that the terrorist attacks
were merely a crime; having convinced
others of this point, he can then insist that
we change the conditions that produced
this “crime.” Bradley and his fellow utopians
thus hold out hope that we can create a new
Eden by reorganizing society.
Which of these two teachings is correct?
I submit that the philosophical and biblical
tradition got it right, and that it is Bradley’s
response—one that has been echoed by far
too many in the academy—that reflects a
failure of intelligence and imagination. The
most fundamental task of the nation-state
is to protect its members by waging war
when necessary against outside aggressors.
The state that is unable or unwilling to do
this will soon cease to exist. And as John
Stuart Mill said, “War is an ugly thing, but
not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling
which thinks nothing worth a war, is
worse.”
JACOB HOWLAND ’80
Tulsa, Okla.
OBJECTIVITY IMPOSSIBLE
The Swarthmore I graduated from was quite
different from the one in which faculty
member Farha Ghannam teaches a course
on Middle Eastern cultures while publicly
linking Muslim attacks on America to double standards in U.S. foreign policy. Her
statement in the article “Peace, Politics, and
Justice” that “the solution ultimately lies in
changing U.S. policies in the Middle East”
is as dangerous as it is flawed.
Prior to 1967, all controversial territories
that Palestinians decry as the root of their
uprising were fully under Muslim control.
Yet simply because it provided a safe haven
for Jews, Israel was attacked by every Middle
Eastern Muslim nation that had an army.
Israel’s painful offer of the same territories
in return for a permanent peace was met
with Palestinian terrorism aimed at murdering any living Jew—suicide missions for
which some 70 percent of Palestinian civilians proclaimed their support. Perhaps there
would be a form of “peace” if the Jews,
whose roots to the land go back 3,000
years, were pushed into the sea as Arafat has
proposed.
The Middle East is no more the cause of
Bin Laden terrorism than the crusaders
from a millennium ago, even if Palestinians
did celebrate the World Trade Center
attacks. America’s mistakes in pre–Sept. 11
Afghanistan related to backing down from
moral principles for the sake of political/
globalization strategies. We have learned our
lesson the hard way. I hope we will not make
the same mistake (as Ms. Ghannam seems
to wish) in the Middle East, where Israel is
our only honest ally.
Because I cherish my alma mater, I am
deeply saddened to imagine the current student climate where a faculty member teaches
a subject about which she cannot possibly
be an objective educator. What evaluation
might I obtain in Ms. Ghannam’s class?
Worse yet, what lessons would be espoused
as “moral”?
DAVID FISHER ’79
Boston
Miguel Díaz-Barriga, associate professor and
acting chair of the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology, replies: “In her teaching, Professor Ghannam fosters considered and vigorous debate that questions ideological conformism. In the spirit of the educational
mission of Swarthmore, this debate includes
discussion of U.S. policy. The College’s mission is excellently served by Professor Ghannam, and Swarthmore is fortunate that she
has chosen to join the faculty.”
HERITAGE OF PEACE
Thank you for the “War and Peace” issue.
Patriotic pacifists have had a rough time
lately, and it helps to be reminded of our
rich heritage.
My Swarthmore roommate, the late Sue
Nason, worked in the Peace Collection and
frequently brought back tidbits of pacifist
history. She and I were fascinated by the
elderly pacifist-suffragist ladies residing
near the campus in the 1950s, looking
“Patriotic pacifists have had
a rough time lately, and it
helps to be reminded of our
rich heritage.”
exactly like our own black-clad grandmothers, wearing hats and gloves on all public
appearances. She reported that many of
them had demonstrated and some had been
jailed for acts of civil disobedience. At that
time, the Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom was on the infamous
“Attorney General’s List” of allegedly communist-affiliated organizations.
I feel grief and rage at the loss of so
many civilians who were simply doing their
jobs on Sept. 11. However, I wonder how
bombing impoverished civilians in Afghanistan fits in with making the world safe for
democracy.
MARY BOYCE GELFMAN ’57
Ridgefield, Conn.
WRITE TO US
The Bulletin welcomes letters concerning the
contents of the magazine or issues relating
to the College. Address your letters to: Editor, Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College
Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1390, or send by
e-mail to bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
MARCH 2002
LETTERS
79
M A N U E L F E R N A N D E Z - M O N T E S I N O S GA R C Í A ’ 5 4 PAY S H O M AG E TO H I S U N C L E
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA.
By Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59
F
ederico García Lorca was only 38
Manolo was a fanatic Dodger fan, and I was
when he was brutally killed by Genera Giants fan. We watched the World Series
al Franco’s troops in 1936 at the start
on TV and saw Bobby Thompson’s home run.”
of the Spanish Civil War. Today, he remains
Navasky said he’ll never forget Manny’s
a towering figure among modern poets and
weekly morning show on WSRN: “He’d beplaywrights. He left the world three great
gin it with Leadbelly’s ‘Good Morning Blues’
tragedies, Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The
and then give misinformation like ‘Steak and
House of Bernarda Alba, and such poems as
eggs are being served for breakfast in Parrish.’
“Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter” and
Or he’d say it was 7:45 a.m., and we had
“Poet in New York.” His works are marked
plenty of time to get to class, when it was
by a personal vision and an empathy toward
really 7:58. He had a great sense of humor.”
the peasants of his native Andalusia.
Navasky also remembers campfire parties
Manuel “Manny” Fernández-Monin Crum Meadow, organized by Dan Singer
tesinos García is García Lorca’s nephew and
’51, where Manny would sing songs from the
has translated into concrete achievements
Lincoln Brigade, the international continthe ideals in his uncle’s works. He champigent that fought with the anti-Franco forces
oned the rights of Spanish workers in Gerin the Spanish Civil War.
man industry, which brought him into the
As a freshman, Manny had the distinction
struggle for the freedom of Spain itself.
of dating a senior, Marilyn Miller Minden
Manny was born into “a good bourgeois
’51. “What I remember most about Manolo,”
liberal family in a small provincial city,”
she said, “was his sense of fun. He was
Granada. His mother, García Lorca’s
always alert to everything, and he made sure
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA VISITED WITH HIS
younger sister, had married a physician.
that other people were awake too. And he
NIECE, VINCENTA, AND HIS NEPHEW, MANUEL
Long active in the Socialist Party, Manny’s
was fierce about justice. ‘Always protest,’ I
father served 10 days as mayor before he was “MANNY” FERNANDEZ-MONTESINOS GARCÍA, IN
remember hearing him say once, almost to
shot by fascist troops; García Lorca was exe- GRANADA IN SUMMER 1935.
himself, laughing. I thought that moment
cuted 3 days later.
defined him: laughing and protesting.”
Only 4 years old at the time, Manny didn’t learn the circumManny didn’t have a clear career goal as a young man because of
stances of his father’s death until later when he overheard conver“so much improvisation” in his life. The family’s time in America
sations by family friends. “I then read about it,” he said, “in a short
was “unsteady and unpredictable. Always waiting for something to
English biography of my uncle.”
end or start: the end of the Civil War; waiting for the end of World
The surviving relatives moved to the United States in August
War II, when we thought the Allies would overthrow Franco
1940, settling first in New Jersey and then New York City. There he
instead of backing his dictatorship. We felt our sojourn in the Unitbecame friends with high school classmate Victor Navasky ’54,
ed States was provisional. We lived in the United States for 11 years
today the publisher and editorial director of The Nation, who knew
with visitor visas.”
him as Manolo. Navasky said they worked together one summer at
Returning to Spain under Franco was difficult, Manny said,
a Long Island school for “privileged children of Latin American dic“but the nostalgia of returning was stronger.” His aunt spent the
tators—macho kids, New York types. We were singing waiters, and
summers of 1950 and 1951 there “to see how involved one had to
we put on The Mikado. Manolo played Koko, the one who’s ‘got a
be with the regime.” She discovered that “to live peacefully, you no
little list.’”
longer had to be an active follower of the regime as in previous
During the McCarthy era, Elisabeth Irwin High School “was
years. You could not, of course, be openly against it.” So, in 1951,
considered a hotbed of progressive radical stuff,” Navasky said. “A
the other relatives went home.
classic Marxist history teacher was on the attorney general’s list of
As a University of Madrid law student, Manny joined the secret
subversives—a great teacher. The principal was called before a conAgrupación Socialista Universitaria. In 1956, he was arrested durgressional committee after we left.”
ing a student riot for distributing leaflets demanding the free elecManny said he enrolled at Swarthmore “because it was well
tion of student representatives—costing him a year in prison.
known in intellectual circles: liberal, with a tinge of Quakerism,
Once Manny was released, García Lorca’s German translator
coed, small but with high standards.” He and Navasky decided to
helped him get a scholarship to the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
room together. Did they stay up late discussing international
He already had enough credits for a doctorate in law from Madrid,
affairs? “No,” said Navasky. “We discussed girls. And baseball—
he said, “but in the spring of 1958, I started to work for the Ger-
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
FUNDACÍÓN FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA
BAC K PAG E S
A Socialist in Franco’s Spain
80
JUAN CARLOS G
ARCÍ
AD
E
PO
LA
VIE
JA
man Trade Unions and abandoned my studies.”
Then, this son of the Andalusian intelligentsia threw himself
into the cause of immigrant Spanish laborers, working for the
Frankfurt local chapter of the metal workers union, “the strongest,
most influential and progressive union in Germany.” In the late
1950s, 150,000 Spanish workers were in Germany; by 1970, there
were nearly a million. Manny and his colleagues ran campaigns to
get them to join the union, publishing a newsletter in
Spanish and explaining the benefits of collective bargaining. “Most important was to show what a difference there was between the fascist trade
unions under Franco and free trade unionism,”
he said.
“All this time, I was in contact with the
Spanish organizations in exile in France. We
founded sections of these organizations
among Spanish workers in Germany. Then,
we established direct relations with clandestine organizations in Spain itself, so that I
spent half my time in Spain and the other
half in Germany.”
In 1964, Manny returned home and established a legal practice, specializing in labor law. It
was secretly funded by the German metal workers
union and the International Metal Workers
Association in Geneva, with backing from
the United Auto Workers in the United
States. “Spanish trade unionism had always
been political,” he said. “Each party had its
own union.”
The exiled leaders of the Spanish socialist
union, Manny said, “were older men who
had not lived in Spain since 1939 and did not
see a changing reality. Our legal practice was
really a short-lived front for the underground
socialist union, working without the consent
of the leadership in exile. In order not to be considered traitors, we
founded a new movement without political affiliation.”
He and three colleagues attended a meeting of the International
Metal Workers Association in Amsterdam in June 1965. Two months
later, they were arrested. “Even though I was freed on bail—circumstances had changed since 1956, when there was no bail for
‘political crimes’—I could not leave the country,” he said. The four
were sentenced to six months in prison for “illegal association.”
After his release, he went to Germany on vacation, where he
learned from an American friend at Merrill-Lynch that another
management consulting firm was looking for someone with his
background. He applied and was hired. “I was really in a maze as to
my future,” he said. “I certainly did not want to risk new jail terms.
Freeing the Spanish socialist organization from the exiled leadership seemed impossible. So I decided it would be fun to see industry from the other side.”
Manny got more business experience in the mid-1970s at the
largest Spanish-owned food corporation. By now, he said, the
socialists “had succeeded in doing what some of us probably tried
to do too soon, when things were more dangerous: wrest the Span-
ABOVE CENTER: MANNY PARTICIPATED IN A POLITICAL
RALLY ON MAY DAY 1960 IN FRANKFURT, GERMANY. LEFT:
MANNY, A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AND A HALF AGO.
ish socialist movement from the exilees. In 1974, I
joined the Socialist Party.” He “participated in semiclandestine activities, political rallies, protest marches,
handing out leaflets. The first public manifestation of homage to my uncle took place
on his birthday, June 5, 1976, in the small
town near Granada where he was born. The
roads were heavily guarded by the Guardia
Civil, and there were armed military vehicles
at every crossroad within miles. Several
well-known actresses read some of his
poems, and then there were short speeches.”
In 1977, Manny helped make history when
he was elected from Granada to Spain’s first
freely elected Cortes (parliament) since
1936. As the only landowner among the Socialists, he said, “I was
speaker for the Party and second vice president of the Agriculture
Committee.”
In 1984, Manny and his uncle’s other heirs established the Federico García Lorca Foundation, which maintains a museum, sends
exhibits around the world, and supervises the literary estate. He
often gives speeches and interviews and retains an intense interest
in politics. “I’m so excited,” he said, “to think that I will accompany
my daughters when they vote for the first time. Sometimes I go to
protest marches with my family, especially against terrorism in the
Basque Country, from where my wife comes and where we go on
vacation every summer.”
Manny also maintains his Swarthmore ties. When the Alumni
College Abroad traveled to Spain in 2000, he was the center of
attention at their first dinner in Madrid. And when Victor and
Annie Navasky celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary there, he
said, “Manolo and his wife showed us the town.” T
Barbara Haddad Ryan is director of affiliate and public relations at the
Phi Beta Kappa Society in Washington, D.C.
MARCH 2002
Imprisoned twice for his
politics, the nephew of
Federico García Lorca
saw Spain emerge from a
half-century of fascism.
AMPHITHEATER: BOB KRIST / STRING: GEORGE WIDMAN
Ties
That
Bind
From 1947 until 1979, a garnet cord came with
the annual Swarthmore calendar. Such cords are
no longer supplied, but from Commencement
ALUMNI WEEKEND
JUNE 7 ~ 9
www.swarthmore.edu/alumni
forward, each Swarthmorean pays out an invisible
string, one end of which is always here. Follow
yours home this June.
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2002-03-01
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
2002-03-01
54 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.