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Features
14
Parrish Reborn
The College’s historical anchor is
undergoing a major renovation.
B y Jeffrey L ot t
De p a r t m e n t s
18
3
A Profitable
Education
Many Swarthmoreans choose careers in
business. But is the College preparing
them for its challenges?
B y Pet er C o h a n ’ 79
2 4 Wo m e n C a r v i n g
Their Own Paths
Self-employed alumnae build
economically independent and creatively
fulfilling lives.
B y An drea H a mme r
32
Ta c k l i n g
To r t u re
Torture isn’t just morally unjustified—it
doesn’t even work, says Darius Rejali ’81.
B y El iz a be t h R ed de n ’0 5
36
D v o r̆ ák i n
America: The NotSo-Distant Mirror
Letters
Readers’ reactions
4
Collection
The campus this spring
46
Connections
The Alumni Office is moving.
48
Class Notes
Story exchange
55
Deaths
Sorrowfully reported losses
66
B o o ks & A r t s
Profiles
59
Marschak’s
Opus
Dorothy Marschak ’51 helps bring better
music education to DC schoolchildren.
By El iza be th R e dde n ’0 5
61 The Meaning
of Retirement
Roger Youman ’53 has served as both
teacher and editor—most recently of
The Meaning of Swarthmore, a
collection of powerful alumni essays.
Patricia White reviews Down and Dirty
By Je ff r ey Lo tt
Pictures, Miramax, Sundance, and the
Rise of Independent Film by Peter
72
Biskind ’62.
Hearts and
Minds
A Sequence of Miscalculations
D.D. Smith Hilke ’73 will bring a
child’s-eye view to Salt Lake City’s
new museum.
An unusual project looks at American
music—and history—through a different
discoverer of the New World.
By Arnold Kling ’75
By Co ll e en Ga ll ag h e r
88
79
B y Dav id Wr i gh t ’ 69
Professor Barry Schwartz’s own
lifestyle has inadvertently become
a piece of best-selling research.
Computer scientist Joan Differding Walton
’85 helps unravel the mysteries of Mars.
By Carol Brévart-Demm
By Ca rol Br é var t- De mm
42
Disobedient
Love
In San Francisco, three same-sex
Swarthmore couples say, “I do.”
B y Laura M a rko witz ’8 5
74
In My Life
Q+A
Lunch at 11
O’Clock Mars Time
COVER: THIS WARHOLESQUE IMAGE OF SWARTHMOREʼS ADIRONDACK CHAIRS FIRST APPEARED
ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE APRIL 15 PHOENIX , WHICH IS OFFERING FULL-COLOR GLOSSY
PRINTS STARTING AT $10. FOR INFORMATION, E-MAIL PHOENIX@SWARTHMORE.EDU.
INSIDE COVER PHOTO BY STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67
PA R L O R TA L K
T
here are few things more pleasurable than giving your attention to something you
love doing, yet modern life affords few chances to concentrate on much of anything.
We celebrate multitasking, and, although it’s true that the pace of our economy
demands this skill, there’s a price to be paid—and it’s not merely the health risks associated with stress or the spiritual confusion we sometimes feel in the midst of chaos. The erosion of opportunities to concentrate—to “attend” to life—is making it more difficult to
both appreciate its joys and solve its problems.
The 20th century gave us two new terms. Attention span (often modified by “short”)
entered the language in the 1930s, signaling a concern about something that was apparently not an issue until the 20th century. And, less than 50 years later, we first heard the
clinical term attention deficit disorder, a learning
problem that one recent study says is exacerbated by watching television in the toddler
years.
But attention deficit isn’t just a learning
issue, it’s an everyday challenge. In our office,
reading a manuscript without interruption is a
rare event, and time to write is often stolen by
insistent e-mails, faxes, and FedExes. We carry
on simultaneous “conversations” in several
media with co-workers down the hall, suppliers across the country, and alumni around the
world. People rarely sit to talk. They lean in the
door and drop a few words, hurrying on to the
next task; or they leave a voice mail—“call me
back on my cell”; or they send electronic messages that would better be delivered in person
to add face, voice, and body language to their
words. It’s no wonder that we need to escape the office to give concerted attention to reading or writing—the two basic jobs of the editor. (In fact, I’m writing this at home, sitting
quietly in my living room, late at night. )
It’s the opportunity to focus that I miss, the chance to do one thing, and one thing
only, for hours. The satisfaction that we find in recreation—for me, a morning spent gardening, an afternoon umpiring a kids’ baseball game, or a clear night at my telescope—
comes not so much from the activity itself but because it can be pursued without distraction. This is what I also crave in my work—time to allow the best in us to rise above the
noise of life.
Ironically (for a person who works on a college campus), the most precious opportunities that Swarthmore provides are the ones to pay attention—to listen, observe, read,
write, think, and dream. For a few years at the beginning of adulthood, students may read
one book for a whole afternoon, watch a play and talk about it for the rest of the evening,
play a game with energy and passion, make a commitment to a cause and follow through
on it, eat all their meals with friends and lovers, think about the meaning of life, and—the
one I miss the most—write all night. Do they know what they have? Probably not. Are
these privileges wasted on the young? No again: Who better to dream today so that they
may lead tomorrow?
—Jeffrey Lott
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
The erosion of
opportunities to
concentrate—to
“attend” to life—
is making it more
difficult to both
appreciate its
joys and solve
its problems.
2
Swarthmore
COLLEGE BULLETIN
Editor: Jeffrey Lott
Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer
Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm
Assistant Editor: Colleen Gallagher
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
Contacting Swarthmore College
College Operator: (610) 328-8000
www.swarthmore.edu
Admissions: (610) 328-8300
admissions@swarthmore.edu
Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402
alumni@swarthmore.edu
Publications: (610) 328-8568
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Registrar: (610) 328-8297
registrar@swarthmore.edu
World Wide Web
www.swarthmore.edu
Changes of Address
Send address label along
with new address to:
Alumni Records Office
Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail:
alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume CI,
number 5, is published in August, September, December, March, and June by
Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. Periodicals
postage paid at Swarthmore PA and
additional mailing offices. Permit No.
0530-620. Postmaster: Send address
changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin,
500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA
19081-1390.
© 2004 Swarthmore College
Printed in U.S.A.
LETTERS
The rising cost of higher education has
become a national issue. Especially in this
context, Paul Courant’s [’68] article “The
Value of a Liberal Education” (March Bulletin) is as trivial and muddle-headed as
any I’ve ever read.
Rather than examine the many possibilities for controlling the costs of education,
he justifies outrageous increases by
declaiming that liberal education is worth
any cost. And, he says, the great demand
for high-priced education proves it is
worth the cost. Little recognition is given
to the fact that our class-conscious society
includes many people who are willing to
pay these high costs because they expect
that prestige and better job opportunities
will result. As to the intrinsic value (whatever that is), how many parents truly assess
it before making or agreeing to a college
choice?
Courant cites Baumol’s Law as justification for the lack of improvement in teacher
productivity despite the fact that anachronistic rigidities abound, that tenured faculty hold sinecures they zealously protect,
and that possibilities for enhanced learning at lower cost are rarely examined with
impartial objectivity. It is no wonder that
legislators, taxpayers, and parents question
the cost increases so smugly justified by
academics like Courant.
RICHARD KIRSCHNER ’49
Albuquerque, N.M.
ACCEPTANCE WAS THE REAL
SEXUAL REVOLUTION
“The Swattie Dating Game” (March 2004
Bulletin) is astute and thorough but would
have benefited from a more accurate version of the history of sexuality. Author
Elizabeth Redden ’05 cites popular journalism and recent surveys by the Independent
Woman’s Forum (IWF) to demonstrate
that a “hookup culture” is widely accepted
among college students. The fact that casual sex has become tolerated leads her to
imply that such sexual behavior is a “millennial” development; she even quotes an
IWF spokesperson who describes it as
“where the sexual revolution took a wrong
turn.”
Popular media images in the 1940s and
1950s showed tidy marriages and squeakyclean young people, but the history of sexual morals is not the same as the history of
sexual practice. The fact that casual sex was
stigmatized and frequently kept hidden
does not mean it didn’t happen—or even
that it wasn’t discussed. As early as World
War II, the sexual culture of American servicemen attracted considerable attention
from journalists, public health officials,
and both religious and secular moralists.
In the decades before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, venereal disease was frequently the subject of public
moralizing. The Kinsey Reports of 1948 and
1953 were scandalous best-sellers largely
because they blew the lid off America’s
“Ozzie and Harriet” facade, bringing to
light just how many millions of Americans
failed to live up to the dominant sexual
ideals.
It is crucial to remember that in the
1950s, obtaining birth control was very difficult even for married couples, and young
pregnant women faced few options apart
from hurried, often unhappy marriages or
dangerous, illegal abortions. Things were
especially bad for gays and lesbians, for
whom casual sex often posed the risk of
being arrested, blackmailed, fired, or subjected to needless and destructive medical
“treatment.” But even for heterosexuals,
sex was fraught with serious dangers made
worse by severe shame and stigma.
The “sexual revolution” was at least as
much a revolution in acceptance as in
behavior, and it brought about major
improvements in American life, ranging
from gays and lesbians coming out of the
closet to birth control becoming widely
available.
TIMOTHY STEWART-WINTER ’01
Chicago
PARTNERS IN MINISTRY
SUPPORTED PAULINE ALLEN
Although the March issue of the Swarthmore College Bulletin paid a glowing tribute
to the late religious adviser Pauline Allen
for her remarkable contribution to the spiritual lives of students—and indeed to the
College at large—the Bulletin neglected to
make clear that Pauline was not an employee of the College. Every penny of her salary
was paid by Partners in Ministry, a consortium of five local Protestant congregations
and the Swarthmore Friends Meeting as
well as by a significant body of alumni,
members of the faculty and staff, and individuals from the local community. The College has been the beneficiary of these Partners’ dedication and commitment to providing a Protestant presence on campus, to
nurturing and supporting students in their
spiritual quests, and making available to
them a positive account of the Gospel message.
P. LINWOOD URBAN
Swarthmore, Pa.
Editor’s Note: Linwood Urban is professor
emeritus of religion and chair of the board of
Partners in Ministry. Alumni interested in supporting this and other religious advising efforts
on campus should contact Dan West, vice president for alumni, development, and public relations.
AT 20, SECOND CHANCE
The article “A Dream Deferred” (March
Bulletin), which told the story of Swarthmore’s relationship with the Bartol
Research Foundation, brought back memories of my undergraduate days and particularly my own limitations as a 20 year old.
In the 1960s, as the article points out, a
procession of Swarthmore engineering
graduates signed up to work at Bartol’s
Antarctic research station, principally to
P l e a s e t u r n t o page 87
JUNE 2004
CONTROLLING COSTS IS KEY
3
COLLECTION
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
4
THE COLLEGE’S AD HOC COMMITTEE ON THE LIVING WAGE issued
its report in February. The recommendations have been the
subject of broad campus conversations this spring, and the
Board of Managers is expected
to discuss formally the committee’s proposals and other options in the fall.
The committee, co-chaired
by Melanie Young, associate vice
president for human resources,
and Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P.
Cartwright Professor of Social
Theory and Social Action, and
comprising representatives from
the staff, faculty, and student
body, began meeting in fall
2002. Its report contained both
majority and minority recommendations that, if implemented, could add an estimated
$750,000 to $2 million to the
College’s annual personnel
expenses.
Among the majority recommendations:
• The Swarthmore minimum
wage should be $10.72 per hour
(minority recommendation:
$13.89).
• Swarthmore should introduce a new child care subsidy
benefit of up to $550 per month
for preschool-age children and
$325 per month for elementary
school–age children. The College would pay the actual costs
of child care, up to these maxima (minority recommendation:
subsidy capped at $5,000 per
employee).
• Swarthmore should modify
its current health insurance
benefits such that lowest-paid
employees receive full HMO
coverage for their families at no
cost to them.
• Both the child care benefit
and the health insurance supplement should be means tested; that is, a family’s entire
income, not just that of a single
employee, would determine eligibility. The committee recommends that employees who
desire these new benefits submit a copy of their federal tax
return each year. The return will
be used to determine where on
the sliding scale they fit.
Perhaps the most vexing
concern facing the committee
was wage compression. If the
minimum hourly wage is raised
from $9 to $13 per hour, for
example, then staff members
already making $13 per hour
would find themselves earning
only slightly more than people
they had previously outearned
by a substantial amount.
The committee decided that
some wage compression was
inevitable, but that something
should be done to preserve wage
differentials in the interest of
staff morale. It, therefore, suggested that wage increases
should be provided for employees earning more than the College minimum, according to a
scale detailed in the report.
Members purposely did not
address how their suggestions
might be financed because, as
noted in the report, “statements
about where the money could
come from would be statements
about what Swarthmore College’s institutional priorities
should be. This is an extremely
important, indeed unavoidable,
matter, but not one to be decided by an ad hoc committee.”
A series of campus meetings
was organized this spring by a
JIM GRAHAM
Living Wage Committee Reports:
Community Examines Options
MEMBERS OF THE LIVING WAGE AND DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN, A CAMPUS GROUP
THAT ADVOCATES WAGE AND BENEFIT INCREASES FOR THE COLLEGE’S LOWESTPAID STAFF MEMBERS, HUNG BANNERS ON PARRISH PORCH DURING THE SPRING
MEETING OF THE BOARD OF MANAGERS. THE BOARD IS EXPECTED TO CONSIDER
THE LIVING WAGE ISSUE IN THE FALL.
group chaired by Maurice
Eldridge ’61, vice president for
college and community relations
and assistant to President Alfred H. Bloom. At those meetings, members of the committee
explained their proposals and
the reasons that they thought
Swarthmore should be a leader
in providing a living wage for its
employees. Several alternative
proposals were floated at those
meetings, but the debate centered on the committee’s recommendation of $10.72 and the
problem of wage compression.
Vice President for Finance
and Treasurer Suzanne Welsh
reported to the faculty in April
that the College’s budget could
not currently accommodate
either the majority or minority
recommendation without reducing expenditures in other areas.
The College has already reduced
its operating budget by $1.5 million over the past two fiscal
years, so Welsh said that there
were “only a few areas that
might provide significant
sources of funds without serious erosion of the program.”
Dan West, vice president for
alumni, development, and public relations, told a staff gathering that it would be difficult for
the College to raise additional
funds to endow staff compensation. He said the College would
need to raise about $20 million
posals and steps the College
might take to address them. He
wondered “what the College can
afford without compromising
other aspects of its educational
mission and community.”
Bloom offered a compromise
proposal when he pointed out
that “because of steps the College has already taken, the lowest wage at the College will be
$9.70 per hour next year, only $1
short of the $10.72 that the
committee determined to be a
living wage for this region.”
(Upon the recommendation of a
staff committee that examined
the College’s entire compensation program, the College’s minimum wage was raised from
$6.66 to $9 in 2002; this base
amount has continued to grow
incrementally through compensation pool increases.)
Bloom also said the College’s
benefits plan offers a cash option equivalent to an additional
$1 per hour: “So if the College
were to fund these benefits separately, we would already be, in
salary terms, at what the majority of the committee judged to be
a living wage.”
The key issue, then, is
“whether, and to what extent,
the College should supplement
health—and perhaps child
care—benefits for our lowest
paid employees,” said Bloom.
At the end of his remarks,
the president invited staff members who were “still convinced
STRADDLING PARK AND CHESTER AVENUES AT
THE HEART OF THE BOROUGH, Michael’s College Pharmacy has anchored Swarthmore
for 70 years. So when owner Jack McDonnell, 67, announced in March that he had
sold Michael’s to CVS—which did not move
into the Swarthmore building but only
assumed existing customers’ prescriptions—he sent shock waves through the
community. McDonnell has owned the
pharmacy since 1985 and worked there as
the pharmacist since 1968.
McDonnell planned to work as a CVS
pharmacy manager during a monthlong
transition to the store at the 755 S. Chester
Road location. As owner of the Michael’s
building, McDonnell said that he hasn’t
even had time to find a tenant yet.
“This decision was the hardest one in my
life,” McDonnell said, after reluctantly
admitting that his legs were “giving out.”
He realized that the demands of a 70-hour
workweek were too taxing. Even though
some faithful employees worked at Michael’s
for more than 20 years, McDonnell was the
one to arrive at 7:30 a.m., pulling in newspaper bundles in time for rush-hour commuters to grab before racing to the train station just across the street.
Before McDonnell owned the pharmacy,
a soda fountain filled half of the store—
drawing College students on study breaks
1947 HALCYON
THE END OF AN ERA
that we should pursue the full
original proposal” to contact him.
“Absent strong support ... I suggest we move toward revising it
into one that focuses specifically
on benefits for our lowest-paid
staff—and that would therefore
be much more affordable.”
Before taking questions from
the staff, Bloom expressed the
hope that “working together, we
can find an approach to this difficult and important issue that
the broad community believes is
right for Swarthmore.”
—Alisa Giardinelli and Jeffrey Lott
To download a copy of the full
committee report, visit http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/reports/LWReport7.Feb04.pdf.
and dates. “One couple became engaged
here,” McDonnell said. Over time, he
noticed more young children coming into
the store and watched many of them grow
up. He said that one mother always felt that
her three sons were safe going to the pharmacy with their nickels.
“Michael’s has meant everything to me,”
McDonnell said.
As the news reverberated through the
borough, thank-you notes and cards
addressing this “difficult time” poured into
Michael’s. Many paid particular tribute to
McDonnell’s patience in answering questions about prescriptions and his compassion during others’ bouts with illness. Even
after a recent fall, which left him with a
bruised eye and made walking up the steps
behind the pharmacy counter difficult, he
unfailingly said that he was fine—instead
focusing his kind eyes on customers and
warming them with his ever-present smile.
Despite the impending void, clusters of
birds still perched on Michael’s bell-shaped
roof—clinging to their daily lookout post—
as the winds of change sent a March chill
through Swarthmore.
—Andrea Hammer
TOP: IN THE 1930S AND 1940S, A SODA FOUNTAIN AND JUKEBOX MADE MICHAEL’S PHARMACY
A POPULAR HANGOUT. BOTTOM: MICHAEL’S WAS
SOLD IN MARCH, SADDENING THE COMMUNITY.
JUNE 2004
in new endowment to finance a
$750,000 annual increase in
wage and benefit costs. The
Meaning of Swarthmore has
raised about $160 million of its
$230 million goal, some of
which is earmarked for staff
development and diversity initiatives.
In May, President Bloom
spoke to both the faculty and
staff about the issue. Bloom
began by saying that “there are
few issues, if any, as critical to
our society and world as providing basic conditions of nutrition, health care, and opportunity to all human beings.”
Bloom acknowledged that
there are differences of opinion
concerning the living wage pro-
5
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
6
IT’S A FRIDAY AFTERNOON IN
MARCH, AND SEVEN STUDENTS are
watching movies in class.
Led by Associate Professor of
English Literature and Chair of
the Film and Media Studies
Program Patricia White, members of the course Film Theory
and Culture are watching Rainer
Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 film
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, comparing
it with Douglas Sirk’s All That
Heaven Allows (1954) and Todd
Haynes’ Far From Heaven
(2002). The students, most of
them special majors and minors
in film and media studies, have
previously seen the films in
their entirety, but now, they are
shown brief clips. Pinpointing
varying techniques for creating
melodramatic effect, they examine the actors’ gestures, facial
expressions, gazes, and body
language. They analyze the roles
of color, sound, lighting, location of action, and the camera’s
and other characters’ perspectives. They discuss the framing
of the actors by scenery, furniture, and other actors.
After the class, senior Jeffrey
Scheible, a film and media studies special major says: “This is
probably my favorite class ever.
We watch great, important
movies and read great, important articles, both about the
movies and about specific
issues. What I especially love
is the way the class combines
theoretical and intellectual
approaches with the quirkiness
of our varying degrees of being
film buffs. Patty enthusiastically
encourages these perspectives.”
The study of film at Swarthmore has its roots in the 1970s,
when William R. Kenan Jr., Professor Emerita of Art History
Kaori Kitao taught the first film
class in the Department of Art
History. Film classes at Swarthmore have spawned several pro-
JIM GRAHAM
A “ M e d i a t e d ” Wo r l d
gressive filmmakers, including
the late Robert Kramer ’62, a
significant political film director
of his generation, and film
author Peter Biskind ’62, whose
Down and Dirty Pictures won
international acclaim this year
(see review on p. 66).
The formal program, which
was approved by the faculty in
1999, now offers students the
option to pursue a special
major, minor, or Honors minor.
Its curriculum includes an
introductory course, a video
production workshop taught by
Visiting Assistant Professor
Nandini Sikan, the theory and
culture course, and independent
study opportunities. Next fall,
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Manishita Dass will offer a new
course on Indian cinema.
Although the program emphasizes film theory, history,
and analysis, White stresses the
importance of these disciplines
for media producers. Recent
graduates are currently enrolled
in top graduate programs in cinema studies at the University of
California at Los Angeles, New
York University, and the University of Chicago.
Besides White and Dass, the
program’s faculty includes Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Miguel Díaz-Barriga,
Professor of German Marion
Faber, Associate Professor of
German Sunka Simon, Associate Professor of Chinese Haili
Kong, Professor of English Literature Craig Williamson, and
Assistant Professor of French
Carina Yervasi.
White says: “Our interdisciplinary faculty is increasingly
drawn from people who have
had academic training in film—
students can take courses in African, French, German, Japanese, Soviet, and Spanish cinema
as well as in visual ethnography.”
According to Scheible, film
and media studies at Swarthmore is “the ultimate liberal arts
subject.” He says: “I’ve taken
classes with top-notch professors in the English, Sociology
and Anthropology, Modern Languages and Literatures, Art, and
Psychology departments that all
count toward my major. All
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE AND FILM STUDIES
PATRICIA WHITE HEADS THE COLLEGE’S BURGEONING FILM AND
MEDIA STUDIES PROGRAM, WHICH
MAY BE TAKEN AS AN HONORS
MINOR, A COURSE MINOR, OR A
SPECIAL MAJOR.
these departments are in dialogue with each other via the
Film and Media Studies Program.”
White, who recently coauthored (with Timothy Corrigan of the University of Pennsylvania) The Film Experience, an
introductory film textbook, considers it vital to educate both
viewers and future producers
who are critical of, knowledgeable about, and appreciative of
the potential of film and media.
“Our world is ‘mediated,’” she
says. “Our government, our
wars, our pleasures all play out
on the screen. It is important to
be not only negative about this
situation but also to see in it the
potential for change.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
BOARD APPROVES 4.5 PERCENT
INCREASE IN STUDENT CHARGES
At its February meeting, the Board of Managers approved a 4.5 percent increase in
comprehensive student charges for 2004–
2005. The budget approved by the Board
calls for tuition of $29,782 for the upcoming
academic year. Room, board, and the student
activity fee will bring the total to $39,408.
“Like many colleges and universities,
Swarthmore is operating in a challenging fiscal environment,” Board Chair Barbara Weber
Mather ’65 said. “The pressures are particularly acute at Swarthmore because we deliberately maintain a small student population
while offering a broad range of courses typical of bigger institutions.”
The College’s financial aid policies will
continue to ensure access for students of all
economic backgrounds. Slightly more than
half of students receive financial aid, most of
it as grants rather than loans. Swarthmore
CINEMATOGRAPHER STEVE KAZMIERSKI AND SOUND TECHNICIAN PETER
MILLER CAPTURE SOME DIALOGUE IN THE TARBLE STUDENT CENTER DURING
THE FILMING OF A NEW ADMISSIONS VIDEO FOR THE COLLEGE.
will continue to admit applicants without
regard for their ability to pay, meeting the
full financial need of all admitted students.
To balance the budget, the board approved a freeze on departmental operating
budgets for the third straight year in addition to a $200,000 cut in operating costs.
Over the past three years, the College has
reduced operating costs by $1.4 million, said
Suzanne Welsh, vice president for finance
and treasurer.
The College’s current capital campaign,
The Meaning of Swarthmore, is set to raise
$230 million by the end of 2006. Funds from
the campaign are financing new construction
and additions to the curriculum, reducing the
burden of those expenses on the operating
budget. The campaign is also helping build
the endowment, income that provides almost
half of the annual operating budget.
“We know that tuition increases are never
welcome news for our students and their
families,” Welsh said, “but they can be
assured that we are taking all responsible
steps to contain costs while continuing to
offer the extraordinary education for which
Swarthmore has long been known.”
—Tom Krattenmaker
FACULTY ON THE RISE
Of eight faculty promotions this year, associate professorship with tenure was awarded to
Assistant Professors Eric Jensen, Physics and
Astronomy; Bruce Maxwell, Engineering;
Sunka Simon, Modern Languages and Literatures; and Thomas Whitman, Music and
Dance.
The following faculty members were promoted from associate to full professor:
Miguel Díaz-Barriga, Sociology and Anthropology; Pieter Judson, History; Amy Vollmer,
Biology; and Hansjakob Werlen, Modern Languages and Literatures.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
JUNE 2004
SWARTHMORE BECAME A MECCA FOR DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS this
spring. Renowned documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman visited campus in April to lecture at the close of a series of screenings of
his films. The documentaries Meat, Ballet, and Titicut Follies were
shown on three successive nights.
Another famous documentarian, Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter,
Grey Gardens, and Monterey Pop), came to campus in April to shoot
footage for a film he is making on anti-Semitism. Maysles asked
Professor of History Robert Weinberg to assemble a group of about
20 students for a filmed discussion.
In March, the College itself got in the act when it brought in a
trio of all-star film crews to capture on digital video the essence of
student life at Swarthmore. Producers Jon Huberth and Vern Oakley
brought in Buddy Squires, who has worked with the famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns; Steve Kazmierski, who directed photography for the critically acclaimed feature film You Can Count on
Me; and Anthony Savini, who worked on the television series Crime
and Punishment and The Freshman Diaries.
The goal was to follow a selected group of students for 3 days
and nights as they navigated their Swarthmore experience. From the
classroom to the dorm room, the dining hall to the rugby field, the
Philly club scene to the famed on-campus party “Screw Your Roommate,” the crews shot some 35 hours of digital video.
One innovative feature of the filming was a series of “self-interviews,” where students sat alone with a camera in the abandoned
“ballroom” of Parrish Hall and talked directly about the College.
Excerpts from these interviews may be seen in “Swarthmore
Unscripted,” a new feature on the College’s Web site (www.swarthmore.edu/unscripted/). The rest of the footage will be edited into a
video for use by the Admissions Office.
—Tom Krattenmaker and Jeffrey Lott
ANTHONY SAVINI
S wa r t h m o re i n Fo c u s
7
THE COLLEGE NEEDS TO BE MORE ACTIVELY involved in the management and preservation of the Crum Woods, according to an independent report issued in December. The College’s ad hoc Crum
Woods Stewardship Committee (CWSC) commissioned the study
from two firms, Natural Lands Trust and Continental Conservation,
as part of its goal to “create a protection, restoration, and stewardship plan for Crum Woods.”
The authors concluded that “basic stewardship tasks,” including
trash removal and trail maintenance, have been neglected in the
past. Just one afternoon of cleanup in April by a dozen students and
faculty members yielded 12 tires, two smashed bikes, two smashed
computers, and approximately 75 cubic feet of trash.
To protect the woods’ boundaries and resources against further
loss and degradation, the report contains recommendations for two
new positions at the College: a full-time manager, who would coordinate all parties with an interest in the woods, and a faculty member who would oversee proposals for new uses. Other suggestions
include the adoption of “a ‘no net loss’ policy on the total area of
unfragmented forest” and the beginning of a number of processes
to improve wildlife and stormwater management.
“Some of the recommendations we agree with; some we don’t,”
says CWSC chair and Henry C. and J. Archer Turner Professor of
Engineering Arthur McGarity. “This report will stimulate some
thought on what structure to put in place. It’s too soon to say how
that will happen, but at the minimum, we have an evaluation that
will guide future decisions.” After reviewing the study, the CWSC
plans to make its own recommendations at the end of this semester.
The woods, consisting of more than 200 acres of forest and 30
acres of swamps, marshes, and floodplains, contain the best
examples of mature, native forest in Delaware County. “There are
threats,” McGarity says. “It’s clear the woods will be threatened over
time, if we don’t pay attention to them.”
—Alisa Giardinelli
8
THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY
MOURNS the March 5 death of
Professor Emeritus of German
George Avery, 77. A faculty member since 1959, he was chair of
the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures from
1975 to 1980, retiring in 1994.
“George had a deep love for
German literature and culture,
and he responded to it not only
as the meticulous and erudite
scholar that he was but also as a
passionately engaged reader.
This fundamental connection
was expressed in his teaching,
inspiring so many of our stu-
COURTESY OF THE AVERY FAMILY
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
AUF WIEDERSEHEN
GEORGE AVERY
dents to develop their own powerful responses to the literature
he loved,” said his colleague
Professor of German Marion
Faber.
Crum
TERRY WILD STUDIOS
Caring for the
THE CRUM WOODS ARE BOTH AN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE FOR THE COLLEGE
AND A NATURAL RESOURCE FOR THE COMMUNITY. THREATS TO THE WOODS
ARE BEING EVALUATED BY A COLLEGE STEWARDSHIP COMMITTEE.
Born in Philadelphia, Avery
served in the military in Germany, followed by postwar relief
work in Finland and Greece.
Later, he obtained bachelor’s,
master’s, and doctoral degrees at
the University of Pennsylvania.
An expert on Viennese satirical
writer Karl Kraus and his
milieu, Avery produced an abundance of scholarly writing,
including a 2003 publication
that examines the correspondence between Kraus and writer
and publisher Herwarth
Walden. Internationally recognized for his pioneering work
on the Swiss modernist author
Robert Walser, Avery was the
recipient of several prestigious
scholarships.
Following the motto Mens
sana in corpore sano, Avery was a
frequent visitor to the Mullan
Tennis Center. Retired baseball
coach Ernie Prudente, who was
often Avery’s partner in tennis
matches, said: “Since his retirement, George was always at the
athletics facilities working out,
playing tennis, and kibitzing
with the rest of us. George was
someone who loved the College
and who was liked by everyone
here who knew him.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
ONE IN FOUR ACCEPTED
The College received 3,753 applications for the Class of 2008 and
accepted roughly a quarter of
those who applied. Of the 885
students accepted, 142 were
notified during the early-decision
period. Based on previous admissions patterns, Dean of
Admissions Jim Bock ’90 expected to enroll a class of about 370
in the fall. Of the admitted students from high schools that
report class rank, 27 percent are
ALEKSEI AND ANNA BUDEYEV, WITH WHOM DAVID HARRISON (LEFT) VISITED LAST YEAR, ARE TWO OF
THE LAST SPEAKERS OF THE MIDDLE CHULYM LANGUAGE.
“because they are traditionally subsistence
hunter-gatherers and fishermen.” They also
have a rich oral tradition of religious beliefs,
stories, and songs.
Harrison found that only 35 members of
the community of 426—and none under
the age of 52—could speak the language fluently, so it is now considered moribund.
“As the existing speakers grow older,”
Harrison says, “they are not replaced in the
population. Therefore, it is almost certain
the language will disappear”—and, with it,
the highly specialized knowledge of the
Chulym people.
In an effort to document Chulym,
Harrison plans to construct a grammar of
the language and a children’s storybook.
He says that standard techniques (such
as those taught at Swarthmore in the linguistics course Field Methods) can be
applied to help understand previously
valedictorians or salutatorians.
Fifty percent are in the top 2
percent of their high school class
and 91 percent in the top decile.
—Tom Krattenmaker
LIFELONG LEARNING
PROGRAM EXPANDS
The College’s Lifelong Learning
Program, which has offered noncredit courses to alumni, parents, and friends in the Philadelphia area, is expanding in the
fall to include two courses to be
unknown linguistic structures.
“For the grammar book,” he says, “I
found one speaker in the community who
had devised his own homemade writing system, and I plan to use it, with minor modifications, to publish the first book ever in the
language.”
Locating and confirming the existence of
the language and possibly preventing its
disappearance, “was a great feeling,” Harrison says, “sort of like the feeling I imagine a
zoologist might have upon documenting a
new species.”
To learn more about Chulym, view a
slideshow, hear the language spoken, and
see a preview of Vanishing Voices, a film about
Harrison’s work on Chulym in Siberia, visit
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/releases/04/harrison.html.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
taught in New York City. Two
eight-week courses will be
offered at the Cornell Club at 6
East 44th Street: Homeric Models
of Heroism, taught by Gilbert
Rose, Susan W. Lippincott Professor Emeritus of Modern and Classical Languages; and Science,
Objectivity, and Values, taught
by Hugh Lacey, Scheuer Family
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy.
Three other courses will be
offered at the College: The New
Embryology: the Science Behind
the Headlines, taught by Scott
Gilbert, Howard A. Schneiderman
Professor of Biology; America at
War, taught by James Kurth,
Claude C. Smith Professor of
Political Science; and Shakespeare taught by Craig Williamson, Professor of English Literature. For more information on
schedules, fees, and registration,
call (610) 328-8696, or visit
www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/life_learning.html.
—Jeffrey Lott
JUNE 2004
WHEN VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR of Linguistics K. David Harrison arrived last July
at Mikhail Skobelin’s house in a remote village in Central Siberia, he found the elderly
man hard of hearing.
“I literally had to shout in his ear. I
asked him in Russian if he could say something in his native language. He said: ‘I am
Mikhail Skobelin, I was born here in 1931,
and I’ve lived here all my life.’”
This was the first sentence that Harrison heard in Chulym, a language he had
been searching for and whose existence
had been only briefly mentioned and incorrectly categorized in the literature of the
linguistic scientific community.
“Fortunately, my film crew had their
cameras rolling, so we caught it on tape. I
have a big smile on my face—it was an
exciting moment,” he says.
The Chulym people are an indigenous
community inhabiting six small, isolated
villages among a mostly Russian population. Their language, with its unique numeric and grammatical systems, is unrelated to
Russian or other Slavic languages and has
existed solely through oral tradition. “They
never had writing and had no written documentation,” Harrison says.
Of particular interest to linguists is the
language’s detailed system for classifying
plants, especially those with medicinal uses
that are local to the area, as well as a large
vocabulary pertaining to fish, parts of fish,
and fishing lures and traps.
“This makes sense,” Harrison says,
GREGORY ANDERSON
Va n i s h i n g
Vo i c e s
9
“ R E G R E T T H AT O U R T I M E
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
TOGETHER IS OVER”
10
A month before retiring, Don Swearer, the
Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Religion, pondered the changes he’s
witnessed during more than 30 years on
campus. He joined the College’s Department
of Religion in September 1970.
“One of the big changes at Swarthmore
since I arrived has been the development of
the Department of Religion,” he says. “Religion became a department in 1968 with the
appointment of Patrick Henry, a Christian
church historian. Lin Urban, a philosopher
of religion, was the chair—having taught in
the Department of Philosophy. I was
appointed to teach the religions of Asia.”
The department now includes five
tenured or tenure-track faculty positions,
including one shared appointment. Swearer
has taught courses and seminars including
The Buddhist Traditions of Asia, Religious
Belief and Moral Action, and Comparative
Religious Mysticism.
“Swarthmore’s faculty overall has grown
in numbers as established fields of study
have changed and new fields have emerged;
furthermore, the faculty has become considerably more diverse in terms of gender and
ethnicity. This diversity is also seen in the
composition of the student body. The presence of a larger number of students from
abroad and the increased opportunity for
students to study in countries throughout
the globe has also added to the cultural
and educational richness of the campus,”
Swearer says.
“Professors expect a lot of their students,
and, likewise, most students expect a lot of
their professors. It is this climate of mutual
high expectation that makes Swarthmore
such a special educational institution and
gives the College its distinctive atmosphere
of intellectual intensity,” he adds.
“The relatively small class size, honors
seminars, and Swarthmore’s inquisitive
intellectual climate contribute not only to
the uniqueness of
the College as an
educational institution but to the rich
and often lasting
relationships that
develop among students and between
students and professors. These relationships often stand the
test of time and last
well beyond the
Swarthmore years
and perhaps for a
lifetime.”
Students who
studied Asian reliDON SWEARER
gions with Swearer
are now professors at Cornell, Oberlin,
Bowdin, Bates, and other institutions or in
graduate school. But others who have followed different paths also stay in touch—if
not regularly, then on special occasions from
holidays to the birth of a child.
Reflecting on his impending retirement,
Swearer says: “What I’ll miss most are those
memorable classes and seminars where—for
whatever reasons—everything seemed to
click; virtually every student is interested,
engaged, and contributing; the class or seminar time never seems to be quite sufficient;
and at the end of the semester, there’s nearuniversal regret that our time together is
over. These classes and seminars are intellectually rewarding, to be sure, but they are
much more. They touch all aspects of our
being—affective and moral—as well.”
Swearer will not leave teaching completely. He will begin a three-year visiting professorship of Buddhist studies at Harvard
Divinity School and will serve as director of
the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Swearer plans to continue his research
and writing in Asian and comparative religions. Two of his books, Becoming the Buddha: The Ritual of Image Consecration in Thai-
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
Glancing
Forward
and Back
land (Princeton) and The Sacred Mountains of
Northern Thailand and Their Legends (Silkwork/University of Washington Press), were
released this spring.
“I’ll also remain actively engaged in the
fields of religion and the environment and
religious pluralism in America,” he says.
H O W T H E T R E E S H AV E G R O W N
Judy Voet, James H. Hammons Professor of
Chemistry, has taught at Swarthmore for 25
years.
“During that time, I’ve watched the
weeping cherries near Beardsley grow to be
beautiful, mature graceful trees while I’ve
gone from a young mother with a new
career to a grandmother trying to juggle
ever-increasing professional and personal
time commitments,” she says.
“My students at one time could baby-sit
for my children. Now, the new assistant professors are my children’s age or younger. I
used to have to fight my students for
authority. Now, I wish they did not view me
as such an authority figure. But age aside,
the students are still the same, ever inquisitive, intense, and with a love of learning
JUDY VOET
JEFFREY LOTT
nal, contributing to the development of a
biochemistry and molecular biology digital
library, and serving on professional committees and advisory boards.
“In addition, I hope to have enough time
to play an important role in the upbringing
of my grandchildren,” she says.
JUBILADA
Amy Morrison, associate College librarian
until the end of March, worked at Swarthmore for nearly 25 years.
During her time at the College, Morrison
found the changes in the physical plan
“most exciting.” She says that the elimination of the road dissecting the campus “created a more cohesive community.” Morrison
also witnessed the 1980s construction of
Cornell Science Library and McCabe Library
renovations during the last few years as well
as the building of Mertz, the Lang Performing Arts Center, Kohlberg, the rebirth of
Trotter, and the new science center.
“I took a leadership role in the automation of the library’s card catalog and in the
development of the tricollege library consortium of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore,” she says. “I also reorganized the
Technical Services Department in McCabe
Library from a function-based organization
to one based on format. In that process, I
was gratified to enable staff in that department to enhance their responsibilities and
to make their jobs more interesting and
rewarding. I consider my legacy and my
greatest pleasure the development of the
artists’ book collection in Special Collections in McCabe.”
Morrison already misses working with
“intelligent, talented, wonderful people—
whose values I both respect and share.”
Although she still returns to campus for
Pilates classes and other events, Morrison
regrets not seeing the campus on a daily
basis. “To allay that loss and to pay back my
debt to the pleasure the arboretum has given
me every day, I have signed on as a Scott
Arboretum volunteer and look forward to
making new friends and to learning something about horticulture,” she says—ever
mindful of Cicero’s maxim, “If you have a
garden and a library, you have everything
you need.”
“I will miss the students,” Morrison
adds, noting the welcome increase in diver-
AMY MORRISON
sity during her tenure. “They taught me to
understand better my own children and to
participate in a more meaningful way in
their adult lives.”
She thinks that, in comparison with
other colleges and universities, Swarthmore
students, faculty, and staff “develop a lasting
sense of connection to the community and a
strong commitment to worthwhile ideals.”
As Morrison explained at her retirement
party, she dislikes the word “retired.”
“It sounds so out to pasture-ish—so put
‘on the shelf,’” she says. “The Spanish say it
so much better—jubilada—like joy, jubilation,” which has a more uplifting ring. “I am
worried that when I am retired, people may
expect me to act my age. I have no intention
of doing that. I expect to be very active in
this Indian summer of my life. I believe in
life changes and renewal. I am looking forward to my ‘Third Age,’ as the French call
it, as something challenging, exciting, and
unknown—an adventure.”
Morrison intends to “reinvent” herself,
“to become who I am and to do what I really
want to do—whatever that may be. I want
to explore the book arts—from the other
side—and to try my own hand at letterpress
printing and maybe even book making.
There will now be time to read, to listen to
music, to work out, to garden, to go canoeing, to take classes, and to travel—or rather
to spend long enough in other places and
countries to make a genuine connection
with the people there.”
She and her husband are considering a
volunteer opportunity at a state park in
Hawaii next winter and another one at a
reading center in a villa near Bologna, Italy.
“Those who are already retired know
how busy and rich that life can be—and
those who are not yet there, well, what can I
say? Eat your heart out.”
—Andrea Hammer
JUNE 2004
JIM GRAHAM
that I seldom see elsewhere.”
Voet has taught courses and seminars,
including Modern Instrumental Methods in
Chemistry and Biochemistry, Biological
Chemistry, and Topics in Biochemistry,
respectively. She co-authored the best-selling Biochemistry (2nd ed., 1995), with husband Donald, an associate professor of
chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
With Charolotte Pratt, they wrote Fundamentals of Biochemistry (John Wiley & Sons,
1999).
Voet’s research has included “determining the rates at which benzenesulfonylfluoride and phenylmethanesulfonylfluoride
inactivate wild type and mutant acetylcholinesterases from several sources” and
using “computer modeling techniques in
order to understand how differences in
enzyme structure can account for these differences in reactivity.”
At the end of the spring semester, Voet
will go on permanent sabbatical leave. “I
will no longer teach, but I will maintain an
office and continue with all of my other professional responsibilities, including writing
biochemistry textbooks, editing a biochemistry and molecular biology education jour-
11
12
ED GOLDSTEIN ‘07 SHOT A 1-OVER-PAR 73
TO LEAD AFTER THE FIRST ROUND OF THE
CENTENNIAL CONFERENCE GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPS IN APRIL.
goal list with 103. DeSimone ranks eighth
on the career scoring list with 139 points.
Junior midfielder Tim Chryssikos also added
four goals and two assists and led the team
in scoring with 25 goals and 24 assists for
49 points. Chryssikos finished ninth in the
CC in scoring and sixth in assists, earning
all-conference honorable mention.
Women’s lacrosse (8–8, 2–7) Jackie
Kahn ’04 led the offensive attack, scoring a
team-best 54 goals and 10 assists for 64
points. The midfielder finished second in
the CC in goals and eighth in points per
game, earning all–CC first-team honors.
Kahn finished her career with 146 goals, 27
assists, and 173 points, ranking seventh on
Swarthmore’s career goals and points lists.
Cara Tigue ’06, the team’s top defender,
earned all-conference honorable mention.
Jenn Hart ’04 closed her career in net with
569 saves to finish third on the career list.
Softball (10–22, 3–13) Centerfielder
Mary Mintel ’05 posted a team-high
.281 batting average and .371 slugging
percentage, hitting the Garnet’s
lone home run in a 3–2 victory over Washington College. Fellow outfielder
Samantha Brody ’05 led
the team in hits (27), runs
(17), at bats (97), and
stolen bases (9); and
infielder Danielle Miller
’06 led the squad with
19 runs batted in and
was second in runs
scored (16), tying
with Mintel. Catcher
Christina Procacci ’06
drew the most walks in
the CC (23), posting a
.439 on-base percentage. Pitcher Marianne
Klingaman ’07 led the
team with six wins, a
3.10 earned run average,
and finished ninth in the
CC with 51 strikeouts.
Emily Remus ’06
fanned 57 to place sev-
CARL WOLF STUDIOS
Baseball (5–20, 4–14) Jared Leiderman ’05
earned all-conference honorable mention
for leading the Garnet pitching staff. In 13
appearances, Leiderman recorded a 4–6
record with four complete games. The workhorse right-hander finished fifth in the
league with 50 strikeouts in 57.1 innings.
Catcher Cliff Sosin ’04 led the team with a
.277 batting average and Ryan Pannorfi ’04
placed second, hitting .266, collecting the
Garnet’s most hits (21) and triples (4). Matt
Goldstein ’04 posted a .517 slugging percentage; almost half of his 15 hits went for
extra bases with two doubles, two triples,
and a team best three home runs, including
two blasts in a 4–1 victory over Haverford.
Golf (13–6, fifth at Centennial Conference [CC] Championship) Swarthmore’s
golf team had one of its most successful seasons in recent memory. The squad equaled
its best finish at the CC Championships,
placing fifth with a school-best three-day
total of 957. The score beat Swarthmore’s previous best three-day
total by 76 strokes.
On the
opening day of the
CC Championships, the
Garnet fired its
best single round in school history, carding a 308. Ed Goldstein ’07 shot a careerbest 73 on the par 72 Eagles Landing course
to pace the Garnet, Zach Moody ’07 and
Matt Draper ’05 posted 78s, and Mike Cullinan ’06 added a 79. Draper finished in 11th
place with 238; Goldstein carded 242 for a
14th-place finish.
Men’s lacrosse (6–9, 3–5) Despite its
6–9 record, the men’s lacrosse team closed
out the season on a high note with a 15–4
thrashing of Haverford. In that game, senior
attacker Joe DeSimone scored four goals,
collected his 100th career goal, and moved
into fourth place on the Garnet’s all-time
MARK DUZENSKI
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
Tennis and G olf:
Strong Seasons
ANJANI REDDY ’04 CLOSED OUT HER SWARTHMORE
TENNIS CAREER WITH A STUNNING 50–0 RECORD
IN SINGLES MATCHES. SHE WAS CENTENNIAL CONFERENCE PLAYER OF THE YEAR FOR FOUR SEASONS.
enth on the CC list. The team’s 10 wins were
the most since the 1998 season.
Men’s tennis (9–8) The Garnet ranked
19th in Division III and advanced to the
NCAA Tournament for the 28th time in 29
years. In the first round of the tournament,
the Garnet rallied from a 3–2 deficit to
defeat Washington College 4–3. Jon Reiss
’07 and Justin Durand ’05 pulled out victories to advance Swarthmore. In round two,
the team fell to the No. 8 ranked host, Mary
Washington, 4–2. The men took an early
lead, winning the doubles point, and Zac
Rodd ’06 picked up the other point at first
singles. Rodd and the doubles team of Mike
Noreika ’04 and Frank Visciano ’04 were
selected to play in the NCAA Division III
Individual Championships.
Women’s tennis (15–3, 9–1) Anjani
Reddy ’04 became the first woman in CC
history to earn four Player of the Year
Awards, as she won her third CC singles
title. Reddy finished her CC career with a
50–0 mark in singles play. The Garnet was
ranked No. 16 in Division III and made the
NCAA Division III Tournament for the second consecutive season. Swarthmore dispatched Salisbury, 7–1 in the first round of
the tourney but fell to the No. 2 team in the
country, Washington & Lee, 7–2 in round
two. Reddy qualified for the NCAA Individual Tournament for the third time. She also
teamed with Sonya Reynolds ’07 to earn all-
J u s t To p s
WHEN SOCCER ENTHUSIAST RYAN KUKER ’06
heard a disabled child bemoan his exclusion from participation in a recreational
sports league, he decided to take action. He
was directed to The Outreach Program for
Soccer (TOPSoccer), a branch of the United
States Youth Soccer Association that,
according to the program’s mission statement, allows disabled children “to play soccer and have fun in a supportive, caring
coaching environment.”
After coaching with the TOPSoccer Program in New Jersey last summer, Kuker
teamed up with fellow student Rhiannon
Graybill ’06 and, with support and guidance from the Lang Center for Civic and
Social Responsibility, the Athletics Department, and the Ridley United Soccer Club,
started an 8-week program in early March.
Currently working with 40 student volunteer coaches and 31 athletes, ages 8 to 13,
Kuker says, “My vision for Swarthmore
TOPSoccer is that it becomes a self-sustaining program, which expands in both athlete
and volunteer participation.”
TIM BREVART
conference honors in doubles.
Men’s track and field (eighth at CC
Championship) Matt Williams ’04 won a
silver medal in the 110 hurdles in a time of
15:48 and placed fourth in the 400 hurdles
in 57.54 to pace the Garnet to an eighthplace finish at the 2004 CC Championships, hosted by Swarthmore. The 4x800
relay team of Dillon McGrew ’07, Duncan
Gromko ’07, Keefe Keeley ’06, and Vernon
Chaplin ’07 finished third in 7:51.28 to win
a bronze medal. Garrett Ash ’05 ran fourth
in the 10,000 with a time of 32:18.26.
Women’s track and field (eighth at CC
Championship) Njideka Akunyili ’04 won
gold and bronze medals in front of a home
crowd at the 2004 CC Championship to
pace the Garnet to an eighth-place finish.
Akunyili teamed up with Sarah Hobbs ’06,
Emily Wistar ’06, and Lauren Fety ’06 for
an exciting victory in the 4x800 relay, crossing the finish line in 9:31.37. She earned a
bronze medal in the 800, finishing in
2:19.30. Jen Stevenson ’06 won a silver
medal in the long jump with a leap of 16
feet 5.25 inches.
—Mark Duzenski
HEAD TOPSOCCER COACH RYAN KUKER SAYS:
“SWARTHMORE TOPSOCCER PROVIDES ATHLETES
AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN A GREAT GAME AND
HAVE FUN WHILE BUILDING IMPORTANT CHARACTER TRAITS SUCH AS SELF-CONFIDENCE AND
TEAMWORK.”
Initially motivated by Kuker’s persuasive
description of the program, Graybill says:
“TOPSoccer didn’t become real for me until
the first session, when I saw all the kids
running around with giant smiles on their
faces. Then, I understood what the program
was really about.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
JIM GRAHAM
DID YOU KNOW:
• In these technological and
culturally trendy times, English
literature remains a top choice
of majors for Swarthmore students?
• In 2003, the College’s first
dance major graduated?
ROBIN SHORES
• In 1993—for the first
time—more women were
enrolled in the College than
men, a phenomenon that has
continued ever since?
Sifting through statistics
from the College’s Institutional
Research Office can produce
some fun facts, but interpreting
these data is not a spectator
sport. Take this topical tidbit,
plucked at random from enrollment statistics tracked for the
last couple of decades: Enrollment of students from all races
and ethnic categories has risen
except for non-Hispanic whites.
Although a trend might be
discernible, says Institutional
Research Director Robin Huntington Shores, individual numbers regarding race and ethnicity aren’t always reliable.
In years past, state govern-
ment agencies seeking race and
ethnicity data didn’t provide for
those who identified themselves
as belonging to more than one
category, without one being predominant, or for those who
chose no race category. So
those who checked more than
one box, or none, might have
been lumped in with white.
Now, the option, “unknown
race,” is being chosen by
increasing numbers of students.
However, the new category
creates what one might call the
Ralph Nader effect: How many
of those “unknowns” would
have described themselves as
“African American” or “Asian”
or “white” in the past? And
what implication does that have
for prior statistics?
Informed, scientific interpretation is serious business to
Shores. She puts her work at
every College employee’s fingertips through the annual Fact
Book and its on-line version at
www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/in
stitutional_research/factbook2.html. Since the office was
established in 1999, much of
Shores’ time has been spent satisfying the requirements of government agencies and educational consortia and responding
to frequent requests from publishers of college guide books.
But she relishes her other role:
conducting research for in-house
use. Administrators and faculty
members clamor for her constant snapshots of College life.
“It’s to see if our thoughts
and ideas about ourselves are
accurate before we go about
making changes,” Shores says.
—Colleen Gallagher
JUNE 2004
Sticking to the facts
13
Parrish Reborn
A S PA R R I S H H A L L G E T S S E T F O R R E N E WA L ,
c. 1870
M O R E O F I T S H I S TO R Y C O M E S TO L I G H T.
By J e f f r e y L o t t
14
FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
The mixed-use nature of Parrish will be maintained. First-floor
administrative offices will be primarily those that provide student
services, such as the Dean’s Office, Financial Aid, Registrar, and
Career Services. A new central stairway (see page 16) will welcome
visitors to the Admissions Office and will also lead to administrative offices on the east and west wings of the second floor. The third
and fourth floors will remain student residence halls, with 112 beds
instead of the current 162.
The project is being funded by contributions to The Meaning of
Swarthmore, the College’s $230 million capital campaign. A pledge
of $10 million by Jerome Kohlberg ’46 provided leadership for the
Parrish renovations.
1881
FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
F
or 135 years, Parrish Hall has stood watch atop its hill, while
one of the nation’s great colleges grew around it. Now, it is
about to undergo a $13.6 million renovation, which will add
modern safety systems and remake the building’s central core into
inviting spaces suited for its next century as Swarthmore’s symbolic
center.
Opened in 1869 as Swarthmore welcomed its first students, the
“College,” as it was called then, housed the entire institution—all of
its classrooms, labs, student rooms, dining room, and common
spaces. After a September 1881 fire gutted the building’s interior, it
was rebuilt with even greater energy and optimism than had surrounded the founding of the College in 1864. The Phoenix, founded
in 1881, was named to symbolize Swarthmore’s rebirth from the
ashes.
That was more than 120 years ago, and although Parrish Hall
has been gradually modernized over the last century, it has, like
Swarthmore, held onto its Quaker heritage. Yet, in a building constructed before the introduction of electric lights—not to mention
fiber optic networks—modernity is a relative term. A major goal of
The Meaning of Swarthmore, the College’s current $230 million
comprehensive campaign, is to bring Parrish into the 21st century.
The exterior of the building will not be changed, and interior
redesign will respect the character of the 19th-century structure.
This is not a “historic preservation” project says Larry Schall ’75,
vice president for administration. This would imply an exacting
restoration of original building details. Instead, Schall says, “The
project is more properly termed an ‘adaptive reuse.’ Parrish has
never been restored—it has always evolved.”
The project architect is Ayers/Saint/Gross of Baltimore, a firm
specializing in buildings for colleges and universities. “The renovation of Parrish is not proposed as a re-gilding of the past, but rather
a step forward,” the architects wrote in a planning document. “The
final product should be a building that appears unchanged on the
exterior with a well-planned interior that appropriately expresses
the building’s Quaker history.”
The work begun in early June will concentrate first on life-safety
systems within the building. A fire sprinkler system will be installed
throughout the five-story structure, and exit stairways will be reconfigured to terminate outside the building.
The central core of the building will be functionally reconfigured
and modernized. Elevators will be installed; a new stairway will lead
visitors to the Admissions Office on the second floor; a new post
office and student lounge will be created in the former Admissions
Office space, and central air-conditioning will be installed in renovated offices and common spaces in the central section of the building.
When it opened in 1869, the “College Building”
housed all of the functions of the new school. It was
gutted by fire in 1881 but rebuilt within months.
The total cost of
rebuilding Parrish Hall
after the 1881 fire was
$ 225, 293.74. R e n o v at i o n s
begun recently will
cost an estimated $13.6
million.
A SURPRISING DISCOVERY
L
ast summer, the Parrish project triggered a surprising discovery
in a basement storage vault. In anticipation of the renovations,
Suzanne Welsh, vice president for finance and treasurer, and two
staff members ventured deep into Parrish’s basement rooms, through
two locked doors, to assess decades of financial records stored there.
Lori Johnson, assistant treasurer, says they never go there alone: “If
the door locked behind you, you might never be found.” High above
a block of filing cabinets, they spotted a metal box stuffed between
the joists of the floor above. Lettered on its side were the words:
This box, which contained a complete
financial record of the rebuilding of Parrish Hall after
fire destroyed the building in 1881, was found last
year in the building’s basement.
“BILLS,VOUCHERS &c Re-Building Committee SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE After the Fire, 9th Mo.25th.1881.”
Treasury Operations Assistant Carmen Duffy (“She’s the tallest,”
Welsh says) stood on a chair to wiggle the box out from between the
boards. Inside the dusty box, which weighed about 10 pounds, were
records kept by Edward Ogden, chairman of the building committee
of the Board of Managers—the complete financial record of the rebuilding, including catalogs, business cards, correspondence, estimates, contracts, invoices, ledgers, payroll records, and check stubs.
As the persons who write the checks today, Welsh and her staff were
particularly interested in the final audited report of the committee,
showing that rebuilding costs had totaled $225,293.74. To the penny.
“That’s less than the cost of one elevator installed today,” Welsh says.
During fall 2003, students in Visiting Lecturer
Thomas Morton’s (left) course The Architect and
summer. Morton used campus buildings and
Philadelphia architecture to introduce students
to the study of architecture.
JUNE 2004
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM GRAHAM
History examined the documents found last
15
Parrish 2005
T
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
his rendering shows, in cutaway view, the major elements of the
renovation of Parrish Hall, which began earlier this month.
A new 75-bed residence hall, nearing completion at the foot
of the campus, will house most of the students displaced by
the construction and reconfiguration of Parrish. When the
project is complete, the number of student beds in Parrish will
be reduced from 162 to 112. The Parrish renovations, which
include a fire sprinkler system for the entire building,
will be completed by September 2005.
16
Parrish Parlors will continue as a popular place
for meeting, studying, and socializing. They will
retain their 19th-century ambience, but with
modern lighting and Internet connections.
Dra w i n g b y A l ex F o r b e s
Two new elevators will make seven
stops at all of the building’s floors
and half-floors. Exit stairways will
be brought into compliance with
modern fire codes.
The Admissions Office will
The College Post Office will be moved to
relocate to the second floor,
the space currently occupied by the
using a renovated Parrish
Admissions Office. It will provide 1,400
Commons as a reception and
individual mailboxes and a student lounge
meeting area for groups of
with computer hookups.
prospective students.
Parrish Hall’s reconfigured first floor will be
A broad staircase will welcome visi-
including the Dean’s Office, Registrar, Financial
tors and take them up to the
Aid, Career Services, and the credit union.
Admissions Office, which will be relocated to the second floor.
JUNE 2004
dedicated to student services and activities,
17
SUZANNE GAADT
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
18
B y Pe t e r C o h a n ’ 7 9
W
hat does the typical Swarthmore graduate do? The accepted wisdom about Swarthmore
is that its alumni are professors, teachers,
doctors, lawyers, government workers, journalists—or crusaders.
The statistics, however, don’t bear out
this view. A recent analysis of Swarthmore’s
alumni data showed that although 41 percent of the College’s alumni are employed by
nonprofit organizations—largely in education, research, social service, and government—an almost equal proportion work in
for-profit businesses or are self-employed.
It comes as no surprise—and no accident—that many Swarthmoreans find work
in the nonprofit world. Swarthmore’s combination of a broad liberal arts curriculum
with its emphasis on using one’s education
to create a better world often leads graduates into academic and social service professions. Yet that same education also seems to
have prepared—almost by accident—nearly
half of the alumni for work in business. The
College has no business major and only a
handful of courses that touch on the practical skills needed in a business career, but
alumni in the for-profit world largely agree
M A N Y S WA R T H M O R E A N S
CHOOSE CAREERS
I N B U S I N E S S.
BUT IS THE COLLEGE
PREPARING THEM
F O R I T S C H A L L E N G E S?
that Swarthmore did prepare them for the
leadership challenges of business and entrepreneurship. They also wonder whether it
could do more.
Joy Hulse Wyatt ’80 began a new job as
senior vice president and director of human
resources (HR) for Fiduciary Trust just three
months after the firm had lost 87 employees
in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade
Center.
Wyatt, a music major at Swarthmore who
says she honed her organizational skills as a
pit orchestra conductor for a musical production, found Fiduciary Trust laden with
emotion at every level. She struggled with
how best to handle the situation and, during a period of roughly two years, she and
her HR team helped to rebuild the firm’s
organization and successfully integrated it
with Franklin Resources, which had
acquired Fiduciary Trust six months before
the disaster.
According to Wyatt, “I met with each
member of the management committee as
well as the HR team and acknowledged the
sensitivities and sense of loss. I said, ‘I am
here to do a particular job. This is what the
job looks like, and it is a different job from
the one my predecessor had to do.’”
As testament to Wyatt’s skill, a longstanding senior leader told her as she
changed jobs at Fiduciary earlier this year,
“You were essential to putting this place
back together.”
Wyatt says that the intellectual training
and experiences she gained at Swarthmore
prepared her for the challenges she faced at
Fiduciary Trust. Yet she sometimes feels a
nagging sense that her choice of a business
career was not wholly respected by her
Swarthmore peers. Wyatt thinks that
Swarthmore needs to define business in a
different way: “Business could be a
respectable academic discipline if it was
called organizational dynamics. It might be
an interdisciplinary major of economics,
political science, and history.”
Wyatt’s feelings about Swarthmore and
business were shared by many of the alumni
interviewed for this article, who were asked
to construct a hierarchy of career options
encouraged by the College. The resulting list
is not surprising: academia, followed by
medicine, law, government, social service,
journalism, and—last—business.
Adrian Merryman ’80, a former investment banker who lived in England for many
years, thinks that, along with its Oxfordstyle Honors Program, Swarthmore may
also have adopted what we observed to be
the historic British attitude toward wealth:
that creating it is distasteful but inheriting
it enables the upper classes to pursue more
dignified callings. Merryman explains:
“Although the British initiated the industrial revolution, they developed a negative atti-
JUNE 2004
A Profitable
Education
19
JOY HULSE WYATT SAYS SWARTHMORE GAVE HER
THE INTELLECTUAL TOOLS TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN
THE BUSINESS WORLD BUT HAS A NAGGING SENSE
THAT HER CAREER CHOICE WAS WAS NOT ALWAYS
RESPECTED BY HER SWARTHMORE PEERS.
DIANE BONDAREFF/FIDUCIARY TRUST
tude toward those professions that resulted
in the creation of wealth. Generations subsequent to that which created the wealth
have preferred to focus on social position
and cultural sophistication.” He says, however, that the British attitude is changing:
“Even Oxford and Cambridge, which until
the last two decades limited their association with the business community, both
now have graduate business schools.”
Robinson Hollister Jr., Joseph Wharton
Professor of Economics, suspects Swarthmore’s attitude toward business comes from
its Quaker roots. “In the 19th and early
20th centuries,“ he says, “Quakers were big
businessmen, including Wharton, cofounder of Bethlehem Steel and a Swarthmore donor. Their social consciousness
didn’t stop them from making a profit.”
But Hollister says: “In the 1930s, there
came to be less of an emphasis among
Quakers on business and more on public
service. This may have been a reaction to the
Great Depression. This shift coincided with
the rise of the Honors Program, introduced
by President Frank Aydelotte, who used the
highly intellectual Oxford model.”
Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright
Professor of Social Theory and Social
warm bodies to process the deals. Suddenly
Wall Street became a desirable place to go.
Students highly rated in terms of academic
performance were going to investment
banking. It was the money. It became the
socially cool thing to do,” Hollister says.
Still, recent graduates who have gone
into business suggest that the campus attitude toward business remains cool. Gaurav
tion is an excellent preparation for a business career. The ability to deconstruct problems and articulate effective solutions translates well in the boardroom.” He praised
efforts such as the annual Lax Conference
on Entrepreneurship (see page 22), the
revival of a student Swarthmore Business
Association, and the support of the Career
Services Office for students and alumni
exploring business careers. But he lamented
that although “the top graduate schools are
aware of Swarthmore’s reputation, human
resources personnel at larger corporations
are often not.”
P
erhaps they should be. According
to Associate Professor of Economics Philip Jefferson, “Swarthmore’s
purpose is to help students process new
ideas. There is a natural realization that
ideas are useful in a variety of situations,
and there’s no reason to exclude business. If
a student says, ‘I’m interested in business,’ I
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
In the view of one professor of economics,
profit is the reward you get for solving
problems that matter to society.
20
Action, who has been on the faculty since
1971, says this bias can still be found among
some members of Swarthmore’s faculty. “I
think the common attitude here is that business is what you do if you’re not intellectually serious. It said, ‘You don’t need to be
smart to go into business, so why are we
wasting our time teaching you?’ Even the
economists were disappointed if a student
went into business,” Schwartz says.
But Hollister thinks that Swarthmore
became more of a springboard to business
during the 1980s boom in investment banking. “In the late ’80s, investment banking
firms were paying an incredible amount of
money. In a major merger transaction, the
bankers’ 0.5 percent commission was so
small proportionately that no one would
notice. The firms doing deals could afford
the fee, and the investment banks needed
Seth ’98, a vice president at investment
banking giant Goldman Sachs, says, “People
ask me why I would go into business. The
Swarthmore mentality is saving the world,
working for the greater good. Swarthmore
believes that business is wasting the intellect. ‘What is the point of making money?’
they ask. While this may be a worthy mindset, the reality is that some of us have to
care about economics and do want to live
comfortably.”
Randy Goldstein ’05 echoed Seth’s view
in his April 8 Phoenix column. “Among the
student body and in certain classrooms,“ he
wrote, “business careers are stigmatized.
They are looked down upon as anti-intellectual and contrary to Swarthmore values.”
In his column, Goldstein, who aspires to
earn an M.B.A. or a graduate degree in economics, affirmed that a “liberal arts educa-
don’t try to dissuade him or her. What are
the problems in business? How will they
solve them? If they develop solutions to
these problems, there is no moral issue in
making money.” In his view, profit is the
reward you get for solving problems that
matter to society.
Jefferson thinks that a Swarthmore education, with its emphasis on independent
thinking and risk taking, may be better
preparation for an entrepreneurial career
than for a position in a Fortune 100 firm.
“This kind of education helps students
understand different real-world situations
and to see opportunity in different forms,”
he says. “Students at Swarthmore are entrepreneurs without knowing it. They start a
club; they protest a policy; they ask the faculty to make a change in the curriculum.
These are all entrepreneurial activities. They
MEGHAN KRIEGEL ʼ97
FOLLOWING A SUCCESSFUL CAREER IN INVESTMENT
BANKING, ADRIAN MERRYMAN AND HIS WIFE,
JENNIFER, HAVE TURNED THEIR ATTENTION TO
MICROLENDING AS A WAY OF LIFTING PEOPLE IN
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES OUT OF POVERTY.
a different focus on the act of learning relative to other colleges. Swarthmore’s seminars encourage students to work together to
solve problems. I enjoy the sheer pursuit of
trying to solve complex problems in a team
environment. You keep asking questions.
This prepares you well for Goldman.”
I
n addition to the intellectual and
experiential tools for success, Swarthmore alumni also take with them a set
of fundamental values that not only influence their choice of jobs but inform the way
they conduct their business.
Kyle says, “After graduation and service
in the Army, I wanted to work for a company
that made a tangible contribution to society.
My first employer, Richardson-Vicks, was an
ethical and over-the-counter pharmaceutical
company that fit my criteria.”
Seth also sees harmony between Swarthmore’s emphasis on giving back to society
JOHN MONTGOMERY’S BRIDGEWAY CAPITAL MANAGEMENT GIVES HALF OF ITS PROFITS TO NONPROFITS THAT FOCUS ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND EDUCATION. AT BRIDGEWAY, THE TOP PAY CAN BE NO
MORE THAN SEVEN TIMES THAT OF THE LOWESTPAID EMPLOYEE.
and the value that Goldman Sachs places on
community service. According to Seth,
“Goldman has an initiative called Community Teamworks, which encourages every
employee to take a day off from the job for
community service. In the past, I worked in
the inner city at Patterson, N.J. We built a
play area.”
Merryman and his wife, Jennifer, were
disturbed by the fact that half the world’s
population lives on less than $2 per day and
20 percent on less than $1 per day. They saw
microlending as an approach that effectively
transforms the lives of the disenfranchised
at the economic, social, and spiritual levels;
as a result, they have become committed to
its more extensive and effective implementation.
“It is amazing,” says Merryman, “that as
little as $200 provided in the form of a loan
can actually transform the life of a family in
despair by catalyzing a business that provides food and education for the children.
And when you get the loan repaid (roughly
98 percent payback rate on uncollateralized
lending to the world’s poorest), you can lend
it to the next family where the cycle begins
again. Opportunity International, the Christian faith-based global leader in microfinance, has set a goal reaching 10 percent of
the world’s poorest over the next 20 years
with this transformational approach. That’s
something worth getting behind.”
Bridgeway Capital Management offers
another thought-provoking approach to
implementing social values through business policies. Founded and managed by
John Montgomery ’77, Bridgeway operates
according to very specific principles. “We
give half of our profits to nonprofit organizations that focus on areas such as human
rights and education,“ says Montgomery.
“There are no job titles at Bridgeway and a
minimum of organizational hierarchy. And
the top-compensated person here can earn
no more than seven times the lowest compensated individual.”
Bridgeway’s financial success has attracted several suitors interested in acquiring the
company. But so far, Montgomery’s discussions with potential buyers have stumbled
when discussion turned to maintaining
Bridgeway’s policy of giving half its profits
to charity. “I would guess that I receive
expressions of interest 10 times a year,”
Montgomery says. “But when I tell them
JUNE 2004
COURTESY OF BRIDGEWAY CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
are seeing a need and filling a void.”
Fred Kyle ’54, a member of the Board of
Managers, echoes Jefferson’s view: “When
we were seniors, my wife and I ran the snack
bar in Commons. It was our risk and our
business. We had 20 to 25 employees and it
provided a real-life business education.”
Kyle, who went on to run the commercial
operations of pharmaceutical giant SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline),
believes his experience running the Swarthmore snack bar proved valuable to his early
business career. “I think our experience at
Swarthmore running our own business was,
in some ways, equivalent to business
school.” Entrepreneurial students still have
such opportunities, running the Paces café
and other services for students.
Swarthmore’s emphasis on smart students working in teams also helps prepare
alumni for business. Seth noted, “Being at
Goldman Sachs is like being at Swarthmore.
It can be intimidating because everyone
here is highly motivated and generally very
smart. They were at the top of their class. It
can be humbling.”
Seth emphasizes the importance of
teamwork at Goldman: “A sure way to be
unsuccessful at Goldman is to promote
yourself at the expense of the team. Goldman does a great job of promoting the right
values: ‘not just for yourself—the team
approach.’”
And Seth says that Swarthmore prepared
him well to work in teams: “Swarthmore has
21
“Y o u c a n
take the
Crum to the
b o a r d r o o m. ”
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
I
22
n his keynote address on March 21
at the College’s annual Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship, Randall
Larrimore ’69 told more than 100 students and alumni that today’s most successful businesses—and business leaders—embody the values important to
Swarthmore students. Despite recent corporate scandals that tarnished the image
of business, he asserted that “the values
we Swarthmoreans hold so dear are the
same values that can make you successful
in the business world.”
“THOSE OF YOU WHO GO
Larrimore,
who closed his business
INTO BUSINESS WILL FIND
career as president and CEO of United
MANY WAYS TO MAKE A
Stationers, a company with about $4 bilDIFFERENCE,” SAID RANlion in sales and more than 6,000
DALL LARRIMORE AT THIS
employees, said that “the stories of
YEAR’S LAX CONFERENCE
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Health South,
and others would lead one to believe
ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
that all companies have scoundrels at the
top and only make money by cheating.” He cited studies showing
that “companies that are successful over the long term have an
ingrained belief in playing by the rules and have strong positive cultures grounded in deeply held values and a sound vision.”
Larrimore said that “capitalism is based on profits, and any time
higher profits can be aligned with doing the right thing, we have a
win–win for the company and for society.”
“At Swarthmore,” he said, “we learn to value people for who they
are and how they think, not by what they look like or what their
backgrounds are. We value independent thinking. We learn to be
empathetic. We learn to care for people. I contend that successful
business leaders do the same.”
In his business career, Larrimore said he learned that success
comes from a formula that combines strategy and execution, with
the emphasis on the latter. “While a great strategy is terrific,” he
said, “It’s the execution that makes something happen.” Good execution depends on employees understanding the company’s goals and
having “organization ownership” of them—something that becomes
possible when “business leaders care about their people and realize
that they are more than just a machine; they are a critical asset of
the company.” It is vital, he said, for “individuals to surrender their
self-interest for the greater good” to both own and implement the
strategy.
Speaking directly to the students in attendance, Larrimore said:
“I contend that Swarthmore students are well equipped to be tomorrow’s leaders. You’ve learned to be tolerant and to respect others’
views. You can become passionate about something and inspire
others to action. You’ve witnessed the value of individual attention
and the free exchange of ideas. You’ve learned to relate with senior
professors and students from assorted backgrounds with diverse
ideas. You’ve learned that power is derived from the soundness of
your ideas and the way you relate to others, not from physical
strength or intimidation.”
He urged the students to “be true to yourself … don’t ever lose
the principles you now cherish.” Speaking of his own experience, he
said that his education at Swarthmore and later at the Harvard Business School had given him the confidence to take risks, knowing
that “I could always find another job…. This allowed me to express
my point of view and make those tough decisions that weren’t conventional thinking. It allowed me to argue with people and stand up
for what I believed.”
“Those of you who go into business,” he concluded, “will find
many ways to make a difference, particularly as you move into higher levels of responsibility. You can make sure that your company is
ethical. You can strive to make the products you sell perform as
promised. You can help to make the work environment safe. You can
insist that people treat other people with dignity and respect. You
can push for diversity and equal opportunity. You can help your
employees balance their work and personal lives. And you can create
an environment where employees can contribute with their minds as
well as with their hands, where they can experience personal and
professional growth.
Other participants at this year’s conference included Margaret
Helfand ’69, architect and founder of Helfand Architecture; Margaret
Thomas Redmon ’79, president of Honey Locust Valley Farms; Dick
Senn ’56, a real estate developer; Roger Holstein ’74, president and
CEO of WebMD; Arthur Obermayer ’52, president of Moleculon
Research Corp.; Stephen Schwartz ’84, president and COO of Lion
Apparel; Susan Levine ’78, managing partner at Quince Hill Partners;
and Adrian Merryman ’80, former CEO of London-based Screen PLC.
—Jeffrey Lott
ABOUT THE LAX CONFERENCE
The 2004 Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship included roundtable
discussions on topics ranging from finding venture capital to nurturing
the “entrepreneurial personality,” panel discussions on “Internet
Prophets Talk Net Profits” and “Working Green: Business and Environmental Responsibility,” and a closing session on “Business Without Borders.” The conference, now in its sixth year, is supported by a bequest
from the late Jonathan Lax ’71, a business executive, noted social
activist, and founder of the Philadelphia-based market research and
consulting company The Marketing Audit. For more information on this
year’s conference—including a list of all current and past speakers and
panelists—go to www.swarthmore.edu/lax. The full text of Randall
Larrimore’s keynote address is posted with this article at the Bulletin
Web site, at www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/june04/business.php.
“We teach our students how to learn what
they need at any specific time, not a set of
skills that go out of date.”
PHILIP JEFFERSON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF
ECONOMICS, SAYS HE DOESN’T DISCOURAGE STUDENTS WHO ARE INTERESTED IN BUSINESS
CAREERS. ROBINSON HOLLISTER, WHO HAS
TAUGHT IN THE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT SINCE
1971, HAS SEEN A GRADUAL SHIFT IN ATTITUDES
TOWARD BUSINESS AT SWARTHMORE, BUT HE
WARNS AGAINST ADDING BUSINESS COURSES TO
THE CURRICULUM.
Kohlberg turned his attention to giving
back, contributing to Swarthmore in many
ways. He seems most proud of his ongoing
contribution to Swarthmore’s student body
through the Evans Scholars Program. “I
named it after my Swarthmore roommate,
Phil Evans; he was a selfless, dedicated doctor, who died prematurely,” says Kohlberg.
“Every April, we grant scholarships to about
eight students.” (For more on the Evans
Scholars Program, see “The Promise of
Leadership,” December 2003 Bulletin, or go
to www.philipevansscholars.org.)
Despite Swarthmore’s record of success
in preparing alumni for business careers—
and the positive contributions they are making to society and to the College—questions
remain about campus attitudes toward business-oriented students.
Some alumni have suggested that the
College offer a minor in business administration. “If Swarthmore is to train the leaders of the future, we need to focus on providing them with a tool kit that is relevant
to this age and the age to come,” says Mer-
ryman. “Business is one of the primary
levers for creating change in today’s world,
and the contributions made can have a
profoundly positive impact. Furthermore,
even those students who don’t enter the
business world need many of the underlying skills to succeed in today’s more competitive academic, medical, and legal environments.”
Hollister warns against adding “practical” business courses to the curriculum.
“My experience of small colleges is that if
they don’t resist the pressure to introduce
business courses, the organization gets
overwhelmed,” he says. “It becomes all business. If you get a good command of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics,
you have the tools to do the other stuff and
can pick it up.”
Provost and Mari S. Michener Professor
of Art History Connie Hungerford agrees.
She says that educating for specific business
skills may not last a lifetime, but the critical
thinking taught at Swarthmore is useful in
every endeavor (see “Women Carving Their
Own Paths” on page 24): “We teach our
students how to learn what they need to
learn at any specific time, not a set of skills
that is likely to go out of date. Swarthmore
alumni can do what a job requires, but they
think beyond the task at hand. They can’t do
a job—any job—without considering how it
might be done better or what the consequences might be.
“A liberal arts education gives people
competence in a wide range of areas and the
confidence that, if they come across a problem—whether it be in business, medicine,
law, or in their community—they have the
ability to work on a solution.” T
Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan &
Associates (http://petercohan.com), a management consulting and venture capital firm. He is
the author of seven books, including Value
Leadership: The Seven Principles That Drive
Corporate Value in Any Economy (JosseyBass, 2003).
JUNE 2004
S
warthmore alumni who have had
success in business support many
causes and organizations—
including the College itself. The business
career and philanthropy of Jerome Kohlberg
’46, an emeritus member of the Board of
Managers, is a prime example.
Kohlberg was co-founder of the leveraged buyout specialist Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts & Co. (KKR) and is now special
limited principal of Kohlberg & Co. His
business success began with the simple yet
powerful notion that it was better to risk
one’s own capital than to be an intermediary. “One of my friend’s fathers was a merchant banker,’ he recalls. “He didn’t act for
commissions. He stood and fell on his own
investments, which he put beside those of
other clients. I realized that being a principal was what I wanted.”
This insight drew Kohlberg into investment banking. “I went to Bear Stearns,
where we invented buyouts. They were
called bootstraps,” he says. In bootstraps,
investors purchase control of companies
financed largely through bank loans, while
giving managers a significant equity stake to
link their personal wealth to the companies’
financial results. The managers streamline
operations and sell the company at a profit
within 5 to 7 years.
“I insisted on [Bear Stearns] management having a piece of the equity,” says
Kohlberg. “I brought up the idea of longterm investments in these bootstraps to the
Bear Stearns partners. My proposal was
overruled.”
This led Kohlberg to start his own company. “After 21 years at Bear Stearns, I left to
start KKR. I was like other Swarthmore students who are used to independence.” In
1987, Kohlberg went out on his own again,
starting Kohlberg & Co. with his son, and
retired as a limited partner in 1992.
PHOTOS BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
that my goal is to give away $100 million a
year when I retire, this squashes the discussion.”
23
WOMEN CARVING
THEIR OWN PATHS
SELF-EMPLOYED ALUMNAE
B U I L D E C O N O M I C A L LY
INDEPENDENT AND
C R E AT I V E LY F U L F I L L I N G L I V E S .
EVE LYMAN
R
eflecting trends in the business world, Swarthmore-educated women have increasingly entered the workforce during
the last few decades. As they have explored options from
leadership positions in major corporations (see “A Profitable Education” on page 18) to independent start-ups, they have consistently
relied on analytic and communications skills developed at the College. According to the College’s database, approximately 500 female
entrepreneurs have opted to work independently as self-employed
architects, financial analysts, translators, landscape designers, Web
consultants, and gallery and bookshop owners—just to name a few.
In their book Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs: How Eleven Women
Escaped Poverty and Became Their Own Bosses (Westview Press,
2002), Martha Shirk ’73 and Anna Wadia focus on women who
have started their own businesses. In the foreword to the revised
paperback edition (published this spring), presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) thinks that this
work shows us “the possibilities of empowering low-income women
through entrepreneurship.” He also notes the emergence of women
as a force in the business sector:
“Since 1985, when I first joined the U.S. Senate Committee on
Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the number of womenowned businesses has doubled. Today, there are over 10.1 million
women-owned firms generating $2.32 trillion in sales. One in seven
American workers is employed by a woman-owned company, and
the latest statistics show that women-owned businesses are outpacing other companies in overall growth, in number of firms, employment, and sales.”
Throughout her 30-year career as a journalist, Shirk has specialized in poverty-related issues. Her previous book, Lives on the Line
(Westview Press, 1999), addressed the challenges of raising a family
below the poverty line.
“The topic of Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs—entrepreneurship as
one route out of poverty—struck me as a natural sequel,” Shirk
“MUCH OF MY WORK IS ALONG THE LINES OF BUILT-IN BOOKCASES,” SAID
JANE KOSTICK FROM HER MEDFORD, MASS., WOODSHOP, WHERE SHE ALSO
DESIGNS MULTIDIMENSIONAL JEWELRY BOXES. SEE HER STORY ON PAGE 30.
said. “After years of writing about problems, I liked the idea of writing about a solution. Starting a small business, or becoming selfemployed, isn’t the right choice for everyone struggling to get by
below the poverty line, but for many, it can be a viable option.”
“I also wanted to get people thinking about the meaning of the
word ‘entrepreneur,’” Shirk added. “I have always been impressed
by the entrepreneurial streak I’ve seen in many low-income people.
People who work in low-wage jobs have always run little businesses
on the side, as a means of survival. However, hardly anyone thinks
of them as entrepreneurs.”
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) defines this
word as “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a
business or enterprise” and self-employed as “earning income
directly from one’s own business, trade, or profession rather than as
a specified salary or wages from an employer.”
Since 1991, the Ms. Foundation for Women has administered the
Collaborative Fund for Women’s Economic Development, a multifoundation effort that has given $10 million to community organizations supporting low-income female entrepreneurs throughout
the United States. In the mid-1990s, after reading Shirk’s Lives on
the Line and receiving a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation,
the Ms. Foundation staff recruited her to research and write a book
about the impact of microenterprise on low-income U.S. women.
Anna Wadia, a program director for the Ms. Foundation, collaborated on the policy-related chapters.
“Research has shown that often what makes the difference between a successful small business and one that fails is the amount of
preparation that goes into starting it as well as the availability of
ongoing support,” Shirk said. “The foundation asked that I feature
women who benefited from some form of assistance from a community-based organization dedicated to promoting microenterprise as a
poverty alleviation strategy.” The 11 entrepreneurs are diverse in race,
age, ethnicity, community, and businesses.
Depending on the individual and the community organization,
the assistance provided ranged from modest (a workshop about
how to start a business) to intensive (one-on-one technical assistance) to ongoing (participation in a production network). Some
JUNE 2004
B y Andrea Hammer
25
CHRISTINE KRIEG
“YOU HAVE TO HAVE AN APPETITE FOR RISK TO GIVE UP A JOB IN ORDER
TO GO OUT ON YOUR OWN,” SAYS MARTHA SHIRK, A JOURNALIST WHO
HAS RECEIVED MANY AWARDS. IN 1997, SHE WAS A KNIGHT INTERNATIONAL PRESS FELLOW IN CHINA. HER RECENT BOOK, ON THEIR OWN
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
(WESTVIEW PRESS, 2004), FOCUSES ON FOSTER CARE CHILDREN.
26
women received microloans for the purchase of such incomegenerating equipment as a sewing or electronic knitting machine
or a commercial freezer.
Meeting the women affected Shirk’s outlook on life. “Seeing the
impact of these women’s businesses on their lives helped me
rethink the notion of success,” Shirk said. For instance, Roselyn
Spotted Eagle, a gifted beadwork artist and quilt maker who lives
on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Kyle, S.D., wouldn’t be
considered a successful business owner by most people’s standards.
Her bead and quilt business brings in $10,000 a year at the most.
However, the income from that business has enabled her to move
her family from a two-room shack without running water to a comfortable three-bedroom mobile home. Her business has made a
huge difference in her family’s quality of life.”
Many women who start businesses want to improve their economic status and gain more control over their lives. Although all of
the subjects in this book started their businesses with the goal of
earning more money for their families, an important factor in nearly every case was the desire to lead a different life.
“To my surprise, this project helped me clarify what I value most
about being self-employed,” Shirk said. “After 21 years of working for
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I made the leap to self-employment seven
years ago; just about every year since, I have debated with myself
about whether to become someone’s employee again.”
But meeting the women profiled in her book helped Shirk, now
a full-time freelance writer, realize that “what I value about being
self-employed is not just the freedom to choose my topics but also
to decide myself how to carve up the time in the day. Being my own
boss allows me to reserve time in my week for other activities that I
enjoy, including community activism, which simply wouldn’t be
possible if I were still working as a newspaper reporter.”
Shirk thinks that “having an entrepreneurial streak isn’t enough
to guarantee success as a business owner. It takes a good idea but
also a lot of planning and hard work,” she said.
“You also have to have an appetite for risk to give up a job in
order to go out on your own. When you’re employed, those paychecks keep coming in, even if you’re having a bad spell at work.
When you work for yourself, your income depends upon your effort, and even major effort doesn’t guarantee it. If you think you
have a great idea for a business, and nobody else thinks so, you’ve
got a failed business. Approximately half of all small businesses fail
within five years, so starting a business is a risky proposition.”
Here are the stories of four alumnae who have taken this bold
step to design and market laptop cases to clients including Apple
and Sony, create a Kathak dance company, develop a woodworking
business, and fund legislative lobbying through antiques dealing.
Although all have faced challenges in their enterprises, their fulfilling work and freedom of lifestyle remain the common threads.
EMILY MCHUGH ’90
Casauri® Laptop Cases
EAST ORANGE, N.J.
T
o raise “seed capital” for designing and marketing stylish laptop cases at her company Casauri, Emily McHugh played violin
in subway stations for the Music Under New York Program.
“I used practically everything I had toward my business,” said
McHugh, who first envisioned Casauri in a business plan that she
wrote for the course Managing New Ventures at Columbia Business
School. “I was depressed by my ugly and boring laptop case, which
I refused to carry. My sister Helena, who went to the Fashion Institute of Technology, made me a case that people started to admire.”
Casauri (stemming from the French word caméléon and reptilefamily sauria, as in “dino-saur”) was born—or at least on the verge
of coming to life.
“The summer after graduating from business school, I worked
part time to help pay for samples and basic expenses. I played my
violin in the sweltering subways of New York and used to play Irish
fiddle on St. Patrick’s Day at the World Trade Center,” she said.
One winter, her sister even sewed fleece scarves and hats, which
McHugh sold on the sidewalk of Times Square. She also worked as
a sales associate at a Coach handbag and accessory shop to learn
the business.
McHugh then did library research to identify additional resources, which eventually led to a microloan sponsored by the U.S.
Small Business Administration (SBA) and guidance from SCORE
counselors. The SCORE Association (see http://www.score.org), a
resource partner with the SBA, has served more than 6 million
entrepreneurs since 1964 and currently advises nearly 400,000
entrepreneurs annually.
“But my first real step was to go into the marketplace and check
the pulse of what was going on. I visited practically every boutique
and luggage store from Prada to Gucci and realized that I had an
opportunity to explore because none of them were meeting the
need in the marketplace that I had identified—that is, stylish, functional, and affordable cases for technology products, especially laptops,” she said.
In business since 1999, Casauri has faced “endless challenges—
every day presents new ones,” McHugh said. “However, as we overcome each challenge, we make quantum leaps forward.”
ing, but I had no idea what. Swarthmore was like an intellectual
playhouse that allowed me to pursue all my eclectic interests. I
couldn't decide on a major, so I created one,” McHugh said.
“At Swarthmore, we were constantly pushed beyond our perceived limits, always asked to do more and to test our stamina—
both physical and intellectual. There was no room for complacency
and absolute intolerance for mediocrity. We were trained to set high
standards, high goals, and ultimately figure out a way to achieve
them…. Swarthmore will be happy to know that I have most definitely found the outlet—it took a while, but I found it.”
Before attending business school, she worked at the Banque
Nationale de Paris (BNP) in New York and in Mexico City.
“[Entrepreneurship] is not for everyone, and it might take a
while to come to the realization that it is something you truly want
EMILY M C HUGH HAS CLIENTS INCLUDING APPLE, SONY STYLE, MERRILL
LYNCH, AND FLIGHT 001 AT HENRI BENDEL. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CASAURI
LAPTOP CASES, FEATURED IN THE JUNE 7 BUSINESSWEEK, VISIT
WWW.CASAURI.COM.
to pursue. For me, it was a lifelong series of events that culminated
in that moment of decision. In addition, it took me a few months
of waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat to accept
that starting my own business was the appropriate step for me to
take. Talk to people, do research, and assess your own temperament. Are you comfortable with total uncertainty—or at least can
learn to be—are you obsessed with a driving force to execute your
vision, are you convinced that the world will definitely be a better
place with what you have to offer?” said McHugh, a 2002 Lax Conference panelist.
“We have evolved beyond just being perceived as a product that
meets a need to becoming an entity to which people have established emotional attachments. We receive e-mails from people all
over the world who tell us that they have been looking for what we
offer for years and that they want more,” McHugh said. “Our goal
is to continue to build Casauri into an international brand that
designs innovative products and resonates with consumers for
decades to come.”
Casauri’s first-quarter sales this year were at least four times the
figures, for the same period, in 2003. This summer, McHugh and
her sister also plan to hire two other internal workers. They currently have at least 20 contract employees as well as another 100 in
a factory in China making Casauri bags.
“The marketplace has gradually woken up to realize that without
women entrepreneurs our economy would be nowhere,” McHugh
said. “With so many companies and government agencies eager to
interact with women businesses, this could possibly be considered
the dawn of the golden age of women entrepreneurship. I personally am thrilled to be part of it.”
JUNE 2004
“It is very exciting to be an
entrepreneur. This excitement
is fueled by a driving passion
and obsessive focus.”
DANIEL MARRACINO
The first major issue was getting design samples made; the next
was to convince stores to take Casauri products based on rough
first versions. To make headway in the marketplace, McHugh had to
find a reputable overseas manufacturer, which took about two
years. Ongoing challenges include inventory controls, distribution,
quality control, pricing, forecasting, marketing, financing growth,
and international expansion.
“We are masters at outsourcing—at least this is our goal. The
strategizing, planning, designing, and conceptualizing take place
‘in house,’ but more and more of our execution take place elsewhere,” McHugh said. “The people we work with are all over the
country and overseas. In fact, we work with independent contractors, many of whom are stay-at-home moms.”
She added: “In the beginning, we did everything ourselves. We
still do a lot, but it has gotten much better. However, being exposed
to all aspects of one’s business really makes the difference in actually knowing and understanding your business. So when it comes
time to delegate, you know exactly what’s going on or what to
expect. Delegating does not mean you do not still need to be aware
of what is happening; it means you don’t have to do all the day-today tasks yourself, but you are still responsible for the results.”
Some of Casauri’s outsourced areas include graphic design, Web
programming, accounting/bookkeeping, manufacturing, and distribution. Emily is directly involved in product development, marketing, and sales. Helena does product design, sourcing, and “remains
the steady voice of wisdom and insight,” her sister said. “She is
great at summing up situations and people—in other words, saving
time.”
At the College, McHugh majored in linguistics, French, and
Spanish.
“Swarthmore was excellent, if not ideal, for shaping me for the
role of entrepreneur. I didn’t know it then, but I certainly see it
now. I knew Swarthmore was shaping me for something interest-
27
JANAKI PATRIK ’66
Kathak Ensemble & Friends/CARAVAN Inc.
NEW YORK
ast year, Janaki Patrik (Wendy Hughes) celebrated the 25th
anniversary of her company with several “beloved” classmates,
who attended her ensemble’s performances.
“I have a dance company whose core repertoire and inspiration
for creating new choreography is Kathak, the classical dance style
from North India,” Patrik said. “I saw my guru, Pandit Birju
Maharaj, in 1963, when he and his company performed at Swarthmore as part of his first United States tour. When I saw him perform and heard him speak about his art in Parrish Commons after
the performance, I decided to go to India to study with him.”
After graduating from Swarthmore, Patrik trained with Maharaji
in 1967, 1969, and during “many subsequent trips in the intervening 37 years,” she said. Awarded a Merce Cunningham Studio
Scholarship in 1971, she studied the renowned dancer’s technique,
repertory, and choreography from 1971 to 1978.
Remaining committed to Kathak, though, she said: “The first
step was to go to India to learn the dance and its cultural context.
This is like [being born] for a second time
and learning a whole new language, both
physically and metaphysically.”
Patrik was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for study in India during 1988 to 1989.
She researched poetry of the Kathak repertoire. Katha means “story,” and the roots of
this dance style are found in storytelling in
village temples. Today, rhythmic footwork
accented by ankle bells, spins, and themes
from Persian and Urdu poetry as well as
Hindu mythology characterize this dance.
“Then, I began performing—almost
exclusively with live music. Becoming part of the network so that
people know you exist and invite you to perform is a large part of
the challenge of launching such a business because traditional
advertisement is not the primary way of getting jobs.”
The company, formed in 1978 and incorporated as a not-forprofit arts and education organization in 1997, performs both
Patrik’s choreography and traditional Kathak. Residencies are
offered through CARAVAN, the company’s arts-in-education section.
Some challenges that Patrik has faced as an artist include “funding, booking, dealing with issues of ‘authenticity’ in a field defined
incorrectly as ‘ethnic’ rather than ‘classical,’ filling out tax forms,
and doing all the administrative work.”
The most fulfilling aspect of Patrik’s work involves “collaborations—working with dedicated fellow artists in performance,” she
said. “Working with children—particularly with those who
respond to the power and physical expertise of a performing artist,
when they may have closed down the traditional access channels
for learning—is some of the most gratifying work my art has
allowed me to experience.”
Patrik has employed hundreds of dancers, musicians, lighting
and set designers, composers, stage managers, and graphic design-
JULIE LEMBERGER
L
ers on a freelance and per-project basis during the 25-year history
of her dance company.
“I could not run a dance company without employing these people. The scope of my work has grown, but I do not measure growth
according to the size of each production. Some productions are
necessarily small because the vision dictates
this; some productions are large. The concept rules the number of people who will
collaborate with me—both artists and technical support staff,” she said.
“As an artist, I want to communicate,
and I am utterly convinced of the beauty
and power of this particular art form—
whether alone in its purely classical form or
in dialogue with other art forms such as tap
dance, modern dance, jazz, and contemporary music. I am grateful that Kathak has
given me a powerful medium through
which I meet and work with other artists who are dedicated to
excellence,” Patrik added. “I enjoy communicating with a very
broad range of students and audience members who hunger for
beauty and positivity and who search for answers in this difficult
world through means other than emotionless words and facts.”
A Russian language and literature major, Patrik said: “Swarthmore did not prepare me for becoming an entrepreneur. It prepared
me to think independently and persevere in fulfilling my visions—
whether academic or artistic. Swarthmore exalted the life of the
mind, and it provided circumscribed and achievable examples of
defining a project, exploring and researching, then presenting the
result in an acceptable format…. I believe that part of Swarthmore
is about vision, reaching for ideals and not thinking only in practical terms. If I thought of my art in entrepreneurial terms, I would
have given up long ago.”
Patrik emphasized the need for artists to persevere in fulfilling
their creative dreams.
“Don't give up before you begin, just because it seems impractical. Creativity does not take place primarily in the mundane. It is
born in the mind and heart and imagination,” she said.
“My business is not based on any sound economic strategy.
America has abhorrent policies toward its arts and artists. For
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
“If I thought of
my art in
entrepreneurial
terms, I would have
given up long ago.”
28
S WA R T H M O R E D E V E L O P S E N T R E P R E N E U R I A L S P I R I T
Being an entrepreneur requires a kind of confidence and courage that
many students learn—or further develop—here,” Professor of Economics Ellen Magenheim said. “They learn new ideas, explore challenges,
follow hunches; they learn to develop and defend an argument and
learn how to listen to what others have to say. All of these characteristics are important in being an entrepreneur because they develop
the abilities to think creatively, plan rationally, and then to have the
confidence to move ahead—even when others are skeptical about your
plans.”
Magenheim touches on entrepreneurship in her course and seminar
on industrial organization.
“In a much more down-to-earth way, we teach them many of the
tools that they will need when they are self-employed, whether it is
the math and accounting needed to do the financial planning aspects
of their work or the ability to express themselves clearly and persuasively in marketing materials,” she said.
“I would also expect that Swarthmore graduates who become entrepreneurs or self-employed are more likely to think responsibly about
their relationships to their ‘community’—that is, their suppliers,
employees, and customers.”
Magenheim has “tremendous respect for entrepreneurs,” she said.
“The scariest aspect to me is that you can do everything right and
still fail—you have a great idea, you prepare a good business plan,
get sufficient financial backing, hire good employees. But then there
is terrible weather, a national crisis, a change in tastes—all of which
can send your business into failure.”
She doesn’t think a particular major is the key aspect of entrepreneurial preparation, but a need exists for “quantitative literacy” and
effective written and oral communication skills. To participate in
international trade, Magenheim recommends learning the language,
history, and politics of the region.
“But I certainly don’t think there is one path to preparation for life
as an entrepreneur—nor do I think you need an economics major,
although I imagine that would be the first major people might think
of,” she said.
“I also encourage students to find entrepreneurs—both successful
and less successful—to talk about their experiences: what they enjoy
and what they don't like about their work, what they would do differently if they were starting now,” Magenheim added.
She also thinks that a partnership might ease the stress of many
critical business decisions. “It would be both a greater pleasure and
possibly a greater success to be able to work through all the challenges with a partner you respect and who possibly has skills that
complement your own—I do think it is a challenge for one person to
embody all of the talents required.”
When considering the scope of entrepreneurial paths, Magenheim
said that social entrepreneurs may develop nonprofit businesses.
Examples include training the previously unemployed to enter the
labor market, providing job opportunities for people who might otherwise find it difficult, or starting social and cultural programs.
“I think these people are also entrepreneurs—even if they are not
running a for-profit business—and I think this may be a model that is
particularly appealing to Swarthmore graduates,” she said.
—A.H.
JUNE 2004
FRAMK GIMPAYA
example, what I am paid now by Young Audiences to teach 30
students—$67 per 45-minute class—is barely $2 more than
what I was paid in 1980. No health benefits or retirement
plan add on to this criminally low wage for a teacher entrusted
with nurturing creativity and inspiring a cohesive and sensitive reaction by students to cultures other than their own.
When America does bother to think about the arts, or arts-ineducation, it generally wants artists to justify themselves in
terms of ‘real economic value,’ by teaching to the curriculum,”
Patrik said. “Art can do that, but it can do so much more, and
to ask an artist to justify herself in entrepreneurial terms—or
according to some abstract standard of economic accountability—is a travesty, a waste, a crime against creativity.”
During the evolution of her company, Patrik has realized a
greater fulfillment of her artistic vision, “both in execution
and in the creative process,” she said. Her goals for future
development are to “continue to create in real time and real
space the musical and choreographic visions that engross my
mind. Along the way, I
envision continuing to
work with fellow artists
and with students in the
most humane and ethical
and creative ways possible.”
Daughter Lela ’04, a
mathematics and sociology/anthropology double
major, is a resident assistant in Mertz Hall. She
has sung in four productions of the Swarthmore
chorus, with a cappella
jazz group Oscar & Emily
for three years, and as a
Swarthmore College Jazz
TOP LEFT: IN N E W Y O R K D E L H I MI X
Band vocal soloist for
(NOVEMBER 2001 PRODUCTION),
seven semesters. Lela also
THE KATHAK ENSEMBLE IS SHOWN IN
dances with the SwarthJOYFUL MOVEMENT DURING ANOTHER
more African Repertory
GET TOGETHER. TO LEARN MORE
group and Rhythm &
Motion; a work-study was
ABOUT PATRIK (ABOVE) AND HER
at the Djoniba Dance and
COMPANY, VISIT WWW.KATHAKDrum Center, the African
ENSEMBLE.COM.
dance studio in New York,
where she continues to
take classes. To learn more about Lela, see her Web site at
www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/04/lkp/index.html.
“Be very careful that you treat your fellow women as seriously and respectfully as you have wished to be treated,”
Patrik said. “We can be our own worst enemies, particularly as
we age and see our beauty, mental acuity, and physical stamina
giving way to the next generation. Revel in the success of your
female colleagues. In the end, that is what we have left—a
sense of a life lived fully and decently and generously.”
29
“I do see myself more as
self-employed than
as an entrepreneur.
Success in business for
me is about making
my life work.”
JANE GREENBERG KOSTICK ’88
Custom Woodworking
MEDFORD, MASS.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
I
30
pursued this line of work straight out of College because woodworking had always been something I enjoyed,” Jane Kostick
said. “In junior high and high school, I loved my woodshop classes,
and then during my senior year at Swarthmore, I loved the woodshop that I used in my sculpture course with Professor [of Studio
Art] Brian Meunier. I majored in math at Swarthmore, and the
independent research I did for my senior paper was about tiling
patterns, which, for me, was about two-dimensional art. That’s
when I first learned about the work of M.C. Escher.”
Kostick now sees herself as a math artist who creates furniture,
cabinetry, and puzzles. She particularly relishes creating wooden
objects that “people can play with” and gifts such as multidimensional jewelry boxes.
“This interest in art and mathematics has led to so much in my
life today. In 1992, [Albert and Edna Pownall Buffington Professor
of Mathematics] Gene Klotz notified me about an art and mathematics conference at State University of New York–Albany. There, I
met people from all over the world with this common math/art
interest.”
At this conference, Kostick was particularly inspired by and
learned from Professor Koos Verhoeff of Holland, who knew Escher
from decades earlier. “We went on to do some collaborative work,
and I began learning about polyhedrons and spatial lattices, threedimensional art,” she said.
“I’m particularly grateful to have met the late Professor Arthur
Loeb of Harvard’s Design Science Department,” Kostick added. He
ran a lecture series at Harvard called the Philomorphs. It was at one
of those lectures the following year that I met my husband, John,
who shares this interest in geometry and also happens to work as a
carpenter.”
After an informal apprenticeship with a fine furniture maker in
Cambridge for a year, Kostick rented space in a Boston woodshop
EVE LYMAN
DEAN POWELL
to design and build her own furniture and artwork in
wood.
“I sold work through art galleries in the beginning, and I still do occasionally,” she said, “but I’ve
always found it to be an unreliable way to make
money. For several years, I worked other part-time
jobs to pay bills. I earned enough to keep doing what
I love, and gradually I acquired enough tools and machinery to set
up my own woodshop, which is in a Tufts-owned industrial building in Medford. Most of the renters in the building are also woodworkers, so there are a lot of skilled people around to learn from.”
A self-employed woodworker for 14 years, Kostick said, “The
biggest challenge was how to make the artwork be profitable.” To
achieve that goal, she expanded her business into other types of
woodworking besides mathematical art.
“This was a natural result of my husband being in the residential remodeling business. So I learned how to design and build custom cabinetry, which there seems to be an endless demand for in
this area. That’s about half of my
business now. I still do the geometric woodworking, and I enjoy
it more when there’s no pressure
to make money doing it,” she
said.
Kostick thinks that self-discipline is critical for self-employed
workers. In her 20s, she learned
to live on a small income—not
needing much to maintain her
lifestyle.
“The most gratifying thing
about my work is that it balances
IN 1994, KOSTICK’S TREFOIL KNOT
with the rest of my life. For the
TABLE (ABOVE)—DESIGNED BY
most part, woodworking is soliKOOS VERHOEFF OF THE NETHERtary and peaceful, just the kind
LANDS—WAS DISPLAYED IN
of energy I need in my life so I
can take care of what's most
SWARTHMORE’S ADMISSIONS
important to me, which is my
OFFICE. HER WORK HAS GROWN IN
family. John and I have two sons,
OTHER DIRECTIONS NOW; SHE IS
and being self-employed has
CURRENTLY BUILDING THE LOGO
enabled me to have a flexible
FOR OUTSITE NETWORKS (SEE
schedule. I didn’t plan it this
WWW.OUTSITENETWORKS.COM).
way, but it couldn’t have worked
out better.”
SARA DUSTIN ’59
Dustbin Antiques
HOPKINTON, N.H.
A
“I have acquired
a life that provides
highly varied
satisfactions.”
Dustin finds the line between leisure and work increasingly
blurred. In many ways, her antiquing is recreational, even though it
provides her income.
“I spent a number of years trucking the stuff down to New York
City one weekend a month to set up at the fabulous outdoor weekend antique markets in the parking lots of Manhattan’s garment
district,” she said. For a week each during May, July, and September
in Brimfield, Mass.—home to one of the largest outdoor antiques
shows in New England with more than 5,000 dealers—Dustin
also has set up and manned a booth 90 feet long by 10 feet wide
every year for the last 18. “I perform this feat in partnership with
my long-term significant other, John Moore,” she said.
But these days, at 66, I am gradually retrenching. I have stocked
a small booth in the most reputable group shop on Northwood
New Hampshire's famous Antique Alley with the very best things I
can find cheap, priced as high as I can imagine them selling—
and, to my astonishment and delight, like my magic show boxes, it
produces this magic money." Dustin refers to “magic" because
the contents of a box and a half (or less) sell regularly for a dependable $400.
A political science major at Swarthmore, Dustin said that she
SARA DUSTIN SOLD ANTIQUES IN A BOOTH AT BRIMFIELD, MASS., ON A
WARM MAY MORNING ABOUT 10 YEARS AGO (ABOVE). DUSTIN BEGAN
LOBBYING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE LEGISLATURE 20 YEARS AGO.
valued the self-confidence and ability to think critically that the
College first instilled—and that has continued to inform her work.
For example, she now has the eye to spot pieces for first-rank venues.
“Two summers ago, I discovered a first-period Van Briggle Jardiniere in a peach basket full of flower pots under a table in a local
estate sale for 50 cents and ‘flipped it,’ as we say in the trade, two
days later, for $1,500 to a colleague with better selling connections
than I. And this fall, a battered turn-of-the-century watercolor I
rescued from a yard sale shed last summer for $25 went for $2,300
at auction at Skinners in Boston,” Dustin said.
“So you see, I have acquired a life that provides highly varied
satisfactions. During the week, I jump into my little suit and my
nylons and go down to the legislature to practice a very active kind
of political science representing the interests of the poor,” Dustin
said. “On the weekend, I play around with [antiques] in my sweat
pants and joggers, getting up at 5 a.m. to beat the competition to
my neighbors' lawns and, up to very lately, camping out in vans to
sell it. High fun and low fun.” T
F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N
The following Web sites provide information about opportunities
and support structures available to women business owners:
The National Association of Women Business Owners
(http://www.nawbo.org)
The Women’s Programs Office
(http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo)
Women Impacting Public Policy
(http://www.wipp.org)
The National Association for Female Executives
(http://nafe.com)
JUNE 2004
“kitchen table business,” Sara Dustin said of her
Dustbin Antiques, “certainly defines mine.... It’s just
something I developed so I could earn enough money, in
my spare time on the weekends, to do the mostly unpaid
Quakerly work I really wanted to do during the week—lobbying the New Hampshire legislature; the state administrative structure; and, occasionally, Congress, on behalf of
poor children and their single-parent mothers.”
In 1996, the Board of Directors of Southern New
Hampshire Services honored Dustin for her “tireless effort
on behalf of New Hampshire’s Women and Children.”
From 1983 to 1997, she also served as executive director of
Parents for Justice, an advocacy group for low-income single parents in New Hampshire. Dustin continues to volunteer for Families for Justice, which supports humane operations of
the state’s child protection agency.
“After doing good all week, on the weekend I turn into a shark,
prowling the yard sales, flea markets, and estate auctions of my
neighborhood in New Hampshire for undervalued treasures, which
could be cleaned up, restored, and marked up mercilessly for sale
on the antique and collectibles market,” Dustin said. “Marketing
the stuff has been a source of much adventure.”
31
STEPHAN DAIGLE/CORBIS
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
32
Are there
c i r c u m s ta n c e s
t h at j u s t i f y
torture in
the name of
n at i o n a l
security?
S
ay the word “torture,” and images
of dank dungeons, disembowelments, and rusting medieval
instruments come to mind. It
seems, at first mention, an archaic concern—a plague against human dignity that
has been all but eradicated. Yet, the news
reports of recent weeks have brought to
light evidence of gruesome deeds, a flashback to another time beamed into the 21st
century via video and Internet technology—
images of what Darius Rejali ’81, associate
professor of political science at Reed College
and an expert on modern torture, says is
clearly evidence of torture as practiced by
modern democracies.
Since the May release of the now famous
photos depicting such torture techniques as
forced standing, electrocution, and humiliation in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, the nation
has been absorbed in a debate about torture, prisoner’s rights, and national security.
The national press attention is new; the
problem, Rejali says, is not. What he saw
from Abu Ghraib simply reflects the exposure of contemporary torture procedures
practiced for the very reason their capture
on camera is so ironic: These methods leave
no marks and thus maintain an appearance
of democracy while soldiers and guards use
decidedly undemocratic interrogation techniques. “Tyranny,” Rejali quotes the Greeks,
“always wears a mask.”
Rejali defines torture as “the systematic
exercise of physical torment on detained
individuals by state officials in their public
capacity for confession, interrogation, or
intimidation.” Three techniques once
approved by the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA)—choking with water, sweating, and
forced standing—all rely on physical torment of prisoners: “We had no problem
calling these approved techniques torture
when other countries did them,” he says.
These techniques depend on surreptitiousness. The famous picture of the hood-
Ta c k l i n g To r t u r e
TO R T U R E I S N ’ T J U S T M O R A L LY U N J U S T I F I E D —
I T D O E S N ’ T E V E N WO R K , SAY S DA R I U S R E JA L I ’ 8 1 .
ed prisoner forced to stand with electrical
wires attached to his extremities is an example of a nonscarring technique that causes
ex-treme temporary pain. According to
Rejali, a 1956 CIA investigation of the technique revealed that forced standing leads to
the swelling of ankles and feet to twice the
normal size within 24 hours; the development of blisters; and, eventually, an increase
in heart rate and kidney failure.
The physical torture in Abu Ghraib was
combined with what Rejali called “cultural
torture” in a May 20 Time Magazine “Viewpoint” article he wrote in response to the
photos. The nakedness and forcing of prisoners to adopt sexual positions with one
another was, Rejali wrote, evidence of the
use of cultural and religious knowledge to
find and employ techniques that would
most destroy the prisoners’ egos. As Rejali
wrote in his article, Muhammad’s son Ali
famously spared the life of an adversary
when his nakedness was exposed, and this
respect for the sanctity of the naked body
has persevered in Islamic tradition into
modern times. The stacking of naked prisoners, one on top of the other, is a type of
torture because U.S. guards have the cultural knowledge “to kick ’em where it hurts.”
Americans have been reluctant to call all
of this torture, though, and the T word, as
Rejali calls it, is just not one we’re all that
comfortable with. Abuse, though, as the Abu
Ghraib scandal has been termed on the
nightly news programs, is not a technical
one and is a concept entirely absent from
descriptions of torture and ill treatment as
found in the Geneva Conventions. It is,
Rejali says, “a fiction of the American
media” and evidence of how quickly we can
and will look the other way.
“We live in an age in which I think tor-
ture is coming back,” Rejali says. “We live in
a society where people are either too terrified or too uncaring to notice these things,
and torture is usually used on people we
don’t like, so we don’t care.”
And it’s not just in Iraq. Almost a year
and a half before The Washington Post released the Abu Ghraib photos, it printed an
article describing the “stress and duress”
interrogation techniques allegedly employed
by CIA officials at the American air base in
Bagram, Afghanistan. Suspected Al-Qaeda
and Taliban members were forced to kneel
or stand for hours in black hoods or spraypainted goggles; were bound in awkward,
painful positions; were deprived of sleep;
and were held under 24-hour lighting. One
U.S. official was quoted in the Dec. 26,
2002, Post as saying, “If you don’t violate
someone’s human rights some of the time,
you probably aren’t doing your job.”
Such statements have prompted indignant responses from human rights organizations, including Amnesty International.
In its 2003 annual report, Secretary General
Irene Khan challenged the assertion that
civil liberties can be curtailed in times of
high-security concerns. “Governments are
not entitled to respond to terror with terror,” Khan wrote. “Human rights are not a
luxury for good times.”
R
ejali has become a key figure in this
debate. His expertise has been in
demand in the aftermath of Sept. 11,
as reporters often ask him for a definitive
answer to the question of whether torture is
ever justified in the name of international
security. It is a debate that Rejali says lacks
relevance at its core. Torture, he says, is a
largely inefficient method of information
gathering.
As Rejali explains, pain tolerance varies
greatly among individuals, undermining the
notion of a universal threshold at which
information can be extracted, thus ensuring
that torture remains unscientific and imprecise. Torture, he says, is time-consuming,
hard work, which is not suited for emergencies. It often leads to false information that
then must be subject to a verification
process, wasting valuable intelligence
resources.
“The gist of it is, there is little social, scientific, or historical evidence that suggests
that torture works in the way people say it
does when they pose the question, ‘Can we
torture for national security?’ And if, as I
argue, torture does not work in any of the
ways often claimed, then there is no point
asking for a moral justification,” Rejali says.
Furthermore, Rejali claims that torture
not only doesn’t work; it can actually
destroy intelligence-building efforts. During
a May 18 CNN Newsnight appearance, Rejali
went head-to-head with Harvard Law professor and author of America on Trial Alan
Dershowitz, when Dershowitz claimed torture is justified for that small percentage of
time it might actually work. Without using
informants, Rejali argued, the probability of
actually identifying the correct crime suspect falls to less than 10 percent, and so the
real key to gaining information on terrorist
plots lies in attaining public trust and
securing informant links. “[The] more you
torture, the less you’re going to get informants and the less you get public cooperation,” Rejali said. “It will actually reduce the
ability of any government to win a war.”
Especially, Rejali wrote in a recent op-ed, in
a war whose premise is the establishment of
transparency, democracy, and respect for
individual human freedoms.
JUNE 2004
By Elizab et h R e d d e n ’ 0 5
33
ANDREI KOSTIN/CORBIS
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
Y
34
et Dershowitz is not the only one
who is unconvinced that democracy
can be maintained without the stripping of freedoms from a few threatening
individuals. Fear breeds violence; in the
insecurity of a post–Sept. 11 world, Rejali’s
stance on the ineffectiveness of torture is
one that has found opponents among those
searching for fail-proof interrogation techniques. In the October 2003 Atlantic Monthly cover story “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” author Mark Bowden argues that
although coercive methods should be officially banned, they should nevertheless be
practiced quietly when they are seen as
effective in garnering necessary security
information. “It is wise of the president to
reiterate U.S. support for international
agreements banning torture, and it is wise
for American interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also smart
not to discuss the matter with anyone,”
Bowden concludes.
Rejali says that Bowden essentially creates a “civil disobedience” argument for the
justification of torture on a limited scale:
“Torture should be illegal but may some-
times be moral. In this respect, torture is
like civil disobedience; you do it, and then
you pay the consequences,” Rejali summarizes Bowden’s argument.
Momentarily putting aside the question
of whether torture works, Rejali says this
argument, although attractive in its appeal
to liberals and conservatives alike, contains
a key flaw. It is unlikely, he argues, that torture can be exposed to the same kind of
public scrutiny necessary for any act of civil
disobedience to be an effective moral alternative.
“Most disobedient protesters submit to
public scrutiny by courts and newspapers.
Modern torturers, on the other hand, specialize in techniques that leave no marks
and operate in secrecy. Courts and bureaucrats can’t evaluate this process. And the
historical evidence suggests that this secrecy
is cancerous. Organizations that torture
splinter; secrecy and police competitiveness
drive a downward spiral of inefficiency and
corruption. The practice also spreads quickly
from security policing to normal domestic
policing. Even the Soviets and Chinese
knew this. They depended far more heavily
on informers than torture.
“Civil disobedience strengthens the law,
but ‘morally justified’ torture sets into
motion a process that undermines not only
the rule of law but the very state structures
Bowden claims this practice is supporting,”
Rejali says.
S
ince the release of the Abu Ghraib
photos, Rejali’s articles have appeared
in Time and Salon, and his name
shows up across the media as a key source
in prison scandal coverage. NBC and CNN
tried to book him for the same time, PBS
wanted him for the NewsHour With Jim
Lehrer, and it seems to him that as long as
the Iraq war continues, he must make room
for a larger media presence in his life.
It will be difficult in a life that is already
so full. Rejali’s favorite moment of the media
DARIUS REJALI (RIGHT) LEFT HIS NATIVE IRAN
IN 1977 TO ATTEND SWARTHMORE. IN 2001, HE
AND HIS MOTHER, SALLIE ANN YARBROUGH
REJALI ’56, RETURNED TO IRAN. THEY HOPE TO
GO AGAIN SOON.
R e j a l i s ay s t h at t o r t u r e w i l l a c t u a l l y
reduce the ability to win a war whose premise
i s t h e e s ta b l i s h m e n t o f d e m o c r a c y
a n d r e s p e c t f o r i n d i v i d u a l f r e e d o m s.
playful God of Beginnings, because I was
starting a new phase in my life. It was enormously moving. I had a wonderful time,” he
says.
A world traveler, speaker of five foreign
languages, and avid musician—“a big-time
campfire accordion player in Oregon,” who
says he’s also learning the Santur, a hammered dulcimer traditional in Persian
music—Rejali is a man of many passions.
Yet he is never more passionate than when
he is speaking of the resurgence of torture,
which he has documented in his first two
books, Torture and Modernity: Self, Society,
and State in Modern Iran (1994) and Torture
and Democracy (forthcoming 2005).
Having recently received a $100,000
Scholar of Vision grant from the Carnegie
Scholars Program, he is working on a third
book, Approaches to Violence: A Citizen’s Toolkit. It aims to provide citizens with the
means and discourses through which they
can think and speak clearly about violence.
“The idea behind it, a broader one, is that if
you live in a society where people can’t really
talk truthfully about cruelty, we often
become unaware of certain kinds of violence
that are not part of the approved roster of
kinds of violence we should care about,” he
says. “If people can’t speak thoughtfully
about cruelty, if the only thing that they can
do is imitate academics or politicians,
they’re not going to be able to identify new
or hidden forms of violence in society.” T
Elizabeth Redden ’05 first interviewed Darius
Rejali in summer 2003. She expanded this article in recent weeks after returning from a semester in Ecuador.
JUNE 2004
activities. For a man who’s spent much of
his career studying torture, Rejali is surprisingly high on life. “The easiest way to tell
you who I am is just to tell you the story of
the last summer,” he says. Having always
dreamed of seeing the midnight sun, the
first thing he did when he went on leave
from his job at Reed was travel to Fairbanks,
Ala., and then to the Arctic Circle. He followed that with a trip
to New Zealand,
where he, a surfer of
five years, “drove
1,000 kilometers in
search of a good
wave.” He then went
to a sociology conference in Australia, did
torture and human
rights research in
Cambodia, and
returned to the United States to create a
17-foot statue of the
Hindu elephant god
Ganesha—which he
then burned as part
of the Burning Man
Festival, an annual
arts festival held in
the desert of northern
Nevada that is devoted to creating and
then destroying beautiful works of art.
“I’ve always wanted
to build something
for that, so I offered
the Ganesha, the
CORKY MILLER
frenzy wasn’t about Iraq at all, but was, he
says, when he got an e-mail from an old
Swarthmore friend asking him if he was still
writing poetry. “This is what college friends
are for—they pull you back to who you are
and not who the rest of the world wants you
to be,” he says.
In response, he says he is still writing
poetry these days—among so many other
35
GEORGE CATLIN (1796–1872), BIG BEND ON THE UPPER MISSOURI, 1900 MILES ABOVE ST. LOUIS., 1832, SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM,WASHINGTON, D.C./ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
D v o ř á k i n A m e r i c a :
The Not-So-Distant
Mirror
36
An unusual education project looks at American music—
and history—through a different discoverer of the New World.
By David Wright ‘69
Nelahozeves had overcome all distinctions
of nation or class and risen to Europe’s
highest artistic circles by composing superb
concert music with a strong Czech flavor. In
1892, a wealthy American arts patron, Jeannette Thurber, had the idea of bringing him
to New York to head her seven-year old conservatory, with the explicit aim of developing an American nationalist style of music.
That raised the question: What is American? Dvořák already had some acquaintance
with American culture, having read (in
translation) Longfellow’s world-renowned
poem The Song of Hiawatha and considered
setting it as an opera. Once in the States,
with the encouragement of various flacks
and “yellow journalists,” he became the
proverbial Man from Mars, observing his
new environment: the hubbub of New York;
the old plantation songs of his African
American assistant Harry Burleigh; Chicago’s Columbian Exposition (with its intimations of future American empire and racist
anthropological displays); and the frontier
community of Spillville, Iowa, where he met
real Indians and heard their music.
His conclusion, drafted for him and
cabled worldwide by a famous yellow journalist named James Creelman, was: “In the
Negro melodies of America, I discover all
that is needed for a great and noble school
of music.” As Creelman was well aware, that
was a controversial thing to say in 1893. (If
you want to know how right Dvořák was,
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
T
he “board room” of the New Jersey
Symphony Orchestra (NJSO) in
downtown Newark is a little short on
wood paneling and crystal chandeliers. It is
a nearly windowless, fluorescent-lit room,
just large enough to hold a functional white
table and enough chairs for the directors to
all sit down at the same time. On a frigid
night in December 2003, a handful of journalists and orchestra publicists have gathered around the table to hear Joseph Horowitz ’70 talk about his latest brainchild.
Horowitz is a music critic, social historian, and orchestra adviser with a reputation
for organizing music festivals that aren’t just
music festivals. A Horowitz event combines
authoritative performances with interdisciplinary lectures, panels, and publications.
One veteran concert presenter recently said
of him, not without a touch of awe: “Joe’s
like a puppy with a slipper when he gets
hold of one of these projects.”
Horowitz’s latest slipper is something
new for him: not just concerts and lectures
but an entire curriculum in middle and high
school American history and social studies—based on, of all things, classical music.
And the composer at the center of it all is
not even an American but a Czech, Antonín
Dvořák. Nevertheless, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the
Ford Foundation, among others, are on
board. On this December evening, the program is headed for a test with real students.
Meeting with the journalists in the board
room, Horowitz is hardly a stereotypical
supersalesman. His longish dark hair, white
beard, and round eyeglasses give him a rabbinical look. His manner is soft-spoken,
almost diffident. But the historical facts pile
up, and they are compelling.
As most classical music fans know,
Dvořák is revered in his home country as its
musical ambassador to the world, a composer as Czech as Tchaikovsky was Russian;
Grieg, Norwegian; and Sibelius, Finnish.
Unlike those others, his career path brought
him, in person, to America.
This butcher’s son from the village of
ask George Gershwin. Or Duke Ellington.
Or Marvin Gaye.)
That same year, the Wall Street Panic of
1893—an event as devastating to American
society as the better-remembered Crash of
1929—dried up the funding for Dvořák ‘s
conservatory, and he returned to Prague two
years later.
Is that enough American history for you?
In the board room, Horowitz rests his case:
If you want to know America, you had better
know Dvořák in America.
A STRING QUARTET OF PLAYERS FROM THE NEW
JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (RIGHT) VISITED
WESTERN AMERICAN LANDSCAPE AND BY
AFRICAN-AMERICAN SONGS.
JUNE 2004
POSER ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (TOP) INSPIRED BY THE
WILLIAM MAY
SCHOOLS AND PLAYED MUSIC BY THE CZECH COM-
37
H
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
YALE COLLECTION OF WESTERN AMERICANA, BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY
orowitz’s effort, designated a
video cameras and notebooks,
National Education Project by
determined to document every
the NEH, is founded on a piece of
sniffle and sneeze of the project
American musical bedrock. Last
from the first phone call to the
year, in a listener poll conducted by
last student report card.
the New York classical-music station
ack in the board room, the
WQXR, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in
critics listen politely to
E minor (From the New World) was
Horowitz and jot a few notes.
ranked No. 7 on the all-time favorite
Only Paul Somers, formerly of
list of classical works, right behind
the Newark Star-Ledger and now
Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto
editor of the biweekly Classical
and Symphony No. 7 and ahead of
New Jersey Society Journal, seems
such perennials as Rachmaninoff’s
to match Horowitz in missionary
Second Piano Concerto and Puccini’s
zeal, speaking up often with
opera La Bohème. This year, Chicaquestions and anecdotes.
go’s Ravinia Festival selected the
After an hour, the press moves
New World as the featured work in
on—without, amazingly, touchtheir “One Score, One Chicago”
ing the sandwiches and vegetaproject, the musical equivalent of
bles with dip that had been laid
the citywide book clubs that have
out for them—and another meetsprung up in many cities. Few would
ing begins for school teachers,
dispute Horowitz’s claim that the
orchestra musicians, and staff.
New World is “still the most famous
Horowitz is moving fast now,
symphonic work ever conceived on
flipping through a well-thumbed
American soil.”
spiral notebook and firing quesThe black- and Indian-influtions around the table, trying to
enced melodies of the New World are
confirm every detail of the
the background music for the many
school-visits schedule.
social, political, and biographical
“I’ve got five visits in each
threads that Joseph Horowitz draws WHILE TOURING THE WESTERN UNITED STATES, DVOŘÁK SAW THIS
school,” he says. “That’s a lot.”
together in his book Dvořák in Amer- “INDIAN MEDICINE SHOW,” WHICH OFFERED SONG, DANCE, ACROBATICS, AND MAGIC TRICKS. AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSICIANS WERE OFTEN
Three well-known Dvořák scholica: In Search of the New World, pubars, Horowitz himself, and a
lished early this year by Cricket
INCLUDED IN SUCH SHOWS.
string quartet of NJSO players
Books. Although billed as a historihave all got to meet with the right class at
cal novel for young readers, this illustrated,
people who knew Dvořák in Iowa; and
150-page book depicts well-documented
watch video essays on immigration to Amer- the right time. David, the video man from
the NEH, swivels constantly to catch the
people and events; its main fictional feature ica and how history is written.
rapid-fire dialogue on scheduling. Once in a
is some imagined dialogue between the
Late last year, after more than two years
characters.
in development, these materials were finally while, somebody tries to squeeze by him and
get a sandwich, stumbling over his cables.
The other cornerstone of the new
ready for their test run. (Well, almost; the
“Sorry,” he says, and tapes that event too.
Dvořák curriculum is the interactive DVD by DVD was still pretty buggy.) The location:
A petite, elderly woman who has been lismusicologist Robert Winter of the Universi- classrooms, board rooms, auditoriums, and
tening quietly at one end of the table is
ty of California–Los Angeles and programconcert halls of Newark and its suburbs
introduced as Grace Blackwell, the greatmer Peter Bogdanoff—a gold mine of letMaplewood and South Orange. The occaniece of Harry Burleigh. She has some photers, newspaper articles, pictures, and music sion: the 100th anniversary of the death of
tos of Burleigh as she knew him: a dapper
relating to the Dvořák story. Users can lisDvořák, which was to be commemorated
ten to the New World while following the
from Jan. 7 to Jan. 24, 2004, by the New Jer- older gentleman in a three-piece suit and
homburg hat, carrying an ivory-tipped walkscore or reading a commentary on what’s
sey Symphony Orchestra with a Horowitzing stick. She confirms that she is available
happening in the music; take a tour of the
planned festival, “The Dvořák Centenary:
to visit the schools herself. The others in the
1893 Columbian Exposition; see views of
Inspiring America.” The testers: about 100
room listen respectfully, a little awe-struck
New York City then and now; gaze into the
middle and high school students, who
to be in the presence of a person directly
American landscape paintings of Frederic
would have presentations in their classconnected to one of the book’s historical
Church, George Catlin, Frederic Remington, rooms and attend festival events, culminatcharacters.
and others (and also Remington’s illustraing in the performance of the New World at
Then, it’s the teachers’ turn. Jay Gavitt, a
tions to The Song of Hiawatha); hear Harry
Newark’s New Jersey Performing Arts Center
Burleigh himself singing “Go Down,
on Jan. 24. The referees: a team of evaluators graying, no-nonsense type who chairs the
Moses”; hear oral history interviews with
from the NEH Office in Atlanta, armed with Social Studies Department at Columbia
38
B
HARRY BURLEIGH (LEFT, WITH HIS BROTHER AND
GRANDFATHER, A FORMER SLAVE) BECAME
DVOŘÁK’S ASSISTANT AND PROVIDED THE COMPOSER WITH A DIRECT LINK TO AFRICAN AMERICAN
SONGS AND SPIRITUALS, MUSIC THAT DVOŘÁK
FAMOUSLY SAID WOULD BECOME THE BASIS OF
AMERICA’S NATIONAL MUSIC.
entry on Schubert in the authoritative New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians—is
Horowitz’s opposite in looks and temperament: tall and skinny, with wild hair and a
Mephisto beard, he enjoys playing the role
of Professor Dynamic, lovable rogue. He and
Horowitz have a Laurel-and-Hardy relationship—Winter teasing and exasperating, and
Horowitz rising to the bait every time. The
5-minute break stretches to 20, as Winter
shmoozes and trolls the room for more content for his DVD from the teachers, evalua-
tors, even onlookers. Horowitz: “Robert, it’s
late....” Winter: “Just a second—almost
done here.” Horowitz: “Robert, please!”
As a preamble, Winter says he comes
from a family of teachers; praises all the
teachers present, expressing appreciation
for their long hours, sacrifices, and dedication to our nation’s most precious resource;
and stresses the need for efficient teaching
tools on a daily basis.
BILY CLOCKS MUSEUM, SPILLVILLE, IOWA
generate,” says one. “Drafts, notes, lesson
plans, e-mails, papers, tests, everything.”
David the cameraman adds, “And you will
tape all your classes, won’t you?” Eyes roll.
Horowitz declares a short break before
the main event: the special guest, just in
from The Coast, will put his new DVD
through its paces. Robert Winter—a worldrenowned musicologist, author of four
books on Beethoven and of the massive
Horowitz says, “Robert, start the program.”
Winter says, “That’s what I like about
Joe; he keeps me on schedule. You know, 10
years of working with Joe on various projects have taught me, among many other
things, what a fine composer Dvořák really
is, and how little we really know about—”
Horowitz: “Come on, Robert!”
The show begins. Winter and his coauthor Bogdanoff have previously created
several commercially successful CD-ROM
programs about classical music, but this one
still has bugs. Text appears with nonsense
characters, and some displays run irretrievably off the screen.
Still, some things work well, such as
links from a musical analysis to related historical material or a follow-the-bouncingball trip through the symphony’s score while
the music plays. Winter says his 16-year-old
daughter loves the program.
As if on cue, his cell phone rings. He
answers it. “Hello, sweetheart. I can’t talk
right now, I’m doing a presentation.” He
holds up the phone. “This is my daughter.
Everybody say, ‘Hello, Kelly.’”
“HELLO, KELLY!”
“I’ll call you in an hour, sweetie. Love
you. Bye.”
DVOŘÁK SPENT THE SUMMER OF 1893 IN SPILLVILLE, IOWA (LEFT), WHERE HE COMPOSED THE
AMERICAN STRING QUARTET. “I WOULD LIKE TO
SPEND THE REST OF MY DAYS THERE,” HE CONFIDED TO A FRIEND UPON RETURNING TO NEW YORK.
JUNE 2004
“I was amazed at how controversial
Dvořák’s idea was—that the so-called
Negro music would become the classical
music of America,” Horowitz says.
HARRY BURLEIGH FAMILY ARCHIVE/JEAN ENGLISH
High School in Maplewood, lays out an
ambitious program of research in primary
sources on the theme of “exploration,
encounter, exchange” leading to Dvořákrelated essays, to be entered in the National
History Day contest in May.
Hassan Williams, the humorous, charismatic band teacher of Malcolm X Shabazz
High School in Newark, has a more musical
project in mind: to have the students consult a collection of spirituals by Harry
Burleigh and arrange some of them for
band. Williams, who has won regional competitions with the Shabazz school band and
dreams of taking it to the Rose Parade some
day, said the job would have to be done
right: “We’ll study the words of the song,
discuss what they mean, and then make the
arrangement.”
This is the cue for the NEH evaluators to
make their appeal. “We want everything you
39
WILLIAM MAY
“So interesting”:
Joseph Horowitz ’70
I
n 1987, Joseph Horowitz was interviewed
about his book Understanding Toscanini
on the noon talk show of New York’s public
radio station WNYC. For almost an hour,
Horowitz calmly explained the artistic,
social, political, and journalistic implications of the American career of the Italian
conductor Arturo Toscanini. At the end of
the interview, the show’s host, Leonard
Lopate, blurted out: “I didn’t expect this
subject to be so interesting.”
Pianist and author Joe Horowitz has
been making classical music “so interesting”
at least since he and I used to debate the
merits of Beethoven sonata recordings by
Vladimir Horowitz (no relation) while lifting
weights in the Lamb-Miller Field House.
After Swarthmore, Horowitz earned a master’s in journalism at the University of California–Berkeley, then worked for two years
as a general reporter at a small East Bay
daily. Returning to his native New York, he
put in four years as a music critic for The
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
W
40
ith its tall tower, 1920s Academic
Gothic architecture and wide hallways accented with decorative tile, Columbia
High School looks the part of a school you’d
move to a New Jersey suburb to send your
kids to. In Jay Gavitt’s American History
classroom, there are no neat rows of desks,
but tables and chairs that can slide into various configurations. This afternoon, the 18
students mostly sit facing the front of the
room because they’re about to hear from the
author of the book they just read. About
two-thirds of the students are African
American. A couple of the school’s music
teachers observe from the back, along with
New York Times before becoming the concert
program editor of the 92nd Street YMYWHA, an Upper East Side institution known
for its generous offerings of concerts and
lectures.
The widely discussed Understanding
Toscanini, Horowitz’s second book (the first
was a profile of the Chilean pianist Claudio
Arrau), put him on the cultural map as a
social historian who comes to the subject
through classical music. His subsequent
books, The Ivory Trade: Piano Competitions
and the Business of Music and Wagner
Nights: An American History, shed still more
light on Americans’ collective attitude
toward themselves and the arts.
In 1992, to differentiate itself from
“general” symphony orchestras like the
New York Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic named Horowitz its executive
director and embarked on five years of a
mini-festival approach to programming,
which, as one critic wrote, “redefines the
symphony orchestra from purveyor of the
canon to community center for music and
musical knowledge.”
After what he calls “five years of fundraising, budgeting, marketing, and costcutting—a hands-on education in arts
administration,” Horowitz moved on from
Brooklyn to advise other orchestras and
mount festivals for them. He also teaches at
music conservatories, gives lectures in the
United States and abroad, and contributes
articles to reference works and journals He
has recently completed his magnum opus,
Classical Music in America: A History of Its
Rise and Fall, published by Norton in March.
—D.W.
the ubiquitous video man, David.
Horowitz sits on a table, swinging his
legs. “Well, you’ve read the book,” he says
softly. “Is there anything you want to ask me
about it?”
Nobody wants to go first, but finally a
boy raises his hand. “Why’d you write the
book?” he says.
“I was amazed at how controversial
Dvořák s idea was—that the so-called
Negro music would become the classical
music of America,” Horowitz says. He talks
frankly to the class about the old blackface
minstrel shows and the low opinion most
white people had of blacks at that time.
“I came to Dvořák through Anton Seidl,”
Horowitz continues. “You remember him
from the book? He was Dvořák’s friend and
the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. He brought good music to as many
people as possible. I wrote a book about him
called Wagner Nights. He’s my hero.
“And I liked reading about Creelman, the
yellow journalist, in Michael Beckerman’s
book about Dvořák.” Beckerman, a professor at NYU, sometime intermission lecturer
on PBS concert telecasts and author of New
Worlds of Dvořák, is considered this country’s leading authority on the composer.
Horowitz adds, “Mike’s coming here, to the
school, next month.”
A student asks, “Did Mike go to Prague
himself?”
“Oh, Mike’s been to Prague many times.”
“Did you go?”
Horowitz grins. “I didn’t do any research
for this book! It’s all based on other books.
But I did a lot of research for Wagner Nights.
I went to Seidl’s archives at Columbia University, and I held his diaries and letters in
my own hands. I discovered his handwritten
copy of the speech he gave on music at one
of his concerts in Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn. That was exciting.”
“What was your favorite thing about this
book?” asks another student.
“My favorite part was writing the dialogue. My publisher said teachers won’t buy
fiction. I had to fight for it! Even then, in
those scenes in Fleischmann’s Café where
Dvořák and Seidl are talking about music,
they made me simplify the dialogue.”
Horowitz talks about his choice to use
the story of Harry Burleigh, the grandson of
former slaves, as a frame for his story of
Dvořák (“That was hard to write—I think
it’s a little dry”), about the different attitudes toward race in Boston and New York
during Dvořák’s time (worse racism in
Boston, even among intellectuals—“it’s
mind-boggling!”), and about Dvořák ‘s
happy family life (“He was a good guy”).
Near the end of the 48-minute class, a
boy asks, “Why is it that we have all learned
about Mozart and Beethoven but were never
told about Dvořák?”
Horowitz nearly jumps off the table.
“That’s a great question! A lot of people in
this country just assumed that music was
better in Europe than it was here. When
Dvořák wanted to encourage Americans to
be themselves, other people were colonizing
them with Mozart.”
A little standoffish at first, the students
now seem won over by Horowitz’s warmth
and candor. After class, many of them line
up at the front of the room to have him
autograph their books.
In the hallway afterward, Horowitz is
still elated about the last question. “That
was perfect! He really got it. Why haven’t we
heard about Dvořák! That’s what it’s all
about, isn’t it?”
ONE STUDENT’S PAPER READ, “DVOŘÁK SAID THAT
THE BASIS OF AMERICAN MUSIC WOULD BE
AFRICAN AMERICAN TUNES—AND, IN THIS SENSE,
RAGTIME, JAZZ, BLUES, AND HIP-HOP ALL ORIGINATED IN SOME WAY FROM HIS WORK.” THE PROJECT CULMINATED IN A PERFORMANCE OF FROM THE
NEW WORLD BY THE NEWARK SYMPHONY.
the audience that the prevailing melancholy
of the New World has less to do with the
national-park grandeur of some of those
paintings than with the vast emptiness seen
in others; Dvořák, the visitor from fully-set-
A boy asks, “Why is it that we have all
learned about Mozart and Beethoven
but were never told about Dvořák?”
Horowitz nearly jumps off the table.
tled Europe, wrote that the desolate landscape around the tiny farm community of
Spillville impressed him as “very wild ...
sometimes very sad, sad to despair.”
Around noon on Saturday, Jay Gavitt’s
class gathers at Columbia High and piles
into an ancient school bus, with rock-hard
seats, for the mercifully short trip from leafy
Maplewood to downtown Newark. It’s
Dvořák day, the goal of all their preparations and visits by experts. In the afternoon,
the students attend an “Interplay” event in
the museum auditorium, consisting of performances of Dvořák’s American piano and
chamber music; a panel discussion; questions from the audience; and Michael
Beckerman’s rendition of his Hiawatha Melodrama for speaker and orchestra, in which
he dramatizes such episodes from the poem
as the “Death of Minnehaha” and “The
Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis” by chanting
Longfellow’s lines in tom-tom rhythm, syn-
this concert, the audience is sticking with
Skrowaczewski the whole way, quiet and
attentive, in contrast with the foot-shufflers
of Lincoln Center or the high-decibel
coughers of the Academy of Music. And
when, at last, he drives the finale to its fierce
conclusion, they reward him and the orchestra with a heartfelt ovation.
In the lobby, Joe Horowitz is ecstatic.
“What passion! What freedom!” he
exclaims. “It was Brucknerian!”
The students are happy, too. The concert
is over. They climb into the bus, chattering
about gym class, boyfriends, the ski trip—
anything but music.
The headline of Paul Somers’ review of
the concert will have the last word (for now)
on Dvořák: “A great American, if ever so
briefly.” T
David Wright is a music journalist who lives in
Wellesley, Mass.
JUNE 2004
he NJSO’s Dvořák festival is under way.
Horowitz’s spiral notebook has done its
work, and every event has come off more or
less as planned. Prudential Hall, the glittering horseshoe-shaped auditorium of the
New Jersey Performing Arts Center,
resounds with a new orchestral program
every weekend, each centered on one of
Dvořák’s last three symphonies and juxtaposing his American works with the Prague
ones he wrote before and after, pointing up
the former’s African and Indian influences.
The New York press gives the festival
only glancing attention, the New Jersey
media little more, but Paul Somers, ever the
missionary for classical music in his biweekly newsletter, is attending every concert and
lecture and writing them up. “The concert
itself had trajectory,” he writes of the Jan. 16
orchestral performance under Vassily
Sinaisky, which includes Dvořák ‘s Violin
Concerto, “from its watery launch through
its spectacularly rising violin flight. What
put the concert into unforgettable orbit was
the performance of the Symphony No. 8.”
Not all the performances fully please
Horowitz, but he is eager to hear the veteran
Polish conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
lead the NJSO in the New World. “Many of
the musicians admire Skrowaczewski,” he
says. “He has the capacity to really inspire
them.” This is a treat for a part-time band
that must operate in the shadow of more
famous orchestras in New York and
Philadelphia.
The other festival events offer fresh
angles. On the last Friday evening of the
festival, in the auditorium of the Newark
Museum, Tim Barringer, an authority on
American landscape painting from Yale University, interprets a slide show of landscapes
by Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt and Indian portraits by George Catlin.
(Some of the originals can be seen upstairs
in that same museum.) Horowitz reminds
WILLIAM MAY
T
chronized with recorded excerpts of the New
World. Horowitz says afterward, “Mike has
convinced me. I absolutely believe that the
New World is Dvořák’s Hiawatha symphony.”
Now it’s time for the festival’s climactic
concert: Dvořák’s late tone poem, The Wood
Dove, his early Piano Concerto, and finally
the New World Symphony. Skrowaczewski
takes enormous liberties with the symphony, speeding up and slowing down at will,
and taking the already broad slow movement—Dvořák called it andante, but Seidl
insisted on adagio—at a glacial pace. But
hear this, New York or Philly sophisticates
who disparage New Jersey as hicksville: At
41
DISOBEDIENT
LO
VE
SA M E - S E X C O U P L E S SAY, “ I D O. ”
By Laura M a r ko wi t z ’ 8 5
42
M
any of America’s greatest
social movements were successful because of a bold act
by an individual. Rosa Parks
defied segregation and took a
seat at the front of the bus. Suffragist
Alice Paul, Class of 1905, went on a
hunger strike in prison to protest the
unequal treatment of women. And on
Valentine's Day 2004, San Francisco
Mayor Gavin Newsom challenged
California’s ban on same-sex marriage by
ordering his administration to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. For
three exhilarating weeks, gay and lesbian
couples from around the country raced to
City Hall to marry before the courts shut
the doors again.
Busloads of schoolchildren on field
trips, tourists from around the world, and
family and friends of brides and grooms
witnessed 3,955 same-sex weddings in
San Francisco from Feb. 14 to March 11
and another 2,288 around the country.
Following Newsom’s courageous act of
civil disobedience, officials in Multnomah
County, Ore.; New Paltz, N.Y.; Asbury
Park, N.J.; and Sandoval County, N.M.,
AT THEIR SAN FRANCISCO
JAMES HARKER AND PAUL FESTA
WEDDING, JAMES HARKER ’99 (RIGHT)
AND PAUL FESTA (LEFT) ATTRACTED MEDIA
IN ON US, WE WERE FEELING GOOD,”
also began issuing marriage licenses to
same-sex couples. Newlyweds beamed for
the television cameras and newspaper
photographers; the mayor of New Paltz
was put in jail; lawyers scrambled to file
suits on both sides of the issue.
The legal validity of the 6,243 same-sex
marriages of 2004 are going to be debated
for some time, but whichever way the
courts decide, no one can deny that history has been made. Like the sit-ins at
Southern lunch counters in the 1960s,
the same-sex wedding phenomenon started a national debate. Some say it is the
beginning of a groundswell of mainstream support to end discrimination
against America’s last legally oppressed
minority group. And that’s what three
Swarthmoreans hoped when they and
their partners took vows to be “spouses
for life” in the rotunda of San Francisco’s
stately City Hall. Against the backdrop of
a mob of delighted supporters, James
Harker ’99 and his partner, Paul Festa;
David Augustine ’96 and his partner, Rob
DePew; and my partner, Mary Kay
LeFevour, and I committed our acts of
love and civil disobedience.
MARTIN HOFFMAN
HARKER SAID.
didn’t wake up that day thinking I would
be getting legally married. It was a cool
and sunny afternoon in San Francisco, and
I met Paul in the Mission District for lunch.
“Do you want to get married?” Paul asked.
“Sure!” I said automatically, but I gave
him a confused look. I had not yet heard the
news that Mayor Newsom had ordered the
city to issue marriage licenses to same-sex
couples. Paul brought me up to speed, and
then we let the idea sink in over a burrito in
Dolores Park. We felt an urgency to run to
City Hall right away and do it. What was
happening in San Francisco was groundbreaking, and who knew how long it would
last? We didn't want to miss our chance. But
if we got married today, no friends or family
could join us. We decided to go to City Hall
and see what the scene was like.
City Hall, which is only two blocks from
our apartment, was packed with hastily
assembled brides and grooms waiting to be
married, dressed in their jeans and business
suits. It was late afternoon, and Paul and I
realized we would have to wait until the
next day. I was somewhat thankful because
it meant we had an evening to prepare. We
went home and called our loved ones and
rounded up a small party for the next day,
consisting of two friends and Paul’s mother.
On Friday morning, Feb. 13, at 7:45 a.m.,
we walked over to City Hall, expecting to be
the first on line. When I saw a crowd, I hesitated. Were they protestors? Paul recognized
that they were couples waiting to be married. My first reaction, still, I realized, was to
expect people to be against us. But as we
joined the line of more than 100 people, my
morose thoughts vanished. Everyone was
ebullient and cheered as each newly married
couple passed the line with their freshly
minted marriage license. Many, like us, had
invited family and friends, had dressed in
special clothes, or had brought flowers.
Many were with their children—“born out
of wedlock,” as the day’s joke went.
After 2 hours of waiting, we made it to
the front of the line. During our 5-minute
ceremony, I had the distinct awareness of
time passing slowly, the flush on my face, a
combination of giddiness and embarrassment that grew increasingly comfortable. I
was concentrating hard on Paul's face, trying
to will a vivid memory, and he looked so
happy. By 11:30 a.m., we were the 185th
JUNE 2004
I
ATTENTION. “AS THE CAMERAS ZOOMED
43
“We felt an urgency to run to City Hall right away and
do it. What was happening in San Francisco was groundbreaking, and who knew how long it would last?”
“WE WERE MARRIED BY MABEL TENG, THE
ASSESSOR/RECORDER FOR SAN FRANCISCO,” SAYS
HARKER (LEFT). “SHE WAS EXTREMELY KIND TO
US, AND WHEN SHE READ THE WORDS OF THE
CEREMONY, SHE BECAME SERIOUS AND EARNEST.
IT HELPED US FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF
WHAT WE WERE DOING.”
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
loving relationships. Although the political
significance of gay men marrying each other
was important to us, I don’t think Paul and I
would want to call our marriage wholly
rebellious. Neither was it ordinary. Every day
teaches us that our life together is a bit of
each. We wouldn’t want it any other way.
44
same-sex couple to be married in the rotunda of San Francisco’s City Hall.
For another week, as celebrations continued, the threat of an injunction made the
line for marriage licenses swell to unprecedented proportions. By Sunday, hundreds
circled City Hall, waiting outside all night in
the rain and hoping to get licenses on Monday morning—before the afternoon hearing
that threatened to stop the marriages.
Since Paul and I live nearby, we made
several trips to City Hall to offer coffee,
doughnuts, whiskey, umbrellas, and blankets to those camping out. We talked to people of all ages and backgrounds. Paul and I,
at 33 and 26, respectively, were among the
youngest to be married. It was a sad reflection on a happy day to realize that many
people in line had lived together for years
with little or no recognition or protection of
their relationships. Paul and I, by fortune of
our generation, were able to marry as soon
as we would have wanted to, although our
marriage might be controversial and legally
ambiguous for some time.
The 26 days of same-sex weddings were
politically rebellious. Paradoxically, that
rebellion took the form of asserting our
ordinariness. After all, gays and lesbians
want the same rights as heterosexuals: legal
recognition and support for our committed,
DAVID AUGUSTINE
AND ROB DEPEW
R
ob and I decided to get married a few
days after Mayor Newsom’s surprise
announcement. To my pessimistic mind, the
issuance of marriage licenses was almost
certainly going to be overruled by a judge as
soon as the machinery of the courts could
be engaged, so Rob and I decided to act fast.
We rearranged our work schedules, made a
few calls to our families, and showed up at
City Hall at 9 a.m. on Friday morning, Feb.
13, prepared to take our vows.
I was a wreck—but not in the way you
might think. I was not a nervous groom.
Rob and I had already committed to spending our lives together and had merged our
worldly belongings. But I wasn’t certain
that the city would act fast enough to get us
all married before the courts forced them to
stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex
couples. When we arrived, the line was not
yet out the door, and I was amazed to see
that City Hall had been transformed into a
marriage factory.
Licenses that usually
took 10 days to issue
were printed in minutes. Scores of clerks
had been deputized to
conduct marriages.
The line to obtain a license was long, but
there was a feeling of celebration as we waited. I was struck by how many couples with
children and older couples had come. News
cameras panned up and down the line,
reporters searching for people who were not
from San Francisco, perhaps to rescue the
story from being only a local-news piece. We
met our friends Doug and Eric in line. They
had their adorable 3-month-old twin girls
strapped to their chests. I admit, we (somewhat guiltily) tagged along when a sympathetic clerk invited the new fathers to move
to the front.
After getting our marriage license, we
stood in another line in the magnificent
City Hall rotunda, waiting to have our ceremony. It was an incredible scene: a dozen
small clusters of people dotted the grand
staircase under the dome, and applause and
hoots periodically erupted as couples were
wed. A group of city employees were busy
unloading flowering potted plants on the
edges of the staircase. The city recorder, who
signs all marriage licenses, paced up and
down the line, informing everybody that we
would all be able to get married that day
because City Hall would stay open as late as
needed to accommodate everyone.
The day was not without its comical
moments. I had invited my mom; when she
finally found me in the crowd, I was standing at the front of the marriage line waiting
for Rob to bring the completed license. The
SINCE THE CEREMONY, I HAVEN’T REFERRED TO
ROB AS MY ‘HUSBAND,’” SAYS AUGUSTINE (LEFT).
“I STILL CALL HIM ‘PARTNER,’ BUT SINCE WE’RE
BOTH LAWYERS, THAT CAN LEAD TO CONFUSION.”
“I held Rob’s hand, and we shared a
deep smile. It seemed so simple, then,
so elemental.”
LAURA MARKOWITZ AND
MARY KAY LEFEVOUR
A
week after Valentine’s Day, I called Mary
Kay at work and asked her to marry me.
She laughed and asked, “What? Again?” We
had already had a big wedding in 1999, with
all of our family and friends gathered around
us. It took her a minute to realize I meant a
legal wedding in San Francisco, and then
she said, “Yes!” Even though we live in Tucson, and Arizona does not honor same-sex
unions, we wanted to go to San Francisco
and take part in this exciting moment in
history—to stand up and be counted.
We called my parents, who were delighted with the news. A few minutes after we
hung up, my father called back and asked if
they could come and be our witnesses. We
were moved by their offer—it’s a long trip
from New York to San Francisco.
After we made our travel plans, we start-
ed hearing rumors from friends in San
Francisco that we would need an appointment at City Hall to get married, but the
phone number to call to make the reservation kept changing. For two days, I wore out
the keypad on my cell phone trying to get
through to the right place and finally
reached a friendly clerk in the Mayor’s
Office of Community Relations, who made
our appointment. Relieved, we then had to
face the really difficult question: What
It was as romantic as applying for a passport. We took a number, waited to fill out
forms, and then signed over a check for $88.
I was glad my parents were there, but it sure
didn’t feel like a wedding day. It felt like a
Tuesday morning in a bustling office building. But when the clerk handed over our
marriage license, I saw for the first time our
families officially joined on the page. Her
mother and father, my mother and father,
everyone’s birthdays and maiden names.
“Later, we could call it an act of political defiance
against a homophobic, heterosexist society, but in that
moment, it was all about love.”
should we wear? We decided to bring the
same clothes we wore to our first wedding. I
liked the symmetry.
During the flight to San Francisco, I had
a big, goofy smile on my face. Despite our
protestations that this wedding was about
making a political statement, despite the
familiarity of two people who have lived
together for 16 years, I was thrilled to be
marrying her again.
My parents arrived with bouquets, champagne, and chocolates. All four of us looked
around the airport, wondering where were
all the brides and grooms we had been seeing on the news? San Francisco didn’t look
like a city in the throes of an act of mass
public disobedience. But the next morning,
the hotel receptionists cheered when we
came downstairs with our flowers, and they
even thanked us for sharing our “special
day.” Strangers yelled “Congratulations” out
their car windows as they drove by us.
There was no line, and no crowd at City
Hall when we arrived. The early injunctions
to halt our marriages had failed, and so
same-sex weddings had settled into a new
routine. I noted that after 3 weeks of queer
weddings, the city staff seemed inured to
the spectacle of another lesbian couple coming in to be married. I would have felt sad if
I had known then that in 2 days, the courts
would stop the city from issuing licenses.
It was odd to walk through City Hall’s
metal detector in our wedding clothes. Four
or five couples were waiting for their marriage licenses, and one camera crew was filming the wedding of the guys behind us. I was
surprised to see a straight couple on line.
LAURA MARKOWITZ (RIGHT) AND MARY KAY
L E FEVOUR WANTED TO “STAND UP AND BE
COUNTED.” MARKOWITZ SAID, “A TOURIST FROM
ARGENTINA ASKED TO TAKE OUR PHOTO AFTER
THIS ONE, AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN
WATCHED.
And there we were. The state of California
declared that we were one big family now.
A retired gay teacher was waiting in the
rotunda to perform our ceremony. He was
wide-eyed with wonder at all he had seen in
the past few weeks and seemed sincerely
happy for us. Mary Kay took my hand, and
my heart started to lift. She looked me deep
in the eyes and repeated the words, “love,
honor, and cherish.” I felt suffused with love
for her and gratitude for the moment. My
discomfort melted away. I was marrying my
beloved, and she was marrying me. Later, we
could call it an act of political defiance
against a homophobic, heterosexist society,
but in that moment, it was all about love. T
Laura Markowitz, editor and publisher of In
the Family Magazine, lives in Tucson, Ariz.
JUNE 2004
clerk—demonstrating apparent open-mindedness (or absent-mindedness)—looked at
my 70-year-old mother and me, asking us if
we were ready to go!
When it was our turn to be married, I
found myself suddenly feeling picky about
who would perform our ceremony. Doug
and Eric had just been married, in front of a
gaggle of television cameras, by an officiant
who mispronounced them “husband and
wife and life partners.” Although I was
grateful to the scores of young clerks who
had volunteered to read couples their vows,
I wanted someone more dignified. Fortunately, a silver-haired gay man with a
booming voice straight out of Central
Casting, waved us over. I suddenly felt
giddy. Rob and I held hands; the marriage
commissioner proceeded to read our vows.
I didn’t know how I’d feel when the
moment actually came. I’d been so busy in
the rush, armed with a clutch of papers and
thinking only of the administrative hurdles
in front of us. I hadn’t had much time to
consider that I was about to marry the man
I love. I held Rob’s hand, and we shared a
deep smile. It seemed so simple, then, so
elemental. We told each other that we would
love and care for each other for the rest of
our lives. We re-exchanged the rings we had
just removed and were pronounced partners
for life. We kissed, and then we hugged for a
long moment. We were married.
45
CONNECTIONS
Boston:
The newly rejuvenated Boston
Connection—under the leadership of
David Wright ’69 and Ted Chan ’02 and
with help from Michele Hacker ’95—is in
the process of planning events for alumni
in the Boston area. Watch your e-mail and
snail mail for upcoming announcements.
Chicago: Chicago Connection Chair Marilee Roberg ’73 is arranging for a tour of the
Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago. Jeff
Jabco, horticultural coordinator of the Scott
Arboretum, will lead this tour. Watch your
mail for an invitation.
Philadelphia: Philadelphia Connection
Chair Jim Moskowitz ’88 arranged interesting activities this spring. More than 30
alumni, family, and friends visited the
National Constitution Center in April,
accompanied by Associate Professor of His-
tory Bruce Dorsey. Later in the month,
alumni toured the Glencairn Museum of
Religious History with Professor of Art History and Art Coordinator Michael Cothren.
Finally, in May, Bruce Gould ’54
arranged for a trip to the Philadelphia
Museum of Art’s Manet and the Sea exhibition. List Gallery Director Andrea Packard
’85 accompanied the group.
The Philadelphia Young Alumni group
scheduled two more happy hours in the
spring at Tangerine and the Suede Lounge.
Watch your e-mail for upcoming happyhour locations and dates.
Metro DC/Baltimore: New Connection
Chairs Jacqueline Morais Easley ’96 and
Trang Pham ’01 are off to a great start this
spring with activities for the DC Connection. Young alumni had a happy hour in
April, followed by all-alumni trips to the
Torpedo Factory Art Center in May and a
pot-luck picnic in June. Watch your mail for
upcoming events.
If you would like to help organize an
event or have a suggestion for an event,
contact Jacqueline at jacqeasley@yahoo.com or Trang at trang_pham2001@yahoo.com.
New York: Once again, this busy Connection participated in New York Cares Spring
Clean-Up Day. The NYC Swarthmore Connection joined 3,500 caring New Yorkers to
revitalize parks and community gardens,
social service agencies, and public schools
throughout NYC.
Many thanks to Jennifer Hayoun ’97 and
Keith Pieck ’97 for arranging a young alumni happy hour in New York in April.
Alumni Relations Office Moving
to Sproul Observatory Building
46
PHILIP STERN ʼ84
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
T
THE ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE, HUB OF ACTIVITY DURING ALUMNI WEEKEND AND NUMEROUS OTHER CAMPUS EVENTS, WILL RELOCATE THIS SUMMER TO THE SPROUL OBSERVATORY BUILDING. THE OLDEST SECTION
OF THE BUILDING (RIGHT) WAS THE FIRST COLLEGE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE. MOST RECENTLY, THE BUILDING
HOUSED THE COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT, WHICH MOVED IN JUNE TO THE NEW SCIENCE CENTER.
HE RENOVATION OF PARRISH HALL
began in earnest at the end of the
spring semester (see article on page 14).
As part of the renovation project, Swarthmore will have its first Alumni House.
The staff of the Alumni Relations
Office, along with colleagues in the Publications and News and Information
offices, will relocate to the Sproul Observatory Building. These staff members will
join the Alumni and Gift Records Office,
which is already located in Sproul.
The building will house a library with
archives of old yearbooks and alumni
magazines. A new entrance will include a
patio space for small gatherings.
According to the current schedule, the
Alumni Relations Office will be relocating
to its new home by summer’s end. So, if
you are looking for us, please visit our
new digs on the first floor of Sproul.
We’ll have a housewarming during
Alumni Weekend 2005—and we look
forward to celebrating our new location
with you then.
—Lisa Lee ’81
Director of Alumni Relations
WILL BROOKS
The Faces of Alumni Council
LEFT TO RIGHT, STANDING: LISA JENKINS ’02, MARCIA SATTERTHWAITE ’71, DAVID VINJAMURI ’86,
COLETTE MULL ’84, PAUL BOOTH ’64, MICHAEL DREYER ’84, ANN STUART ’65, DAVID WRIGHT ’69, G.
STEPHEN LLOYD ’57, GEE GEE ROBINSON ’50, JANE LATTES-SWISLOCKI ’57; SITTING: MARTHA LOUISE
SPANNINGER ’76, MINNA NEWMAN NATHANSON ’57, VINCENT JONES ’98, MEGHAN TAYLOR KRIEGEL ’97,
DOUGLAS THOMPSON ’62, SUSAN SCHULTZ TAPSCOTT ’72, KEITH BENTRUP ’01 (NONCOUNCIL MEMBER).
HONORARY DEGREE
NOMINATIONS SOUGHT
WOULD YOU LIKE TO NOMINATE SOMEONE TO
receive an honorary degree from Swarthmore? We’d like to have your recommendations of individuals who might join illustrious past award recipients such as astrobiologist and public policy analyst Christopher Chyba ’82; former head of the U.N.
Humanitarian Program in Iraq Denis Halliday; bioethicist and civil rights advocate
Adrienne Asch ’69; and Josef Joffe ’65,
publisher and editor of Die Zeit.
The Honorary Degree Committee used
these criteria in choosing recipients:
• Distinction, leadership, or originality in significant human endeavor
• Someone in the ascent or at the
peak of distinction, with a preference to
the less honored over those who have
received multiple degrees
• Ability to serve as a role model for seniors, speaking to them at Commencement
• Preference (but not a requirement) for
individuals who have an existing affiliation
with or some connection to Swarthmore
In addition, the committee seeks to
balance choices over the years from a
variety of categories such as careers, gender, academic discipline, race, ethnicity,
and public service.
If you know a worthy candidate,
please submit background information,
including your own reasons for choosing
this individual, by Friday, Oct. 1, to the
Honorary Degree Committee, Vice President’s Office, Swarthmore College, 500
College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 190811390; or e-mail Vice President Maurice
Eldridge ’61 at meldrid1@swarthmore.edu.
All nominations are confidential;
please do not inform the nominee. The
committee will forward its recommendations to the faculty in mid-November.
JUNE 2004
T
wice a year, the Alumni Council convenes on campus for a weekend of
work on ever-changing issues. Council
members come from near and far to share
their expertise and opinions with the College.
Council members are elected for threeyear terms, during which they represent
alumni in given geographic areas. The work
of the council is broken into three areas: the
Alumni Support Working Group works on
issues that directly affect alumni such as
Connections; the Student Support Working
Group focuses on providing alumni support
to students through programs such as the
Externship Program, and the College Advisory Support Working Group reviews College
policies and practices related to alumni.
Each council member brings his or her
special brand of Swarthmore experience to
the council, making the group vibrant and
driven to produce meaningful results.
The work of Council does not end after
the weekend does. Members continue working on projects throughout the year and, in
many cases, long after the council term ends.
The College is grateful to Alumni Council
members—past and present—and looks forward to our continuing partnership.
—Patricia Maloney
Assistant Director of Alumni Relations
47
CLAIRE SAWYERS
CLASS NOTES
“Swarthmore is a place where the Quaker tradition inspires
diverse people to reach for the most humane approaches to living.
It insists that students and faculty alike work that amazing tool,
the mind, to its utmost. It encourages arguments with the world,
testing it, insisting that it be what it really ought to be."
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
—Chris King '68
48
the meaning of
s w a r t h mor e
Marschak’s Opus
D O R OT H Y M A R S C H A K ’ 5 1 H E L P S
B R I N G B E T T E R M U S I C E D U C AT I O N
TO D C S C H O O L C H I L D R E N .
eborah Renée Marschak was born in
Paris in 1958, and her mother, Dorothy
Marschak, says she never let anyone forget
it: “Her siblings were born in Oakland, and
she used to lord it over them.” Inheriting
some of her birth nation’s reputation for
high culture, Deborah Renée was a talented
young musician, a piano and violin player
who loved to write and dance.
The death of Deborah Renée in an accident in 1968 sent Marschak on a dizzying
detour from academia to a life of community
service. Now the founder, president, and
organizer of CHIME (Community Help in
Music Education), Marschak’s ambition to
improve the quality of music education in
the inner city of Washington, D.C., is just
the most recent of many expressions of her
long-standing commitment to community
welfare.
“The original CHIME started in Berkeley, California,” Marschak says of a smallerscale music education effort she spearheaded in the late 1960s in the aftermath of her
daughter’s death. “It was a memorial to her,
and, in some ways, what I’m doing now, in
my mind at least, still is.”
In Berkeley, Marschak organized a group
of musicians to provide volunteer instruction. Her own involvement with the effort
lasted only a year because she was unable to
secure lasting funding. Yet, her interest in
her career teaching statistics was starting to
dwindle with respect to her growing sense of
civic responsibility. She attributes this development to her daughter’s death as well as
the Zen explorations she undertook in its
aftermath.
Always more interested in helping her
students curb math anxiety than in academic research, Marschak remained engaged in
Berkeley community issues until 1984, when
an emerging interest in Third World development brought her to Washington, D.C., to
coordinate an international research project
COURTESY OF DOROTHY MARSCHAK
D
AS THE ORGANIZER OF CHIME, MARSCHAK, WHO
BELIEVES THAT MUSIC PROMOTES LEARNING,
HEADS A VARIETY OF INITIATIVES. THESE
INCLUDE A SERIES OF FREE CULTURAL MUSIC PERFORMANCES HELD IN WASHINGTON, D.C., PUBLIC
LIBRARIES. ONE OF THE PROJECTS, THE EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE SERIES “MUSIC AROUND
THE WORLD” HAS BEEN MOVED AND NOW BRINGS
MULTICULTURAL CONCERTS DIRECTLY INTO THE
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
concerning the impact of the Green Revolution.
With her community ethos unaffected by
the move, Marschak became involved in a
variety of projects before forming the Washington, D.C., version of CHIME. She directed a reading and writing project at a homeless clinic, initiated a social studies program
for adults who were seeking to obtain their
GEDs, ran a singing and reading program
for the chronically mentally ill, and tutored
children in the schools.
While serving as a docent for the National Symphony in 1995, Marschak revived her
passion for the community issue that has
absorbed her life now for more than seven
years.
In the course of visits to poorer inner-city
schools to prepare the students for a free
field trip to the symphony, Marschak was
struck by what she found: “I discovered two
things: One was how little music education
there was in the schools. It was appalling.
The other thing I noticed was how very
responsive the students were to learning
about music. It seemed to me that maybe
this might be the time to see if we could
mobilize the community to create some kind
of volunteer support for school music programs.”
A pianist since the age of 7, Marschak
loves to play chamber music and says music
is a key component of a full and balanced
life: “First of all, it just belongs in education.
It’s a basic part of every culture, and people
who aren’t exposed to it are missing a part of
themselves.” Aside from the well-established
scientific links between music and academic
performance and the self-esteem benefits
associated with learning musical skills,
music is valuable in and of itself, Marschak
insists.
“Music is a mode of communication that
speaks directly to the emotions,” she says.
“It also promotes learning. How many
poems do you know by heart? Probably not
many. But you probably know hundreds of
songs.”
Projects initiated by CHIME include volunteer music instruction in the schools and
after-school programs; instrument donation
drives; a Music Around the World educational performance series that brings multicultural concerts directly into DC public
schools; professional teacher training workshops on incorporating music instruction
into the curriculum using recorders and
other simple instruments; and an advocacy
campaign to require music education in the
curriculum.
At the present time, Marschak devotes
more than 40 hours a week to organizing
CHIME’s many initiatives because the
organization has no paid staff members—
this is a primary goal of current fund-raising
efforts. She longs to be able to devote more
time to the many other causes she has been
involved with since she was first stirred to
service. “Even in terms of my social involvement, I’d like to broaden right now,”
Marschak says. She hopes that CHIME will
soon have the finances to enable her to turn
the daily administrative duties over to a successor.
“Oh, yes, there is always too much to do,”
she says with a laugh.
—Elizabeth Redden ’05
JUNE 2004
PROFILE
59
PROFILE
The Meaning of
Retirement
ROGER YOUMAN ’53 OFFERS
PRO-BONO EDITORIAL
ADVICE—AND EDITS A
B O O K F O R S WA R T H M O R E .
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
W
ROGER YOUMAN VOLUNTEERED TO EDIT THE BOOK THE MEANING OF SWARTHMORE. IT’S ONE OF MANY
POSTRETIREMENT PROJECTS FOR THE FORMER EDITOR OF TV GUIDE.
Youman did more than “impersonate” a
magazine editor. After military service from
1953 to 1955, he took a job with a magazine
he says he had “never read”—a fledgling
publication about a new medium: TV Guide.
And, as many editors know, this little weekly
became the most successful (and profitable)
magazine in history.
“Television was the universal entertainment,” he says of TV Guide’s heyday. “We
catered to the intense interest in both the
programs on TV and how they were produced. At the time, newspapers looked down
their noses at TV and didn’t write much
about it. That was helpful—we had no competition.”
At TV Guide, Youman says: “We worked
to make the magazine better than the subject it covered. We hired the best writers,
illustrators, and photographers.” Although
he says publisher Walter Annenberg ran the
magazine as “an autocracy,” it was still “a
place where people were happy to work.
Many stayed for a long time.” Youman
worked four decades there, rising from a
program editor to regional editor in Houston and Memphis, Tenn., and up the ladder
through managing editor to the top position, co-editor, which he held from 1981 to
1990. He retired in 1996, seven years after
the magazine was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corp.
Retirement isn’t all work, says Youman:
“None of my volunteer projects or pleasures
can compare with the joys of being with our
four children—who have managed to
become exemplary citizens despite the lack
of a Swarthmore education—and seven
grandchildren.” Youman and his wife, who
is director of the Information and Referral
Service at the Jewish Federation of Greater
Philadelphia, travel as much as possible,
returning often to Italy, with which they fell
in love during daughter Laura’s five years of
living there. His self-published Tuscan Notes:
An Opinionated Guide for Travelers to Florence,
Tuscany, and Umbria is invaluable for visitors.
Of Swarthmore, he says: “During my visits to campus, I rejoice at seeing what the
College and its student body have become.
The whole world is represented there now,
in all of its glorious diversity. I have gotten
to know some of these kids and, in this grim
time when human rights and democratic
values are being undermined in the name of
antiterrorism, they give me hope for the
future.”
—Jeffrey Lott
To read essays from The Meaning of Swarthmore book, visit http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/meaning/index.html. Alumni wishing
a copy of Youman’s Tuscany guide may
e-mail him at ryouman@worldnet.att.net.
JUNE 2004
hen I retired in 1996, after impersonating a magazine editor for 40
years, I announced that I was going
to give myself some time to figure out how
retirement works,” says Roger Youman. “I’m
still trying to figure it out.”
It’s not as though he’s sitting in a rocker,
pondering what to do with his golden years.
“For me,” he says, “retirement means hopping from one project to the next—doing
some writing, editing, consulting, and
teaching (currently as an adjunct professor
at the Columbia School of Journalism), but
mostly providing pro-bono editorial services
to the nonprofit world.”
Among the beneficiaries of his expertise
have been HIAS and Council Migration
Service of Philadelphia, which provides
resettlement services to refugees; the Community Violence Prevention Network of
Chester County; the Executive Service Corps
of the Delaware Valley, which helps nonprofits with management, marketing, and fundraising; and his alma mater, for which he
volunteered to edit the recently published
book The Meaning of Swarthmore. (Swarthmore is also alma mater to his wife, Lillian
“Lily Ann” Frank Youman ’57.)
When the idea for the book came along
in 2001—and after Mark Pattis ’75 and The
Pattis Family Foundation offered to underwrite the project—it took Youman and the
Publications Office staff about 18 months to
prepare the final manuscript for printing.
“This project gave me a lot of satisfaction,” he says. “I’ve enjoyed helping the College—and especially the contact I’ve had
with a lot of interesting people.” The book’s
48 alumni essayists span nearly seven
decades at the College, from the Classes of
1933 to 1996.
In a 40-year career with TV Guide,
61
BOOKS & ARTS
Sex, Lies, and
Independent Film
Peter Biskind ’62, Down and Dirty Pictures:
Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent
Film, Simon & Schuster, 2004
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
66
ndependent film is a baggy category, signifying everything from slickly engineered Oscar-bait like Shakespeare in Love
(2001) to short experimental films and
social-issue documentaries that are lucky to
get an airdate on PBS affiliates. The concept
is used as much to market films as “edgy” as
to describe their makers’ autonomy from
studio formulas and funds. The 1990s was
the decade of the so-called indies. Every
moment of this bumpy ride—from the
debut of Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and
videotape at Robert Redford’s U.S. (later Sundance) Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in
1989 to Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 Pulp Fiction with its unprecedented $100 million
gross to the 2002 controversy over the
Academy’s attempt to ban “screeners” (the
DVDs sent out to Oscar voters that constitute independent filmmakers’ only shot at
having their films noticed) is chronicled in
Peter Biskind’s juicy new book. Down and
Dirty Pictures is a follow-up of sorts to
Biskind’s acclaimed and riveting Easy Riders,
Raging Bulls, which tells the story of how, as
the subtitle has it, “the sex-drugs-and rock
’n’ roll generation saved Hollywood.” The
movie mavericks it glorifies—“film school
brats” like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin
Scorsese, and Brian De Palma—were
weaned on Hollywood genre and European
art films and made “auteur theory” as American as apple pie in films that spoke a new
language to new audiences. Down and Dirty
Pictures tells a less heroic narrative. Its
antagonistic main characters are a pair of
bad-tempered, foul-mouthed brothers from
Queens, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who
cooperated with Biskind on the book, and
Redford, the Golden Boy of ’70s Hollywood,
the Sundance Kid himself, who didn’t. Dirt
is dished by the truckload, but because of
the author’s insight into the art, history, and
business of film—he’s a former editor of
PHOTOFEST
I
STEVEN SODERBERGH’S SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
KICKED OFF A DECADE OF INDEPENDENT FILMS.
THE ENSEMBLE CAST INCLUDED (FROM LEFT)
PETER GALLAGHER, LAURA SAN GIACOMO, ANDIE
MCDOWELL, AND JAMES SPADER.
Ultimately, Biskind’s taste,
politics, and even tact
make this gossipy journey
much more substantial
than a guilty pleasure.
Premiere, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair,
and the author of a book on 1950s Hollywood as well—one emerges feeling relatively
unashamed of one’s prurience, if disappointed by the smudged face cinema presents at the dawn of its second century.
The Weinstein brothers’ distribution
company, Miramax, is probably best known
for its vigorous and, until last year, fruitful
Oscar campaigns for such “small” films as
My Left Foot, The English Patient, and Chicago.
Miramax changed the way independent
films were marketed, especially after an
influx of cash from Disney, which bought
the company in 1993. In the words of one
insider, “Harvey molded art film into smart
film.” But their success formula came at a
high price—the co-chairman’s meddling
with films he’d acquired and bullying their
directors earned him the nickname Harvey
Scissorhands, and creative accounting and
physical threats against filmmakers and
staffers left a trail of tears that Biskind
enthusiastically follows. Meanwhile, Bob
Weinstein’s Dimension division locked into
a money-making formula with the Scream
franchise and never looked back.
Back in the day, Soderbergh’s success
with sex, lies, and videotape, produced by
Bobby Newmyer ’78 and released by Miramax, encouraged young filmmakers to
dream of going west—not to Hollywood but
to Utah, where the festival and filmmaking
labs sponsored by Redford’s Sundance Institute arose in opposition to the studio model.
Redford remains a remote, inscrutable presence in Biskind’s book and is, in fact,
described as a remote, fickle presence by
most of the many associates whom Biskind
does interview. Far from the benevolent
father of indie film, Redford comes off as
arrogant, moody, and a poor manager, not as
Other Books
Frank Ackerman ’67 and Lisa Heinzerling, Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, The New
Press, 2004. Debunking cost-benefit analysis and related economic theories, this book
challenges the Bush administration’s
approach to health, environmental protection, and conservation.
Nell Duke ’93 and Susan Bennett-Armistead, Reading & Writing Informational Text in
the Primary Grades: Research-Based Practices,
Scholastic, 2003. Based on their work in the
Early Literacy Project, the authors offer
classroom-tested strategies for helping children become creators and wise consumers
of informational text.
Phillip Daves, Michael Ehrhardt ’77, and
Ronald Shrieves, Corporate Valuation: A
Guide for Managers and Investors, SouthWestern/Thomson Corp., 2004. Divided
into four parts, this book includes chapters
on “Financial Statements and Free Cash
Flow,” “Multiyear Projections and Valuation,” and “Top-Down Analysis.”
Peter Friedman ’58, Ideal Marriage, The
Permanent Press, 2004. Like many 1950s
teenagers fascinated by the book Ideal Marriage, written by the Dutch gynecologist
Theodoor Hendrik Van de Velde and translated into more than 40 languages, Friedman explores a boy’s journey into manhood.
Heather Goff, “Poison in My Coffee,”in
Kevin Takakuwa, Nick Rubashkin, and
Karen Herzig (eds.), What I Learned in Medical School: Personal Stories of Young Doctors,
University of California Press, 2004. In this
collection of medical students’ stories, Goff
introduces her tale about obsessive-compulsive disorder with, “It all started shortly
after college, when I began believing that
my coffee was poisoned.”
Jeffrey Hart ’69, Technology, Television and
Competition: The Politics of Digital TV, Cambridge University Press, 2004. Focusing on
how nationalism and regionalism combined with digitalism to produce three different DTV standards, this book adds to our
understanding of relations between business and government and competition
among the world’s great economic powers.
Stephen Henighan ’84, The Streets of Winter, Thistledown Press, 2004. This novel
about life in modern urban Canada, filled
with Montreal’s cultural details, explores
the opportunity to reinvent oneself.
Jeffrey Miron ’79, Drug War Crimes: The
Consequences of Prohibition, The Independent Institute, 2004. Examining the alternatives to drug prohibition, the author—a
professor of economics at Boston University—analyzes the costs, benefits, and consequences of the Drug War.
Jennifer Patrick ’88, The Night She Died,
Soho Press, 2004. In this novel, a smalltown murder in Georgia will particularly
resonate with readers who have struggled to
survive difficult personal experiences.
Dorothy Espelage and Susan Swearer '87
(eds.), Bullying in American Schools: A SocialEcological Perspective on Prevention and Intervention, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
2004. This edited volume of 17 chapters by
leading researchers across the United States
on bullying and victimization in schoolaged youth reflects a social-ecological perspective on this ubiquitous phenomenon.
Peter Friedman,
author of the
novel Ideal Marriage, graduated
from Harvard
Law school,
studied East
German law on a
Fulbright grant,
and was counsel
to former New
York City mayor
Robert Wagner
in the New York State Constitutional Convention. His fiction, articles, and humor have
appeared in Harper’s, Redbook, Cosmopolitan,
Saturday Review, and many newspapers.
Frank Ackerman,
co-author with
Lisa Heinzerling
of Priceless, is
an economist at
the Global Development and
Environment
Institute at Tufts
University, the
author of Why
Do We Recycle?,
and contributing
author to the 2001 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has
served as a consultant to the Environmental
Protection Agency, state agencies, and environmental groups.
Stephen
Henighan,
author of the
novel The
Streets of Winter, has also
written When
Words Deny the
World, The
Places Where
Names Vanish,
and Nights in
the Yungas.
Henighan teaches Spanish American Literature in the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Guelph in Ontario,
Canada. His work has been published in eight
countries.
JUNE 2004
assured in his taste as the Weinsteins but
not above taking over young filmmakers’
projects either. The downside of the book’s
focus on the institutions that fostered the
independent film movement is that the
abundance of articulate, passionate filmmakers who put themselves and their visions
out there are heard sounding mostly sour
notes. Soderbergh himself, who tangled
with Weinstein and Redford and followed
his auspicious debut with a series of flops,
does come out a winner, with a string of
critical and popular successes as
writer/director and a growing list of producer credits on a new crop of noteworthy
independents.
Ultimately, Biskind’s taste, politics, and
even tact make this gossipy journey much
more substantial than a guilty pleasure.
Knowledgeable about such predecessors as
Jean-Luc Godard and John Cassavetes, who
inform the spirit and the formal visions of
indie filmmakers, he sticks to his story: The
film school brats of the 1970s made movies
the video store brats of the 1990s—beneficiaries of the democraticization of the medium—might never match.
—Patricia White
Associate professor of English literature
and film studies
67
PROFILE
Hearts and
Minds
D.D. SMITH HILKE ’73 WILL BRING
A C H I L D ’ S - E Y E V I E W TO SA LT L A K E
CITY’S NEW MUSEUM.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
72
.D. Smith Hilke still feels the awe of
stumbling across the Rosetta Stone in
the British Museum in London: “I had
touched something real that there’s only one
of in the universe.”
Yet long before her doctorate in the psychology of language had sensitized her to
the sanctity of such an object—when she
was a little girl in Philadelphia wandering
wide-eyed through the Franklin Institute—
Hilke experienced her first museum shocker.
The surprise has carried meaning for her
life’s work.
“I was about 5, and I walked through the
heart—and I have never forgotten it,” Hilke
says. The Franklin Institute’s giant human
heart exhibit, complete with stairs linking
the chambers, has thumped thunderously in
the ears and imaginations of generations of
visitors. “I remember thinking, ‘I bet my
heart doesn’t have stairs!’’’
As executive director of the Children’s
Museum of Utah, Hilke cherishes institutions that satisfy an adult’s reverence for cultural treasures and especially those that
indulge a child’s urge to plunge right into an
exhibit and experience it bodily. “The way
children learn naturally is exploration and
play,” Hilke says.
The Franklin Institute’s heart excites the
senses as it promotes spatial perception—
methods of learning that modern children’s
museums employ with phenomenal success
today: The Association of Children’s Museums calls these family meccas the fastestgrowing type of cultural institution in America, with an estimated 250 to 300 nationwide and another 80 cities planning ones of
their own. Since 1990, the association says,
100 children’s museums have opened.
Salt Lake City is among those with children’s museums on the drawing board, with
Hilke in the vanguard of the effort. Last
March, the County Council agreed to issue
©LANCE CLAYTON/ UTAH BUSINESS
D
HILKE HELPED BUILD PUBLIC SUPPORT IN SALT LAKE CITY FOR A LARGER CHILDREN'S MUSEUM. AROUND
THE COUNTRY, CITIES HAVE BUILT THESE FAMILY-ORIENTED ATTRACTIONS AS CENTERPIECES TO
DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION EFFORTS.
$15 million in bonds to pay for a new building to replace the small discovery center that
serves the region after county voters had
approved the bond sale by a wide margin.
The first phase of the total $34.5 million
project is to be finished in fall 2006, with
the full 75,000-square-foot facility to be
complete a year later.
The popularity of such museums in cities
large and small—the 2002 Winter Olympics
delayed Salt Lake City’s boarding the bandwagon—can be explained by the huge cultural shifts of the past several decades, Hilke
notes.
“Children aren’t just out there roaming
around in the woods across the street,” says
Hilke, formerly a visitor advocate for the
Smithsonian Institution. “I mean, they’re
being carted in their car across asphalt to
their program, and these programs are finetuned to one age group. Or they’re sitting in
front of a computer, and they’re living more
virtually. “What a children’s museum really
does is allow the kid out into the community
and into experiences that are hard to find
today,” she says.
Not only do parents feel uncomfortable
today letting their children roam, but technology entices children away from hands-on
play, and families find they have few hours to
have fun together. And when they do have a
special day together or when they’re visiting
a new city—violà!—the museum beckons.
While planning the children’s museum
for Salt Lake City—where she lives with her
husband, John ’73—or while spending time
with her 2 1⁄2-year-old granddaughter, Hilke
carries in her mind another childhood
museum memory. The recollection is something of a cautionary tale for her profession
and a reminder of how museums can leave
lasting impressions on a child. Hilke remembers eagerly approaching a glass case that
held a model of a boat with a big paddle
wheel. On a button was the tantalizing word
Press.
“It didn’t work.”
—Colleen Gallagher
IN
MY LIFE
A Sequence of
miscalculations
OR HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS BY
L E A R N I N G T H E H A R D WAY
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
By A r n o l d K l i n g ’ 7 5
74
MY CAREER AS AN ENTREPRENEUR BEGAN as I approached my 40th
birthday. You might say that for my midlife crisis, instead of going
for a sports car and a younger woman, I chose to quit my job at
mortgage giant Freddie Mac to start an Internet business.
This was in April 1994. Although, five years later, it seemed that
almost everyone was thinking about starting an Internet business,
when I founded Homefair.com, the World Wide Web consisted of
only about 1,000 sites, and most of those were maintained by universities. This was well before Amazon or eBay or Google.
I had no business plan. I had never heard of the “elevator pitch,”
which is a short speech that an entrepreneur is supposed to give to a
venture capitalist. In fact, it never occurred to me to seek funding for
the business.
The idea of Homefair was to bring mortgage and real estate
information to the Web. I thought that those industries, with their
quaint business practices and high fees, were ripe for disintermediation. I would never have guessed that 10 years later most home buyers would still be using real estate agents and mortgage brokers.
I neglected to ask two questions that would have occurred to
anyone who had attended business school: What sorts of consumers
were using the Web? What sorts of businesses were making money
on the Internet?
Had I asked those questions, I would have discovered that of the
20 million Internet users in 1994, only about 500,000 had software for browsing the Web. The rest were using e-mail as well as
text-based information services that have since been superseded. I
personally could not figure out how to install the software needed
for Web access in those days. It took an evening visit from the
founder of my Internet service provider to get me set up.
Even worse than the low numbers was the fact that most Web
surfers were still in college. As Jay Minkoff, a publisher of New
Homes Guides in the Philadelphia area, put it, “What you’ve got is an
apartment market.”
The businesses that were making money on the Internet, at the
time, were providing connectivity and consulting services. Nobody
had figured out how to make money by providing information on
the Web, which is what I was attempting to do.
I misjudged the money-making potential of micropayments and
CURTIS PARKER/CORBIS
“I NEGLECTED TO ASK TWO QUESTIONS THAT WOULD HAVE OCCURRED TO
ANYONE WHO HAD ATTENDED BUSINESS SCHOOL: WHAT SORTS OF CONSUMERS WERE USING THE WEB? WHAT SORTS OF BUSINESSES WERE MAKING
MONEY ON THE INTERNET?” KLING SAYS IN RETROSPECT.
banner ads. Micropayments are transactions in small amounts, such
as paying a few pennies to download an article. I thought that this
would be a successful model. I thought that banner ads were a stupid idea and that they would be the least effective way to fund
Internet content. Today, most content sites seem to be supported by
advertising, and micropayments are rare.
After Homefair’s first year, I was quite depressed. My accountant
told me that the business in which I had sunk about $50,000 (in
addition to the “opportunity cost” of leaving my job) was now
worth about $20,000. The only reason that I did not abandon
Homefair was that my wife counseled me to keep going. In 2002,
when I participated in Swarthmore’s Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship (see “A Profitable Education” in this issue), someone
asked where an entrepreneur should seek high-quality professional
advice. My response was, “Your spouse.”
I worried that America Online (AOL), which had the user base
with the demographic characteristics that Homefair needed, might
never choose to give its customers Web access because that would
devalue AOL’s own proprietary content areas. However, in August
1995, AOL did offer Web browsing; instead of hurting itself, this
launched AOL on a huge growth spurt.
Summer 1995 was a turning point in other ways as well. I made a
cold call to Rich Ganley, the owner of a small relocation service business in Scottsdale, Ariz. They had developed for more than 300
cities the Cost of Living Report, a sheet of useful information for
employees considering relocation. Ganley said that he would gladly
fax people free cost-of-living reports in order to obtain their contact
information to solicit their relocation business.
Faxing the reports was a disaster. It was time-consuming for
Ganley’s company, and the relocation leads were not particularly
helpful to Ganley’s business.
Fortunately, we came up with a better approach. We changed the
paper-based Cost of Living Report to an interactive “salary calculator”
that allowed you to adjust job offers in various cities for differences
in the cost of living. We then created a more sophisticated way to
connect consumers to real estate agents and other service providers.
Ganley and I formed a partnership. Impressed by my Ph.D., he
nicknamed me “Doc.” He had only a high school equivalency diploma, but he had the combination of drive and charm that makes a
great salesman.
My role in the partnership was to maintain the Web site. I chose
Netscape’s server software, which I expected would make it easier to
develop the sort of interactive applications that were successful for
us. The good news is that the applications were easy to develop. The
bad news is that the server was a bug-ridden nightmare, which
crashed whenever it became heavily taxed. Soon, Homefair was
going down every few minutes. It took several agonizing weeks to
convert our Web site to a more stable environment.
In 1997, after Homefair had been profitable for more than a year,
we were bought by Central
Newspapers, Arizona’s largest
newspaper chain. In what is
called an “earn-out” arrangement, the terms of sale would
be determined by our profits
over the next three years.
Central Newspapers was
seeking to expand its Internet
properties. We looked at
www.mapquest.com, which was
in trouble at the time, but
decided that the price tag of $30
million was too much. About a
year later, MapQuest was sold
for $1 billion to AOL. On the
other hand, we did suggest that our parent company purchase a site
called www.theschoolreport.com (now www.homefair.com/sr_home.html), which offered school information in different
cities and used business models that were similar to ours. I thought
that the similarity of our two businesses would mean that integration of our software would be easy. Instead, rewriting their software
to make it work with ours wound up costing much more than developing their software in the first place.
Back in 1995, when Netscape became the first Internet company
to sell stock to the public, I thought that the Internet frenzy on Wall
Street would be over in a year or two. However, in 1999, the dot-com
mania was still in full swing. When one of our competitors,
www.homestore.com, went public, we decided that it would be better to join them than to try to beat them. They bought our family of
companies (Homefair, TheSchoolReport, and Ganley’s relocation
company) for $85 million in cash and stock. My share of the total
was quite diluted by this point, but a couple percentages of $85 million is still real money, particularly considering the sequence of mistakes, miscalculations, misjudgments, and erroneous forecasts that
led to it.
Since 1999, I have drifted back toward my academic roots. I teach
math part time on a volunteer basis at a local private high school. I
write essays for a Web journal called www.techcentralstation.com,
and I maintain an economics-focused Weblog at http://econlog.econlib.org.
I published a book, Under the Radar, about Internet businesses
operating without venture capital. I am working on another book,
tentatively called Learning Economics, which is an introduction to
economics that shifts the emphasis from how an economy allocates
to how an economy learns. My own experience with trial-and-error
learning as an entrepreneur influenced me to adopt this perspective.
It was because I made the “mistake” of jumping into the Internet
arena too soon that I was able to learn enough to neutralize later
competitors who came in with more money and business competence.
By 1998 and 1999, the Homefair partners could laugh at new rivals
who were attempting tactics that we had discarded years earlier.
After my appearance at the Lax Conference, I joked that discussing business with Swarthmore students is like trying to talk
about death with teenagers. They know it’s out there, but they prefer
not to think about it.
But if you love to learn, then business can be a challenging and
educational experience. And if you want to have good luck in business, it pays to be eager to learn. T
Arnold Kling lives in Silver Spring, Md.
JUNE 2004
Someone asked where an entrepreneur
should seek high-quality professional advice.
My response was, “Your spouse.”
75
PROFILE
Lunch at
11 o’clock,
Mars Time
C O M P U T E R S C I E N T I S T J OA N
COURTESY OF JOAN WALTON
D I F F E R D I N G WA LTO N ’ 8 5 H E L P S
U N R AV E L T H E M Y S T E R I E S O F M A R S .
amed after the Roman god of war and
source of inspiration for a sinister musical composition by Gustav Holst, the mysterious “red planet” has begun to reveal its
secrets—thanks, in significant part, to Joan
Walton.
Walton, a physics major at Swarthmore
and daughter of Jane Bassett Differding ’59,
is the lead computer scientist for the Computational Science Division’s Information
Design Group at NASA’s Ames Research
Center in Mountain View, Calif. With NASA
since 1996, for the past three years, she has
been heading the team that developed and
customized an information system called the
Mars Exploration Rovers Collaborative
Information Portal (CIP). The Web-based
tool allows mission engineers and scientists
to access data and images downloaded from
the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity; read
mission schedules, reports, and papers; see
clocks in the various time zones where mission workers are located (including the two
rover landing sites on Mars); and send and
receive broadcast announcements.
After initial brainstorming with experts
from the 1997 Mars Pathfinder and the
Mars Exploration Rover missions, Walton’s
team created a system that both integrates
the massive amounts of mission information and incoming data and also coordinates
schedules for the 240 mission members
working on three shifts spanning the Martian day. “Our program enables users to
search, sort, and browse and be notified
when new data comes in,” Walton says.
Careful daily planning is crucial to the
mission because the rovers use solar energy
and can perform tasks only during sunlight
hours on Mars. Following commands from
mission control, they collect data, which are
WALTON AND STEVE SQUYRES, PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR ON THE MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS MISSION
AND A PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY, LOOK AT THE CIP LOG-IN WINDOW IN THE
MISSION SCIENCE ASSESSMENT AREA AT NASA’S JET PROPULSION LABORATORY IN PASADENA, CALIF.
beamed via satellite to Earth and translated
by engineers into digital images and other
types of data files. Based on their analyses of
the data, scientists formulate the rover’s
tasks for the following day and then pass
their observations and recommendations
back to the engineers. After evaluating the
rovers’ capacity to perform the new tasks,
the engineers translate them into commands that the rovers can interpret and
send them back to Mars.
“We’re running the mission on Mars
time,” Walton says, “so one of their most
serious needs is for scheduling. A Mars day
is 40 minutes longer than on Earth, so every
day, people have to show up for work 40
minutes later than the day before. Just
knowing that something’s happening at 8
o’clock Mars time—when the workday
begins—you have to know what time that is
on Earth, today, tomorrow, and the day after
that. So the schedules are really critical.
Walton considers the scheduling system
one of the most important aspects of CIP
because previously mission team members
had disseminated the schedules by printing
or e-mailing them. “With our system,” Walton says, “you log in and get any of the 250
or so different schedules pertaining to the
mission, including staffing schedules, satellite communication schedules, or standard
event schedules for each day. They’re all integrated so you can put them up on your
screen at the same time, query them, or
obtain certain parts [of them].”
Because the Mars Exploration Rover mission has been so unlike previous missions,
creating the CIP was quite a challenge, Walton says. So she is delighted with the feedback that she and her team have received.
Mission team members describe the program as “indispensable” and themselves as
“helpless without it.” Nonetheless, Walton
is already considering improvements such as
building a more interactive level into the
scheduling tool to allow users not only to
view and query the pages but also to edit
them. She would also like to enhance the
system that monitors changes in the huge
data repository so that users can be notified
more quickly that their files have arrived.
Now, Walton and her team are gearing up
for upcoming missions including the Mars
Science Laboratory, planned to launch in
2009 and last for several years. Using a
more powerful rover that does not rely solely
on solar energy and is equipped with additional scientific instruments and a laboratory, it will be possible to conduct more complex experiments on the planet, including
chemical analyses of Martian substances.
In the meantime, Walton continues to
keep the Mars Exploration Rover crew working—and eating—on time. She says, “One
of the most popular reasons for processing
the schedules was to figure out when lunch
was. People posted signs: ‘Lunch is at 11
o’clock, Mars time. Check CIP to find out
when that is.’”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
JUNE 2004
N
79
NYC to complete a master’s in
health policy and management
at Columbia. Emily Clough is
moving to Berkeley, Calif., after
a stint at international peacebuilding organization Search for
Common Ground. Joanne
Gaskell is a research assistant
for the International Food Policy
Research Institute. Although
Sanya Carley enjoyed consulting for the World Bank, this fall
will likely find her in Madison,
Wis., studying urban and regional planning.
Akira Irie is a paralegal in
Virginia, Todd Gillette is working for a small Web-programming firm in Alexandria, Va.,
and taking Brazilian jiujitzu,
and David O’Steen is in an
engineering Ph.D program in
Florida.
Carrie Cooper-Fenske (in
medical school) and Toby Sanan
(in a chemistry Ph.D. program)
are both attending The Ohio
State U., Laura Barker is in a
Ph.D. program in biology at
UC–San Francisco, Kirstin Bass
is doing an M.D/Ph.D. at Mount
Sinai, Joan Javier is working on
a new voter’s project for the
state PIRGS in New Mexico, and
Sarah Stanton and Than Court
are in Seattle.
David Whitehead misses his
Carib but loves Ann Arbor as a
programming analyst for the U.
of Michigan, building a national
service for earthquake engineers. Ursula Whitcher is doting on her cats and her cooking
while doing a math Ph.D. at the
U. of Washington. Emily Almberg is tracking wolves in the
beautiful Yellowstone Northern
Range, dotted with bison, hot
springs, and fallen snow. In
sunny California, Heather Fleharty is in medical school at
Stanford.
The enterprising Swattie of
the year award goes to Becca
Van Fleet, who opened her own
gallery in New Hampshire:
Becca Van Fleet Pottery (www.beccavanfleetpottery.com).
Well, that’s enough to make
us all feel proud and inadequate
at the same time. Do write. I
love hearing from you!
LETTERS
Continued from page 3
keep the foundation’s cosmic
ray detectors up and running.
Doug Thompson ’62 was one
of the most enthusiastic of that
group. Just after his return
from the Antarctic, I attended
his slide show at the Bartol
building and was enthralled by
his rugged man-versus-nature
tales, his evocations of pristine
beauty in what is arguably the
least hospitable spot on earth,
the drinking and movie-watching parties with Soviet scientists camped across several
miles of icy desert, and so on.
So enthralled that, in fact, I
applied for a stint myself.
It was only a few months
later—when an offer of a 13month job arrived—that I had
second thoughts. In the sobering light of day, I was astonished that I had even contemplated such a rash move. I was
just a few years out of India’s
110-degree summers, and I
could hardly tolerate the winters in Pennsylvania—but I
had, without thinking, considered living in the barren wastes
of the Antarctic for 13 months!
Sheepishly, I declined the offer.
Every time I think of this
incident, I remind myself that,
at 20, not all decisions are
sound and that young people
must always be given a second
chance to back out.
GEORGE THOMA ’65
Bethesda, Md.
The Bulletin welcomes letters
(and poems!) to the editor concerning the contents of the
magazine and issues relating to
the College. Letters must be
signed and may be edited for
clarity and space. Address your
letters to Editor, Swarthmore
College Bulletin, 500 College
Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081
or bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
R.I.P.
Requiem, In Peace
Don Mizell ’71, who served as
chairman of the Swarthmore
African American Students
Society from 1969 to 1971, submitted the following poem in
response to the review by Jon
Van Til ’61 of Dignity, Discourse,
and Destiny: The Life of Courtney
C. Smith (March Bulletin).
To speak undaunted
To vaunted power
Was never joy,
Not even staunch
Atop some learned chair
Far out /
Beyond the pale.
An unarmed call
To inner light
Bore an awful price:
Framed poster boys
Of sudden death /
By fame / like that
/ In a flash /
/ A snapshot /
Not by Godot
But by God.
No fade to black
As stark relief
From icy breaths
and fires beneath /
No sane retreat
From boundless love
Or mercy sweet
As yet we beseech:
To seek to keep
The fallen dream
From sleep so deep
There is no wake.
The flame we pass
Burns in us all /
We march / we weep
For justice sake
Perhaps if blame
Was not so game
Our rest’d find
Requiem, in Peace.
© 2004 by Don Mizell
JUNE 2004
UPenn. Carolynn Laurenza is
working in the UPenn School of
Medicine’s Dept. of Psychiatry,
studying addictions and living in
West Philly with Alyssa Bell (a
paralegal at Community Legal
Services) and Ilana Luft (who
works as Professor of Education
Ann Renninger’s research assistant at Swarthmore). They live
around the corner from Matt
Rubin (teaching some long days
in southwest Philly), Aaron
Goldman, and Joel Blecher ’04,
whose awesome band The Perfection!sts draws in huge Swat
crowds.
In New York, Andrew Fefferman invites anyone nearby to
check out his new Ithaca house.
Nearby, Mike Smith eagerly
awaits law school acceptances
after a year learning the true
meaning of relaxation. Rashelle
Isip is home in NYC, eating
enviable home-cooked food,
departing on au pair stints to
Paris and Milan, and having a
wonderful time. Tanya Chotibut
is postponing the real world in a
psychology graduate program at
Columbia. Kara Levy and Ted
Alexander are leaving Prague
for NYC, where Kara will earn an
M.F.A. in fiction at Columbia.
Alicia Munoz has just finished
up her first year at Cornell, and
Ben Hamilton is working in a
genetics lab there.
In Boston, Mark Romanowsky
(studying physics at Harvard)
and Laura Fox (a research assistant in the MIT Brain & Cognitive Sciences Dept.) team up to
tackle the Haymarket fruit and
veggie market on Saturdays.
Down the coast in DC, Kuzman Ganchev is researching
natural language processing for
StreamSage and plans to study
the same at UPenn this fall.
With fond memories of European
breads and spreads, Ben
Galynker is working as an LSAT
instructor in Baltimore. Chris
Keary is a behavioral therapist
for two young autistic boys in
an after-school A.B.A. program
and applying to med school this
spring. Dan Dan is interning
with the U.S. State Dept. this
summer and then heads back to
87
Q + A
Something About Barry
P R O F E S S O R B A R R Y S C H WA R T Z ’ S O W N L I F E S T Y L E H A S I N A D V E R T E N T LY B E C O M E A P I E C E O F
BEST-SELLING RESEARCH.
S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N
By Carol Brévart-Demm
88
Barry Schwartz is tired of talking about
his jeans. In his 2004 book The Paradox
of Choice: Why More Is Less, he uses a
jeans-shopping experience—having to
choose one pair from myriad different
styles—to illustrate the bewilderment
and paralysis that beset members of a
consumer society faced with virtually
unlimited choice. He explores the psychological and sociological effects of
such overabundance of options, suggesting how to avoid falling prey to it.
Following his own advice, Schwartz, 57,
is still happily married to his junior
high school sweetheart; he applied to
only two graduate schools; and he
applied for only one job.
The book is being translated into six
languages, and Schwartz has become a
public intellectual whose thoughts and
ideas are being taken seriously worldwide. Invited to speak to the British
Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, he
offered advice to Tony Blair (who wasn’t
there in person), and, according to the
London Guardian, everyone at Downing
Street, No. 10, is “reading one book.”
Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of
Social Theory and Social Action, is one of
Swarthmore’s most popular teachers.
Did this book affect your own decisions?
What question did the media fail to ask?
What public intellectuals do you admire?
The only thing that’s been disappointing is
that often the focus of the conversation is
on my jeans, toothpaste, or cereal. I wish it
were more routine for people to think about
and ask me about the research’s broader
implications for social, economic, and political policy. It’s a radical departure from the
way we think about almost everything, and
if it were to be taken seriously, it would have
widespread effects, so we should at least be
talking about them. When they have to
squeeze a 10-minute interview down to 5
minutes, that’s the part that gets cut.
What brand of jeans did you finally choose?
Gap relaxed fit.
It’s made me a more extreme version of
what I was. I can’t tell you, though, how
many people have told me that it has completely altered the way they make decisions—
for the better. I never anticipated that it
would have any practical effect on people’s
lives.
What was your most important decision?
The most important decisions I’ve had to
make didn’t feel like decisions—who to
marry, where to go to graduate school,
whether to take this job—they were nobrainers, but they were very consequential.
How did it feel offering advice to Tony Blair?
Wonderful. Flattering. It was extraordinary
because there’s nothing like the Strategy
Unit in the States. There’s this group of
young, highly educated social science types;
their mission is to get the right answer to
policy questions. There’s no politics at all.
They figure something out, then it starts to
wend its way through the system and get
spun in the way it needs to—or it gets
abandoned if the politics are wrong—but at
least they start out as if the best answer to
every question could be implemented.
The philosophers Alasdair McIntyre and
Martha Nussbaum, the late historian
Christopher Lasch, a welfare economist and
1998 Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, and
the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who
also won a Nobel Prize in 2002 for his integration of psychological research into social
science.
If you were president, which five Swarthmore colleagues would you choose as cabinet members?
I’d make Rob Hollister secretary of the treasury, Ken Sharpe secretary of state, Jim Kurth
secretary of defense, Tom Bradley secretary
of labor, and Rich Schuldenfrei secretary of
education. (What’s the good of power if you
can’t hire your friends?)
What’s your favorite book, and why?
I think it’s Social Limits to Growth by the
economist Fred Hirsch. It completely
changed the way I understand social institutions, more specifically, the economy. That
one book changed the work I do.
What’s the best lesson you ever learned from
a Swarthmore student?
A Swarthmore student changed the course
of my professional career by teaching me to
view the sort of narrow, empirical research I
did in a much broader perspective. That’s
what got me interested in economics and
sociology. I used to think that I could figure
out the answers to questions by putting the
questions in the laboratory, and I learned
from this student that that was not true—at
least, not of the questions I cared about.
Which three words describe you?
Curious. Organized. Grateful.
Which three words would your children use?
Compulsively organized. Even tempered.
Affectionate.
Are you a religious person?
No, although I’m a member of a congregation I helped found, but it was for political
more than spiritual reasons. The Mishkan
Shalom congregation was the product of
divergent opinions in a former congregation
I belonged to, and we founded it in the spirit of commitment to the public pursuit of
social justice. I was very active for many
years, but in recent years, my participation
has dwindled.
What do you do for fun on weekends?
Mostly, we inhabit the Ritz cinema. That’s
why I moved to Society Hill, so I could walk.
Where do you see yourself 10 years from
now?
Well, my plan is to be right where I am now.
BARRY SCHWARTZ BELIEVES THAT EXPANDING
FREEDOM OF CHOICE, PARADOXICALLY, CAUSES
INCREASING DISSATISFACTION AND ANXIETY
IN OUR WESTERN CONSUMER SOCIETY.
TIM SHAFFER
Swarthmore
College
On-Line
Alumni
Community
First launched in 1999, the Swarthmore OnLine Alumni Community has been improved to
reflect the changing needs of Swarthmore
alumni.
ARE YOU
• Trying to locate the guy named Smith
who lived on the first floor in Willets
when you were a junior?
• Considering graduate school and wanting
to compare notes with alumni who have
already been there?
• Looking for a job and trying to contact
alumni in your field?
DO YOU
• Want to see Class Notes on-line?
• Want permanent e-mail addresses that
identify Swarthmore alumni?
• Want up-to-the-minute information about
Swarthmore Connection events on-line?
If you have answered yes to these questions,
then the Swarthmore On-Line Community is
for you.
YOU’LL FIND
• An on-line directory with an increased
number of search fields to help you
connect with your classmates and other
alumni
• New Class Notes and Connections pages
• A permanent e-mail forwarding feature,
which makes your alum.swarthmore.edu
address the only one to change when
necessary
• A direct link to Career Services Office
Web site
• Chat rooms
To log onto the On-Line Community, visit
http://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/olc.html
for complete instructions. Visit today to see
what is new at Swarthmore!
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2004-06-01
The Swarthmore College Bulletin is the official alumni magazine of the college. It evolved from the Garnet Letter, a newsletter published by the Alumni Association beginning in 1935. After World War II, college staff assumed responsibility for the periodical, and in 1952 it was renamed the Swarthmore College Bulletin. (The renaming apparently had more to do with postal regulations than an editorial decision. Since 1902, the College had been calling all of its mailed periodicals the Swarthmore College Bulletin, with each volume spanning an academic year and typically including a course catalog issue and an annual report issue, with a varying number of other special issues.)
The first editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin alumni issue was Kathryn “Kay” Bassett ’35. After a few years, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 was appointed editor and held the position for 36 years, during which she reshaped the mission of the magazine from focusing narrowly on Swarthmore College to reporting broadly on the college's impact on the world at large. Gillespie currently appears on the masthead as Editor Emerita.
Today, the quarterly Swarthmore College Bulletin is an award-winning alumni magazine sent to all alumni, parents, faculty, staff, friends of the College, and members of the senior class. This searchable collection spans every issue from 1935 to the present.
Swarthmore College
2004-06-01
62 pages
reformatted digital
The class notes section of The Bulletin has been extracted in this collection to protect the privacy of alumni. To view the complete version of The Bulletin, contact Friends Historical Library.