Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2003-03-01

Having
a Ball
The Folk-Dance Tradition Continues

ON THE COVER: THE 32ND ANNUAL ENGLISH-SCOTTISH BALL IS THE HIGHLIGHT
OF THE FOLK-DANCE SEASON AT SWARTHMORE. FOR MORE ON THIS CONTINUING
TRADITION, SEE PAGE 14. PHOTOGRAPH BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS.

CONTENTS: A CARPET OF DAFFODILS SPREADS ACROSS MAGILL WALK IN EARLY
SPRING. PHOTOGRAPH BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS.

Features
Stepping and
Shifting
Folk dance at Swarthmore
finds a new home.

14

By Elizab e th R e d d e n ’ 0 5

Frank Aydelotte:
Architect of
Distinction
20
A look at Swarthmore’s
defining president

Christopher Van Hollen Jr. ’83—
one of two Democrats to unseat
a House Republican in
November’s election—has
his work cut out for him.

26

The lives of six young
Swarthmoreans tell the tale
of a great college.

Innovative student-staff
partnerships exchange knowledge,
experience, and friendship.
By Andre a H a m m e r

Collection

4

Profiles

Alumni Digest

40

At Home With
Her Herbs

Class Notes

42

By Elizabeth Redden ’05

Deaths

49

In My Life

52

News on campus

Latest correspondence

Accidental Discovery of Joy

44

For Gertrude Bowers Burdsall ’28,
her garden is the most peaceful place.

Courtroom
Theatrics

Rick Appel ’62 teaches
the art of persuasion.

62

By Angela Doody

B y H e r b e rt Locksley ’43

28

B o o ks & A r t s

66

O u r B a c k Pa g e s

80

Creative works
Come Together

B y J e f f r e y Lott

By Rick B a d e r

Learning
for Life

3

Alumni input

Heartfelt condolences

By Jason Z e n g e r l e ’ 9 6

Essential
Swarthmore

Letters

Gatherings and future events

By Dan We s t

I Do Solemnly
Swear

De p a r t m e n t s

34

A Passion
for Play

Aaron Weissblum ’86 makes
a living from inventing games.
By Carol Brévart-Demm

70

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

A

mong people who work with college and university alumni, there’s a saying about
how alumni view change at their institutions: “Anything before their era is
quaint—anything after is heresy.” Of course, Swarthmore alumni know better.
They know that the College’s history is the story of change. By studying the past, we are
able not only to understand these events but also learn more about how to approach contemporary challenges.
I’m known around the office as a Swarthmore history buff. When I applied for this job
13 years ago, I knew nothing of the College—in fact, I had to consult a map to get to my
first interview. But the very first task I completed after being hired was to read Richard
Walton’s Informal History of Swarthmore College (Swarthmore College, 1986) and a lovely
little book of College lore called Swarthmore Remembered (Swarthmore College, 1964). I’ve
been delving into College history ever
since. One of the first editorial changes I
made in the Bulletin was to add a regular
history and nostalgia department, “Back
Pages,” and we have done regular feature
articles on various aspects of College history.
Vice President Dan West shares my
passion for the past. Since he arrived at
the College in 1999, we have had many
conversations about Swarthmore’s history
and how, from its Quaker founders to
today’s leaders, key people and decisions
have shaped the character of the College.
Last summer, we both read Frances Blanshard’s Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore
(Wesleyan University Press, 1970), a biography of President Frank Aydelotte. Dan
suggested that the Bulletin publish an article about the man he calls “Swarthmore’s defining president”; not wasting a moment, I suggested that he write it. The result (“Frank
Aydelotte: Architect of Distinction,” p. 20) is a fascinating look at how Swarthmore
became the academic powerhouse it is today.
Dan’s article is not the only bit of history in this issue. Folk dancing at Swarthmore
(“Stepping and Shifting,” p. 14) has its roots in the 1940s—a long tradition that continues to enrich the lives of students and alumni. And today’s activist Alumni Council
(“Come Together,” p. 80) also dates to the first half of the 20th century.
There are a surprising number of books about this small college—a testament to its
rich history and powerful impact on American education. (A brief bibliography is offered
with Dan West’s article at www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/mar03/aydelotte.) Three more
books of interest to Swarthmoreans are soon to be published. A scholarly biography of
President Courtney Smith (1953–1969) by Donna and Darwin Stapleton ’69 is in preparation at the University of Delaware Press. The 75th anniversary of the Scott Arboretum
will be celebrated by a pictorial history to be published later this year. And a new book of
essays called The Meaning of Swarthmore is in its early editorial stages. For history buffs like
me, it’s going to be a good year.
—Jeffrey Lott

There are a
surprising number of
books about this
small college—
a testament to its
rich history and
powerful impact on
American education.

Swarthmore
COLLEGE BULLETIN

Editor: Jeffrey Lott
Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer
Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm
Assistant Editor: Angela Doody
Staff Writer: Alisa Giardinelli
Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner
Art Director: Suzanne DeMott Gaadt,
Gaadt Perspectives LLC
Administrative Assistant:
Janice Merrill-Rossi
Intern: Elizabeth Redden ’05
Editor Emerita:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
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The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
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number 4, is published in August, September, December, March, and June by
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REFUGEES

I must take issue with your titles for the
two very critical letters about Teach for
America (“Letters,” December Bulletin).
The original article (“Teaching for
Change,” a profile of Kevin Huffman ’92,
September Bulletin) pointed out changes in
the program about which Patrick Runkle
’98 was very derisive. The title of Runkle’s
letter (“Foul Stench”) was unfair, in my
opinion. A second letter from Nathan
Myers ’99 was more balanced. But there
again, you emphasized “hypocrisy.”
I confess I’m prejudiced because a
granddaughter has been in Teach for America for four years, and a grandson is in his
second year.
CAROLYN KEYES CADWALLADER ’36
Newtown Square, Pa.

I appreciated very much the article on midcentury faculty émigrés (“Émigré: The College as a Place of Refuge,” December Bulletin).
By the late 1940s, as World War II
began to recede in day-to-day life, the
Swarthmore campus was home to not only
these faculty members but also to several
students who were refugees.
We fled the Nazi onslaught on Europe
as youngsters. By 1950, we were more or
less Americanized, but there still was (I
speak only for myself) a sense of being
outsiders and uprooted—albeit enormously fortunate, saved by fate, miracles, and
pure random events or the prescience, wisdom, and capability of parents who
brought us out of the Holocaust. Each of
us had a story, but we were only vaguely
aware of how the others survived.
THOMAS REINER ’52
New York

After reading the letters “Foul Stench” and
“Hypocrisy” about Teach for America
(TFA), I feel compelled to set the record
straight on a few key points.
Endemic to much of the criticism that
TFA has received over the years is a disturbing tendency to rely on unproven theory and isolated anecdotes. These two letters
fall into this trap. The facts are pretty clear
that most of TFA’s corps members are successful. In a recent independent survey of
the school principals of TFA corps members, nearly 80 percent of principals rated
them as more effective than other beginning teachers with whom they had worked.
And in a study by Stanford University’s
Center for Research in Educational Outcomes, the students of TFA corps members
in Houston recorded gains as great or
greater than students of non–TFA colleagues in every grade level and subject
area.
About 87 percent of TFA corps members complete their two-year commitments
in their original placement schools. Patrick
Runkle conveniently failed to note that he
was one of the few TFA participants who
quit the program without honoring their
commitments. Runkle’s bizarre willingness
to make sweeping (and damning) generalizations about the community in which he
was placed runs counter to TFA’s most
basic philosophies. After spending one year
in teaching, he apparently was able to
determine (1) that “education will get you
nowhere” in rural Louisiana and (2) that

these districts are “beyond help” and “not
interested in change.” The fact that he
would actually refer to his former school
district as “beyond help” cuts against
everything I believe about public education. Many of us who taught in dirty trailers in low-income neighborhoods left the
corps with diametrically opposite perspectives, having seen firsthand that our students could exceed grade-level expectations
and outperform their more affluent peers.
Nathan Myers’ letter furthers the
strong tradition in public education debate
of framing issues in black and white:
Either you get a Swarthmore-quality certification program, or you get thrown to the
wolves; either you give low-income families
experienced and highly trained teachers or
ill-prepared novices. I see the same tautologies constructed in nearly every other education reform debate—school choice, charter schools, high-stakes testing, and multicultural curricula.
I suppose at the end of the day, we have
two choices. We can, as Runkle’s letter suggests, look at the centuries of poverty and
racism that have created the current
inequities, throw up our hands in despair,
and declare that the schools serving our
poorest citizens are beyond repair. Or we
can roll up our sleeves and work tirelessly
to address the inequities head-on.
KEVIN HUFFMAN ’92
Vice President and General Counsel
Teach for America
New York

NOT THE WHOLE STORY

The December Bulletin article about the
participation of Marcia Grant ‘60 in the
development and launch of a women’s college in Saudi Arabia (“Liberal Arts in a
Conservative Land”) was absolutely amazing for what it left out.
Saudi Arabia is a nation with, shall we
say, a somewhat spotty human rights
record. The country is ruled by a corrupt
monarchy; human rights there are largely
nonexistent. Although, as Marcia Grant
points out, it is simplistic to think that
women are oppressed simply because of
Islam, they are unquestionably oppressed.
This is a nation that once held the West
hostage with an oil embargo and has put a
great deal of money and effort into trying
to destroy Israel. To quote the Human
Rights Watch World Report 2001:
Freedom of expression and association were nonexistent rights, political parties and independent local
media were not permitted, and even
peaceful antigovernment activities
remained virtually unthinkable.
Infringements on privacy, institutionalized gender discrimination,
harsh restrictions on the exercise of
religious freedom, and the use of
capital and corporal punishment
P l e a s e t u r n to page 78

MARCH 2003

ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES

LETTERS

UNFAIR

3

COLLECTION

MATT LANDREMAN (RIGHT) CREDITS
SWARTHMORE—AND HIS THREE
YEARS OF RESEARCH WITH
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF
PHYSICS MICHAEL BROWN—FOR

Landreman ’03
Receives Rhodes
Scholarship

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

SWARTHMORE SENIOR MATT
LANDREMAN HAS A RADIANT
SMILE—and a lot to be smiling

4

about these days. One of 32
Americans chosen from 981
applicants for the prestigious
Rhodes Scholarship, the physics
major will head to Oxford next
fall for two to three years of fully
paid study there. Since being
selected, he says, “I keep thinking of Dean Bob Gross’ [’62]
statement to us as freshmen:
‘You are not an admissions mistake.’”
For three years, Landreman,
who hails from St. Paul, Minn.,
researched alongside Associate
Professor of Physics Michael
Brown, a plasma physics specialist. Landreman’s interest lies
in fusion power, which he sees

as a solution for the world’s
environmental problems.
Brown and Landreman have
been working with the Swarthmore Spheromak, a machine
built by Brown six years ago,
which can reproduce processes
that occur on the Sun’s surface.
Landreman’s research has been
concerned particularly with
magnetic reconnection, a process in which magnetic energy is
converted into heat and highenergy particles that cause the
solar atmosphere to be 1,000
times hotter than the Sun’s surface. Because of its impact on
solar physics and its potential
for helping provide a clean, safe
energy source in the future,
Brown’s research has been funded by the National Science

JIM GRAHAM

HIS RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.

Foundation and by the U.S.
Department of Energy.
Landreman’s research has led
to co-authorship of two articles
in the journals The Physics of
Plasma and The Astrophysical
Journal, and he has been recognized by the American Physical
Society.
Disarmingly modest, Landreman credits Swarthmore, at
least partially, for the scholarship. “Where else would undergraduates have the opportunity
to work so closely with someone
like Mike Brown or write review
articles?” he asks.
As a participant in the
Upward Bound Program for
three semesters, Landreman has
taught physics to students from
Chester High School. He is a
member of the Swarthmore
cross-country team. And he
founded “Food for Thought,” a
bread-baking business, where,
once a week, students make
bread by hand in their dormitories, sell it to fellow students,
and donate the proceeds to
Philadelphia charities.
During his time in Europe,
Landreman plans to travel, especially to visit his former host
family in Hungary, where he
spent fall semester 2001 in a
Study Abroad Program for
mathematicians. “I’m looking
forward to relaxing a bit,” he
says.
In Oxford, he will study
mathematics, which he says has
a broader definition there than
here. “In Oxford, there’s no
fusion program,” he says, “but I
will study aspects of physics
that are related to it.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm

BLACK ALUMNI EVENT
TO BE HELD IN JUNE
BLACK ALUMNI WEEKEND, held
for many years on campus in
March, is scheduled this year in
conjunction with the College’s
Alumni Weekend on June 6 to 8.
A special program for black
alumni will begin on Thursday
evening, June 5, and run
through Friday.
In a February letter to black
alumni announcing the change,
Vincent Jones ’98, chair of the
event, wrote that, with the event
in June, “those of us who have
reunions won’t have to choose
between the March and June
weekends…. [It will] allow us to
connect with members of the
Swarthmore community and other
black alums at events planned
just for us.” These will include an
African dance workshop, a reception with President Alfred H.
Bloom, a Caribbean dinner, and
the opportunity to choose among
the three Friday evening programs open to all alumni.
One of those programs will be
“A Politically Incorrect Forum,”
featuring six prominent black
alumni in a panel discussion
moderated by Associate Professor
of History Allison Dorsey.
Attendance at the separate
March weekend had been declining in recent years, said Astrid
Devaney, associate director of
alumni relations, adding that
housing will be offered in College
dormitories—something that was
not possible during the semester.
Lisa Lee ’81, director of alumni relations, welcomed the
change: “Many affinity groups
hold gatherings or receptions
during Alumni Weekend, and they
really enjoy the opportunity to
interact with alums of all ages.
We welcome the decision to
schedule the Black Alumni
Reunion in June and hope that it
results in terrific attendance.”
—Jeffrey Lott

a key affirmative action case now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The brief argues that affirmative action in the admissions process
is essential not only to the educational programs of the institutions but to their broader mission to benefit society.
The case stems from suits brought against the University of
Michigan and the University of Michigan Law School. The white
plaintiffs claim that they were unfairly denied admission because
of policies designed to increase the number of minority students at
the schools. They are asking the court to overturn its historic 1978
Bakke decision allowing the consideration of race in university
admissions.
The brief, submitted in February, concludes its arguments, “The
Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI, and 42 U.S.C. 1981 leave colleges
and universities free to select those students who, in their judgment and as Bakke contemplated, will, individually and collectively,
take fullest advantage of what the college has to offer, contribute
most to the educational process, and use what they have learned
for the benefit of the larger society. In making these judgments,
colleges and universities may take into account race or ethnic back-

COMMITTEE STUDIES
LIVING WAGE OPTIONS

THE NEWEST FORUM FOR DISCUSSIONS on
compensation of Swarthmore’s lowest-paid
staff members is a committee of staff,
faculty, and students, which began meeting
in November. Now in the process of gathering data, the committee will examine four
key areas: the costs of potential wage
increases, alternatives to wage increases,
government entitlement programs, and
wage compression issues.
The committee, co-chaired by Associate
Vice President of Human Resources Melanie

NEW DIRECTOR FOR
CAREER SERVICES
IN FEBRUARY, NANCY BURKETT
became Swarthmore’s new director of career services. Former
Director Tom Francis announced
last year that he wanted to
reduce his responsibilities and
become associate director of the
office that he has headed since
1985.
Burkett comes to Swarthmore
from Wagner College, where she

Young, continues the work of the Staff Compensation Review Committee (CRC), which
made several recommendations in fall 2001,
including a $9 an hour “Swarthmore minimum wage.” The previous hiring minimum at
the College was $6.66 an hour; the federal
minimum wage is now $5.35.
The CRC’s recommendations received the
endorsement of top administrators and the
Finance Committee of the Board of Managers,
but members of the student-driven Living
Wage and Democracy Campaign found fault
with some of them. Among their counterproposals was a minimum wage of $13 an hour.
“The CRC’s work is a backdrop, and we're

was director of career services.
She previously worked for 10
years as a career services officer
at the College of William and
Mary. Dean of the College Bob
Gross ’62 praised Burkett’s “obvious enthusiasm and interpersonal skills and her understanding
of the role that Career Services
can play in a liberal arts
college.”
The Career Services Office
provides information and counseling to students, alumni, and

simply revisiting it to see whether we can do
better than $9,” says committee co-chair
Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action. “Our
mandate is to come up with a set of practical recommendations with regard to the
wages of lowest-paid staff—estimating
costs, identifying possible unintended negative consequences, and suggesting ways to
prevent them.”
Meanwhile, the CRC is continuing its
work on staff compensation issues. Its latest
project is a review of the College’s job-grading system.
—Alisa Giardinelli

employers. Students get help
researching career opportunities,
preparing resumes, finding
internships, and interviewing
with potential employers. The
office also provides advice about
graduate and professional school
applications. Many of these
services are also available to
Swarthmore alumni, who can
learn more at http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/career_services/.
—Jeffrey Lott

NANCY BURKETT

MARCH 2003

SWARTHMORE HAS JOINED SEVERAL OTHER SELECTIVE
PRIVATE COLLEGES and universities in filing an amicus brief in

ground as one of various factors to be competitively considered,
without quotas.”
Maurice Eldridge ’61, vice president for College and community
relations and executive assistant to President Alfred H. Bloom, said
that Bloom was first contacted by President Thomas Gerety of
Amherst College.
“We were pleased to be able to help craft this important argument,” said Eldridge. “Swarthmore is strongly committed to providing opportunity for minority students and to sustaining a
broadly inclusive and diverse educational community, and although as a private college we might seem to be less affected by the
Michigan case, we are deeply worried as an institution about the
trends we see and the chilling effect an adverse decision would
have across institutions nationally. This brief reflects of our commitment to diversity, not only here at Swarthmore but in the larger
society.”
In addition to Amherst and Swarthmore, the brief was joined
by Bates, Bowdoin, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Colby, Connecticut,
Davidson, Holyoke, Oberlin, Pomona, Sarah Lawrence, Smith,
Trinity, Vassar, Washington and Lee, Wellesley, and Williams colleges and Colgate, Wesleyan, and Tufts universities. The Supreme
Court is expected to rule in the cases by the end of its current term.
—Jeffrey Lott

JIM GRAHAM

SWARTHMORE JOINS BRIEF IN MICHIGAN CASES

5

ERIC JENSEN

COLLECTION
ASTRONOMERS HAVE A DIFFERENT IDEA about the age of
things. For instance, a group of
“young” stars recently discovered
by a Swarthmore research team
is 30 million years old. As is the
case with many astronomical discoveries, they did not discover
new stars per se but rather
learned something new about
stars whose existence had been
known.
“What’s new here is our realization of how young these stars

are,” says astronomy major Rabi
Whitaker, who has been working
with Assistant Professor of
Astronomy Eric Jensen as part of
her senior thesis. “If you think
of our Sun as middle-aged, these
stars are like babies that are
only a few weeks old.” The stars
are also relatively close to
Earth—just 100 to 200 lightyears away.
Jensen and Whitaker announced the findings in January
at the American Astronomical
Society’s annual meeting. New

RABI WHITAKER ’03 WAITS FOR
NIGHTFALL AT CERR0 TOLOLO
OBSERVATORY IN CHILE.

knowledge about the stars could
open the door to new understanding of planet formation.
“Their ages are just right for
them to be forming planets right
now, and their proximity makes
them easier to observe,” Jensen
says. “These stars are perfect
candidates for follow-up observations to help us understand
planet formation. By observing
these stars as part of a larger

sample of stars of similar ages,
we can get an idea of how frequently stars form planetary systems and exactly when in a star’s
life cycle planets are formed.” He
cautions that it is not yet known
whether there are planets orbiting any of these stars.
The evidence for the stars’
youth comes from observations
made in August 2002 with the
National Science Foundation’s 4meter telescope at Cerro Tololo
Inter-American Observatory in
Chile. Spectra of the stars show
the presence of a large amount
of the element lithium. As a star
ages, nuclear reactions gradually
destroy the lithium atoms that
were part of its initial chemical
makeup. Thus, the more lithium
present in a star, the less time
the star has had to destroy it,
hence the younger the star.
Jensen expects still more
young stars to be found in the
near future. The Swarthmore
team has more observations of
promising candidates scheduled
for April.
—Tom Krattenmaker

Bed-and-Breakfast in the Ville

6

H.W. Longfellow’s house? In the near future, campus visitors will
have the option of staying in, among other places, at least an
architectural replica of Longfellow’s Cambridge, Mass., mansion—
right in the heart of Swarthmore.
On Jan. 13, when Swarthmore Borough Council unanimously
passed the long-awaited ordinance permitting the establishment
of bed-and-breakfasts (B&Bs) in Swarthmore, Joanne Cline,
owner of the soon-to-be “Longfellow B&B,” was the first to apply
for an application. More applications have arrived since then.
The ordinance, which restricts the establishment of B&Bs to
two per block and a maximum of four rooms per house, has been
under discussion for several years.
“There’s been a real need [for guest accommodation] for a long
time in Swarthmore,” said Cline, who has been hosting international students in her home for the past 20 years. With three double bedrooms to let, she is looking forward to making life easier for
College visitors by providing comfortable lodgings and homecooked breakfasts. She anticipates being ready to receive guests by
springtime and is already answering inquiries.

CAROL BREVART-DEMM

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

WHO COULD RESIST THE APPEAL of a couple of nights spent in

JOANNE CLINE PLANS TO OPEN A B&B IN SWARTHMORE DURING
THE SPRING THAT IS A REPLICA OF H.W. LONGFELLOW’S MANSION
IN CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

In the meantime, conversations with the borough are continuing about the possibility of an inn and restaurant being developed
on College land.
—Carol Brévart-Demm

F a r e w e l l t o Tw o G o o d F r i e n d s
THE COLLEGE MOURNS the death of Morris L. Clothier Professor Emeritus of Physics
William Cronk Elmore on Jan. 23 at age 93.
After earning a B.S. in engineering
physics from Lehigh University in 1932 and
a Ph.D. from Yale three years later, Elmore
began his career as a physics instructor at
MIT. In 1938, he joined Swarthmore’s
physics faculty, retiring in 1974. He served
as department chair from 1948 to 1968.
Elmore is fondly remembered by his
students for his integration of imaginative
laboratory work with theoretical content.
His former colleague, also Morris L. Clothier Professor Emeritus of Physics, Mark
Heald says: “Bill was the principal mentor
in my professional life. For faculty of my
generation, he was an inspiration.” Elmore
and Heald co-wrote the 1969 textbook
Physics of Waves, which is still in print.
During World War II, Elmore conducted
research at the Bartol Research Laboratory

BILL AND BARBARA ELMORE’S CONTRIBUTIONS
TO SWARTHMORE COLLEGE WERE A TEAM EFFORT.
MARK HEALD SAID THE ANNUAL HONORS DINNER
PARTIES AT THEIR HOME WERE “LEGENDARY.”

on the College campus and was recruited to
work for two years on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, playing a major role in
developing electronic circuits to handle the
fast-pulse signals needed in the development of the atomic bomb. In 1949, he was
co-author with Matt Sands of Electronics:
Experimental Techniques as part of the
National Nuclear Energy Series. The book

BARBARA PEARSON
LANGE GODFREY

Emerita of Women Barbara Pearson Lange
Godfrey ’31 on Feb. 4 at age 92.
Godfrey, the daughter of Edna and Paul
Pearson, was born in the Benjamin West
House in 1910. Her father was professor of
public speaking and founder of the Swarthmore Chautauqua. After attending the College with a White Open Scholarship for two
years, she transferred to the Yale School of
Drama. In 1932, she married Gordon Lange.
They had three children: Julie, Josie, and
Jonathan.
Returning to Swarthmore, Godfrey
served as director of dramatics for 17 years.
Thomas Blackburn, Centennial Professor
Emeritus of English Literature, said: “Barbara was a vital part of the creative and
artistic life of the College, when those activities were not yet permitted to the full
standing of the curriculum. She could get
amateur actors to do things they never
dreamed they could do.”

COURTESY OF JULIE LANGE HALL

THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY WAS DEEPLY
SADDENED by news of the death of Dean

BARBARA PEARSON LANGE GODFREY
WAS BORN ON THE SWARTHMORE CAMPUS AND
DEVOTED HER LIFE TO THE COLLEGE.

Because of Godfrey’s positive relationship with students, she was appointed dean
of women by President Courtney Smith,
serving from 1962 to 1969. During that
time, she continued to direct faculty stage
productions. From 1968 to 1970, she served
as director of career planning and placement.
In 1960, Godfrey received the John W.
Nason Award for her distinctive and lasting

became the standard reference work of practical electronics for a generation of physics
graduate students in the 1950s. In 1957, he
returned to Los Alamos to work with the
controlled fusion group and was a delegate
to the second Atoms for Peace Conference
in Geneva.
In 1965, Elmore received a Distinguished
Service Citation from the American Association of Physics Teachers and was elected a
fellow of the American Physical Society.
Also an accomplished musician, Elmore
played accordion at square dances in Los
Alamos and was the founding pianist of the
Swarthmore faculty dance band The Moonshiners.
He was predeceased by his wife of 66
years, Barbara, on Jan. 1. Known for her lifelong love of art, she joined Swarthmore’s
fledgling arts and crafts department in 1954
and taught jewelry, enameling, and pottery.
Her efforts led to the establishment of the
studio arts program on campus.
—Carol Brévart-Demm and Alisa Giardinelli
service to the College.
Two years after Lange’s death in 1979,
she married Warren Godfrey. After retirement, she maintained strong links to
Swarthmore, serving as reunion activity
chair, admissions interviewer, on-campus
event speaker, and class co-secretary, a position she held for almost six years until her
death.
In 2001, aided by daughter Julie, she
published a compilation of her father’s letters, photos, lecture notes, and plays titled
Man of Chautauqua and His Caravans of
Culture: The Life of Paul M. Pearson.
Her connection to the College is further
strengthened by family ties. Godfrey’s
daughter Julie Lange Hall and son-in-law
Parker Hall are both members of the Class
of ’55. Her late brothers, Drew and Leon
Pearson, were members of the classes of ’19
and ’20, respectively.
In a 1999 Bulletin article, Editor Jeffrey
Lott wrote: “She observed Swarthmore College from its Quaker roots to the threshold
of the new century. For most of that time, it
has never been far from her thoughts.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm and Alisa Giardinelli

MARCH 2003

COURTESY OF THE ELMORE FAMILY

WILLIAM ELMORE

7

SOME OPPONENTS OF THE
ANTI-SUV “WHAT WOULD
JESUS DRIVE?” CAMPAIGN
charge that it smacks of pagan
Earth worship. But Mark Wallace, associate professor of
religion, says there is ample
biblical basis for protecting
the Earth’s environment.
“From the story of Genesis
to Jesus’ words in the New
Testament, the idea comes
through that the goodness of
creation is our inheritance,
something we must preserve
and pass on to the next generation—not something we
possess to exploit and abuse,”
says Wallace, who is at work
on a book about the relationship between Christianity
and environmentalism.
One reason behind traditional Christian apathy
toward the environment, Wallace says, is a misunderstanding of the biblical principle of
human “dominion” over
Earth. Wallace, who is expert
in Hebrew, translates the
Hebrew word for “dominion”
to mean “stewardship”—not
“control” or “ownership” as it
is often understood.
Another reason for the disconnection between Christianity and ecology is the tradi-

tional conception of God as
separate from the Earth—a
“sky God,” as Wallace phrases
it. But Wallace believes the
widely accepted theory of
incarnation argues for a God
of the Earth, meaning that
humans honor God by revering and protecting creation.
Wallace finds still more
biblical support for environmental protection in statements by Jesus. In the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus
speaks of birds and the beauty of flowers, Wallace notes.
“Jesus shows a kind of intimacy with the beauty of creation,” he says. “This intimacy
teaches people today to be
equally loving toward the natural world. To me, that means
we ought to develop appropriate and sustainable technologies.”
Wallace says he is encouraged by signs that some
Christian movements are
accepting responsibility for
the environment. “If Christianity doesn’t wake up to our
environmental crisis,” he says,
“it’s going to be partly responsible for everything we’re facing today, from pesticides in
our food to global warming.”
—Tom Krattenmaker

8

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

KUHARSKI AWARDED ORDER OF
MERIT IN POLISH CULTURE

ALLEN KUHARSKI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
and chair of the Department of Theater, was
awarded the Order of Merit in Polish Culture
for his work promoting cultural exchanges in
theater and dance between the United States
and Poland. The award is the highest honor
given by the Polish Ministry of Culture and
National Heritage. It was presented in
November in Manhattan by Pawel Potoroczyn,
director of the Polish Cultural Institute in

“If Christianity
doesn’t wake
up to our
environmental
crisis, it’s going
to be partly
responsible
for everything
we’re facing today,
from pesticides
in our food to
global warming.”

NASA PHOTO

COLLECTION

Redefining “dominion
over the earth”

New York City, on behalf of Waldemar
Dabrowski, Poland’s minister of culture.
Kuharski has worked closely with internationally acclaimed Polish choreographer Jacek
Luminski and the Silesian Dance Theatre to
establish the College’s study abroad program
in theater and dance in Poland.
Kuharski is also a widely published
authority on various aspects of Polish theater
and drama, in particular the work of playwright Witold Gombrowicz.
—Angela Doody

Communicating the Crum
on a warm September day, 11 students pause
while their guide, conservation ecologist
and former Assistant Professor of Biology
Roger Latham, points out a colony of woolly
aphids feasting on beech sap. The students
laugh in wonder at the little creatures, hundreds of whom are waving what Myra Vallianos ’05 would later term “those fluffy
butts of theirs” into the wind. After Latham
explains the symbiotic relationship between
the aphids and the beech tree, the students
throw the insects one last glance and move
on. Clutching their field journals, members
of Associate Professor of English Literature
Elizabeth Bolton’s Writing Nature class continue their trek through the Crum.
Writing Nature is an unusual English
course that combines field walks and ecological observation with creative writing and
literary analysis to provide students with the
tools to express their biological and emotional connections with the Crum. Bolton
says she designed the class (taught most
recently in fall 2002) for two practical reasons—the need for more humanities courses within the environmental studies concentration and the oversubscription of more
traditional creative-writing workshops within the English Department. But she also
wanted to help students better appreciate
the Crum as a valuable parcel of nature in

FOUR JOIN BOARD
OF MANAGERS

THE COLLEGE WELCOMES
FOUR NEW MEMBERS to

(After Joy Harjo’s “One Cedar Tree”)

the midst of suburbia.
“The Crum is the one refuge from suburban sprawl around here,” says Bolton.
“There’s something healing and soothing
about the woods.”
The course thus began with a series of
field walks, both with Latham and Rhoda
Maurer, plant records supervisor of the
Scott Arboretum. Students then moved on
to writing their own nonfiction essays and
poetry, while simultaneously reading and
critically responding to a variety of nature
writing from Shakespeare to Terry Tempest
Williams. As a culminating project, students
completed a class anthology Taproot: Communicating the Crum.
Sonal Shah ’05 says she thought the
class was tied together by the shared goal of
“communicating the Crum. There was a
sense of camaraderie among the students
and Professor Bolton that was cemented by
our early morning walks.”
Bolton hopes future offerings of the
course will tie together better the increased
ecological focus with the actual writing
process. Still, she thinks that the intensive
engagement with the Crum provided students with a shared creative perspective. “If
everybody’s working and writing on the
Crum, that tends to unite the class in terms
of having a common project.”
—Elizabeth Redden ’05

ture development and management company Plebys International LLC and president and
CEO of Plebys-supported
WaterHealth International Inc.

When you dance in the woods
your feet touch dirt
on every third whistle of the wind
With whom do you waltz?
the gallant tree lily
or the staid hemlock?
Twirl,
the leaves mimic your steps. The ground
spinning, following your lead
and the creek
sashays into a fluid flourish.
Stop. Wait. Pose,
For a grass-breath.
Then, with a flick-of-a-wrist,
a toss-of-a-head,
your toes tap a green rhythm
and you spin among boughs.
Fingers furl upward
tracing the sky.
Jump, turn, and bend to the whistling wind,
You feel a part of the grand pas de deux
But turn,
look over your shoulder,
the trees do not move
only you do.

—Evelyn Khoo ’05

Hengen is a partner in the
law firm of Holland & Knight.
Kemp is the founder and president of Home Decoration Collectors, a mail-order catalog.

Rothenberg is a co-founder
and co-director of the Pig Iron
Theatre Company.
—Carol Brévart-Demm

JEFF HURWITZ

the Board of Managers.
Elected at the December
meeting, Tralance Addy ’69
and Nancy Hengen ’73 will
serve as Alumni Managers,
Gil Kemp ’72 will serve as a
Term Manager, and Dan
Rothenberg ’95 is a Young
Alumni Manager.
Addy is the founder,
president, and CEO of venTRALANCE ADDY

NANCY HENGEN

GIL KEMP

DAN ROTHENBERG

MARCH 2003

TRAMPING THROUGH THE CRUM WOODS

When you dance in the woods

9

COLLECTION
HOOPS: WOMEN STRONG, MEN IMPROVE;
SWIMMERS THIRD IN CONFERENCE

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

JOHN FERKO

Women’s basketball (19–6, 12–3
Centennial Conference [CC]) Katie
Robinson was named CC Player of
the Year. Robinson became the first
woman to earn Player of the Year
honors in back-to-back seasons. The
junior guard led the conference in
scoring (18.2 points per game), steals
(4.39 per game [pg]), and free-throw
percentage (87.5) and was seventh in
field-goal percentage (47), 15th in
assists (2.48 pg), and 17th in
ROBINSON: CENTENNIAL
rebounding (6.1 pg).
PLAYER OF THE YEAR
The co-captain also became the
fifth woman in school history to
eclipse the 1,000-point mark and set the school and CC record for
career steals. Robinson is also on the Garnet’s career top-10 list in
assists, rebounds, and field-goal percentage.
Senior guard Ali Furman closed out her career as the school’s top
three-point scorer and became just the second woman in the CC to
reach the 200 mark. The co-captain finished ninth on the careerscoring list and fourth on the all-time assist list. Led by the topranked defense in the conference, which allowed 52.1 points per
game, the Garnet reached the CC play-offs for the fourth consecutive season.

10

NEW SOCCER COACH ERIC WAGNER HAS RESPONDED TO
CHALLENGES BOTH ON AND OFF THE FIELD.

Men’s basketball (9–16, 5–8 CC) At 9–16 overall and 5–8 in the
CC, the Garnet posted its best record since the 1996–1997 season.
The Garnet Tide was in the CC playoff hunt until the final game of
the season, falling one game short of a postseason berth. Senior
guard David Pearce, named All-CC honorable mention, became the
14th player in school history to eclipse the 1,000-point mark and
closed out his career as the Garnet Tide’s eighth leading scorer with
1,107 points. Pearce also ranks fifth on the career steals list with 94,
is eighth on the career three-point list with 89, and ranks 11th on
the career assists list with 177. Pearce also excelled in the classroom
and was selected to the Verizon Academic All-America District II
Team. Junior point guard Jacob Letendre finished third in the CC in
assist/turnover ratio (1.75) and was fifth in assists (84); his 37 steals
placed him in sixth place. Letendre
also moved up the Tide career ladder
and is now in second place in assists
(262) and steals (121). Sophomore
forward Matt Gustafson led the team
in scoring, averaging 15.6 points per
game and finished eighth in the CC
scoring race. Sophomore Blair Haxel
had a breakthrough season, posting
seven double doubles. The 6-foot 9inch center averaged 12.5 points per
game, 9 rebounds, and 1.73 blocks
per game. Haxel finished fourth in
PEARCE: BEST MEN’S RECORD
the CC in rebounding and third in
SINCE 1996–1997
blocked shots.
JOHN FERKO

Soccer and
Service

JIM GRAHAM

ERIC WAGNER IS A DEDICATED SOCCER COACH AND FAN, but his
vision extends well beyond the field. So when he heard news reports
of the worsening famine in Ethiopia, he tried to find a way to apply
his sport to the cause.
The result: Wagner and his Garnet soccer squad held a clinic for
local school children on Super Bowl Sunday. The event attracted 60
kids, raised nearly $900 for relief efforts, and—perhaps most important—generated awareness of the little-known famine on campus
and in the surrounding communities.
“Athletics are what I do, but if I can make an impact on the wider
community through sports—bring my two passions together—that’s
what really excites me,” Wagner says.
The brother of two Swarthmore alumnae (Lise ’85 and Karin ’90),
Wagner became soccer coach at the College last year after a successful
five-year run at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where he amassed a
school-record 49 victories. Wagner knew it would be a challenge to
revive a Swarthmore soccer program that had been enduring some
lean years. But he leapt at the chance.
“I think it’s a fantastic opportunity,” says Wagner, a 1988 Connecticut College graduate who was a four-year letter winner as a midfielder and defender. “There is very strong administrative backing for
the program here at Swarthmore. We have good facilities. When

Men’s swimming (7–3, 5–1 CC) The Garnet finished in third place
at the CC Championships. Senior Mike Dudley led the way, earning Outstanding Performer of the Meet honors. Dudley won the
200 breaststroke (2:07.35), the 100 breaststroke (58:44), and the
200 individual medley (IM) in 1:55.59, setting school records in all
three events as well as a CC and meet record in the 100 breaststroke. John Lillvis ’03 won the 400 IM at the CC championships
in 4:12.65. Earlier in the season, Lillvis set a Ware Pool record in
the 400 IM (4:20.33). David Whitehead ’03 won the 100 butterfly
in 52.13. Dudley and Whitehead teamed with Eric Shang ’04 and
Mike Auerbach ’05 to win a silver medal in the 400 medley relay
(3:35.07). Dudley, Whitehead, Auerbach, and Jeff Schneider ’05
captured the bronze medal in the 200 medley relay (1:38.19). The
800 freestyle relay team of Auerbach, Shang, Lillvis, and Whitehead also claimed a bronze medal, touching the wall in 7:12.66.
Women’s swimming (6–4, 4–3 CC) The quest for a three-peat
came to an end as the two-time defending CC Champions placed
third this year. Leah Davis ’04, Katie Stauffer ’05, Patricia Funk ’06,
and Davita Burkhead-Weiner ’03 won the 200 freestyle relay in
1:39.77. The relay team of Tara Trout ’04, Funk, Melanie Johncilla
’05, and Burkhead-Weiner captured a silver medal in a NCAA B-cut
time of 7:56.57. Burkhead-Weiner and Davis won silver and
bronze, respectively, in the 50 freestyle and later teamed with Johncilla and Funk to earn a bronze medal in the 400 freestyle relay
(3:39.84). Burkhead-Weiner also earned a bronze medal in the 100
freestyle (54.71).
—Mark Duzenski

COLLEGE CLAIMS
VICTORY IN
LOCKHEED MARTIN
SHAREOWNER ACTION

DEFENSE CONTRACTOR
LOCKHEED MARTIN decided in
November to prohibit workplace discrimination based on
sexual orientation. This decision demonstrates the influence that colleges and universities can exert to bring about
social and ethical change in
society, says Swarthmore’s Vice
President for Finance and
Treasurer Suzanne Welsh.
The announcement, which
was made to company employees in an e-mail and reported in
The Washington Post, came days
after Lockheed
Martin received
notice from
Swarthmore
that the College
intended to
refile a shareowner resolution,
urging the company to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in its equal
employment opportunity policy.
“Among colleges and universities with significant endowments, our status as shareholders is an opportunity to influence society,” says Welsh. “I
hope the College’s action helps
lead the way for similar efforts
in the future.”
Swarthmore first presented
its resolution at the company’s
annual shareholders meeting in
San Diego on April 25, 2002.
Although the resolution was
rejected by most shareholders,
it exceeded the minimum percentage of votes required for
the College to resubmit it.
Morgan Simon ’04, an honors economics major who
helped spearhead the College’s
action, read the news of Lockheed’s decision via e-mail with
tears and laughter. “I have been

involved in many social change
efforts, and sometimes it is difficult to measure results,” she
says. “Having such a concrete
victory gives me a lot of confidence and reinforces my hope
that all this work is worth the
effort.”
The resolution—the first in
the country solely initiated by a
college or university since the
anti-apartheid movement in
the 1980s—is the work of the
College’s Committee for Socially Responsible Investing. The
committee, chaired by Harvard
University Business School
professor emeritus and Board
of Managers member Samuel
Hayes III ’57, comprises students, College administrators,
and members of the Investment

Committee of the Board. The
committee prepared the resolution in consultation with the
Equality Project, a nonprofit
organization in New York
devoted to securing equality in
the workplace for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgendered
employees.
Since the College first introduced its resolution, Lockheed
had faced increased pressure to
change its policy from its
employees in GLOBAL (Gay,
Lesbian, or Bisexual at Lockheed Martin). In August, the
company also received a zero
rating from the Human Rights
Campaign, a Washington,
D.C.–based gay rights advocacy
group.
Buoyed by their success,
Simon plans to work with the
committee on building alliances
with other schools and finding
another resolution to file.
—Alisa Giardinelli

MARCH 2003

you’re recruiting people, you’re ultimately selling the school. Well,
Swarthmore is one of the easiest sells in the country because of
its reputation. Now the challenge is selling high school kids on a
soccer program that’s been in the doldrums for a few years.”
It didn’t take long for the Swarthmore campus to find out
about Wagner’s penchant for putting soccer in the service of the
community. Realizing the opportunity afforded by a home game
on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Wagner organized a commemoration focusing on local “first responders.” Local
police, fire, and rescue squads were honored before the game with
a large crowd of students, staff members, and administrators in
attendance. The student a cappella group Sixteen Feet sang the
National Anthem, and Ed Kline, chief of the Swarthmore Fire and
Protective Association, kicked in the ceremonial first ball.
The Swarthmore squad showed improvement during Wagner’s
first year as coach despite finishing with a 5–14–1 record. One of
the Garnet’s top offensive producers was Anteneh Tesfaye, a senior from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Wagner immediately thought of
Tesfaye when he heard about the famine there, which to this point
has attracted little attention despite promising to surpass the
1980s famine that became a global cause celebre. He enlisted Tesfaye as a co-organizer and got to work on the clinic.
“For me, soccer has always been more than a game or a competitive contest,” Wagner says. “It’s something to bring people
together.”
—Tom Krattenmaker

11

JIM GRAHAM

COLLECTION

Does

diversity
include

me?

By Darryl Smaw, associate dean for multicultural affairs

NOT LONG AFTER ARRIVING ON CAMPUS LAST

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

FEBRUARY, I went to Sharples Dining Hall with several other

12

deans. While enjoying lunch with a cross-section of students, I
couldn’t help overhearing three students behind me who were discussing what it was like to be a Republican on campus. As they ate,
they talked about how other students—and even some faculty
members—were not interested in hearing their perspective once
they identified themselves as Republicans. Although they liked
being part of the Swarthmore community and knew they were
receiving an excellent education, they felt marginalized—even
silenced—because of their political convictions.
I introduced myself to them as the new associate dean for multicultural affairs and asked if I might join them. I told them that I
couldn’t help overhearing their conversation and wanted to know
more about their experience as young conservatives on a liberal college campus. They were visibly surprised, wondering why the dean
of multicultural affairs—who could not be other than a left-leaning
liberal—was interested in what they had to say. After all, I was the
“diversity guy,” and we all think we know what that means.
I had a very engaging conversation with these smart, conservative young people. In the end, I told them that I had a very expansive definition of diversity—that it included not just race and ethnicity but those who held different ideas and political beliefs, which

DARRYL SMAW (CENTER) MEETS WITH CAMPUS REPUBLICANS OVER LUNCH.
HE VIEWS CAMPUS DIVERSITY AS ENCOMPASSING NOT ONLY
RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS BUT ALL SORTS OF DIFFERENCES—INCLUDING
POLITICAL CONSERVATIVES AND FRATERNITY MEMBERS.

add an important dimension to the educational experience of all
students. They agreed, but I could tell that they remained skeptical
that this black liberal’s idea of diversity included them.
Early in the fall semester, some members of the Republican club
asked my opinion of their plan to bring conservative commentator
David Horowitz to Swarthmore. Although I disagree with much of
what Horowitz usually has to say, I told them I would support their
proposal. I think it’s important—and very much within Swarthmore’s traditions—for the campus community to have the regular
opportunity to engage all sorts of ideas, no matter how uncomfortable it might be for some who disagree.
In early December, Horowitz spoke to an overflowing crowd in
the Friends Meetinghouse. He attacked liberals in general and
higher education in particular, saying, “this is the only chance
you’re going to get to see someone talk the way I talk, thanks to
your totalitarian professors.” He derided the “hate-America” left.
He railed against Democrats and peace activists and do-gooders,
declaring that “every one of you is blessed to live in this country.”
He said that Palestinians who put their children on the front lines
of the Intifada were “worse than the Nazis.” To all this, I listened
respectfully, along with several hundred students, faculty members,
and staff. My conservative friends were delighted by the turnout
and by what Horowitz said.

MY INTERACTION WITH CAMPUS REPUBLICANS and conversations with other groups of Swarthmore students remind me that it
wasn’t that long ago that college campuses were far less diverse
than they are now.

As the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and
’70s pricked the conscience of America, the landscape of predominantly white college campuses began to change. Colleges and universities saw the importance of having a diverse learning community and started to recruit minorities actively. Many single-sex colleges became coeducational. These initiatives focused largely on
providing access, and it was easy for some to think that once certain numbers were reached, the diversity goal had been achieved.
Yet with the passage of time, diversity came to represent much
more. A 1997 report by the Association of American Colleges &
Universities describes diversity on college campuses as encompassing “complex differences within the campus community and also in
the individuals who compose that community. It includes such
important and intersecting dimensions of human identity as race,
ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, class,
age, and ability. These dimensions do not determine or predict any
one person’s values, orientation, choices, or responses. But they are
by definition closely related to patterns of societal experience,
socialization, and affiliation. They influence ways of understanding
and interpreting the world.”

have emerged on campuses: acts of prejudice, bigotry, discrimination, sexual and racial harassment, and insensitive language have
been directed at this new population of students. In the classroom,
residence halls, and social lives of students, such acts have served
to foster feelings of alienation and separation—even at Swarthmore. Last fall, a white student attended a Halloween party in
blackface—a thoughtless act that was deeply hurtful to many of his
fellow students. This occurred within days of several other acts that
were offensive to several groups on campus. It took weeks of
intense work by all of the students involved—including the offender, who was truly sorry—to turn this “incident” into a learning
experience.

THE CHALLENGE TODAY IS TO CREATE OPPORTUNITIES for students to come together and discuss such complex issues, to learn
from each other how true diversity works. Although Swarthmore is
a leader in the effort to move beyond numbers and focus on creating a campus that authentically embraces and celebrates diversity, it
is not an easy task. The greatest challenge is to help students find
common ground amid the range of people and ideas they

Although Swarthmore is a leader in the effort to

move beyond numbers and focus on creating a campus that
authentically embraces and celebrates diversity, it is not an easy task.
encounter on campus. Moreover, because campuses literally renew
themselves each year when new students arrive, an additional challenge is to create programs that transform, adapt, and change with
the diversity found in each class.
Therefore, according to Myrtis Powell in The Multicultural Campus: Strategies for Transforming Higher Education (Altamira, 1998),
student affairs professionals such as myself must “act as both catalysts and facilitators, as helpers and prodders; [we] must both influence and help shape the multicultural campus.” At the same time,
the work of diversity is not solely that of the deans and administration. Although we are on the front lines of setting the tone as to
how students from diverse backgrounds can live and learn together,
success requires the engagement and commitment of everyone on
campus: faculty, students, administrators, and staff.
This is an exciting time to be at Swarthmore. The College recognizes that “stage two” is needed to create an inclusive, multicultural
living/learning community and is firmly committed to the difficult
work necessary. Although our campus community will always be a
work in progress, I believe that it will one day model for our students the inherent strengths of a pluralistic society. No road map
is available to accomplish this goal—either at a college or in
America—and many obstacles are ahead. But this work is essential
for the world into which our students will graduate. T
Darryl Smaw, associate dean for multicultural affairs, was previously
associate dean for program development at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education. Among his duties at Swarthmore is to serve as adviser to
the Phi Si fraternity.

MARCH 2003

Because diversity is about all of the ways we are different, it also
can and should include political ideology and a host of other attributes that have not always been ascribed to the term. Efforts to create a truly diverse community—whether on a campus, in a corporation, or on a city block—can only succeed when institutions affirm
the inclusion of all members of community, not just the so-called
minorities.
A small college such as Swarthmore presents both opportunities
and challenges in this regard. The College has, in large measure,
achieved the numbers. Though African American and Hispanic
matriculation remains below what we might wish, one-third of students are persons of color. Thanks to generous financial aid and
need-blind admission, tremendous socioeconomic diversity exists.
There are musicians and scientists and athletes and activists and
liberals and, yes, conservatives. The College is a microcosm of the
world into which its students will graduate.
But what happens when you educate all these different students
on the same residential campus? How do they “get along?” What
happens when they collide as a result of differing cultural assumptions, values, and norms? Or when they express different political
and ideological belief systems? How do they engage in the difficult
conversations that require them to cross boundaries of ideology
and cultural safety and security? How does all this diversity contribute to the educational experience of students both inside and
outside of the classroom? Seeking answers to these and other questions is now seen as the next step in achieving a diverse living/
learning community.
With the achievement of diversity in numbers, new challenges

13

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

F

14

olk dancing is anything but a spectator
sport. As a newcomer to the Scottish
dance class, I sit hunched in a corner.
Watching the more experienced dancers, I try
to look inconspicuous. Dancing—I will be
the first to say—has never really been my
forte.
The music to one dance ends. It’s light
and jumpy—a sort of doo-doo-doo that goes
on for several bars. On the stage, live musicians play—piano, guitars, even bagpipes.
The music is uplifting and absorbing, and I
am perfectly content to just listen and
watch.
No such luck. Looking for a new partner,
a young man comes over, holds out a hand,
smiles, and asks if I’d care to dance. It’s
delightfully archaic—a gesture from a time
when “courtship” still meant something. I

protest: “I can’t dance. Really, I’m not very
good.”
“Can you walk?” he asks.
Good point. I follow him to the floor and
join a line of about 20 dancers. I look
around nervously, receiving a thumbs-up sign
from one and a reassuring smile from another. I grab my partner’s hand, imitating his
light hopping motion, which switches from
the ball of one foot to the toe of the other
and back again. I kind of get it. My movement isn’t perfect, but no one expects it to
be. Everyone learns the step, pivots around
each other, and walks through the rotations
a few times. The music begins again; “six
bars,” the teacher calls.
Scottish dancing is harder—and easier—
than it looks. The precise steps elude me;
that, I know, will take time. Still, I get the

THE 32ND ANNUAL ENGLISH-SCOTTISH BALL,
HELD THIS YEAR ON FEB. 8 IN THE ALL-CAMPUS
SPACE OF CLOTHIER HALL, IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF
THE COLLEGE’S FOLK-DANCE SEASON.

overall motion, the pattern I must follow to
execute my part. I can hardly help not to, as
my fellow dancers eagerly direct me at every
step. They’re so helpful, so open; they know,
as I will soon learn, that the dance works
only if everyone does it together. I lift my
heel, kick my opposite toe out, and give it
my best shot. A smile spreads across my
face—I’m not half as bad as I thought.
“Remember we were all new once. You’re
doing great,” I hear. My partner gently
nudges me to the correct corner after my last
“pas de basque.”
I can’t help but trust him.

Stepping
and Shifting
F O L K D A N C E AT S WA R T H M O R E E N D U R E S I N A N E W H O M E .

S

kipping and stepping their way
into College history,
members of Swarthmore’s Folk Dance Club
have gathered to enjoy
just such dances for
more than 50 years. Second only to The Phoenix
as the most venerable
extracurricular activity
on campus, folk dance
can be traced back to the
1940s, when Irene Moll,
an instructor in the
Physical Education Department, started a folk
dance class. The activity—and what some
might call a folk-dancing
subculture—has thrived at Swarthmore ever since.
Yet this year, for the first time in its history, the Folk Dance Club
has found itself in a perilous position. The growth of the curricular
Dance Program has put a premium on time in the College’s dance
studios. With the expansion of the academic Dance Program, folk
dance—an extracurricular social activity—has had to move to the
Swarthmore Community Club, located just off-campus not far from
the Pittenger, Palmer, and Roberts residence halls.
“I think we’ve all been frustrated by the constant struggle to
find time and space in the dance studios over the past few years,”
says Hollis Easter ’03, co-president of the club and a four-year
dancer. “This year, the Dance Program told us they didn’t have room
for us at all, and I think it’s fair to say we were disappointed by that
decision.”
“The studios [in the Lang Performing Arts Center or LPAC] were
constructed for the use of the academic Dance Program. These
spaces are our laboratories,” explains Sharon Friedler, Stephen Lang
Professor of Performing Arts and director of the Dance Program
within the Department of Music and Dance. “Folk dance has been a

Photographs by Eleftherios Kostans

very important community in the Swarthmore lexicon for years. I
think it’s wonderful, and as long as we were able to accommodate it,
we did. But in the 10 years since the opening of the LPAC, the
entire performance-based Dance Program—both curricular and cocurricular—has expanded.”
Swarthmore’s Dance Program, first granted academic status in
the late 1970s, has grown significantly under the leadership of
Friedler. Since she arrived at the College in 1985, the program has
provided instruction in a wide variety of dance techniques, currently
including African, Balinese, ballet, contact improvisation, flamenco,
Kathak, modern, tap, and yoga. The program also offers composition courses, repertory classes, and instructions in the study of
dance history and theory—all taught in the LPAC studios. “The
program looks at dance forms from all over the world, linking practice and theory,” explains Friedler.
Between 300 and 350 students now enroll in dance classes each
semester and, as Friedler points out, performance dance initiatives
are not limited to the formal technique classes but also include stu-

The expansion of the curricular
Dance Program has presented
new challenges for
traditional folk dancers.
dent-run choreography projects. Current student-run performance
dance organizations include Dance Forum, Rhythm ’N’ Motion,
and Terpsichore—and all of these courses, performance projects,
and groups require time in the two studios.
Folk dance—a social dance form—is not included within the
realm of performance dance. “We’ve made an effort to build an
inclusive—not exclusive—program,” says Friedler. “But the fact
remains that we are interested in dance as a performance art. We
applaud and support and are delighted that people wish to folk
dance. I folk dance myself. But it’s a different thing than what we’re
involved in as a department.”
Timothy Williams ’64, professor emeritus of biology and a for-

MARCH 2003

B y E l i z a b e t h R e dden ’05

15

mer Swarthmore folk dancer, acknowledges that the campus studios
are already used to capacity. He thinks the real problem is not a
clash of interests between academic and nonacademic dancing but
instead that the campus lacks an adequate amount of suitable dance
space.
“The best solution would be to make some space available for
non–dance-program activity,” Williams says. Such an area, he
explains, could be used for folk, swing, and ballroom dances as well
as for aerobics classes. Because the all-campus space already available in Clothier Hall is frequently scheduled for parties, dances, and
large events, it is an unreliable venue for a regular weekly or twiceweekly class.
“It seems a shame that a program so vital to Swarthmore can’t
have a space on campus with a wooden floor,” says Terry Harvey,
who teaches club classes in Scottish country dance. “I don’t see folk
dance stopping, but I’m worried about having moved off campus.
It’s a big psychological change to no longer be in College space. I
would rather have the College embrace folk dance and find a location for it.”

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

D

16

espite its move, the folk dance club is functioning as always,
with 20 to 30 students enrolling in the classes each semester.
Other members of the community—faculty and staff, alumni, and
Swarthmore residents—are also welcome. Though a wide variety of
forms (including Balkan, international, Morris, highland, rapper,
and English long sword) have been taught at Swarthmore in the
past, the club currently focuses mainly on English and Scottish
country dancing. All-campus contra dances are also held a couple of
times a year, and workshops in a variety of other dance styles are
typically offered a few times a year.
The club’s biggest event, the annual English-Scottish Ball, is held
in Clothier Hall around Valentine’s Day each year. Geoffrey Selling
’71, founder of the event, said the English-Scottish Ball is a studentrun dance that generally attracts between 30 and 40 alumni from
across the country each year (see sidebar).
Eileen Thorsos ’03, folk dance co-president with Easter and
another four-year dancer, remembers what brought her to the club
in the first place. Although she had studied ballet and tap in elementary school, Thorsos had simply refused to dance for a long time
after that. “I hardly ever exercised,” she says. “I was more comfortable reading or doing some other intellectual thing. Dancing when I
was around other people was even more risky.” Yet, in fall of her
freshman year, she decided to attend an all-campus contra dance. In
contra, a New England style of folk dance, partners join hands with
a long group of couples and, listening to the instructions of the
caller, execute a series of patterns. Like all folk dancing, it’s an inherently social dance, accessible to beginners and advanced students
alike.
“I loved it,” says Thorsos. “In part, I think I was hug-deprived. I
was used to getting hugs from my mother every day; then, I came to
college, and there were all these people I couldn’t touch.” From that
point on, she was hooked. She started doing not only English and
Scottish country dancing but also Argentine tango, swing, and flamenco—all during her first semester at Swarthmore. “There’s this
happy, warm, relaxed, sweaty feeling you get after dancing,” Thorsos
says, “like an endorphin high.”

WEEKLY FOLK-DANCE CLASSES ARE NOW HELD AT THE SWARTHMORE COMMUNITY CENTER. THE SPACE IS NOT IDEAL, BUT ENTHUSIASM FOR THE EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY REMAINS HIGH. STUDENTS PRACTICE “LEFTS AND
RIGHTS” (TOP LEFT); SIKANDRA CHRISTIAN ’06 CROSSES HANDS WITH HER
PARTNER (TOP RIGHT); AND INSTRUCTOR TERRY HARVEY TWIRLS ELIZABETH
M C DONALD ’05 (RIGHT) AT A TUESDAY NIGHT CLASS IN JANUARY.

The dancing itself is about patterns of skipping and stepping
and shifting and waltzing and circling. It’s about bowing at the
beginning and end of each dance, synchronizing the body to the
music, and joining together to create the intricate patterns that
become the dance. “It’s kind of like that whole Jane Austen remake
movie. The live music really adds to that. You could just see Mr.
Knightly changing positions,” says Aviva Aron-Dine ’05, a first-year
folk dancer.

F

olk dancing at Swarthmore is a melting pot of the old-fashioned
and the modern. Students generally dress down for classes—
jeans or sweatpants, though some women wear skirts—and only
don formal wear for the English-Scottish Ball. Still, as the dancers
line up, with uneven numbers of men and women often requiring
temporary shifts in traditional gender roles, thoughts about what
everyone is wearing fall away.

The dancers bow and grab hands, arms held firmly and fixedly,
eye contact maintained. Then they skip, or shift, or “step change,”
or “strathspey,” or “pas de basque” in Scottish class. On English
nights, they start a stately lilting walk.
As Jenny Beer, Swarthmore’s English country dance instructor,
explains, English folk dance has “minimal footwork—if you can
walk, you can dance.” In both dances, though, once the music
begins, the patterns made are what matters. From overhead, the
dance should look like an intricate secret, an intangible entity
impossible to separate into individual components. Yet for those

MARCH 2003

“There’s this
happy, warm,
relaxed, sweaty
feeling you
get after
dancing—
like an
endorphin high.”

17

who smile and bow and curtsy at its conclusion, it’s a secret to
which every one of them is privy.
In fact, it is the dance’s accessibility that students, faculty, and
alumni alike praise repeatedly. “Folk dance covers territory that is
also covered by the sports teams or the performance dance classes.
But very little about it is competitive, and the emphasis is not on
performance,” explains Sibelan Forrester, associate professor of
Russian and folk dance faculty liaison. “Particularly for someone
who’s kind of shy or doesn’t have a lot of physical confidence coming out of high school, folk dance can be a great way to participate
in physical activity.”
“For me, there’s a joy in movement in folk dancing that I haven’t
found in some of the other dance movements I’ve tried,” says Easter ’03. Like Thorsos, Easter also “had this great fear of dancing all
through high school. I didn’t want to go folk dancing because I was
sure I wouldn’t be good at it. But my friends dragged me there, I
protested mightily, and here I am now.”
Also a bagpiper on the Canadian Circuit in Ontario, Easter says
the live music available at every Swarthmore folk dance class “has
gotten me into some of the music I now play.” Yet, it is mostly the
social aspect of the dance that brings him
back week after week—the guarantee that he
will see his friends and have a good time.
The dance community, Easter stresses, is
accessible and open, based on ideals of trust
and cooperation that give the dance meaning. “The dance doesn’t go if everyone doesn’t work as a team. And that can bring the
wonderful sense of being part of something
larger.”

From overhead,
the dance
should look like
an intricate secret—
an intangible entity
impossible to
separate
into individual
components.

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

T

18

he class is winding down. I’m more tired
than expected; this last dance seems so
much harder than the first. I wipe my hand
across my forehead and am surprised to find
it just a bit damp. But as I line up to face
my partner—a different one this time—I
remember that they’re all counting on me.
“Be careful of the pole,” someone says.
Columns are arrayed on the sides of the
dance floor at the Community Club—a surmountable obstacle, I think. “If we were in
the LPAC...,” I hear. It’s almost funny, a
political statement in an apolitical setting.
The music swells. I rise on my toes,
almost automatically now, and reach for my
partner’s hand. My arms are more fixed than
earlier, though certainly far from perfect. I
take a deep breath; look into his eyes; and
step off, circling around him in a skipping
step. This step—and my partner’s—is where
the dance begins again. T

Elizabeth Redden ’05 is a McCabe Scholar
from Lewes, Del.

ACCORDING TO ONE LONGTIME MUSICIAN, THIS YEAR’S ENGLISH-SCOTTISH
BALL (ABOVE) DREW THE LARGEST STUDENT TURNOUT IN MANY YEARS. IN
ALL, MORE THAN 125 ALUMNI, STUDENTS, AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS
DANCED. JOANNA REINER, AN INSTRUCTOR, TIED ON HER SLIPPERS FOR THE
EVENING (TOP RIGHT) WHILE DON CHEETHAM ’73 VISITED WITH DAUGHTER
LAURA IN THE CHILD-CARE AREA (BOTTOM RIGHT). CHEETHAM MET LAURA’S
MOTHER, MELISSA SHANER ’93, AT A SWARTHMORE FOLK DANCE.

NOT JUST AN

more for many of us,” Cecily Sell-

ACTIVITY BUT A

ing adds. “Our main contact

WAY O F L I F E

[with] the College is through
dancing.”

campus activity, folk dance

Some folk-dance alumni
select their locale, their friends,

has a remarkable history of keep-

even their spouses through or as

ing its members in close contact

a result of their folk-dancing

with one another long after

connections. Andrew Peterson

Commencement. Years after leav-

’93 met his wife, then a Univer-

ing the College, many alumni

sity of Delaware student, at a

still count folk dancing as a

Scottish dance class in 1989. “I

major factor in their lives.

remember being bowled over by

“There are a whole lot of

her then, and I still am now,” he

activities at Swarthmore that

says. The couple return to the

people get involved in—politi-

College once or twice each year

cal, community service, and

for dances, always enjoying the

tutoring. Inevitably, each activi-

company of old friends they’ve

ty touches certain lives. I think

kept close. “The friendships I

it’s extraordinary that a program

made with dancers in the area

like this can keep people togeth-

have proven some of the most

er so many years later. Dancing

enduring of my life,” Peterson

becomes a permanent part of

says.

people’s lives,” says Geoffrey
Selling ’71.
An elementary school science

Fran Poodry ’92 chose to stay
in the Philadelphia region after
graduating just so she could

teacher, Selling is also a certi-

maintain contact with the close

fied Scottish country dance

friends she has made through

instructor, an active member of

dancing. Yet, even for some of

the Delaware Valley branch of

those far away, folk-dance roots

the Royal Scottish Country Dance

prove hard to forget. Kira “J.C.”

Society, and husband of Cecily

Goetschius ’00, a graduate stu-

Roberts Selling ’77—one of many

dent at the University of Hawaii,

folk-dance romance stories.

now dances regularly with the

Dancing, he says, has kept him

Honolulu branch of the Royal

in close contact with the Col-

Scottish Country Dance Society.

lege. “I’m 53. and my daughters

She expects never to stop.

are in college [including Sarah

“I know that Scottish dance

Kate Selling ’03], but I’ve still

will always be a part of my life,

known dancers in every Swarth-

and, as many will tell you, it’s

more class.”

not just an activity, but a way of

“Folk dancing has been a
really important part of Swarth-

life,” she says.
—E.R.

MARCH 2003

P

erhaps more than any other

19

20

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

Frank Aydelotte
Architect of Distinction
!
A L O O K AT S WA R T H M O R E ’ S D E F I N I N G P R E S I D E N T
B y D a n We s t

arry Truman once said that the only thing new in
the world is the history you don’t know. How did
Swarthmore College become the outstanding example of small, private liberal arts colleges in the country? How did it become so distinctive? Why is it so
admired by many in higher education?
In my experience, every college or university of true distinction
has, somewhere in its past, a defining president. Harvard had
Charles Eliot. Columbia had Nicholas Butler. Chicago had Robert
Hutchins. It is clear to me that for Swarthmore College, that president is Frank Aydelotte, who served from 1921 to 1940.
Aydelotte was a fascinating man of unusual substance, exemplary character, complex personality, and amazing energy. Although he
was not a Quaker when he
came to the presidency, his
influence rivals that of the
Quaker founders. His ideas
continue to resonate. His programs and emphases have
remained intact for 60 years
through the administrations of
six successors.
Although he never wrote an
autobiography, there are many
good sources of information
about Aydelotte and his presidency. Two books stand out.
The first, An Adventure in Education: Swarthmore College Under Frank Aydelotte, is a collection of
unsigned essays written by “the faculty.” It was published the year
after he left office—an unabashed tribute to an admired leader. The
definitive biography is Frances Blanshard’s Frank Aydelotte of
Swarthmore for which the author, a former dean of women and wife
of Professor of Philosophy Brand Blanshard, had access to Aydelotte’s papers and conducted many personal interviews. From these
and other sources (a complete list of sources is on the Bulletin Web
site: www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/mar03.html), I’ve drawn several
conclusions about President Aydelotte.

O

ne explanation for his impact is the length of his tenure of
almost 20 years. Changing a college takes time; it’s like turning a great ship onto another course. It happens slowly. A president
must have a vision and the skills to lead effectively, but this process
also takes time. Most defining presidents were in office a good while.
Still, Aydelotte did not by any means inherit a blank page. He
came to a school where many had labored mightily and accomplished much. College presidents are often prone to ignore or even
denigrate the work of their predecessors, but Aydelotte did not commit this error. Astute as a historian and modest about accepting
credit for himself, he readily acknowledged the work of his Quaker
predecessors. He succeeded Joseph Swain, formerly president of
Indiana University and one of Aydelotte’s mentors.
Swain had come to Swarthmore in 1902 after success in
Indiana on the condition that
the Board of Managers would
raise enough money to increase
the College’s endowment from
$400,000 to $1 million. He consolidated presidential (as distinguished from Board) authority
and led the College away from
the “guarded education” concept
of the 19th century. He built a
library with the help of a grant
from Andrew Carnegie and persuaded the governor of Pennsylvania, William Sproul, to build and endow the College’s observatory. Swain was more than a fund-raiser; according to Robert Brooks’
1927 book, Reading for Honors at Swarthmore, he left a fertile field
that “Swarthmore presented to Aydelotte.” Standards had advanced, students were working in small groups, the faculty was
experimenting with new teaching methods. Indeed, when Aydelotte
arrived in 1921, he inherited a strong foundation on which to build
his distinctive college.
Aydelotte’s biography is also illuminating. Reared in small-town
Indiana, he borrowed the money from his father for his education

Aydelotte transformed
Swarthmore from an
acceptable Quaker college of
local reputation to
a truly outstanding institution
of national renown.

MARCH 2003

H

Illustrations by Nancy Harrison

21

at Indiana University. He majored in English, joined Sigma Nu fraternity, earned a varsity letter in football, and graduated Phi Beta
Kappa in 1911.
It is an insight into his character that Aydelotte developed with
certain handicaps. He had large and protruding ears, which Blanchard says, “perhaps prevented his becoming vain." As a child, he
stammered but, while still young, he managed to control it. Also as a
child he injured his arm, and it was later discovered to have set
badly. It was rebroken and reset but never healed properly. He
undertook years of exercising his elbow, determined not to give up
until he could play sports like other boys. Perhaps his passion for
sports was the result. As an adult, he was forced to shake hands
with his left. It was a discomfort he chose to ignore.
His selection to the Swarthmore presidency occurred within 10
years of his graduation from Indiana. First, he became a professor in
English in a teacher’s college in California, Pa., then taught English
and coached football (successfully in both endeavors) at Vincennes University and Louisville
Male High School in Kentucky.
He was one of the first Rhodes
Scholars, studying at Brasenose
College, Oxford. Returning from
England, he was a faculty member at Indiana and later at the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

signature and remains the centerpiece of Swarthmore’s curriculum.
To critics who argued that honors was the “Oxfordization” of
Swarthmore, Aydelotte pointed out that students met in small
groups with two faculty members, not a single tutor. Some complained it was undemocratic. He countered that it was a stimulant
to the entire college—faculty and students alike—and that all faculty members taught in both honors and in course. Some said it was
too expensive, so he raised more money to finance it, obtaining a
large grant from the Rockefeller-funded General Education Board,
whose president, his friend Alexander Flexner, called the Honors
Program “frankly an endeavor to spot and to develop excellence.”
For 17 years, the following statement about American education,
written by Aydelotte, was printed in the College’s catalog:
[America is] educating more students to a fair average than
any country in the world, but we are wastefully allowing the
capacity of the average to
prevent us from bringing
the best up to the standards they could reach.
Our most important task
at the present is to check
the waste. The method of
doing it seems clear: to give
to those students who are
really interested in the
intellectual life harder and
more independent work
than could profitably be
given to those whose devotion to matters of the intellect is
less keen, to demand of the former, in the course of their
four years’ work, a standard of attainment for the A.B.
degree distinctly higher than we require of them at present.

He said, “In a very real sense
of the word, the faculty
is the College.” During his
tenure, he increased salaries
by 200 percent.

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

O

22

nce at Swarthmore, Aydelotte was successful in all of the ways by means of which we
usually measure a president. Enrollment grew from 510 to 678, the
faculty increased from 41 to 83, and annual financial aid rose from
$16,000 and 96 recipients to $75,000 and 281 recipients. The
endowment grew from $2.8 million to $7.7 million. Expenditures per
student increased from $934 to $1,341. During his tenure, several
buildings were completed, including Bond and the lodges, several
faculty homes, the Biddle Memorial wing of the library, the Clothier
Memorial, the Lamb-Miller Field House, the Martin Building and
Animal Laboratory, and Worth Hall. A campaign launched in 1929
for $2 million raised more than $4 million, much of it after the
stock-market crash and the onset of the Great Depression.
Of greater importance, however, were Aydelotte’s ideas. His educational philosophy and ability to implement it allowed Swarthmore
to grow from an acceptable Quaker college of local reputation to a
truly outstanding institution of national renown.
Believing that education is an active, not a passive, process and
that the best and only true education is self-education, he proposed
the Honors Program. At a meeting of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), he outlined his
idea: a more challenging set of seminars for chosen students in their
last two years. These students would receive no term grades or
exams but instead would be tested by external examiners at the end
of the senior year. For these advanced students, he abolished the lecture method of teaching. Moreover, the seminars would serve, in
Aydelotte’s phrase, “to educate the faculty.” The program grew from
11 students in 1923 to 146 students in 1939. It became the College

To accomplish this goal, Aydelotte needed faculty members who
could do two kinds of teaching (honors and course) as well as
research. Blanshard says that when he found and hired them, he
coddled them.
Some may think that strong support of faculty is a recent development at Swarthmore, but it began with Swain, and it became the
norm with Aydelotte. Having an Honors Program meant greater
intensity and effort for faculty as well as students. As an experienced
teacher, Aydelotte knew well the toll on strength and resources of
such intensity and the subsequent need for replenishment. He set a
goal for doubling both the time and money usually allowed for
leaves of absence and sabbaticals. The endowment campaign of
1929–1930 had this mission, eventually making it possible for faculty members to have one semester of leave every three to four years at
half-salary or one full year in every seven at full pay. He established a
faculty travel expense fund to help them attend meetings of learned
societies. He initiated the tenure system at Swarthmore in 1924. He
built a group of faculty homes, designed by a faculty member, Alfred
Brooks. He once said, “In a very real sense of the word, the faculty is
the College.” During his tenure, he increased faculty salaries by 200
percent. The faculty responded in kind. In 1933, the worst year of the
Depression, the faculty presented the Board and administration

S

warthmore’s small size is another legacy from its defining president. As a Rhodes Scholar, he was much impressed with the
English style of small colleges within a large university at Oxford.
He may well have subscribed to the sentiment of John Corbin, who
said at the close of the 19th century, “The function of the college is
of greater importance to the nation than that of the university, and
the function of the secondary school is more vital than that of
either.”
Aydelotte stood for the small college. In the face of repeated
attempts on the part of universities to lure him away, he stuck to
Swarthmore. He was keen to limit its size. His annual reports to the
Board of Managers in the early 1920s called attention to raising
academic standards by limiting enrollment. But this policy was
more than a strategy to raise standards. It was an integral part of his
philosophy of education. He wrote, “Any student who is good
enough to be admitted to the college can hope for a place uniquely
his own … he is an actor in it, not a spectator; and the difference is
great.” According to Frances Blanshard, “The only increases he
hoped to see at Swarthmore were in the number of teachers, the size
of their salaries, and the volumes in the library.”
He also embraced Quaker values. The College was founded by

liberal Quakers (the Hicksites), and Aydelotte was drawn to—and
drew on—their values of individual freedom and collective improvement. Swarthmore had been nondenominational since 1909, but
the all-Quaker Board of Managers impressed him, and he believed
that the College was out of the ordinary—more solidly founded on
character.
His style of leadership and his understanding of governance also
set the tone. He thought of himself as a facilitator. He was a president who adhered to the faculty viewpoint and who often said, “The
administration exists to save the faculty’s time.” His management
style was to talk issues through, shape plans communally, and form
consensus slowly. He had many one-on-one conversations. To facilitate this, he located his office on the ground floor of Parrish Hall,
close to the dining room (now the Admissions Office). He liked
what he perceived to be the flexibility of the Quakers. He loved their
phrase, “Proceed as the way opens.” His idea of holding meetings
was to simulate a Quaker meeting by discussing every significant
problem from every viewpoint and by involving everyone concerned.
He saw the Board, the faculty, and the administration acting as one
unit.
A consequence was what Frances Blanshard calls “the unobtrusive character of his administration.” He would usually begin the
introduction of a new idea by asking for advice from his interlocutor. Later, he would offer his adviser a list of possibilities—the most

MARCH 2003

with a voluntary salary cut, the proceeds of which were to be used
for scholarships for needy students.

23

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

24

controversial of them last—and insist that no conclusion be
reached at that moment. His style of leadership caused faculty
members to think of Swarthmore as a “remarkably unified college.”
An example was the implementation of the Honors Program—
at once Aydelotte’s greatest legacy and one of his most controversial
initiatives. After describing his idea in a talk to the AAUP during
his first year in office, he urged discussion of it. He then appointed
a committee to study it. Two faculty members, Robert Brooks in
political science and Jesse Holmes in philosophy, became so enthusiastic that they couldn’t wait and experimented with the new pedagogy in fall 1922, with 11 students. So successful were these first
two seminars that more were formed the following year, and the
program grew. There was never a formal vote of the faculty or the
Board. Honors at Swarthmore just evolved.

It was never easy, however. One serious challenge to the Honors
Program came at the meeting of the Board of Managers in December 1927. Had it not been for the strong support of three older
Quaker women—Lucy Biddle Lewis, Emma Bancroft, and Caroline
Hallowell Worth—we might not have an Honors Program today.
They were part of an ad hoc Board committee to “investigate the
new program.” They staunchly supported it and carried the day.
Honors and other ideas endured and prospered.

F

rank Aydelotte’s legacy includes other facets: an emphasis on
research, a social life that is more egalitarian than at most colleges, the insistence on a strong library, and the introduction of
scholarships with which to attract talented students.
Then, as now, debate occurred about the type of student who

should be admitted. In 1925, after the General Education Board
made a five-year grant of $240,000 to solidify the Honors Program
and help the College recruit outstanding students for it, not everyone at the College was exuberant. A letter to the editor of The
Phoenix deplored the effect this grant would have on the College’s
admission policy:
Eliminating most of the red-blooded men and women …
substituting that vile species designated as “Greasy
Grinds” for the robust, virile type that has made Swarthmore glorious in the past … Let other colleges, founded
with specialized intellectual aims project them in this
enlarged Honors plan, but there is no excuse for sacrificing
Swarthmore’s established pre-eminence in the field of producing well-rounded men and women for the sake of
attempting an alien and
undesirable success in cultivating mental geniuses.

do with the development of ruggedness, courage, determination,
and better human understanding.” Tomlinson deplored what he
called a lack of communication between the administration and the
alumni. President of the Board Charles Jenkins defended Aydelotte
and proposed a joint committee of Board members and Alumni
Council members to “canvass the situation.”

A

ydelotte’s ideas took root and flourished. They were carefully
nourished by generations of administrators, Board members,
faculty members, and students. Indeed, one scholar, Burton Clark,
points to several important reasons why his programs and policies
endured at Swarthmore while such did not occur at other oncedistinctive colleges: the force and validity of the ideas, the way they
were introduced and implemented, the initial and continuing support of faculty, the length of his tenure, and outside financial support all played a role.
So did the persons who succeeded him. Both John Nason
and Courtney Smith were
intellectual protégés of Aydelotte. Like Aydelotte, both had
served as secretary of the
Rhodes Scholar Program in
the United States. Both had
been developed as faculty
members, and both had
become small-college liberal
arts advocates.
I visited President John
Nason on a couple of occasions before his death in 2001. During
one visit, he told me (too modestly) that his greatest contributions
to Swarthmore in his 11 years as president had been, on the one
hand, to calm the place down after years of controversy under
Aydelotte and, on the other, to prevent the reversal of any of Aydelotte’s policies and programs. It is significant that in the 60 years
since Aydelotte left Swarthmore’s helm to head the Institute for
Advanced Study at Princeton, Board members, presidents, and faculty members have all protected, preserved, and advocated those
formative ideas and programs that help make Swarthmore what it
is today.
Frances Blanshard called Aydelotte a “thoroughgoing intellectual” who made Swarthmore “the endeavor of his life” and left it
arguably the most admired small college in the country. The policies that were instituted while he was president, the priorities that
were established, the values that were set, the ways we teach and
learn and recruit and play sports and govern ourselves, the way we
treat and support each other—indeed, the way we think about ourselves as an institution—are largely to be traced back to this
remarkable man whose central idea was to develop leaders for our
society and our world. T
Dan West is vice president for alumni, development, and public relations.
He holds doctorates in theology (Vanderbilt University, 1969) and educational administration (Harvard University, 1984). During his 34-year
career in higher education, he has served at five small liberal arts colleges.
He was president of two of these.

MARCH 2003

His Honors Program became
the College signature
and remains the centerpiece of
Swarthmore’s curriculum.

Aydelotte’s role in defining
Swarthmore’s approach to
college athletics is the final
illustration of how he shaped
the College so permanently.
When he arrived at the College in 1920, the Alumni
Association essentially owned
and ran the Athletics Program. Alumni scheduled the
games, hired the coaches, collected the gate receipts, and recruited
men to play football, providing scholarships and subsidies. This
approach and Aydelotte’s educational philosophy were headed for
inevitable conflict. He believed that the chief source of corruption
in American sports was the spectators, intent on victory at any
price.
He was an advocate of the Oxford University attitude toward
sports. In an essay for the Oxford Stamp, he deplored spectator sports
as opposed to participation in sports. At Oxford, almost everyone
played a sport, but few watched others play.
In a Collection speech at Swarthmore, he said that his ambition
for the school was for every student to play a game and for many to
play well enough to represent the school on a team. But he had
accepted the presidency on the condition that financial subsidies to
athletes be eliminated. In 1932, Aydelotte finally assumed direct
responsibility for the Athletics Program, financing it entirely with
College funds and giving faculty standing to physical education
staff and coaches. Athletics became a college program, part of a student’s educational experience—clearly second in importance, along
with everything else, to the academic endeavor.
Controversy continued for several years. President of the Alumni Association William Tomlinson ’17 led the opposition. At a meeting of the Board of Managers in February 1935, he presented his
views in a speech he called “Men Wanted.” He stated that he and
others feared that Swarthmore’s admissions policy was not considering the “broader qualities of manhood,” that “the purely academic functions … are crowding out those vital activities that have to

25

I Do Solemnly Swear
C H R I S T O P H E R VA N H O L L E N J R . ’ 8 3 — O N E O F T W O D E M O C R AT S T O U N S E AT A R E P U B L I C A N
IN THE HOUSE IN NOVEMBER’S ELECTION—HAS HIS WORK CUT OUT FOR HIM.
By J a s o n Z e n g e r l e ’ 9 6

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

N

26

ovember’s midterm elections were disastrous for Democrats. But even the darkest days have their bright spots—
and one of those for Democrats was Christopher Van
Hollen, who was one of only two Democratic challengers to defeat a
House Republican incumbent. Now that Van Hollen is in office, representing Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, he’s experiencing
the midterm election’s fallout firsthand—as he tries to figure out
how, as a freshman member of the minority, he can make headway
on the issues on which he campaigned.
“What’s supposed to be one of the greatest democratic institutions is actually very undemocratic in the sense that the majority can
use the rules to prohibit the minority from offering up alternatives,”
Van Hollen explained one January afternoon in his House office.
“I’m not talking about losing the vote. I’m talking about the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on your alternative proposal.
They can bring a bill to the floor under a rule that says only Republican amendments are in order.” So, although Van Hollen may have
run for office with visions of repealing parts of President Bush’s $1.4
trillion tax cut and passing stricter gun control laws, he now realizes
that much of his job will consist of simply trying to fend off Republican proposals.
One of his first orders of business, he says, will be dealing with
President Bush’s call for $670 million more in tax cuts. “It’s only
putting additional money in the pockets of people who need it the
least, and it’s not going to help the economy,” Van Hollen complained. “The rhetoric of helping working people is almost
Orwellian.”
Van Hollen’s rhetoric might be sharp, but he thinks it’s necessary.
Indeed, Van Hollen blames the Democrats’ midterm debacle, in
part, on the party’s reluctance to stand up to President Bush. “I
think a lot of Democrats got cowed by the Bush administration on a
whole range of issues and tried to be, in some cases, Republican
lite,” he says. “When you say, ‘I agree with the Bush administration
on a lot of things,’ and then the president comes to your district and
says, ‘Well, that’s great, but I’m supporting the other guy because he
agrees with me more,’ your message isn’t going to get across.”
Still, Van Hollen says he will look for common ground where he
can find it. “The opportunities to build coalitions are going to be
issue dependent,” he says. “Gun control is probably an issue for
now on which it’s going to be very tough to put together a coalition.
But there may be other issues, like working on child abuse and neglect—that’s something I worked on in the state legislature and that
[House Majority Leader] Tom DeLay has worked on, too. Maybe we
can make some progress on that. Working on mental health issues
or disabilities issues—at least in the state legislature—we were
always able to build bipartisan coalitions.”
The son of a Foreign Service officer, 44-year-old Van Hollen
spent much of his childhood abroad, so that by the time he arrived
at Swarthmore in 1977, he already had a healthy interest in foreign

affairs and public policy. Van Hollen initially majored in history,
then switched to physics, and eventually settled on philosophy, writing his senior thesis on Wittgenstein. “I’m sure if I looked at the
paper today, I wouldn’t understand a word I wrote,” he jokes. Away
from the classroom, Van Hollen pursued his political interests more
directly: He was a member of the Swarthmore Anti-Apartheid Committee, which advocated that the College divest from companies
doing business in South Africa; and he was active in an organization
called the Nuclear Weapons Education Project, an education group
interested in arms control efforts such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. Then Swarthmore Physics Professor and now New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt was involved in the group.
After his junior year, Van Hollen decided to take some time off
from school, and, along with several classmates, he went to
Guatemala. “We drove all the way from Washington, D.C.,” he
recalls, “in a beat-up old Toyota with old floorboards; every time we
went over a puddle, our feet would get wet.” After a few months in
Guatemala, Van Hollen rounded out his own personal study-abroad
program by traveling around South Asia before returning to Swarthmore in fall 1982 for his senior year.
After graduation, Van Hollen enrolled in the two-year master’s in
Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
(where he met his wife, Katherine, with whom he has three children). From Cambridge, he went to Washington to work on Capitol
Hill for Maryland Senator Charles Mathias. He handled arms control and foreign policy issues for Mathias; when the senator—a liberal Republican—retired from politics in 1986, Van Hollen joined
the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He began attending law school at night at Georgetown University. In 1990—with the ink barely dry on his law degree—Van Hollen
made the move from political staffer to actual politician, running for
and winning a seat in Maryland’s House of Delegates, where he represented the Washington suburb of Montgomery County.
Four years later, he won a seat in the Maryland Senate. In Annapolis, Van Hollen built a reputation as a liberal but pragmatic
politician, proving effective at building coalitions on issues like
school funding, gun control, and protecting the Chesapeake Bay. To
many in the Maryland Capitol, it was clear Van Hollen was marked
for bigger things; after a second term in the State Senate, he set his
sights on the U.S. House.

D

espite his impressive legislative record in Annapolis, Van
Hollen entered the 2002 congressional campaign a decided
underdog. His first challenge came in the Democratic primary,
where he faced one of his Maryland General Assembly colleagues,
Mark Shriver, son of Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver.
“There’s no doubt that everyone in the Washington political
establishment—the Democrats on the Hill, the political consultants, all the insiders—saw [me] as the underdog,” says Van Hollen.

SWORN IN AS REPRESENTATIVE OF MARYLAND’S 8TH DISTRICT. TO HIS RIGHT
ARE DAUGHTER ANNA, 12, AND SON NICHOLAS, 11.

Although Van Hollen may not have been the favorite son of the
political establishment, he was no slouch where it counted most, in
his district. He was well known there from 12 years of legislative
work in Annapolis and capitalized on that to score a narrow victory
over Shriver in September’s primary.
But Van Hollen wasn’t able to rest on his laurels because his next
order of business was squaring off against an even more formidable
opponent, the eight-term Republican Congresswoman Constance
Morella.

F

ortunately for Van Hollen, he had some help. Although Morella
was still popular in a district where her generally liberal voting
record endeared her to predominately left-leaning voters, her party
affiliation had become a burden. Democrats sensed that she was
vulnerable, and the national Party put its weight behind Van Hollen,
helping him with fund-raising and sending out big names like then
Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and New York Senator Hillary
Clinton to campaign with him.
The result was a heated—and sometimes bizarre—campaign.
Van Hollen mostly refrained from attacking Morella head on but seldom missed an opportunity to portray the race as a contest between
the Democratic and Republican parties. “When President Clinton
was in office, there was always a safety net; if anything really bad got
out of the Congress, there was his veto pen,” Van Hollen explains.
“Under Bush, it’s the opposite; so we focused a lot on the fact that
the first vote Representative Morella cast each Congress was for the
Republican leadership.”
Morella, meanwhile, obfuscated on the party question: “Connie
Morella doesn’t represent a political party, she represents us,” one
campaign mailing stated (never mind that the mailing was paid for
by the National Republican Congressional Committee). But she

couldn’t obfuscate enough. On election day, Van Hollen won 52 percent of the vote.
Although Swarthmore alumni made up only a small portion of
those voting for Van Hollen, they played a disproportionately large
role in his campaign. Early in the campaign, Greg ’65 and Lee Smith
Ingram ’66 contacted 15 other Washington-area Swarthmore alumni and asked them to help organize a fund-raiser. “We had a preliminary meeting, and we all agreed that we would reach out to all the
people we knew,” recalls Lois Stoner ’44. “I helped get people from
the 1940s classes.” Michelle Pokomy Parker ’90 and Kathy Stevens
’89 hosted another Van Hollen fund-raiser a few months later. Several Washington-area alumni helped Van Hollen’s campaign in other
ways.
“He established a corps of volunteers who were dedicated to him
and who had the kind of enthusiasm you cannot buy in politics,”
says Frank Sieverts ’55. Says Van Hollen: “The Swarthmore contingent in the area was terrific. . . . As the campaign went on, it just
seemed like everyone was from Swarthmore.”
In fact, Van Hollen’s life as a House freshman hasn’t been that
different from the life of a college freshman. When I visited him in
his office in early January, the congressman was in the midst of
unpacking boxes, hanging pictures, and getting a tutorial from a
staffer about how to buy lunch with a congressional debit card.
Then, there was the task of putting names to all the new faces—
a task that’s particularly important for Van Hollen since he’s discovered that, thanks to his race’s high profile and the fact that it
occurred in Congress’s backyard, he’s not a typical freshman. “Every
member of Congress, whether they represent Hawaii, California, or
Florida, they were here, and whenever they turned on their TV sets,
they saw this race, or whenever they picked up The Washington Post,
they read about it,” Van Hollen says. “There are advantages to that
in that a lot of people know who I am coming in here. So my task is
to quickly get to know who all the others are.” T
Jason Zengerle is an associate editor of The New Republic.

MARCH 2003

© 2003 THE WASHINGTON POST. PHOTO BY BILL OʼLEARY. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION.

IN JANUARY, CONGRESSMAN CHRISTOPHER VAN HOLLEN (CENTER) WAS

27

Essential
Swarthmore

6

T H E L I V E S O F S I X S WA R T H M O R E A N S

T E L L T H E TA L E O F A G R E AT C O L L E G E .

28

that spring from Swarthmore. On the
following pages, you will meet six young
students and alumni whose actions in
the world reveal the educational common
ground that all Swarthmoreans share.

DAVID WOOLWAY

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

One of the best ways to get at the essence
of Swarthmore is to look at its people. The
ways that they learn, the work that they
do, and the lives that they lead offer
insight into the habits of mind and values

By Rick Bader

Eternal Student

W

hen Jacob Krich set out some eight years ago to write the
essay for his Swarthmore application, he wrote about
what he thought would be the ideal college experience.
He wrote that he would like to sit down with a college course catalog and work his way through it from beginning to end, from
anthropology to zoology, stopping only when he had studied
absolutely everything the college had to offer. He wrote that in his
perfect world, he would be a student all his life.
When Krich finally sat down with the Swarthmore catalog and
learned that curriculum realities would require some narrowing, he
set to work paring his list of possible majors to a manageable 20 or
so; then, during his freshman and sophomore years, he explored as
many of those as he possibly could. When it finally came time to
decide on a major, physics seemed the logical choice. Why? Because,
he says, “When you ask a physicist why, he doesn’t refer you to
another discipline.”
To do physics justice would mean doing it as closely as possible
to the way physicists do it, and this meant participating in the
Honors Program, a long-standing Swarthmore tradition that
encourages learning at the highest possible level. The program,
which was revamped in the mid-1990s, has three signature characteristics. One, honors candidates take part in intense seminars
designed to foster both collaboration and a high degree of independent thinking. Two, students are required to do a thesis. And
three, the award of honors is conferred not by the College itself
but by a panel of expert external examiners. What made the biggest
difference for Krich was the thesis. “The thesis terrified me,” he
says. “It’s the closest model of what practicing scientists do, and
it terrified me. But I wanted to lock myself into something that
made me do it. It was possibly the most rewarding thing I did at
Swarthmore.”
Krich’s work focused on substances called liquid crystals, which
are molecules that exist in a state somewhere between a liquid and a
solid and that are being used in everything from high-tech optical
displays to laser devices. The liquid crystals he was interested in
move around while still approximating the shape of a helix. A full
rotation through that helix is called the pitch. In some cases, as the
temperature increases, the helix completely unwraps and inverts,
wrapping itself the opposite direction. Krich’s hypothesis was that
any liquid crystal could be made to invert if it could be heated

enough without causing it to melt. Unfortunately, he notes, “it
didn’t happen.”
So, with time running out on his summer of thesis research, he
switched to a side project that looked at the phase transition that
occurs as the temperature of a liquid is lowered to the point just
before it becomes a liquid crystal. He studied tiny pockets of liquidcrystal–like substances that appeared at temperatures too hot for an
actual liquid crystal and set out to make the very difficult measurement of the pitch of these “pretransitional fluctuations.” The success of this project allowed Krich to test a widely used theory. The
theory, Krich found, was wrong; his work to reach this conclusion
earned him the American Physical Society’s Apker Award, given
annually for the best undergraduate physics thesis.
“Jacob is the best model for a modern scholar I can think of,”
says his friend and thesis adviser Swarthmore Professor of Physics
Peter Collings. “He enjoys the life of the mind without being overly
professorial. He has this impressive intellect, but it’s not an intimidating intellect. He won’t push people away—he’ll draw them in.
That’s where I think he’s special.”
Those qualities helped him win a Rhodes Scholarship. Now in
his third year at Oxford, he’s beginning to feel like he might achieve
that goal of being an eternal student after all. After the Rhodes, he’s
looking at five or six years in a doctoral program and then a few
years at least as a postdoc. Then, a career in an academic environment is almost certainly in order. But whether that career will be at
a major research university, where Professor Collings says Jacob
would “make a real difference in our understanding of nature,” or at
a place more like Swarthmore, where undergraduates would benefit
enormously from his intellect and personality, remains to be seen.
Krich himself is putting off that decision for now. But a clue to
his eventual direction might be found in a story he likes to tell
about a hiking trip he took a few years ago in Costa Rica with his
father and sister. They were standing at the top of a mountain on a
clear day under a sky that was a sharp and brilliant blue, and that
got Krich thinking about physics. “I remembered,” he recalls, “that
the light from the blue sky is partially polarized, which you can see
particularly well when you have a clear sky. I had polarized sunglasses, which meant that if you looked at the sky and rotated them, the
light would grow darker and lighter. I showed this to my sister, and
I got the response that every teacher always dreams of [hearing].
She said, ‘That’s so cool!’”
RHODES SCHOLAR JACOB KRICH (LEFT) “IS THE BEST MODEL FOR A MODERN
SCHOLAR THAT I CAN THINK OF,” SAYS HIS MENTOR PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS
PETER COLLINGS. “HE WON’T PUSH PEOPLE AWAY—HE’LL DRAW THEM IN.
THAT’S WHERE I THINK HE’S SPECIAL.”

MARCH 2003

For as long as he can remember, Jacob Krich ’00
has wanted to know more about the way things—
all kinds of things—work. So he’s spending a
lifetime finding out.

29

Precocious Leadership
A liberal arts education has prepared
Jeremy Peterson ’99 for high-level positions
at a remarkably young age.

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

30

DAVID REESE

I

t was spring 2001, and Jeremy Peterson, newly appointed at
the astonishing age of 24 as director of the New York City
Parks Department’s Operations and Management Planning
(OMP) Division, was having a problem with the excess grass growing between sidewalk cobblestones in Battery Park. Because Jeremy
was having a problem with this, and the problem had been duly
noted in a report OMP had prepared, it was also a problem for
Manhattan Borough Commissioner Adrian Benepe. Peterson
believed it was Benepe’s responsibility to keep the spaces between
the cobblestones grass free. Commissioner Benepe, many years
older and with many more years of experience than Director
Peterson, was doing his best to discredit the report and its author
at a meeting of all the New York Borough commissioners.
“I was the chief bad guy,” Peterson recalls. “It was my job to kick
peoples’ butts. Commissioner Benepe pulled out the report in front
of all the top commissioners and said, ‘Look at this picture of grass
between the stones. It’s not OMP’s job to deal with these small aesthetic concerns.’ He had a valid point. But I also had a valid
point—these were the rules, and it was an offense.”
So Peterson stuck to his guns. When Commissioner Benepe was
promoted to commissioner of the entire City Parks Department not
too long afterward, the OMP’s chief bad guy feared he might soon
become a former chief bad guy. Much to his surprise, and relief,
what Peterson got instead of the axe was respect; in his first speech
to Parks staff, the new commissioner said keeping park ratings up
was his top priority, and he singled out Peterson for his tenacity
and toughness.
Precocious leadership under pressure is nothing new to
Peterson. His father is a biologist who studied wolves and moose
on Michigan’s Isle Royale, where family vacations consisted of collecting random body parts of decaying animals. Once, when the
leader of a volunteer team assembled to support his father’s
research got sick, Jeremy, who was all of 15 at the time, was recruited to head the expedition, guiding a group of adults off trail
through thickets as dense as suburban garden hedges in search of
decaying moose. “My parents were very nervous,” he remembers.
“They didn’t know if these people would come out alive or dead.”
All survived, and he led four more trips before his freshman year at
Swarthmore.
At Swarthmore, Jeremy integrated interests in the natural world
and human behavior into a major in bioanthropology, an interdisciplinary field that explores the evolutionary roots of human behavior. It was an education, he says, that did a good job of imparting
practical knowledge and instilling an ethic of purposefulness. “The
hard skills I gained in science classes were incredibly useful. They
enabled me to digest problems, break them down, and look for
solutions. When I entered the workforce, I was better prepared
than others and able to advance rapidly. And Swarthmore imbues
students with a sense of responsibility, a sense that you have some

“SWARTHMORE IMBUES STUDENTS WITH A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY, A
SENSE THAT YOU HAVE SOME PURPOSE IN THE WORLD,” SAYS JEREMY
PETERSON. AT 24, HE DIRECTED OPERATIONS AND PLANNING FOR THE NEW
YORK CITY PARKS DEPARTMENT.

purpose in the world. You have this education, and these talents,
and this knowledge, and you have this responsibility to use it all in
a productive manner.”
One day after graduating, he moved to New York to start his job
with OMP. He was at Parks a year and a half before being named
director, a job that was every bit as much about human behavior as
it was about protecting natural environments. He is proudest of
putting in place a system to improve the performance of workers in
the agency’s skilled trade shops—blacksmiths, plumbers, carpenters, and other heavy-trade workers—people with high pay and
highly unionized jobs who had compiled a 1,000-order backlog of
work orders. The biggest challenge, Peterson says, was creating an
incentive for change. “The government is better at sticks than carrots, and even the sticks aren’t that good. I mean, you can’t fire
these people. But they took pride in their jobs. So we used the tool
of competition.” Monthly performance goals were set for each
shop, and no shop wanted to face the embarrassment of being the
only one to fall short of its goal. In six months, the backlog was
gone.
For now, Peterson has left New York for Argentina, a country
struggling through economic crisis and political upheaval, where
he’s learning Spanish and working for the Buenos Aires Herald while
waiting to hear if he’s been accepted to law school. He’s chronicling
his experiences on a Web site, http://unglued.org, which he
describes as a sort of modern-day travelogue. On one page, he
ruminates on a friend’s account of how people at the University of
Buenos Aires cheered when the second plane crashed into the
World Trade Center. On another is a story about local protest
marchers angry about increased utility costs. And on yet another is
an account of Peterson’s own frustrating experience with an uncooperative washing machine. You can bet he saw to it that the laundry eventually got done.

The service ethic is what drew Smitha Arekapudi ’99
to Swarthmore, and it remains the dominant force
shaping her life and career.

O

MEGHAN KRIEGEL ʼ97

ne of the first qualities that struck Smitha Arekapudi
about Swarthmore when she was a high school student in
Chicago thumbing through the College’s catalog several
years ago was language that connected Swarthmore to its Quaker
heritage. It was not so much the “Quakerness” itself that attracted
her as the principles underlying it, values of simple living, generous
giving, and a commitment to a search for truth. “I felt,” she says,
“that they were promoting the idea of seeking intellectual clarity.”
And “there’s a general sense that you’re being prepared to be someone who will be an active part of society,” she adds.
Being an active part of society was nothing new to Arekapudi.
She attended high school at the University of Chicago Laboratory
Schools, where she was an outstanding student and president of
the school’s chapter of Amnesty International. Her activities in and
out of the classroom made her an ideal candidate for admission
into Swarthmore’s Lang Scholars Program. The program, created
through a gift from Eugene Lang ’38, offers financial and other
kinds of support to students who are committed to social justice
and have potential to become leaders in civic society.
Arekapudi’s civic engagements as a Swarthmore student, both
on and off campus, were many. She worked in Philadelphia for the
Pro Choice Task Force, which helped escort women seeking services
at Planned Parenthood past an occasionally intimidating gauntlet
of antiabortion protestors. She served on the Swarthmore fresh-

man orientation committee and became co-president of the South
Asian student organization, Deshi. She worked at the William Penn
Housing Community in Chester, Pa., with the Chester-Swarthmore
Community Coalition, helping to set up a women’s wellness center.
She did a summer internship writing policy papers for the Health
and Medicine Policy Research Group in Chicago.
Sometimes, these activities were directly linked to her academic
studies. Her work in Chester, for example, was part of a political
science course she was taking called Public Service, Community
Organizing, and Social Change. Other times, the connections were
less explicit. “Sometimes, it’s hard to connect a community project
to the academic experience,” she says. “It can be a fundamentally
different experience. But your courses prepare you to be an educated problem solver, whether in academics or in the real world. Some
people say Swarthmore is about intellectual study supported by
extracurricular programs. Maybe during certain experiences for me
it was the other way around.”
Most Lang Scholars apply to do a special Lang Project, which is
designed to meet a significant community need and is eligible for a
grant of up to $10,000. For her project, Arekapudi helped launch
an organization called the Illinois Public Health Advocate, which
sought to educate and mobilize people in Illinois who were interested in public health issues. One of her first efforts was to organize a round table on public health in DuPage County, Ill. “We
opened the dialogue and got an overwhelming response,”
Arekapudi says. “Some came to talk about noise pollution at
O’Hare Airport, which was a huge concern. Others asked about the
meaning of public health and specific issues like contaminated
food, contaminated swimming pools, and health care access.
Others just came and said, ‘What can I do?’” The program’s success
drew national attention, and others modeled on it have since been
developed in several states.
Arekapudi’s next stop after graduating from Swarthmore with
honors in economics was the Harvard School of Public Health,
where today she’s pursuing a doctorate. Her chief interests are cancer prevention epidemiology and the effects of tobacco. After she
earns her doctorate, she plans to go to medical school. After that,
she hopes to work in women’s health and preventive medicine,
striking the right balance between teaching, research, and practice.
At every step along the way of her evolving life and career,
Arekapudi says, she’s grateful for the influence of her Swarthmore
experiences. “The Lang Program encouraged us to be leaders in
social and public service. Swarthmore gives you an academic foundation, but, importantly, you learn how to use that information to
promote change and make a material difference in your community.
You learn to think critically, observe well, speak articulately, and
write persuasively, and also you learn to be an active citizen. There’s
a sense that you’re being prepared to be someone who will be needed to take on an active and important role in the world. It’s the
Swarthmore philosophy I’ve carried around this whole time.”
SMITHA AREKAPUDI IS EARNING A DOCTORATE AT THE HARVARD SCHOOL OF
PUBLIC HEALTH, CONCENTRATING ON CANCER PREVENTION AND THE EFFECTS
OF TOBACCO. AFTER THAT, SHE PLANS TO ATTEND MEDICAL SCHOOL. AT
SWARTHMORE, SHE SAYS, “YOU LEARN TO BE AN ACTIVE CITIZEN.”

MARCH 2003

Change Agent

31

Mixing It Up
It’s the variety of experience that has made
Swarthmore work for junior Matthew Goldstein,
who has excelled in the classroom and on the
baseball diamond.

A

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

JIM GRAHAM

sk Matthew Goldstein to list some of the highlights of his
Swarthmore years, and two come quickly to mind. One was
winning the College’s Dunn Trophy—awarded to the sophomore who contributes most to the Athletics Program—last spring.
The second was a trip he took to Baltimore in fall 2002 as a College
representative to the national conference of the American Society
of Human Genetics. These two events put some fitting bookends
on college experience and signify the importance of Swarthmore to
him.
Goldstein, a three-sport athlete in each of his four years at
Crystal Springs Upland School in the San Francisco Bay Area,
looked at Amherst and several Ivy League colleges, but he chose
Swarthmore because he thought it gave him the best opportunity to
explore his various intellectual interests fully and participate in
intercollegiate athletics. “Athletics are an important part of my life,”
he says, “but not the most important.” What made Swarthmore so
attractive is that it has the proper balance.
As a freshman, he played soccer and later went out for baseball,
when a friend suggested he try out. As a southpaw pitcher with a
curve, a change-up, and a wicked fastball that tails away from righthanded batters, he was a welcome addition to a team that was
struggling. Part of that struggle, he says looking back, could be
attributed to an Athletics Program that was spread too thin.
During his sophomore year, however, as Swarthmore’s
Intercollegiate Athletics Program was in the midst of being restruc-

32

tured, he sensed that the perspective on athletics was beginning to
change. “This is an intellectual community,” he says, “and we’re
here first and foremost to get an education. But after the restructuring, the remaining Athletics Programs are receiving more resources
and attention, which in turn is raising the quality of those programs. As a result, the Swarthmore community is paying more
attention, and the athletes are feeling better about what they’re
doing.”
With the change in focus came stepped-up recruiting efforts;
now, up to 30 prospects a year are visiting to look at Swarthmore
and at its baseball program. The team members took matters into
their own hands as well, holding meetings to decide among themselves where baseball fell on their priority lists. All this has been
enormously rewarding, Goldstein says. “It’s a tremendous experience—we’re excited about contributing to the development of the
baseball program.”
The turnaround is gradually playing itself out in the team’s performance. They improved from a dismal .200 season in Goldstein’s
freshman year to .384 in the Centennial Conference last year, with
a young team loaded with sophomores and juniors. This spring,
Goldstein thinks they have a realistic shot at a .500 record. “When
I compare freshman year to where we are now,” he says, “the difference is significant. There’s recognition that athletics are an important part of many students’ lives—and they can pursue the same
high level of achievement in athletics as in academics.”
As an honors biology major with a history minor, Goldstein has
experienced considerable success on the academic turf as well, and
that too has been fulfilling. “I’ve really come into my own in terms
of finding my intellectual and academic passion,” he says. “I don’t
think I truly appreciated how much I love learning until I came
here. I’ve developed a keen interest in genetics, particularly in the
area of neurological diseases such as autism. This past summer,
after taking a genetics seminar, I was fortunate to work with an
autistic child as part of Cure Autism Now in the Bay Area. The
Baltimore conference gave me the opportunity to hear about the
cutting-edge research on autism.” He noted that al-though much is
known about autism, there is great opportunity as the knowledge
and understanding about the disease is in its infancy.
As for what happens after Swarthmore, Goldstein has his sights
set on medical school and, after that, possible work in public health
policy, research, or international health in developing countries.
Goals such as these, he notes, are very Swarthmorean: “There’s an
energy about Swarthmore. There’s something unique and different
about how people approach their lives. There’s a sense of purpose—a sense that people have the ability to effect change and
have an impact on society.”
Of course, if a pro scout showed enough interest, he wouldn’t be
opposed to putting off saving the world for a few years, at least
while his arm feels good.
“ATHLETICS ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF MY LIFE,” SAYS MATTHEW
GOLDSTEIN, “BUT NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT. WHAT MADE SWARTHMORE SO
ATTRACTIVE IS THAT IT HAS THE PROPER BALANCE—AN EXCELLENT LIBERAL
ARTS PROGRAM COUPLED WITH A SOLID DIVISION III ATHLETICS PROGRAM
THAT DOESN’T OVEREMPHASIZE SPORTS.”

Small World
MICHAEL MATSIL

What do a young man from Kenya and a young
woman from rural Nevada have in common?
Swarthmore—and a desire to understand better the
complexity of the world in which they live.

JIM GRAHAM

M

HEATHER WEYRICK (TOP) AND MELKIZEDECK OKUDO TYPIFY SWARTHMORE’S
GROWING INTERNATIONAL FOCUS. HE CAME FROM KENYA TO SWARTHMORE TO
STUDY ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, AND SHE TRAVELED TO POLAND
TO STUDY THE ROLE OF THEATER IN CREATING A NATIONAL IDENTITY.

the ways presentation and performance become part of our public
lives. During a semester in Poland on a Swarthmore exchange program, she learned how theater has helped shape its national identity, especially when the country was under communist rule, and
ways theater, much of it forced underground, helped the nation
hang onto a Polish identity that stood in opposition to the “official” government identity. With the fall of communism, she says,
theater took on an important role in rebuilding a nation. “The task
of theater was to create an image of what it means to be Polish.”
In today’s world, what it means to be educated increasingly
involves developing an understanding of other cultures and
the ways they shape our lives. For this reason, international
experiences are an increasingly important part of a Swarthmore
education.
Weyrick is now back in Poland on a Fulbright Fellowship, studying the role of Poland’s Jews and the Holocaust in shaping the
national culture. Okudo is looking ahead after graduating to a job
in New York with Goldman Sachs, where he expects to gain investment banking experience that will take him closer to his goal of
working in sub-Saharan Africa to promote capital investment in
worthy projects. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, the two
are in complete agreement about the value of their international
experiences. “It’s important to just go somewhere else and get
another perspective on the world,” says Weyrick. “I felt it legitimized me as a person.
“I have,” Okudo adds, “a much better understanding of the way
the world works.” T

MARCH 2003

ost girls going to high school in Fernley, Nev., a small
town about 30 miles east of Reno on I-80, give little
thought to leaving the state after graduating.
But Heather Weyrick ’01 wasn’t like most girls. And some of the
literature she got from one very distant college piqued her interest.
“They described themselves as different and quirky,” Heather
recalls of her first encounter with a certain liberal arts school
southwest of Philadelphia. “Among the people I grew up with, I
really was weird and quirky. But when I got to Swarthmore, the
scale on which they defined weird and quirky was much different
from my own scale at that time.”
Swarthmore was an altogether foreign environment to her, even
if not quite as foreign as a place like, say, Africa might have been.
Melkizedeck Okudo ’03, on the other hand, knew Africa. The
young Kenyan had spent the first 18 years of his life in Nairobi
before coming to the United States to attend the United World
College, whose two-year program of intense academics, wilderness
experiences, and community service attracts students from all over
the world to its New Mexico campus. It was there that he first
heard about Swarthmore. “I felt it was the kind of place where I
wanted to be,” he says. “Academic rigor was the No. 1 thing, they
gave financial support to international students, and I could be
involved in community service.”
Okudo came to Swarthmore to be part of the Lang Scholar
Program, which supports students who show exceptional promise
in community service. To date, Okudo has been involved with two
service-related projects. The summer after his freshman year, he
worked in Kenya for a nongovernmental organization called EcoNews Africa, which monitors and reports on the impact of global
policy making on the economies of nations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Last spring, for his Lang project, he organized a partnership
between a Chester, Pa., nonprofit and a group of Swarthmore students to promote computer education in Chester’s low-income,
mostly black communities. The classes occurred during the summer, while Okudo was in New York doing an internship with
Goldman Sachs. He returned to his work in Chester last fall, and
another set of computer classes is about to begin.
Okudo enjoys the intellectual give-and-take of international
conversations at Swarthmore—whether they center on Islamic fundamentalism or the recent elections in Kenya—and appreciates the
interest of other students “to step out and find out about me.”
For Okudo, Swarthmore is an international experience. He, in
turn—along with the 86 other international students on campus—is something of an international experience for others he
meets. For Heather Weyrick, Swarthmore was the gateway to a
broader world.
As a double major in theater and sociology/anthropology and a
self-described child of pop culture, Weyrick became interested in

33

Amid the 11:15 a.m.
swirling motion in

Le a r n i ng
for Life

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

LIZ DOZIER

campus exhibit (and many of the
photos for this story).
Kohlberg’s Coffee Bar, students
“I always ask permission to
greet each other above the din.
take photos,” says Pierce, who
Friends plan to meet for lunch
finds video more challenging.
after their next class, shifting in
“Students are easier to interview
opposite directions with their
[on video] because they don’t
cups of fuel. A few stragglers,
label things. You see people’s
I N N O VAT I V E S T U D E N T - S TA F F PA R T N E R S H I P S
draping their feet over the
reactions.”
EXCHANGE KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE,
plump lounge chairs, miracuThrough “trial and error,”
A N D F R I E N D S H I P.
lously catch catnaps.
Davenport says they are experiPerched on a high stool,
menting with the video camera.
biology major Katie Davenport
“But mostly, we just have fun.”
By Andrea Hammer
’05 cushions her chin against
Coordinating schedules, they
P hotographs by Sharon Pierce*
her hands on the table. She’s
meet two times a week. “We’re
waiting for Sharon Pierce, an
filming and interviewing people
Environmental Services (ES) employee and decided to join L4L. “I became more aware
we meet on campus,” she adds. “We’re tryher Learning for Life (L4L) partner. Pierce,
of how privileged we [students] are and how ing especially to film other L4L partnerships
who is also a L4L Steering Committee mem- some employees are working really hard all
and see what they’re doing.”
ber with 15 years of College service, woke up of the time,” she says.
Pierce—who describes herself as shy—
at 2:30 a.m. to start her 4 a.m. shift in
Pierce and Davenport, who are learning
has learned to approach people and simply
Parrish. Like many other ES workers, she
together how to use a video camera from the ask, “What’s on your mind today?” She says
takes additional cleaning jobs off campus.
Education Department, both have colds.
that students and others on campus wel“Everyone’s always talking about all the
But they brighten in each other’s presence.
come the opportunity to talk about family or
work they have to do,” Pierce says. But L4L
“Katie is so open and easy to joke with
to dance in front of the camera. Pierce takes
“lifts you up and makes your work easier by that you’ve got to love her,” Pierce says.
turns doing interviews with Davenport,
giving you knowledge.”
“She’s a sweetheart and makes my day!”
“who wanted to share and didn’t want to
Davenport, who played rugby before an
Davenport, in turn, says she values “talking take control.”
injury, learned about staff members carrying to someone with experience [who has] the
Before arriving in Kohlberg, Pierce fintwo jobs when a Public Safety driver helped same wacky humor.”
ishes an interview with L4L partners Karly
her get around campus. “She mentioned
“But I would never interfere with her
Ford ’03 and ES worker Angela Freeman,
having two jobs and not going to bed until 3 classes,” Pierce says, smiling at her friend,
who make electronic greeting cards to praca.m.,” Davenport recalls. “So I said, ‘I
who is considering a future in genetics. Last tice typing and word processing. “Angela
should be driving you.’”
semester, Carly Hammond ’02 worked with
says that Karly lifts up her day and makes
Shortly after that experience, Davenport Pierce on photography skills, resulting in a
her a better person,” Pierce reports.

34

*Unless noted otherwise

Left: Sharon Pierce and grandson Nacier at Longwood
Gardens during the L4L Summer Experience.
Center: Assistant Professor of Education Diane
Anderson recently learned that L4L is the focus of a
June plenary session at the Friends Association for
Higher Education National Conference at Swarthmore
and Pendle Hill. Right: Friends Historical Library
Curator Christopher Densmore (center) during a
summer workshop.

Freeman, who has worked at Swarthmore for a decade, wants to become a social
worker. “We found a program at Widener
University and worked on the application
together,” says Ford. “Angie went to an
open house and is now all set to start work
on her degree in January by taking night
classes.”
Pierce approaches her next “victim” in
Kohlberg. “Do you have anything on your
mind that you want to share?” she asks, as
Davenport begins to film.
Then, the batteries die suddenly.
“We’ve had a lot of technical
problems,” says Davenport, searching for an electric outlet. Sitting
down on the floor, she reads the
user manual and recalls that “once
we forgot the tape.”
Pierce and Davenport exchange
a private look and burst into laughter again.
“I take a lot from the College
and wanted to give something fun to
Sharon,” Davenport says. “It’s good to have
community.”

education interests, including GED and driver’s license preparation, computer and chess
skills, and choreography and sign language.
“Most of the staff [members] involved
are from ES, but, increasingly, Dining
Services staff are joining the program,” says
L4L co-coordinator Brigid Brett-Esborn ’04.
“We have a longtime participant from facilities and a request from [a member of] the
Scott Arboretum staff,” adds co-coordinator
Jessica Lee ’03.
Maintenance employee John Haubrich
became partners with Lester Tran ’03—after

instructor because he wouldn’t do the work
for him. “He just monitored the work, and I
designed the Web site myself,” he says.
Similarly, Tran believes that L4L offers the
“opportunity to build a strong friendship
with someone you otherwise would not
meet during your time at Swarthmore. Two
given people can learn all sorts of lessons
from one another and, from there, build a
strong, long-lasting friendship.”
According to Pat James, associate director for training and student programs at the
Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsi-

“I envision L4L as one of the new Lang Center for
Civic and Social Responsibility’s core programs, and
it certainly is a model that is of great interest to
other colleges and universities,” says Pat James.

Conceptualized in 1998 by a transfer

bility, L4L’s “most important accomplishment is building community among students and staff,” she says. “One of the
favorite parts of my job is to be part of
launching a successful program and seeing
students and other staff assume leadership
as gracefully as the student and staff coordinators of L4L have done.”

Giving L4L its initial impetus,
pioneering student co-coordinators Susie
Ansell ’02 and Elizabeth Derickson ’01

Left: LFL Steering Committee Member Liz Dozier hugs pioneering L4L student co-coordinator Susie Ansell. Right: Don
Bankston, Brigid Brett-Esborn, Jessica Lee, Jaimie Layton,
and Liz Dozier (left to right) relax before their 2002 SCALE
conference presentation at the University of North
Carolina–Chapel Hill.

MARCH 2003

COURTESY OF JESSICA LEE

student, staff, and an education professor,
the campus-based L4L Program was launched
in spring 1999. Initially pairing only a handful of participants, the program now matches approximately 100 students and staff
members, who generally meet two hours a
week. Together, they explore continuing

several frustrating attempts on his own—to
learn Web design. Through L4L, he finally
created the Web site he had long imagined
about his family, including a photo gallery
(http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/jhaubri1).
“Family is everything to me,” he says.
In exchange, Haubrich shared “lessons
about life: family, children, work, happiness,
and relationships,” says Tran. After attending graduate school, Tran will “translate L4L
experience to practice in the education field.”
Haubrich stresses that Tran was a good

35

comforted and loved.”
Jessica Lee stresses that Ansell and
Derickson “are responsible for its success
today.” She adds that Assistant Professor of
Education Diane Anderson “is the rock of
this program.”
Growing out of Anderson’s course
Literacies and Social Identities, L4L reconceptualizes the traditional teacher-student
model. Anderson thinks that “one-on-one
informal learning, community change, and
mutual and reciprocal participation” characterize L4L. “Many service staff members are
among the ‘working poor,’ with two jobs,
and some have been historically disadvan-

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

36

education—we’re all human,” says Ansell.
“We all crave love and affection and new
experiences. We all love to learn new things
and to make new friends. We all share commitments to personal relationships—to
family and friends. We all feel sad and lonely
at times, and we all love to share joy with
others! We all deserve respect from others.
We all feel pride in the work we do, whether
that work [is] a 10-page history paper or
waxing the floors in Beardsley.”
She adds: “All employed adults are professionals. We must value and respect the
work they do. A person’s sense of selfrespect and self-pride directly stems from

“L4L enables a mutual, shared joy of learning
and discovery,” Anderson says. “Staff, too, are
living a ‘life of the mind’—a lifestyle that our
society tends to claim for its scholars.”
taged educationally through race, socioeconomics, and class,” she says (see sidebar).
The College supports L4L by allowing
staff up to three paid hours of work time to
meet with student partners each week.
Based on mutual respect for the knowledge
each person has to offer—regardless of job
status and income—L4L draws partners
together as peers with common interests.
Learning is an equal exchange.
“Regardless of age, ethnic background,
past experience, place of origin, religion, and

DON BANKSTON

applied for—and received—a Eugene M.
Lang [’38] Opportunity Grant. L4L is also
supported by a Literacy Action Network
Grant through Student Coalition for Action
in Literacy Education (SCALE; see later
description about L4L members representing Swarthmore at these conferences) and a
Swarthmore Foundation Grant.
“Getting the program off the ground was
definitely a struggle,” says Ansell, now a
research associate at Education Week. “L4L
needed a strong commitment from both students and staff members because the program was based on a bond of trust. Neither
partner could let the other down by missing
too many meetings or slacking off.”
But after many made full commitments
to L4L, the challenge became “dealing with
more logistical issues such as attempting to
appropriately pair over 100 eager participants who all had extreme variety in schedules and educational interests,” she adds.
“Although there were always a few partnerships that faltered each semester, we had
overwhelming success with pairing students
and staff members—mainly because both
parties were so excited and enthusiastic
about joining the program!”
According to Ansell, L4L fills needs in
both partners’ lives. Swarthmore “academics
can be so trying, a student’s schedule can be
so exhausting … and to have someone at the
end of the day to give you a big hug and pull
you off into a corner of the library to just
talk, to catch up on each other’s lives and
families—nothing ever made me feel so

Left: Current L4L student co-coordinators Jessica Lee
and Brigid Brett-Esborn matched 100 staff and students as L4L partners in the fall. Center: Kenny Whye
joined Bonnie Peterson during the L4L Summer
Experience trip to Chester. Right: Hamzi Wali and Pat
James celebrate the accomplishments of L4L (all left
to right).

their job and how well they do it. People
know their jobs, they know their experiences, and we must draw on that knowledge
if we want to improve the system…. Whether
you are 5 or 50 years old, you do not deserve
to be talked down to. The first person to talk
to when you want to improve the system is
someone already in the system.”
Derickson, who is serving in the Peace
Corps in Cape Verde, off West Africa, was
visiting in State College, Pa., during a recent
holiday. “I became so involved in the L4L
Program because I had such a wonderfully
positive experience with my learning partner, Don Bankston,” she says. “I wanted to
ensure that other students and staff members had the opportunity to have similar
experiences.”

During the past two summers, the
L4L Summer Experience has offered grouporiented workshops and excursions. In
2002, Lee organized the eight-week syllabus, including sessions on nutrition, gardening, physical fitness, and genealogical
research. Group tours to Longwood Gardens,
Chester’s historical sites, and the African
American Museum in Philadelphia, with
lunch in Chinatown, were also conducted.
In her end-of-the-summer report to the
Lang Open Competition Grant Committee,
Lee wrote: “This summer experience … has
had great impact on me personally, academically, and professionally.... I have been
given great perspectives to take into my senior year and a more realistic perspective
with which to live my life.”
Lee also reported the need for increased
advertising, staff member involvement, and
faculty participation. “In summary, the [L4L]
Summer Experience requires improved
infrastructural support and organization,”
she wrote.
Ansell had advised Lee to delegate duties
for greater staff involvement and control

over the program. “However, this is easier
said than done. Many of the staff members
work multiple jobs and have families, all of
which make most of the organizational
duties inconvenient or impossible,” Lee
says. “I personally felt that as long as I was
acting upon the suggestions and decisions
of the Steering Committee, I was adequately
involving the staff members.”
The current committee includes Lee,
Brett-Esborn, Dozier, Pierce, and Bankston.
“I tried to connect with the Dining
Services and grounds staff, but their schedules were incompatible with the ES staff’s
schedules. Also, it was impossible for them
to participate in the extended trips [because
of] their work times,” Lee says. “I hope that
we will eventually be able to say that L4L
involves all of the Swarthmore College
community.”
In her own L4L team with Heather
Fleharty ’03 and ES staff member Doeshes
Brinson, “the most wonderful part was the
relationship that developed among all three
of us,” Lee says. “We became so close that
we could talk about family and personal
matters and have come to rely on each other
for help outside of the academic/tutor-tutee
realm. The most challenging part of the
partnership is knowing that the [hierarchical] system may never change: The prevailing attitudes, which include disrespect of
and indifference toward staff members on
campus, are difficult to change. Even when
Doeshes gets her GED or gets another job,

Left: Liz Dozier is grateful to Sara Lawrence Lightfoot
Professor of English Chuck James, Diane Anderson, and
others in L4L “for a great partnership.”Center: Professor
of Studio Art Brian Meunier taught a photography workshop during the L4L Summer Experience. Right: Al Miser
and Liz Derickson attended the 2000 SCALE conference.

MARCH 2003

one in L4L has input.” Professor of Studio
Art Randall Exon offered a class before the
group visited an art museum, and Professor
of Studio Art Brian Meunier taught photography before they experimented with singleuse cameras.
Since his L4L experience, Bankston and
others from L4L “enjoy talking with students. Now there is community between
staff and students,” he says.
“I’ve seen attitudes change, and confidence has grown.”

DIANE ANDERSON

Now focusing on preschool development
in the Office of Social Welfare and teaching
computer classes at the region’s youth center
in her Peace Corps work, Derickson adds:
“As I struggle keeping 12 students engaged
and on track at one time in my computer
classes, I miss the ideal nature of my oneon-one learning partnership with Don.
Sometimes I feel trapped by the mandated
curriculum of my computer course, and I
wish I could follow the learner-motivated
model of L4L.”
Derickson and Bankston—still in
touch—created the L4L Web site
(http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin.learningforlife/), which Bankston updates as
their Web guru. An L4L Steering Committee
member who now has his own computer
consulting business and janitorial service,
Bankston works on campus as an ES supervisor from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.
“L4L helped me learn computer language,” says Bankston, who was “heartbroken” when Derickson left campus. “I
learned so much with Liz; we did a lot of the
L4L footwork together.”
According to Bankston, Liz did the L4L
groundwork—“knocking on doors”—and
“Susie got things into action,” he says.
Information Technology Services and the
Art Department also gave their “time and
resources.”
In addition, Bankston describes “friendly professors who helped L4L get going”
during the summer program, when “every-

37

she will be replaced by someone else.”
In the November L4L newsletter,
Brinson says: “This will be my last year
working with Jessica and Heather, as they
are both seniors this year. I am going to
miss them so much. At the College, through
this program, they have learned a lot from
me…. I can go to them when things are

phrases and some cultural phenomena. It
was even more pleasant to be able to just
talk to him, to see how his studies were
going. At the time, Hamza was involved in
the Living Wage Campaign, and we would
chat about how that was progressing, and
what Hamza thought about different issues
concerning that.”

“I know my role as a student and in the world.
I’m here for myself, but it’s important to know
that I’m here for our community,” Ray says.

38

“Welcome to WSRN, 91.5 FM,
Swarthmore’s fiercely independent radio
station,” says Lillian Ray ’05, a math major
DON BANKSTON

Wali, who received his paralegal degree at
Delaware County Community College last
spring, says: “Without a doubt, the L4L
Program has indeed influenced my thinking
and outlook toward making a difference in
other people’s improvement as well as my
own…. My biggest challenge is to remain
focused on the social and economic issues
that affect the underprivileged in our society.
The source of satisfaction is to make a difference and to encourage others to learn for
life and exercise a voice for economic and
social change while employed here.”
Wali credits Ansell, his first L4L partner,
“a great deal for influencing, motivating,
and empowering me to achieve personal
growth and development. That inspired me
to take a leadership role…. I was also selected, along with two other staff members, two
students, and Diane Anderson to participate
in a workshop for the SCALE Conference at
the University of North Carolina in October
2000.”
Al Miser, an ES supervisor who greets
people in Parrish Hall with an ever-present
smile, also attended the 2000 SCALE

THERESA BROWN

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

going on in my life, and they will help me
with the right decision and the best results.”
Hamza Wali, another ES employee who
worked with Meggie Miao ’03 to learn
Chinese, “was very impressed with the idea
of a one-on-one learning system,” he says.
“It was like having your own private tutor
on whatever subject matter an individual
desires to learn. L4L is a very unique learning program that allows students and staff
the opportunity to become learning partners, to break the social boundary, and to
establish friendship.”
Miao, an art major and Asian studies
minor pursuing work as a photo journalist,
says: “I was really lucky to work with
Hamza, who was not only a longtime active
L4L participant but also an inspiring person
who has made a lot of achievements….
Hamza not only has mastered all kinds of
computer skills, he was enrolled in a school
nearby while working, trying to get a paralegal degree!”
She adds: “It was very pleasant to be able
to spend a set amount of time with him
each week, teaching the basic greeting

Conference. “It was my first plane ride,” he
recalls. “Professor Diane Anderson sat next
to me, helping to calm my nerves.”
Describing his friend, Miser says Anderson
“is like an angel from heaven—such a wonderful, caring person. She treats people like
every person is on one level, the human
level. I’ve also met her family.”
Describing her experience at the SCALE
Conference in 2000, Anderson wrote: “It
was very powerful to have students and staff
members who have been involved in L4L
and researching L4L as collaborators and
presenters. Liz Derickson, Liz Dozier, Al
Miser, and Hamza Wali were wonderful
public speakers. They articulated both the
personal and the community effects of the
program. They represented Swarthmore in
the best possible way, and I am so proud to
have been among them.”
Miser, who continues to learn about
computers with Michael Loeb ’03, adds that
“The conference was very educational and
informative. Swarthmore College really
stood out. Other schools want a program
like L4L.”
The November L4L newsletter describes
the “Year-Round Service Learning” presentation that Lee, Brett-Esborn, Dozier,
Bankston, and Jamie Layton of Dining
Services gave at the 2002 SCALE Conference in Chapel Hill, N.C. “L4Lers have
attended this conference for the past three
years, and every year, L4L is told that there
is no other program like ours in the nation!”
As conceived in Ansell’s original grant
application, one L4L goal is to have other
colleges replicate the program.

Left: Associate Professor of History Allison Dorsey (center) ran a workshop
focusing on African American history. Right: Shelly Mattison (left) and
Sharon Pierce enjoy a lighthearted moment in Chinatown after visiting the
African American Museum in Philadelphia during the L4L Summer Experience.

Assistant Professor of Education Diane Anderson has completed research with L4L participants
about their program. Anderson’s article “Students and Service Staff: Learning and Researching Together on a College Campus” elaborates on these findings in the Michigan Journal of
Community Service Learning (spring 2003); for details, see http://www.umich.edu/~mjcsl/.
• Large group settings can be frustrating and even hurtful to L4L staff, no matter how well
intended. Staff discussed earlier classroom-based experiences and how humiliated they could
feel. L4L staff prefer one-on-one and informal learning partnerships.
• L4L staff has been traditionally distanced from the students and peripheral to the College’s
main purpose. Yet, especially among long-term employees, staff has maintained a deep commitment to the institution and its students; they carry time and institutional memory.
• Staff is now more likely to be present in places that were previously frequented primarily by
students and faculty, such as in McCabe Library, at public-area computers, and in recreational
facilities. L4L has increased awareness about staff’s difficulty in negotiating and using these
resources; many do not have access to computers or e-mail.
• L4L partners stand together as learners and teachers, students and workers, elders and youth,
male and female, person of color—and whatever else categorizes and separates people.

phones around her neck. She hops up on a
computer room stool—just down the hall
from the engineering lounge, with stacks of
journals such as Network Computing and
Modern Steel Construction. Cranes working
on the new science center, emerging within
immediate view from the large windows,
drone as students collaborate in a nearby
lab.
“I could retire at any time,” says 67-yearold Dozier, who has worked at the College
for 18 years. But I like being around the students and absorbing the information.”
Algebra was her “favorite subject” in
high school, which Dozier didn’t complete
when she married in 1951. Since then, however, she has completed a GED.
Ray says that Dozier is “incredibly good
at math” and hopes to have more time to
work on additional algebra or computer
projects together. In
return, Dozier thinks her

forte is “giving students love. We tell each
other stories about our families.”
A member of the L4L Steering Committee, Dozier wanted to learn more about computers, so she could explore her family’s
genealogy. “My mother died when I was 3
years old, and I did research to find some of
her relatives,” she says. A link to her “Five
Generations Page” (http://www.geocities.com/lizdozier1/fivegenerations.html)
is now on the L4L Web site.
“I think it is really important for students to have a community here that we feel
like a responsible part of,” Ray says. “I also
think that having an adult learning partner
can teach both partners so much about
teaching and learning.”
With her eyes gleaming, Dozier says that
L4L “helps me feel part of the campus. We’re
all flourishing in this program.” T

LIZ DOZIER

Left: Another 2002 L4L Summer Experience workshop
involved a trip to Chester, Pa. Right: Andrew Bunting,
curator of the Scott Arboretum, facilitated a group discussion during a visit to Longwood Gardens.

MARCH 2003

Meanwhile, after her cleaning shift
ends in Hicks, Dozier slips her head-

Learning for Life: Research and Findings

DON BANKSTON

aspiring to teach high school students. “I
hope Kenny will join me soon, bringing his
mix of smooth jazz and soul.”
Kenny Whye, an ES employee, is her L4L
partner. Their radio show is popular with
Whye’s friends, like Liz Dozier—Ray’s other
L4L partner—who listens while cleaning
Hicks.
“It’s my comfort,” Dozier says later,
pointing to her headphones.
Back in Parrish, before Ray’s show
begins, she props herself on the back of a
chair in the barren lounge outside the studio—stopping to catch her breath after
climbing four flights. “That’s the hard part,”
she says.
But “it’s especially rewarding to help a
staff member be heard all over campus and
get to feel a little more like part of the community. My favorite part of L4L is getting to
know local community members who live
here, have roots here, have been here for
years, and who interact with students on a
much more personal level than professors
do,” Ray says.
“It makes me feel like Swarthmore is a
much less isolated, idealized place—like it’s
in a real community [similar to] the ones we
all grew up in,” says Ray, who is from
Charlottesville, Va. “Plus, it’s a good chance
to make new friends, learn new skills, and
learn a lot about being good teachers and
students, who need to be brave and willing
to put themselves on the line. They have to
be willing to speak up and ask questions.”
After a few minutes, Ray says, “We better
go into the studio.” Ray finds a CD left
playing by the preceding phantom DJ and
selects three more to fill her hour.

39

mation, or contact Boston Connection
Chair Stephanie Hirsch at shirsch@sprynet.com or (617) 498-3947.

Paris: The revitalized
Paris Connection recently
hosted Associate Professor of Political Science
Cynthia Halpern, who
discussed current world
events with Swarthmore alumni. This
Connection conducted a successful winetasting event in the winter. If you are interested in
receiving information regarding
Paris Connection events, contact
the Alumni Relations Office at
alumni@swarthmore.edu, and
your name will be passed along
to Paris Connection Chair
Catherine Seeley
Lowney ’82.

Metro DC/Baltimore: The following
Connection event is planned:
Annual Trip to Hillwood Museum and
Gardens. Scott Arboretum Director
Claire Sawyers will join a docent-led
tour of Hillwood Museum and Gardens, one of America’s premier
estate museums, on March 22 at
noon. Hillwood’s founder was Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir of the Post
cereal empire and one of America’s first
businesswomen. Encircled by woodlands in the heart of Washington, D.C.,
the 25-acre estate boasts pleasure gardens and important azalea and
orchid collections. The
cost is $10. Contact
Sampriti Ganguli ’95
at (202) 545-0835
or e-mail at sampritig@hotmail.com. We have
very limited space,
© PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
so reserve early!
THE PHILADELPHIA CONNECTION WILL TOUR THE

Philadelphia: The
Philadelphia Connection held an
event—geared
toward young
alumni (young at
heart were in
PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART’S DEGAS AND THE
attendance
Philadelphia: The
DANCE EXHIBIT ON MAY 2.
too!)—at Buffalo
following two
Billiards in Philadelphia. Pool sharks and
events are planned for this area:
novices alike enjoyed this fun, social
Art Museum. Join the Philadelphia Conevening. This Connection wants to continue nection for Degas and the Dance at the Philadelphia Art Museum at 6:30 p.m. on May 2.
hosting events of interest to recent graduJill DeVonyar and Richard Kendall, major
ates. If you are interested in participating,
historians of the dance and of Edgar Degas,
contact the Alumni Relations Office at
have brought to this subject a new perspecalumni@swarthmore.edu.
tive of remarkably fresh insight. Through
UPCOMING
some 150 works in all media, the show will
EVENTS
explore Degas’ investigation over some 40
Boston: Barry
years of the dance world that was central to
Schwartz, Dorwin P.
the culture of Paris in his day. The cost is $17
Cartwright Professor
for senior citizens and $20 for others. Payof Social Theory and
ment must be received in advance; contact
Social Action, will visit
Philadelphia Connection Chair Bruce Gould
the Boston Connec’54 at (215) 575-9320 or brucegould54@tion on May 9 to preshotmail.com to register and receive payment
ent a lecture titled
information.
“Too Many Choices:
Swarthmore Connection Dinner Group.
BARRY SCHWARTZ
Who Suffers and
This group meets on the first Thursday of
Why.” Watch your mail for additional infor- every month at 6 p.m. at a Philadelphia-area

restaurant. The monthly location changes
depending on the group’s palate preferences.
All suggestions are welcomed! Call or e-mail
Bruce Gould (see earlier) or Jim Moskowitz
’88 at (610) 604-0669 or jim@jimmosk.com for the upcoming monthly meeting, or
check the alumni Web site at www.swarthmore.edu. Also, sign up for the Philadelphia
listserv to be notified by e-mail of upcoming
events.
Los Angeles: Daniel
Underhill Professor of
Music James Freeman
will speak to the Los
Angeles Connection at
The Sage Hill School
on May 10 beginning
at 1 p.m. Watch your
mail for additional
JIM FREEMAN
information, or contact the Alumni Relations Office at alumni@swarthmore.edu.
Twin Cities: A recent planning meeting of
the Twin Cities Connection yielded several
great events for 2003. Those who attended
the meeting were Christy DeLaCruz ’96,
Annika Lister Stroope ’97, Paula Beck ’90,
Elizabeth Starling ’92, Lia Theologides ’89,
Paul Crowell ’86, Emily Wallenfels White
’43, and Martha Easton ’89. Events planned
for 2003 include an ongoing monthly salon
discussion group, a production of The
Coconuts at the Actors’ Theatre, and a trip
to the Saint Paul Saints game. Watch your
mail for more information, dates, and times.
If you are interested in participating on the
planning committee for this Connection or
have an event to suggest, contact Lia Theologides at liatheologides@yahoo.com.

LONDON CALLING
The London Connection is also re-energized and looking to plan events for spring
2003. If you are interested in participating
in event planning, can suggest an event, or
just want to attend, contact Margarethe
“Abby” Honeywell ’85 at abby.honeywell@btinternet.com. or the Alumni Office at
alumni@swarthmore.edu.

STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67

RECENT EVENTS

STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67

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

40

Connections

Family Weekend
April 11–13
Black Alumni Reunion
June 5 and 6
Alumni Weekend
June 6–8
Alumni College Abroad
May 10–20
VOTE FOR ALUMNI COUNCIL
The Alumni Council ballots will be mailed
in late April. Please take a moment to
review the ballot and vote for your representative to the Alumni Council. This year,
for the first time, you can vote on-line at
http://alumniballot.com. The Web site will
become available after ballots are mailed.

WWW.SWAT
The Alumni Relations Office has recently
redesigned the alumni pages of the College
Web site. See the new look at http://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni. E-mail the Alumni
Relations Office staff at alumni@swarthmore.edu with your comments.

Alumni Council Update

I

The report contains findings
n an effort to provide a range of
and suggestions that the task
services to alumni, students,
group hopes will be useful to the
and the College, the Alumni CounBoard. The task group also hopes
cil adopted an ambitious work plan
that its report will be helpful in
for the 2002–2003 academic year.
efforts to bring about reconciliaThe plan includes initiatives priorition with those still feeling distized by the Executive Committee
tanced from the College.
of Council for the current year. For
As part of the agreement to
those interested in learning more
make
the report available to the
about these initiatives, the plan is
RICH TRUITT ’66
greater College community, the
posted on the Alumni Council Web
full Report on Consensual Decision Making by
page www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/alumthe Swarthmore College Board of Managers
ni_council.html. Also posted there is the
was posted in early March on the Alumni
Alumni Council Newsletter, which summarizes
Council Web page.
the proceedings and outcomes from the fall
Those without Web access who wish to
meeting held on Oct. 25 to 27.
receive a copy of any or all of the documents
One of the special initiatives of council
referenced in this column may contact the
this year is to foster reconciliation between
Alumni Relations Office at (610) 328-8402,
the College and those feeling distanced from
requesting the Annual Work Plan of Alumni
it after the December 2000 decision to
Council, the Alumni Council Newsletter for fall
restructure the Athletics Program.
2002, and/or the Report From the Task Group
One major element of this initiative has
on Consensual Decision Making.
been the study and development of a report
Thank you for your interest in the activion the use of consensual decision making by
ties of the council and for your support to
Swarthmore’s Board of Managers. The task
Swarthmore College.
group, appointed by Council and chaired by
—Rich Truitt ’66
Jed Rakoff ’64, conducted its work over a
President, Alumni Association
nine-month period and presented its report
to the Board at its meeting in late February.
STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67

SPRING EVENTS

Attention Entrepreneurs—or Potential Ones
arc Reinganum, vice president and director of
Three panel discussions will be part of the program. The
quantitative research and portfolio strategist for
first panel will address the biotechnology industry and
equities of OppenheimerFunds Inc., will be the keynote
will highlight panelists C. Vibeke Strand ’71, a biopharmaspeaker at the 2003 Lax Conference on Entrepreneurceutical consultant for Loftis/Strand Consulting; Joseph
ship on Sunday, April 6. Reinganum, the spouse of AliTurner ’73, chief financial officer of Myogen Inc.; and
son Fox ’80, is renowned as the founding father of
Emily Levy ’80, principal/management consultant for
stock market anomalies. His research in the field of
Synergy Partners.
small cap stocks (with Rolf Banz) proved conclusively
The second panel discussion topic will address the future
that it is not a “random walk down Wall Street.” Since
of technology. Panelists include William Squadron ’77, chief
1995, Reinganum has held the Mary Jo Vaughn Chair in
executive officer of Sportvision Systems LLC; Iqbal Quadir
MARC REINGANUM
Financial Investments at Southern Methodist University
’81, founder of GrameenPhone and lecturer at Harvard
and is currently on leave.
University’s Kennedy School of Government; Maggie Habib Gorse
Beginning at noon, the Lax Conference allows alumni and cur’73, director/consultant at Gorse Analysts; and Douglas Winneg
rent students to learn about business from alumni panelists and
’89, president of Software Secure Inc.
others who have been successful entrepreneurs. Panel discussions
The third panel is on ethics in business. Panelists include Linda
and a networking reception provide an opportunity for formal and
Ambrus Broenniman ’77, director of HFS Capital; Samuel Hayes III
informal discussion. The conference, now in its fourth year, is
’57, Jacob Schiff Professor Emeritus of Harvard Business School;
funded by an endowment created by a bequest from the late
and Alan Tawil-Kummerman ’74, CEO of Foto Wire SA.
Jonathan Lax ’71. It is co-sponsored by the Swarthmore Business
For additional information or to sign up for the conference, call
Society, the Career Services Office, and the Alumni Relations
the Lax Conference Response Line (voice mail) at (610) 690-6887,
Office.
or visit the conference Web site at http://www.swarthmore.edu/lax.

MARCH 2003

M

41

STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67

CLASS NOTES

the meaning of

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

s w a r t h mor e

42

Swarthmore means having your
cake and eating it too. You get
to spend four years with the
most brilliant minds in the world
while you just happen to live
in the most beautiful garden in
the world.
Swarthmore is a feast for the
intellect and the senses. All the
world’s problems seem more
solvable when the crocuses are
in bloom.
—Rikki Abzug ’86

FOR GERTRUDE BOWERS BURDSALL ’28, HER GARDEN IS THE MOST PEACEFUL PLACE.

G

ertrude Burdsall remembers clearly the
day the growing pains first hit. As a girl
of about 8, Burdsall said she was suddenly
overwhelmed by the desire to plant something. “I happened to have some beans, so I
planted them, not in particularly good soil,
but I wasn’t very soil conscious at the time,”
she recalls. “But I planted them and, much
to my surprise, they came up. And that’s
when I started growing things.”
Burdsall can still be found in her garden
every day, tending the herbs, vegetables,
and flowers she has grown to love so much.
It is when she is standing within the confines of what she describes as her “small,
informal country herb garden” that she
feels most at peace. “I just feel as though
you never cease to be amazed by the knowledge and interest that is in herbs,” she says.
“People who grow things think you just
put seeds in the ground and then you have
beans. Well, it’s not all that easy,” says
Burdsall, a serious gardener for more than
80 years now.
After graduating from Swarthmore,
Burdsall married Ellwood Richard Burdsall
’27, whom she described as a “good gardener” who taught her much of what she
knows. Soon afterward, they moved into
what had been Ellwood’s family summer
home in Great Barrington, Mass. The home,
set on rolling farmland, was the perfect
place for the young couple to cultivate their
love of gardening: Ellwood raised the vegetables, and Gertrude planted the flowers.
“It was just sort of what you did—you
grew flowers,” Burdsall says. “I worked very
hard at it, and it was a very pretty garden.
But then, I discovered herbs.”
Her life would never be the same. As
Burdsall recalled, she became intrigued
when the owners of what is now called the
Berkshire Botanical Garden began creating
a hillside herb garden. “It was a very unusual type of garden for the area, and I was just
fascinated from the start,” she says.
She began reading books about herbs
and talking to local herb experts, all the
while becoming engrossed by the diversity,
complexity, and varied uses of herbs.
“Flowers are lovely to grow, but when
they’re gone, they’re gone,” she explains.

COURTESY OF GERTRUDE BOWERS BURDSALL

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

44

At Home With Her Herbs

IN THE BERKSHIRE MOUNTAINS OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS, GERTRUDE BURDSALL SPENDS MOST OF
HER TIME THESE DAYS TENDING TO HER HERB GARDEN, COOKING, AND SWIMMING.

“Herbs just have so much more to offer
than flowers in a flower garden. There’s just
no comparison with the interest in growing
them, as I see it.”
Today, Burdsall is never more at home
than when she is with her herbs. The mother of three children, a grandmother to nine
children, and a great-grandmother to nine
more, she has not strayed far from where
she began. Seventeen years after her husband’s death in 1964, Burdsall moved into
a smaller house designed by her son Benjamin, an architect. The house stands not
far from the larger home she and Ellwood
once shared, now a bed-and-breakfast run
by her son Richard, a retired English
instructor.
“I was 75 when we built the house, and
my friends said to me, ‘You’re building a
house at 75?’ But I’ve had 20 years in this
house, and it’s been wonderful. It’s open to
the outside and the hills and the sky, and
I just think it’s the most wonderful place
in the world.”

Her beloved herb garden, home to more
than 50 varieties of plants, now stands
directly adjacent to the house’s plant room.
It is on her farm where she spends most of
her time these days, tending her plants,
indulging her passion for cooking, and
enjoying daily swims at the family bed-andbreakfast.
She stays in touch with her old classmates and, as class secretary, writes the ’28
Class Notes for the Bulletin, including regular commentary on her gardens and grandchildren. “Gardening is always full of surprises, even when one has been at it for
more than 80 years!” she wrote for the June
notes, after her discovery of frozen early
chives in the middle of a Massachusetts
March.
So having traded the beans she once
planted for basil and borage, Burdsall continues to return to her garden every day,
waiting and watching for those unexpected
surprises that make it a joy to be alive at 96.
— Elizabeth Redden ’05

IN MY LIFE

One
Fine
Day
T H E AC C I D E N TA L
DISCOVERY OF JOY
By H e r b e r t B o y a j i an L o c ks l e y ’ 4 3

52

For the first time, it
occurred to me that birds
and mammals might
exercise their
individual skills not
just for survival—but
for sheer joy.
CLAIRE SAWYERS

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

H

oping to clear the torpor of my mind
and spirit, I was walking in Crum
Woods one sunny spring afternoon.
I had remembered a medical claim that
walking improves your health and longevity.
But closer to home, I did not find the hurried pace of other walkers’ jostling on narrow sidewalks conducive to peace of mind
and thought.
Unexpected events turned my walk into
an existential bonanza. Entering the woods,
I seemed to step into another world—like
Alice through the looking glass—or like
Adam in an Eden without any cares. Adam
must have listened to the whisper of leaves,
the rippling brook, the chatter and arias of
birds. He must have enjoyed the bright red
plumage and full-throated song of the male
cardinal or the gently fluttering hues and
polka dots of butterflies. Didn’t Adam have
to climb over large tree roots and rocks in
Eden—hills that required tricky maneuvers
of balance and coordination that challenged
his mind and body? Didn’t he find caterpillars, insects, wildflowers, patches of daffodils, berry bushes and mosses, scurrying
squirrels, and chipmunks?
God had said it was “good.” Adam called
it “Paradise.”
I heard a bird, perched on a small bush
several paces away, singing with abandon. I sat motionless on a
boulder, listening with fascination. Who was the bird singing to? No
others were in sight—no near or distant replies. Oblivious to its
surroundings, with no expectant looking around or attentive cocking of its head, the bird sang broken dyads and triads, repeating
these in quick succession. I tested my weakly developed solfège in a
soft whistle; I could find the intervals but not the glorious timbre
and fullness of its notes.
Then, I remembered that birds have a double larynx—two sets of

vocal cords. Unlike any orchestral wind instrument, birds can produce two simultaneous notes, something that string musicians call a
“double stop.” My singing friend changed intervals, phrases, and
emphasis apparently at whim; the mood of its song also varied from
tentative and inquiring to declarative and sometimes imperative.
Interspersed was staccato chattering—a “recitative”—and lowpitched, soft, mechanical chirps, which I thought were either warning sounds or reassurances for little chicks. But it was too early for
chicks. No danger seemed to warrant a warning; no other living

F

ollowing gravity about 50 feet down a slope through branches,
rock outcroppings, and small rain gullies, I arrived at the meadow and a path beside Crum Creek. As I neared a moderate-sized
pool about 2 feet deep, I heard frantic thrashing and splashing. In
the middle of the pool was a large dog—probably a golden retriever.
It seemed to be struggling—paddling with its hind legs and flagellating its tail. Rising up in the water, it also thrashed with its
forepaws.
No owner was in sight.
Then, to my surprise, the dog turned and swam ashore; bounded
up onto the bank about 20 feet from me; and, with a series of
tremendous shakings, cast off sheets of water. It had a fawn-colored
head, friendly eyes, a well-formed body, droopy ears, and a dripping
matted coat. It sniffed the ground and air and then looked straight
at me. I wanted to make friends. So without moving, I alternately
called, whispered, yipped, whistled, and commanded—all tactics
that worked with my own two dogs—but to no avail. Instead, it
rolled in the soft muddy bank, rubbed its back with undulating contortions; got up; and chased its tail in a tight circle. It looked at me
again for an instant, then raced back into the pool.
I watched for about 5 minutes as the dog repeated this ritual several times. It was not hunting, fishing, chasing, or playing with
another dog. It was not obeying its master. It seemed to be swimming and rolling in the mud for sheer personal joy!
As I walked away from the creek, I saw two students passing by,
holding hands and laughing. We struck up a conversation. I asked
about the dog’s master, home, and unusual behavior. They reported
that the dog came to that pool in the creek almost every afternoon—from which I inferred that they did too—each in pursuit of
the joys of nature. With a friendly wave, we went our separate ways.
I mused that birds, mammals, and humans do many similar
things. Birds and mammals sing and vocalize in their own peculiar

ways—bark, chirp, cheep, screech, hawk, grunt, and whistle. They
swim, dive, fly, soar, dig, race, chase, wrestle, climb trees, play hideand-seek; build nests, dens, burrows, and even abodes complete
with dam and moat. Humans can do everything they do with greater
versatility, although sometimes not quite as well, and often requiring special equipment.
For the first time, it occurred to me that birds and mammals
might exercise their individual skills not just for survival—but for
sheer joy.
Humpback whales, too, might sing their low-pitched mournful
songs not just to communicate with others at great distance but
simply to please themselves. All of us, seeking the simple joy of
using muscles, developing coordination, exercising skills, or inventing new songs, new ideas, new anythings. But mostly being “up and
doing—unchained, unworried, unharried, free to choose, exuberant,
at one with nature and oneself.
I had never identified joy in quite this way before. It seemed a
new thought, a good recipe!

B

eginning my walk had required an act of will. I had felt physically tired and mentally dull. After nearly an hour of walking,
climbing, sliding, and tripping along narrow paths, I was now walking faster, feeling invigorated and mentally rejuvenated.
Now it was time to return home. In the distance, I heard the soft
pure tones of a flute. Nearer to the source, I saw a young man with
long blond hair and full beard sitting on the stone wall beside the
stage of the College’s amphitheater. I rested for a few minutes out of
sight and enjoyed a solo flute concert. But it was his succession of
moods that intrigued me. At any given moment, the theme he selected might be flighty and tripping, slow and melancholy, lilting and
romantic—and occasionally loud and strident. Like the ancient
psalmists, the shepherd in Tristan and Isolde, and the Neanderthal
inventor of the first willow whistle with side holes—he was giving
expression to some corner of the human heart. Away from the hubbub of college life, he seemed as at peace as a lone young man can
be. I walked up to the young musician, said a few friendly and
appreciative words, and went on with a happy little hum under my
breath, like Pooh.
Soon, I passed back through the looking glass and was startled
by revving engines, perforated mufflers, and thumping car stereos. I
hurried back home, back to my Eve.
A pastor, or perhaps a philosopher, once said: “Since the fall of
Adam and Eve and the banishment from Eden, mankind has had to
suffer and work. But we are even now building our own Eden.” But I
thought to myself: Man can build a better mousetrap, automobile, or
computer. We can build tall steel and glass office buildings; resort
hotels; garish gambling casinos; and, yes, magnificent cathedrals.
But build another Eden?
God did not destroy Eden or even lock the gate. The primeval
forest is still there (at least for a while longer) and so is primeval
joy! How fortunate we are to have an Eden so accessible to this tree
of knowledge.
And, by the way, the doctors are right: My health is already
better! T
Herbert Locksley is a retired neurosurgeon who lives in Wallingford, Pa.

MARCH 2003

COURTESY OF HERBERT LOCKSLEY

thing was paying
attention to the
song but me. This
winged minstrel was
running through its
repertoire, exercising
its voice, developing
virtuosity, composing songs, singing
paeans for sheer personal joy—without
a care, feeling good
to be alive; reveling
in singing as much
as it might in soar“BEGINNING MY WALK HAD REQUIRED AN ACT OF
ing. As I walked on,
WILL,” SAYS LOCKSLEY. “I HAD FELT PHYSICALLY
the lovely musical
theme of calm and
TIRED AND MENTALLY DULL.” ALL THAT WAS
thanksgiving after
ABOUT TO CHANGE.
the storm from
Beethoven’s Pastoral
Symphony ran through my mind, and I barely caught myself from
audibly saying “thank you” to this joyous little friend.

53

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

62

Courtroom Theatrics
RICK APPEL ’62 TEACHES THE ART OF PERSUASION.

J

ust because attorneys make it through
the rigors of law school doesn’t mean
they will automatically perform like Perry
Mason in court, says seasoned trial attorney
Rick Appel.
In an effort to help fellow lawyers who
need to brush up on their “act” before a
judge and jury, the Cheltenham, Pa., resident
has combined his passion for theater and
the law by teaching a course called Theater
Skills in the Courtroom.
In recent years, Appel noticed that many
inexperienced attorneys weren’t receiving
adequate training in courtroom “performance.” The problem, he maintains, is that
law trial-skills courses don’t get to that level.
In addition, more cases are settled out of
court now, and the economics of law practice
makes firms less likely to send their newer
attorneys into courtrooms to learn by
watching.
“Twenty years ago, law firms sent at least
two attorneys to a trial, and it was the second, less experienced attorney’s job to help
administratively. They could also watch and
gain valuable tips on how to act during a
trial. Now, that doesn’t happen,” he says.
As a result, inexperienced trial attorneys
worry too much about looking good for the
client or battling the opposing attorney.
They forget that their real audience is the
jury, and they’re not prepared with their
props. They also tend to get excited and talk
too fast, and a nervous lawyer is more difficult to listen to, Appel says.
“The best way to influence a jury is to tell
a story,” he tells a recent seminar class.
“You’ve got to get away from being a lawyer
and become a storyteller.”
Appel has taught hundreds of students
throughout the country in law schools, government agencies, continuing education
classes, and in his own three-year-old consulting business, Trial Run Inc. His one-day
seminars teach lawyers how to use their
voices; relate to an audience; focus on
breathing, movement, and the use of props;
and tell their “stories” in a compelling, honest fashion. He even brings in professional
actors and directors to help instruct and critique his pupils.
One of the techniques Appel tries to con-

RICK APPEL HAS COMBINED HIS PASSION FOR
THEATER AND THE LAW BY CREATING A COURSE
FOR ATTORNEYS CALLED THEATER SKILLS IN THE
COURTROOM.

vey to his students is the importance of
speaking from a position of honesty without
betraying their true emotions.
“I don’t want them to think, ‘I’ve got to
sound like a lawyer here,’ but rather ‘I have a
strong opinion about something, and I want
you to understand it,’” he says.
Part of the course also focuses on the
“verbal mannerisms” that can distract from
a courtroom presentation. “Lots of attorneys
use words such as ‘like’ or ‘uh’ to fill in the
gaps of their conversation, or they repeat a
witness’s answer—things I call ‘busy words.’
They also tend to talk fast because they don’t
want to lose the floor to the other attorney.”
Appel encourages his students to stop at the
end of each sentence and breathe before
they start their next thought.
He also teaches various acting “tricks of
the trade,” such as facial gestures, letting
dialogue and movements happen naturally.
“Public speaking doesn’t come naturally
just because you went to law school,” Appel

says. “And the way things happen [in court]
can either diminish or enhance the attention to your case.”
The 62-year-old has worked as a trial
lawyer for the last 30 years. He currently
focuses on serious personal injury, medical
malpractice, and product liability in the
Jenkintown, Pa., office of Groen, Lamm,
Goldberg & Rubenstone.
His passion for the theater has existed,
however, since his days at Swarthmore,
when he helped write the original student
musical called The Hamburg Show (then an
annual Swarthmore tradition).
“I had a part of me that I discovered at
Swarthmore that wanted to continue with
the disciplines of acting and directing,” said
Appel, who went on to graduate from Temple University’s School of Law in 1966.
Although he originally intended to be an
entertainment lawyer in New York City, during summer 1964, he helped represent
clients involved in the civil rights movement
in Georgia in the ’60s. He eventually
returned to Philadelphia as a public defender and then moved to private practice and
civil litigation.
Appel and his wife, Diana Dooley, have
two children, Molly, 18, and Benjamin, 16,
and both are involved in music and drama.
Between his law practice and courtroom
skills courses, Appel said he doesn’t have the
time to be involved with the theater. But he
does sing in the local Abington Choral Club.
In addition to his theater skills course,
Appel also teaches a workshop called The
Elements of Advocacy, which focuses on the
art of persuasion and communication skills.
He is also scheduled to offer a workshop on
public speaking and persuasion at Swarthmore on March 22 to 23. The seminar will
help students deal with public speaking and
the art of persuasion in job interviews and
oral exams.
He noted that his one-day courses are
not meant to duplicate a semester or yearlong course at a college or theater school.
“But [the course] can give some level of
comfort and confidence and open gateways
to maximizing whatever experiences come
along,” he said.
—Angela Doody

MARK VONNEGUT ’69 KNEW BOTH THE IDEALISM AND INSANITY OF THE ’60S.

Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A
Memoir of Insanity, Seven Stories Press,
2002. Orginally published by Praeger,
1975

T

here’s a saying about the 1960s: If you
remember them, you weren’t really there.
Mark Vonnegut was definitely there—and
he remembers.
The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity is
about Vonnegut’s descent into madness
while living in a commune in British
Columbia. First published in 1975 and reissued in November, it chronicles his
post–Swarthmore odyssey and illness—
then diagnosed as schizophrenia but likely
understood today as bipolar disorder.
It’s also a cogent contemporary account
of the mind-set of the 1960s—one of the
best books I’ve read about the restless idealism and hard work of “being a good hippie.” The Eden Express doesn’t analyze or
romanticize the hippie experience—it just
pours it onto the page with all the passion,
anguish, and dichotomies that characterized
the time.
“I think most of us were fed to the teeth
with the brand of rationalism that had
made up so much of our education,” Vonnegut wrote. “Western rationality had made
a dreadful mess of this lovely planet, but it
was more that this form of rationality had
taken up the lion’s share of our minds without giving us much in return…. We wanted
to free some of our rational brain space to
make room for other ways of being.”
The Eden Express depicts hippie life and
its mental aberrations without a shred of
defensiveness. A new afterword to the 2002
edition (the foreword is by the author’s
famous father Kurt) offers this retrospective
explication:
“We were not the spaced-out, flaky, selfabsorbed, wimpy, whiney flower children
depicted in movies and TV shows…. It’s true
that we were too young, too inexperienced,
and, in the end, too vulnerable to bad advice
from middle-aged sociopathic gurus. Things
eventually went bad, but before they went
bad, hippies did a lot of good. Brave, honest, and true, they paid a price.”
One such guru was Harvard professor
and acid-head Timothy Leary. For followers

COURTESY OF MARK VONNEGUT

BOOKS & ARTS
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

66

The Good Hippie

“I think most of
us were fed to
the teeth with
the brand of
rationalism that had
made up so much
of our education.”

“IT WASN’T THAT HARD TO LIVE WITHOUT
ELECTRICITY AND OTHER CONVENIENCES ON
NEXT TO NO MONEY,” WRITES VONNEGUT (ABOVE,
AT THE COMMUNE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1970).
“I LOVED WORKING SUNUP TO SUNDOWN
BUILDING A HOUSE, CUTTING FIREWOOD, AND
MAKING A GARDEN. AND I DIDN’T HAVE TO
WORRY THAT MY EFFORTS WERE SOMEHOW
SUBSIDIZING DEATH AND DESTRUCTION.”

of his mantra, “turn on, tune in, drop out,”
LSD and other psychedelics were the gateways to a new consciousness—a way of
short-circuiting the Western rationality that
was so troubling to our generation. The
trouble was, Vonnegut said in an October
interview, “we didn’t know that drugs were
bad for us. I really do think that was a key
piece of information we were missing.”
Another guru, psychologist R.D. Laing,
may have done more damage. When Vonnegut fell ill at the commune, his fellow
Eden seekers viewed his psychosis through
Laing’s then-popular idea that insanity is a
sane response to an insane society. Though
Mark was going crazy, his friends (including
several classmates and friends from Swarthmore who also lived at the commune) at
first saw his behavior—and even his misery—as normal behavior in the crazy world
of 1971. Mark had been the commune’s
visionary, and it seemed that his mind was
merely intensifying its natural self. Only
after he became incoherent, stopped eating,
and threatened suicide did his comrades
seek medical treatment for him in Vancouver. He eventually suffered three severe psychotic “crack-ups,” as he calls them, and was
hospitalized twice.
The book’s description of Vonnegut’s
psychosis—the voices in his head, delusions, and despair he feels when he thinks
he will not recover—is vivid and immediate.
At one point, he decides that his thoughts
are responsible for an earthquake in California that has killed his girlfriend. He also
imagines that his father has killed himself.
The third break, which came unexpectedly as he seemed to be recovering, was the
worst.
Vonnegut writes: “I was running out of
excuses. My father hadn’t committed suicide. Virginia was OK. My mother was OK.
Spring was on schedule…. I had followed all
doctor’s orders faithfully, and here I was
back in that fucking little [isolation] room
again.”
He adds: “My suicide attempts became
more frequent, more pathetic, more sincere.
Before, I had danced with death, loved
death, hated death, teased death, been
teased by death.”
Against the odds, he recovered. Slowly,

Jonathan Franzen ’81, How to Be Alone, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. This collection of 14 essays includes the author’s controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of
the American novel as well as other personal
narratives and reportage.
Marjorie Garber ’66, Quotation Marks,
Routledge, 2003. These essays explore the
power of language and miscommunications.
Garber is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of
English and director of the Humanities Center at Harvard, where she chairs the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and
directs the Carpenter Center of Visual Arts.
Stephen Henighan ’84, Lost Province: Adventures in a Moldovan Family, Prospect Books,
2002. The author of four books, Henighan
explores the struggle of an outsider in our
“global village.” His controversial When
Words Deny the World (The Porcupine's
Quill, 2002) was nominated for the Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards.
Anne Sheldon ’67, Hero-Surfing, Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2002. The
winner of the 2001 Washington Writers’ Publishing House poetry competition, Sheldon
creates a sequence of Lancastrian poems and
delivers sonnets based on Icelandic sagas.

PLACE, IS DISTINGUISHED TEACHING PROFESSOR
OF ENGLISH AND WOMEN’S STUDIES AT SUNY–ALBANY.

Jack Spafford ’44, An Interesting Life: An
Autobiography, self-published, 2003. The author describes his life experiences, including
schooling, World War II, jobs, and travels.
Carol and David White ’65, Catskill Day
Hikes for All Seasons, Adirondack Mountain
Club, 2002. Describing 60 mountain hikes,
the authors include practical advice, roundtrip distances, difficulty ratings, summit elevations, and page maps.
Richard Wolfson ’69, Simply Einstein, W.W.
Norton, 2002. The author presents key
ideas framing comtemporary physics—from
the possibility of time travel to the fate of
the universe. Wolfson explains the concepts
of Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell’s electromagnetism, highlighting contradictions
leading to the 19th-century physics crisis.

OTHER BOOKS

Christopher Castellani ’94, A Kiss From
Maddalena, Algonquin Books, 2003. In this
first novel, the author imagines a story
about young love and war in 1943. Castellani, whose parents are Italian immigrants,
won the SUNY Stony Brook Short Fiction
Prize and the Ella T. Grasso Literary Award.
Judith Fetterley ’60 and Marjorie Pryse,
Writing Out of Place, University of Illinois
Press, 2003. The authors focus on regional
writers, offering a countertraditional viewpoint of human development and considering feminist theory and American literature.

JUDITH FETTERLEY, CO-AUTHOR OF WRITING OUT OF

EXHIBIT

STEPHEN HENIGHAN, AUTHOR OF LOST PROVINCE,
TEACHES SPANISH AMERICAN LITERATURE AND
CULTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH, ONTARIO.

Alexandra Grant ’94 organized unDRAWN
at the Brewery Project in Los Angeles during
November and December. The exhibit included the works of 11 young, emerging
artists who use drawing as a concept on
which they base their work in other media.
Grant’s own work is part of a series called
“drawings without paper,” wire sculptures
that dance across the gallery walls in the
form of shadows.

MARCH 2003

with the help of a doctor who prescribed
antipsychotic medication and vitamin therapy, he regained his mind. He went back
East, wrote this book, went to Harvard
Medical School, and became a pediatrician.
He also learned from his disease.
The Eden Express closes with a letter to a
friend who is suffering from schizophrenia.
“Simply realizing that the problem is biochemical can be enormously helpful,” he
wrote to her. “No one’s to blame. Psychological heroics are not required to improve
things…. As poetic as schizophrenia is, I
know of very few cases in which poetry was
of much help.”
Mark Vonnegut was one of the lucky
ones; he got better. Yet he still believes that
his crack-ups remain a presence in his life.
“I know that I was very sick and got
well—well enough to participate in life,” he
said. “I’ve had other things that have been
extremely challenging. I had one more psychotic episode. I’ve had horrible trouble
with insomnia. So sometimes, when things
get rough, I still feel, ‘Oh shit. This can take
me out somehow.’ A lot of mental illness is
how many times you get your wheels in the
rut and spin. After a certain number of
times, it gets very hard to get the wheels out
of the rut.”
Mental illness drove Mark Vonnegut off
the road on the way to his Eden. Nearly
three decades after the book was written, it
traces not only Mark’s path from 1969 to
1972, but also the early turns of a generation
still in spin—still wondering whether the
roads we chose have brought us to where
we truly wanted to go.
—Jeffrey Lott

67

AARON WEISSBLUM ’86 MAKES A LIVING FROM INVENTING GAMES.

A

aron Weissblum has always loved to
play games. “I was the kid who never
wanted to go to bed but wanted to play one
more game,” he says. “Today, the self-proclaimed “game geek,” and board-game
designer is still playing.
The Swarthmore math major invented
his first game, a “large, crazy, skill-andaction game too large to fit into most people’s homes,” about 15 years ago, while working as a potter in a studio in Gloucester,
Mass., where he still lives. His landlord liked
it and connected Weissblum with an agent
in the game business.
“Although my agent never actually sold
any of my games,” says Weissblum, “I
learned a lot about the business from her.”
After several years trying to sell games in
the United States, Weissblum realized that
the U.S. market was dominated by large toy
firms like Hasbro, which bought out companies such as Milton Bradley and Parker Bros.
New products were narrowed to battery-run
games that look and sound “cool” and sell
well on television; or games using popular
licenses like “Harry Potter” or “Star Wars.”
“For games based on original ideas,
whose value is in their design and in the
interaction of players with each other, or
which require some skill or strategy, the market here is limited,” says Weissblum.
When he met veteran game designer Alan
Moon in 1996, he learned that Europe—
particularly Germany, with dozens of game
publishers—offered more sales opportunities.
“I believe,” says Weissblum, “that the
U.S. game industry underestimates the
American population, with respect to both
our interest and our willingness to be challenged. That’s not so in Europe, where
there’s a thriving culture of game playing.”
In 1999, Weissblum’s first two games,
Cloud Nine (by Weissblum) and Knights of the
Rainbow (with Moon), were published by the
American division of the German company
FX Schmid. Although the American division
did not exist long enough for the games to
be distributed in this country, Weissblum
remained undaunted. “The good thing in
this business,” he says, “is that if you sell a
game to a company and it doesn’t do well,
it’s not the end of the world.” If the compa-

COURTESY OF AARON WEISSBLUM

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

70

A Passion for Play

WEISSBLUM’S LATEST GAME, STILL UNNAMED, DEBUTED AT THE NEW YORK TOY FAIR IN FEBRUARY. VIEW
HIS GAMES AT WWW.FUNAGAIN.COM, OR VISIT THE INCLUED WEB SITE AT WWW.INCLUED.COM.

ny does not actively produce and market the
game, the intellectual property reverts to the
game inventor. Both games were reissued in
2002 by other companies.
In 2001, three games created by Moon
and Weissblum were nominated for the
prestigious German Spiel des Jahres (Game of
the Year) award, the first time in the history
of the award that three games from the same
inventors were nominated. San Marco (a
game of territorial control set in Venice), Das
Amulett (a hunt for jewels along the Nile),
and Capitol (constructing multistoried
buildings in Ancient Rome) did not win,
“but they did help get us solidly established,” says Weissblum.
He is optimistic that the U.S. market for
board games is expanding with the help of
companies like Rio Grande, a New Mexico–
based firm that imports selected German
games and markets them here.
Responding to growing interest, small
game companies such as Out of the Box,
which reissued Cloud Nine, are beginning to
thrive. “For people like me,” says Weissblum,
“it’s really important for these companies to
do well. They’re the ones with the imagina-

tion to recognize that maybe Americans do
want to play some good board games.”
Weissblum’s creation of a game frequently begins with an idea adapted from one feature of another game. First, he physically
builds a prototype of the game, meticulously
providing clear and concise rules and creating a product with bright colors and clear
symbols. The game is tested by “game
geeks”—players sharing his obsession but
not representative of the general public—
and by more average players or “non–game
geeks,” called together by Weissblum’s wife,
Kate Nordstrom. His games are mainly family games, usually for adults but also for children. He says, “If you want to make a living
at this, you have to include children.”
To supplement his game income, which
trickles in sometimes years after selling a
game, Weissblum owns a small company,
Inclued (www.inclued.com.). Using puzzlebased treasure and scavenger hunts, he creates team-building challenges for corporate
clients. “The motivational aspect is covered
from the start,” he says. “It’s such fun that
when they hear about it they want to do it.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm

CLASS NOTES
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

78

agent. Lashanna Lawler is living and working in a theater at
Longwood Gardens. Rachel
Kane was in Philly briefly, but
she is now abroad in Costa Rica.
Marvin Barron is living in
the museum district and working in stocks and bonds or what
he refers to as “money grubbing.” Jason Burton is working
as a jeweler’s assistant. Jared
Eisenstat is working at Borders
and studying Greek. He is also
learning to play the piano.
Jason S. (Skonieczny) and Eric
Martin are working as substitute
teachers in Philly. They also
made a magazine together. They
share a place with John “JB”
Farley ’01, Aaron Firestone ’01,
and Tim Jaeger ’00.
Marchella Tortora is living in
New York City and studying for a
master’s in social work at
Columbia. Colin Weidig is in
California, living life. Ashley
DeMello spent the summer in
Big Sur, Calif., with Teresa Pontual ’03 and is now in Honolulu.
There, she is getting reacquainted with her Hawaiian ancestry
and working for Native Hawaiian
Rights. Chris Scheller is working as a fourth-grade teacher’s
assistant in Boston.
Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman is
working for ajc.com and is an
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
journalism intern. Nicole
Georges-Abeyie manages a
one-acre organic farm in Anacostia, a Washington, D.C.,
neighborhood. The farm is part
of the Urban Oasis project.
Maya Peterson is in Germany on
a Fulbright Scholarship. She is
studying the experiences of
Russian immigrants.
Aurelio Perez is doing a Fulbright in Austria. He is teaching
conversational English and
studying at the U. of Innsbruck.
Amanda Schneider is on a Fulbright, studying physiological
biology in the Ural Mountains of
Russia. Kevin Setter is on a Fulbright in Canada, studying
quantum gravity physics at the
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Tanyaporn Wansom
is also on a Fulbright, working
on empowering women through

sexual health education in Thailand.
Ben Park is volunteering as
the adult adviser to the college
ministry of the Korean Presbyterian Church of Minnesota, working as a driving instructor and
at a coffee shop. In the upcoming months, he’s planning on
applying to seminaries as well
as substitute teaching at a couple of local school districts.
Randy Keim is working as a
hospital product specialist for
Johnson & Johnson, selling Procrit, a drug that both treats
anemia in the chronically anemic and serves as an alternative
to blood transfusions. He
reports that it is a dream come
true. Mara Hvistendahl is studying journalism at Columbia.
Marah Gotcsik mentioned
that Megan Choy was married in
California. Marah spent a relaxing summer in Boston with her
sister. She spent a week traveling solo in Europe and is now in
Wales with the Community Service Volunteers Program. There,
she provides support for children at risk of expulsion from
school for behavior problems.
Fabienne François reports
that she is currently working as
a Spanish bookseller at Schoenhof’s Foreign Books (also known
as a bibliophile’s candy shop) in
Harvard Square, Cambridge,
Mass. “I hope everyone is doing
well, and, if you’re in the neighborhood, do drop in at 76A
Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge,” she writes.
Finally, I (Hunter Wells)
spent the summer in Philadelphia waiting tables in colonial
uniform. There, I lived with
Becka Schultz until she left on
a Fulbright to North China,
where she is making a documentary film. Now, I am living near
Washington, D.C., doing an
apprenticeship in fashion design. In DC, I’ve run into Jaime
Yassif and Olga Rostapshova.
To those from whom I
haven’t heard, I hope you’ll all
send me updates on what you’re
doing, so that I can report
them. Good luck in the coming
year, Class of 2002.

Letters...
c o n t i n u e d f ro m p a g e 3

were also major features
of the kingdom’s human
rights record.
The report also points out
that the Saudi regime has provided a new home for Idi Amin,
the Ugandan dictator whose
regime was responsible for the
deaths of several hundred thousand people in the 1970s.
Working closely with a government like this (Ms. Grant
worked directly with a member
of the Saudi royal family) to
develop a “liberal arts college”
raises troubling questions that
the article completely ignored.
There’s a lot of cheery writing
about the excitement and value
of educating women, but the
basic morality of assisting a
regime like this isn’t even an
issue. I’m not necessarily criticizing Ms. Grant’s work, but I
am astounded that in a world
that is filled with violence,
hatred, and oppression—a fair
share of which is provided by
Saudi Arabia—the article did
not even touch on some of the
moral issues raised by working
with, legitimizing, and implicitly supporting a regime like this
one.
PETER DARLING ’84
San Carlos, Calif.
A COMPLEX PICTURE

I may be the only Swarthmore
alumna who also graduated
from Dar al-Hanaan, the private
girls’ school founded by Queen
Effat, and my father has taught
at King Abdul Aziz University
in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for
more than 20 years. So I was
pleased to learn that two
Swarthmoreans have played an
instrumental role in establishing Effat College in my hometown (“Liberal Arts in a Conser-

vative Land,” December
Bulletin). Saudi Arabia’s new private colleges mark a milestone
for the country, giving Saudis—
particularly women—a new
range of choices in higher education.
I was disappointed, however,
to note a few factual errors in
the story. The most glaring was
the statement that female students at the public King Abdul
Aziz University “are taught in
separate rooms from the male
students, where they watch the
professors (also male) on
closed-circuit televisions,” and
that Queen Effat “imagined a
college environment where
women could interact directly
with their teachers.”
In fact, female professors
and lecturers teach almost all of
the classes at King Abdul Aziz
University’s women’s section,
located on a separate campus
adjacent to the men’s campus.
Yes, male professors occasionally teach female students via
closed-circuit TV. My father has
taught classes that way and
reports that it’s quite disconcerting not to be able to see his
students. But he has only
taught female students when no
female professor is available or
qualified to teach the material.
Non-Saudis might be surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia has an exception to its rule
against coeducation: Male and
female medical and dental students learn and train together.
So, although private women’s
colleges like Effat College are
helping to change higher education in Saudi Arabia, they are
only one part of a complex picture.
EMAN QUOTAH ’95
Washington, D.C.

In his December letter to the editor, Jeremiah Gelles ’63 compared Israeli settlement
[in the West Bank] with American settlement in the West or German settlement in
Eastern Europe.
The first comparison is a compliment to
the Israeli settlers. The European conquest
of North America gave the United States the
power to save the world from tyranny several times during the last century. The world
is deeply indebted to American settlers for
their role in giving us the strength to do
great good.
The second comparison is inexact: The
Germans, who had settled for most of a millennium in Eastern Europe, were expelled
en masse because they preferred to join in
on German territorial expansion and German genocide rather than recognize the
competing moral and legal claims that the
newly born nations of Eastern Europe possessed to the same land. If a comparison
with Israel is appropriate, the situation of
the Germans is more akin to that of the
Palestinians. Indeed, if the Palestinians are
ever expelled, it will be because the Palestinian appetite for genocide and their refusal
even to recognize Israel’s legal and moral
claims to its pre-1967 boundaries make any
sort of coexistence impossible. The Israelis
will then join the Czechs and the Poles as
one of the peoples who realize that justice,
not mercy, is essential to survival.
DAVID RANDALL ’93
Brooklyn, N.Y.
BAGELS AT MIDNIGHT

In the December issue of the Swarthmore
College Bulletin, I noticed a pattern of conflict to which I believe there is a solution. In
the solution I propose, I must confess my
enormous indebtedness to the work of Ken
Wilber, Clare Graves, Don Beck, and Christopher Cowan. Different letter writers complained of a tendency within our community to preach inclusiveness while actually
consigning to the outer darkness those misguided souls with the temerity to advocate
other viewpoints, such as libertarianism,
conservatism, and Republicanism.
Wilber, Graves, et al. (whose thoughts I
shall now brutally condense and simplify)
suggest that individuals and societies develop roughly similarly to biological organisms
by differentiation of new capacities and

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Swarthmore On-Line Community
For more information on these services,
go to www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/olc.html.

integration of both old and new, a transcend-and-include process. For human
beings, this involves differentiation and
integration of worldviews and values, which
can be color coded for convenience.
Skipping the beige level and starting at
the purple level, there is precious little differentiation, much magical thinking, and a
certain proneness to human sacrifice and
cannibalism. At the red level, the disadvantages of overdoing the herd mentality are
seen, and heroic values of individual
courage and generosity emerge, along with a
certain amount of outlawry. At the blue
level, the disadvantages of outlawry are
seen, and the emphasis is on order and tradition (which is where most adults in most
present-day societies operate). At the
orange level, the disadvantages of excessive
reliance on tradition are seen, and values of
individualism, rationality, constitutional
democracy, free markets, and scientific
enterprise emerge. At the green level, the
disadvantages of overreliance on science
and individualism are seen, and values of
inclusivity, multiculturalism, pluralism, egalitarianism, environmentalism, and sensitivity become prominent, often (unfortunately) accompanied by a rejection of science
and individualism, Western civilization, and

so on.
On close inspection, one may note that
each color has something to offer as well as
some shortcomings. Even purple has something to offer: magical thinking, which (if
understood properly) can be both instructive and a joy (if you don't believe me, meet
some small children). Green, whose positive
values may be self-evident to many at
Swarthmore, has the distinct disadvantage
of tending to reject Western civilization,
which, despite its many ghastly failings, has
given us the concepts of human rights, civil
liberties, and several other blessings that
help minimize the number of green people
burned at the stake or tossed in jail in the
U.S. and other constitutional democracies.
A shared problem all of these colors have is
that they cannot appreciate their own limitations very well, nor can they appreciate
the values of the other colors. They tend
instead to get locked into battles for dominance.
There is hope, though, the solution of
which I wrote: At a second tier of colors
(yellow and turquoise), people can see how
human values and worldviews are integrated and have particular strengths and limitations. The tendency to dismiss contemptuously the worldviews of others as worthless,
subhuman, or demonic evaporates in favor
of an ability to see a far more inclusive
vision that can honor and use creatively the
contributions of all levels (while accounting
wisely for the dangers inhering in the different levels). Second-tier thinking vastly
improves the capacity to distinguish baby
from bathwater. And we, my friends, can
engage in it! Just think what a radical reduction in mutual contempt might mean to us all!
In closing, I cannot resist a plug for a
technique that appears to enhance secondtier capacities enormously: meditation. In
one study, the practice of meditation
appeared to boost the proportion of secondtier thinkers from 1 percent at pretest to 38
percent at post-test, a rather astonishing
result.
Peace, love, and bagels at midnight,
DAVID KERRIGAN '79
Falls Church, Va.
WE WELCOME YOUR LETTERS

Address letters to Editor, Swarthmore
College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue,
Swarthmore PA 19081; or e-mail them to

MARCH 2003

COMPETING CLAIMS

79

BAC K PAG E S
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

80

Come
To g e t h e r
S WA R T H M O R E ’ S A L U M N I C O U N C I L

tion which all graduates and former students of the college
share in common…. The second purpose is to serve the college in whatever ways are possible. By financial support, by
the contribution of suggestions and advice, by the recruitment of students, by public expression of enthusiasm, and by
the quality of their individual lives and services, alumni contribute to the strength and progress of their alma mater.

OFFERS SERVICE AND ADVICE.
By J e f f r e y L o tt

I

n April, Swarthmore alumni will participate in an annual democratic ritual—the election of new members to the Alumni
Council. Fourteen alumni chosen from seven geographic
regions will join more than 50 other members in an organization
that is often poorly understood.
What exactly is the Swarthmore College Alumni Council? Quite
simply, it is the governing body of the Alumni Association, of
which all graduates and former students are members. The council
was created in 1937 during a reorganization of the association,
which itself dates to 1882. Since its creation, the council has undertaken numerous projects and performed many different functions,
often struggling to define its role at the College but still finding relevance today.
The council had its origins in the desire to bring alumni and the
College closer together. In the 1930s, Swarthmore’s relations with
its alumni were strained by changes at the College under President
Frank Aydelotte (see page 20). The institution of the Honors Program and Aydelotte’s determination to bring the intercollegiate
Athletics Program under the control of the College caused many
alumni to question the direction of their alma mater. Efforts were
made on both sides to close the gap.
For its part, the Alumni Association, under President William
Tomlinson ’17, began publication of The Garnet Letter, the precursor
to this magazine, in 1935. During the next two years, a Joint Committee on College-Alumni Relations worked out a plan to reorganize the association with an elected Alumni Council as its central
governing body. One of its first initiatives was to urge the College
to hire a professional alumni secretary. Carl Dellmuth ’31 began
this work in 1938, and his office was the foundation of Swarthmore’s current alumni relations, public relations, and development
programs.
Another initiative was to obtain alumni representation on the
Board, which then—unlike today’s Board—had many nonalumni
(largely leaders of the Society of Friends) among its members. The
Board agreed, and the council recommended Thomas McCabe ’15,
who became the first Alumni Manager—and later the first nonQuaker to be its chairman.
In an examination of the role of the association in 1948, President John Nason described it as follows:
It is assumed that an Alumni Association exists to serve two
purposes. The first is to promote and facilitate those gatherings of alumni, which bring together old friends, renew old
acquaintances, and revive the sentiments of loyalty and affec-

Nason saw the functional role of the council as advisory on the
determination of policy, collaborative in the support of students
and alumni in their careers and in the recruitment of new students
for the College, and fiduciary in the alumni’s “special interest not
only in the maintenance of private higher education but of Swarthmore College in particular.”
According to Rich Truitt ’66, current president of the Alumni
Association, today’s council is not too far off that mark. Council
remains both an advisory and a service organization—and,
although responsibility for fund-raising now lies with the administration, class agents, and the Board of Managers, it sponsors and
promotes the Alumni Council Scholarship, established in 2000.

T

he current structure of the council was developed in the 1990s
under the leadership of presidents Alan Symonette ’76, Jack
Riggs ’64, and Elenor Reid ’67. Riggs says that “different people
come on the council with different expectations, and although
some members saw themselves as ‘ambassadors,’ others wanted to
play a more active role in the affairs of the College.”
The council is currently organized in three “working groups”—
alumni support, student support, and College advisory and support. As their names imply, each working group has taken on a set
of projects that focuses on the needs of the constituent. The alumni
group supports
communications,
alumni career services, awards, and
Connections
organizations in 13
cities. The student
support group
concentrates on
connecting students with alumni,
career networking,
and the highly successful Externship Program. The College advisory group assists the
Admissions and Development offices in finding alumni volunteers
and has provided input and alumni representatives for several campus committees. (Detailed descriptions of these and other initiatives may be found at the council Web site http://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/alumni_council.html.)
Since the Board of Managers’ December 2000 decision to eliminate football and wrestling from the Athletics Program, members
of the council have made a concerted effort to involve alumni more
closely as a sounding board in the decision-making processes of
the College. This is “complicated,” says Riggs, who now serves as a
Term Manager. “Because of the depth of Board members’ involve-

“If we didn’t
have an Alumni
Council, we’d have
to invent one.”

STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67

regularly with the executive committee of the council and members,
and the executive committee of the
Board of Managers has also begun
to meet annually with council members to exchange ideas.
Some would like to go much further in involving alumni in the governance of the College. Marshall
Schmidt ’47, president of the Alumni Association from 1971 to 1973
and now a member of Mind the
Light, acknowledges that the Board
of Managers has “always been selfselected” but thinks that “alumni
participation in the Board should
be free and open. I would like to see
at least one third of the Board elected directly by alumni.”
The Alumni Council is active in
proposing names for Board nomination. There are currently eight
persons designated as Alumni
Managers serving four-year terms
on the Board—about a quarter of
its members. In addition, there are
three Young Alumni Managers who have graduated within the past
10 years, selected by the Board’s Nominating Committee. The president of the Alumni Association also serves as an ex-officio member
of the Board, and many former association presidents have gone on
to become Term Managers.

ALUMNI COLLECTION. ONE IMPORTANT ACTIVITY OF THE ALUMNI COUNCIL IS
TO SPONSOR TWO AWARDS EACH YEAR—THE SHANE AWARD FOR ALUMNI
SERVICE TO THE COLLEGE AND THE ARABELLA CARTER AWARD FOR ALUMNI
SERVICE IN THEIR HOME COMMUNITIES.

ment—and the fact that currently all Managers are alumni—it’s
easy for them to understand the rationale for certain decisions. But
the Alumni Council can and does provide an important perspective
on how others might see the Board’s actions.”
In fall 2001, the council arranged for meetings between members of the Board and administration and representatives of Mind
the Light, an alumni and parents group critical of both the outcome
and process of the athletics decision. One result of those meetings
was an ad hoc committee to study the history and uses of consensus decision making at the College. That committee reported to the
Board of Managers at its meeting in February (see “Update,” p. 41).
Governance issues and the role of alumni in affecting College
policy will continue to be debated. “The controversy over athletics
gave the council greater visibility and there for more opportunity to
be of service to the alumni and the College,” says Truitt.
Alan Symonette, a professional arbitrator and the first African
American to head the Alumni Association (the first woman, the late
Ruth Wilcox Mahler ’49 was elected in 1975), sees the council as
“more active these days, more involved as a resource for the administration and the Board.” He points out that Alumni Managers now
meet regularly with the executive committee of the council and that
the nominating committees of both the council and Board have
“refined the process” of selecting Alumni Managers, giving a
stronger voice to the council. President Alfred H. Bloom has met

T

he council is most visible to students and alumni through its
service functions. Its successful Externship Program, initiated
in the early 1970s and revived in the 1990s, placed 150 students in
externships during this year’s winter break. The program is supported by the Alumni Relations and Career Services offices at the
College. But recruitment of sponsors, hosts, and placement of students is handled by an active group of volunteers headed by Cynthia Norris Graae ’62 and Nanine Meiklejohn ’68. Another recent
initiative was to contact alumni and parents living abroad, asking
them to provide support for the increasing number of Swarthmore
students who study outside the United States each semester.
The council has also sponsored career-networking dinners,
bringing alumni in various fields to campus and introducing them
to students interested in those professions. In 2002, more than 80
students attended these dinners.
Elenor Reid thinks that this relationship between the council
and the College is “a wonderful model for the undergraduates—to
see all these alumni who come back to campus and want to be of
service.”
Former Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations Maralyn
Orbison Gillespie ’49, who observed and shepherded the Alumni
Council for more than 30 years, sums up: “If we didn’t have an
Alumni Council, we’d have to invent one. It’s a sounding board,
especially in times of controversy or crisis.” T

MARCH 2003

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT RICH TRUITT PRESIDES AT THE 2002

Picture
Yourself
Here
It’s a warm, sunny day on Parrish Beach.
A gentle breeze is blowing across the campus,
which is never more beautiful than in spring.
The Adirondack chairs beckon. You are deep in
conversation with an old friend.
What could be better?

June 6–8

PAINTING BY BARBARA SEYMOUR ʼ63

Alumni
Weekend