swarthmore college bulletin (september 1997)bulletin.swarthmore.edu/bulletin-issue-archive/wp... ·...

SWARTHMORECollege Bulletin September 1997

SUMMERTIME

SWARTHMORE

Those who taught and studied inold Science Hall would beastonished to see the newly

refurbished Trotter Hall, shown here asthe landscaping was being completedin August. The original Science Hall(inset, ca. 1910), which opened in 1882,had wings added in 1895 and 1920 andwas renamed in 1937 in honor of thelongtime head of the Natural SciencesDepartment, Spencer Trotter. After nearlytwo years of interior and exterior renova-tion, the “new” Trotter opened with thebeginning of classes this month. Look fora photo tour in the December Bulletin.INSET: COURTESY FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY

CONTEMPORARY PHOTO BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

Why not pick our incoming classes at random, queries BarrySchwartz, professor of psychology. There are many reasons,counters Robin Mamlet, dean of admissions. Enjoy this debateabout the whos and whys of getting admitted to Swarthmore.

16 Good enough for Swarthmore?

With the advent of television, says Harvard Professor RobertPutnam ’63, leisure time in this country has become privatized.His theories on why we have been disengaging from civic lifehave brought him acclaim—and stirred a national controversy.

20 Investing in Social Capital

After moving to Vancouver in 1990, Deborah Hyman ’81 andher family felt isolated, far from family and friends. Seeking tofind the kind of support that used to come with neighbors insmall towns, they found their dream in a cohousing community.

24 Under One Roof

After the end of World War II, young idealists from campusesaround the country formed the National Student Association.But 20 years later it was discovered to have secret CIA backing,and Swarthmore’s disillusioned student body voted to withdraw.

64 Swarthmore and the NSA

2 Letters4 Collection30 Alumni Digest33 Class Notes36 Deaths60 Recent Books by Alumni

Editor: Jeffrey LottAssociate Editor: Nancy Lehman ’87News Editor: Kate DowningClass Notes Editor: Carol BrévartDesktop Publishing: Audree PennerIntern: Jim Harker ’99Designer: Bob Wood

Editor Emerita:Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49

Associate Vice Presidentfor External Affairs:Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59

Cover: There’s a lot of action oncampus during the summer—andnot all of it on the playing field.Story on page 10.

Changes of Address:Send address label along with newaddress to: Alumni Records,Swarthmore College, 500 CollegeAve., Swarthmore PA 19081-1397.Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or [email protected].

Contacting Swarthmore College:College Operator: (610) 328-8000

www.swarthmore.eduAdmissions: (610) 328-8300

[email protected] Relations: (610) 328-8402

[email protected]: (610) 328-8568

[email protected]: (610) 328-8297

©1997 Swarthmore CollegePrinted in U.S.A. on recycled paper.

The Swarthmore College Bulletin(ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is vol-ume XCV, number 2, is published inAugust, September, December, March,and June by Swarthmore College, 500College Avenue, Swarthmore PA19081-1397. Second-class postagepaid at Swarthmore PA and addition-al mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620. Postmaster: Send addresschanges to Swarthmore College Bul-letin, 500 College Avenue, Swarth-more PA 19081-1397.

By Barry Schwartz and Robin Mamlet

Those lazy, hazy days of summer on campus have become buta memory. Nowadays literally thousands of youngsters come toSwarthmore to learn the finer points of baseball, lacrosse, ortennis, others to take part in educational enrichment programssuch as Upward Bound. And then there are all those backhoes....

10 Summertime

By Jason Zengerle ’96

By Beth Grubb and Chuck Luce

By Elizabeth Weber ’98

SWARTHMORECOLLEGE BULLETIN • SEPTEMBER 1997

If this issue of the Bulletin looks a little different, it is. For thefirst time since 1983, the magazine plays host to the College’sannual Report of Gifts—a record of donations to Swarthmorefrom July 1996 through June 1997. It also contains two impor-

tant feature stories about how we relate to each other and to ourcommunities. I think the two are connected.

Creating community is a big issue these days. Social scientistRobert Putnam ’63 (“Investing in Social Capital,” page 20) hasvoiced America’s nagging feeling that something is wrong withour body politic—a problem he attributes to declining civicinvolvement. Putnam believes that voluntary organizations likebowling leagues and PTAs are essential to the health of a democ-racy, and his ideas have touched a national nerve.

Deborah Hyman ’81 and her husband, David Wright, have feltthe same thing on a more personal level. Their involvement in

WindSong, a cohousing com-munity in Vancouver, B.C.,(“Under One Roof,” page 24) isa testament to their belief thatthe health of individuals andfamilies is directly related tothe quality of the social envi-ronment in which they live.They took great risks to help

create an intentional community that meets their need to besomething more than just another family lost in suburbia.

I’m fascinated by the wide variety of intentional groups wejoin in order to better our lives. As an inveterate joiner myself, Isometimes wonder whether we really exist as individuals unlesswe bind ourselves to families, neighbors, churches, baseballleagues, Scout troops, singing groups—or schools. Nowhere isthis more evident than at Swarthmore College. Students growingto adulthood are deeply influenced by friends, teachers, and thesmall societies in which they live and work. Swarthmorechanges peoples’ lives, and I believe that both Deborah Hymanand Robert Putnam are doing what they do today because ofsomething they took away from Swarthmore, something asmuch spiritual as intellectual.

Like a WindSong or a bowling league, a great college is anintentional community, beholden to its founders, given life by itscurrent members, and sustained by its alumni. In one way oranother, you choose to be part of it, and whether or not yourname is on one of the lists following page 32, as a reader of thismagazine you continue to be a part of it. While it is not the job ofthe Bulletin to ask you for money, we hope that it shows you(and lets you enjoy once again) one of Swarthmore’s greatestgifts to you—an extraordinary experience of community.

—J.L.

Assisted suicidechanges doctor’s roleTo the Editor:As a physician who has spent thelast quarter-century working withfrail homebound elderly people, Iwould like to respond to Dr. TomPreston’s [’55] views on physician-assisted suicide (“The Future ofDying,” June 1997).

Now that the Supreme Court hasdetermined that no constitutionalright to physician-assisted suicideexists, the race to determine whichstate will first legalize this action isunderway. As the national debateintensifies, we are faced with a dras-tic change in what we have all heldas a basic truth: that life is valuableand is to be preserved.

A most important concern is therisk that vulnerable persons, espe-cially the frail aged, will be subject-ed to undue influence by others inmaking death decisions. There maybe a venal basis for family membersto seek a way to have an older rela-tive die; or a political agenda mayexist. When Richard Lamm, thenthe governor of Colorado, said sev-eral years ago that old people have“a duty to die and get out of theway,” he was surely not expressingmerely his own view. Policymakersand insurance companies are highlylikely to press for further legal stepsthat will lead to the early death ofolder persons rather than to pay forthose famous last six months of lifethat purportedly cost the healthsystem so dearly.

Assisted suicide changes the roleof doctors. No longer will the elder-ly be able to trust implicitly thattheir physicians will stand up forthem and not harm them. The fearthat the doctor may connive withthe family will lurk in the patient’smind in some situations. All physi-cians are placed in an equivocalposition, even those who know thatthey will never participate in anassisted suicide.

Deaths in younger persons, someof which are indeed disastrous andtragic, have been the prime concernof protagonists for physician-assist-ed suicide. However, the likelihoodof death in younger groups is mod-est compared to that in aged. Thereare ever-increasing numbers of

! L E T

2 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

PARLOR TALKI’m fascinated by the wide variety

of intentional groups we joinin order to better our lives.

older persons in this country whohave deteriorating conditions thatwill eventually lead to death. All ofus who have worked with the frailelderly know of situations wherefamilies were ambivalent or worseabout the survival of an aged par-ent. Pressure will be placed on doc-tors to cause death under new legalgrounds. We also will see subtledemands placed on older personsto agree to die. Thus the Right toDie will become the Duty to Die.

In its decision to allow physi-cian-assisted suicide, the 2nd Cir-cuit Court judges—taking a positionnow reversed by the SupremeCourt—leaned strongly on the factthat withdrawal of life support bydoctors is already legal. The EqualProtection Clause of the 14thAmendment was construed to meanthat because doctors are nowallowed to withdraw life support,leading to death of patients, theymay also assist in suicide. The 2ndCircuit judges simply passed overthe extremely obvious distinctionthat in withdrawal of life support itis the disease that kills; in physi-cian-assisted suicide, it is the doc-tor who is the killer.

Physicians are trained to pre-serve the lives and the good healthof their patients. Once physiciansare legally enabled to participate inkilling their patients, other abusesmust inevitably flow from this fun-damental concession.

PHILIP W. BRICKNER, M.D. ’50New York

Market-driven health careand assisted suicide don’t mixTo the Editor:The article by Tom Preston advo-cating the legalization of physician-assisted suicide ignored the rapidchanges in the health care market-place that make this a very danger-ous concept.

Many fear living on in intractablepain or attached to machines ortubes. Advocates of assisted suicideclaim that it gives control to thosewishing to avoid this fate. But Dr.Preston admits that current lawalready allows doctors to use allmeans to relieve pain, even if deathis hastened, and allows patients to

T E R S

SEPTEMBER 1997

Please turn to page 32

Shh! Did you hear that?!” We wereimmediately silent. But the myste-

rious noise that put us on alert sound-ed more like a water pipe than ournemesis: Swarthmore College PublicSafety. We relaxed and continued.

This night’s adventure had broughtus to the new Trotter Hall, still underrenovation in late June. At about mid-night we walked up to campus andfound its hall lights brightly lit and thefront door wide open. So, we took atour of the not-quite-finished building.Our intentions were harmless, but theillicit midnight tour was still prettyexciting. My first English classroomduring old Trotter’s final semester wasnearly finished—lights were hung, fur-niture in place. Otherparts of the buildingwere not so far along andwere strewn with build-ing materials, curioustools, and packaging.

Having thoroughlyinspected the contrac-tors’ progress, we left theway we came andreturned to the dark andquiet of a summer nightin Swarthmore.

For the 120 or so stu-dents who stayed for thethree months of summer, the campuswas a different and interesting place.Construction intensified dramatically,tearing up the grounds, encirclingsome sections in orange fencing andpaving others.

In places not affected by the exten-sive surgery, the campus was equallydramatic. Most students leave tooearly or arrive too late to see the outra-geous bloom of Kohlberg’s CosbyCourtyard or the Rose Garden,Crumhenge, or the Scott Amphithe-ater. All these places untouched byconstruction looked brighter, greener,and more alive than they do during theschool year. But they were silent, too.When the construction ceased for theday and the staff of the College left atnight, the whole campus was vacant.And then it was ours.

At first it felt very strange to walkaround the campus without seeinganybody. After some time, though, asense of proprietorship grew, and Ibecame accustomed to the quiet andempty spaces that felt like they were

ours to explore.Under the cover of darkness, we

certainly did explore. We foundCrumhenge under a full moon filledwith thousands of fireflies. The compli-cated grounds of the Scott ArboretumOffices, we discovered, are a goodplace for hide-and-seek. We made useof Crum Creek especially in the hotweather. Despite the taboo againstclimbing the trees, we spent manynights perched high in the old, knottyPurple Leaf Beech between McCabeand the Arboretum offices.

Some of our ventures into the near-ly deserted campus did not fare quiteas well. Our plan to get to the sixthfloor dome room of Parrish was quick-

ly abandoned when weencountered an impene-trable-looking lockeddoor on the fifth floor. Onone particularly hotnight, we managed to findan open, air-conditionedclassroom in Kohlberg towatch a movie on thelarge projection screens.Public Safety soon paidus a visit and scolded usmildly for not askingthem first—but they letus finish the movie.

Resident assistants and varsity ath-letes have just returned for the schoolyear, and the first-years and theneveryone else will soon follow. I amsurprised at how possessive I now feelabout the campus. The quiet, emptyplaces are being taken over by thereturning students who, like me, feelthat the campus belongs to them.

I am sure in a matter of weeks I willlearn to share again. However, spend-ing a summer in Swarthmore haschanged my relationship to this place.The returning students weren’t here tosee Trotter’s skeleton or the campus infull bloom. Many are surprised to seethe results of the construction projectsthat those of us who stayed watchedstep by step. Some places will remainmine, at least in memory. But I sup-pose this is the way it is for all of uswho spend time here.

I’m going to miss summer in Swarth-more—peace, quiet, no schoolwork toworry about. Just a whole, empty cam-pus to explore.

—Jim Harker ’99

3

P O S T I N G S

When theCollege staffleft at night,the wholecampus

was ours.


You, the members of the Class of 1997, are graduatingtoday in the midst of one of the most radical and per-vasive revolutions in human history—the globalization

of our world.Thirty years ago last week, when I graduated from college,

I set out around a world, vast stretches of which stillremained, as they had for millennia, only barely touched bythe ideas, economics, and culture of a global order. Thatmajority of the globe beyond the Rio Grande, beyond Hawaii,and beyond the borders of WesternEurope, was to us a terrain of adventure,at once romantic by virtue of its culturallure and intimidating by virtue of its geo-graphical and cultural remotenessand/or subjection to Communist rule.

The war in Southeast Asia was cen-trally on our minds—and, we feared, inour futures as well—but otherwise thosefurther stretches of the globe lay outsidewhat we imagined could ever be our per-sonal sphere of involvement and respon-sibility. Only specialized careers mighttake one there, or an idealistic mission tobring to the underdeveloped portion ofthe globe the technologies, insights, andvalues of the West. Names like Bucharestand Kiev, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai andTaipei, Bogota, São Paulo, Lagos, andNairobi rang with a mystery almost on apar with that of Timbuktu.

During the past 30 years, that relativeisolation, in place for the length ofhuman history, has been amazingly andsuddenly removed. Now hardly a townor village exists anywhere that is notlinked by phone and media—if not bythe Internet—to a new pervasive global order. Hardly a townor village exists anywhere whose financial, commercial, intel-lectual, artistic, and gastronomic life has not been fundamen-tally transformed by that new global order, whose centralcafe does not serve both coffee and Coca-Cola and offer con-versation infused with the events, expectations, and alluringpossibilities of a larger world.

Moreover, the names of that former era—such as Ceylon,Rhodesia, Saigon, and Peking—have been replaced by SriLanka, Zimbabwe, Ho Chi Minh City, and Beijing-—signalingthat the new order speaks in multiple voices, of which thoseof the West, though still very powerful, are now only a sub-set.

And, in penetrating every corner of our planet, the neworder has subsumed us as well, embedding our intellectual,cultural, and economic lives within its global context.

Unlike 30 years ago, it is highly likely that any career youchoose will engage you in that global world. And unlike 30years ago, it is highly likely that the contributions you willwant to make and the leadership you will assume willdepend in important measure on your embrace of it.

I urge you in the strongest terms to meet that global chal-lenge and responsibility.

At the same time, I assure you that your Swarthmore edu-cation constitutes a remarkable preparation for that task.The knowledge, analytic skills, and ethical consciousnessyou have developed here will enable you to grapple with thestructural and value complexities of our global order. Yourareas of particular expertise will provide the basis forrewarding exchange with individuals of similar interestacross it. Your ability to listen and to grasp others’ perspec-tives will equip you to build trust and shared understandingacross individual and cultural divides. And your proficiencyin foreign languages will open for you the even deeper under-standing that comes from grasping other points of viewthrough the categories of language and thought in which

they are conceived.Many of you have already begun to

acquire international experience.Thirty-three percent of you havestudied abroad. You internationalstudents who have come to Swarth-more have succeeded in the remark-able accomplishment of taking onand mastering an educational systemdifferent from your own. And forthose of you who are looking for-ward to your first trip around theworld, if your careers don’t immedi-ately take you there, Singapore Air-lines will—and at a fare that is only24 percent in inflation-adjusted dol-lars of what it cost in 1967! Amongthe benefits of globalization is easieraccess to the world.

But even a rich intellectual founda-tion, supplemented by internationalexperience, will not in itself ensureyour transformation from Renais-sance men and women to the globalpersons I urge you to become. Forthat global leap will require buildingon those skills and that experience

in at least three additional ways:First, I ask you to make use of the analytic precision and

flexibility with which you have approached new fields ofknowledge and new disciplines to break down any sense youmay have of the inapproachability of other cultural worlds.Use those very skills to move beyond exotic and alienatingstereotypes to an increasingly precise grasp of the actual dif-ferences in perspectives and priorities that distinguish thoseworlds from your own.

And even more importantly, use those very skills to moveto a recognition of where differences end and where the richarray of human commonalities begins—that rich array ofconceptual abilities, emotions, needs, and aspirations that allhuman beings share. As the myth of inscrutability dissolves,almost any cultural context can become a domain of effec-tive and satisfying personal engagement for you. A distin-

“The global person acts to open his or her ownnation not only to what it can teach but also to

what it can learn,” said President Bloom.

DE

NG

-JE

NG

LEE

COLLECTIONS W A R T H M O R E T O D A Y

Educating the Global PersonThe 1997 Commencement AddressBy President Alfred H. Bloom

SEPTEMBER 1997 5

DE

NG

-JE

NG

LEE

guishing characteristic of the global person is that he orshe arrives as confident in Mombasa and Manaus, as inMemphis and Minneapolis, that beyond the Airport Hiltonlies a world in which personal connections can be made,and shared goals identified and achieved.

Second, I ask you to make use of those carefully honedanalytic skills to explode the assumption that the most sig-nificant challenges facing our own society are somehowunique to us. Consider, for example, how many nations arestruggling, as we are, to overcome the historic marginaliza-tion of ethnic or racial groups and to create more inclusivedemocratic societies—nations ranging from Peru to Rwan-da to Bosnia, Israel, Sri Lanka, and Canada. Consider howmany other nations currently face severe pressures fromimmigration, from the urgent need to strengthen their edu-cational systems and reverse the degradation of their envi-ronments. Consider how many other nations face, as we do,unconscionable conditions of poverty and a steadilyincreasing disparity between their wealthy and poor.

A second distinguishing characteristic of the global per-son is that he looks at the world through a global frame-work that rejects a privileged and provincial view andattends not only to the commonalities that unite us all asindividuals, but to the commonalities that unite us in therealm of societal experience as well.

And that brings me to my third and final point. I ask youto make use of those same skills, which have served you sowell at Swarthmore, to shatter the assumption that there islittle in the way of experience and insight out there relevantto solving our problems at home.

Thirty years ago when I landed in Singapore, in Taiwan,in South Korea, and in Hong Kong, the poverty I witnessedbeyond the main squares was comparable to, or worsethan, that of Chester or North Philadelphia today. During

the past 30 years that poverty has been virtually eliminat-ed, with, moreover, no appreciable increase in the disparitybetween those at the lower and higher ends of economicsuccess.

Given the extent to which we all share in a commonglobal experience, I believe that it is morally indefensibletoday to claim, on the basis of a presumed sense of unique-ness and privilege, that approaches which have been soremarkably successful elsewhere are of no value to us here.Those nations have critical lessons to teach, regarding, forexample the central importance of investing in education,public health, and job creation.

And they stand as compelling proof that poverty can beeliminated, if the collective will is there.

A third distinguishing characteristic of the global personis that she acts to open her own nation not only to what itcan teach but also to what it can—and what it has theresponsibility to—learn.

In sum, I urge you to become the global persons thatyour careers, your societies, and your historic era require.There is no group of individuals to whom I would more con-fidently entrust a global world, and there are no individualswhom I would rather see at alumni events everywhere fromMelbourne, Malagasy, and Managua to our most esteemedMontreal.*

And don’t forget to enjoy that world as you engage it,and as you make it your home.

Congratulations on your graduation. And as the Chineseput it—yi lu shun feng—may the wind be behind, blowingsmoothly, for the entire journey you undertake!

*A reference to the students’ beautifully staged April Fool’s jokeregarding the presumed merger of Swarthmore into the Canadianuniversity system.


COLLECTION

Acting on a recommendation ofthe Librarian Search Committee,the new position of associateprovost for information serviceshas been created. ThomasStephenson, associate professorof chemistry, will hold the postfor the next three years. He willwork with the library, ComputingCenter, and Media Services staffsto see what areas of cooperation

and collaboration can be fostered among the three.The new position addresses the committee’s recom-

mendation that the College move “toward a single, inte-grated department of information services in theforseeable future...”

Stephenson’s new responsibilities will include adminis-tering the College’s efforts as part of the recent $1 millionAndrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for foreign languageinstruction. The grant, made jointly to the Modern Lan-guages departments of Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, andHaverford, will support a program to integrate newapproaches to teaching foreign languages. Facilities willbe upgraded for a common level of technical capability.

Lewis Elverson, longtime footballand track coach and former chair ofthe Department of Physical Educa-tion, died May 1.

The emeritus professor of physi-cal education for men began as apart-time football coach at the Col-lege in 1937 after his graduationfrom the University of Pennsylvania.The next year he was named headcoach. Elverson went on to compile

more wins than any other Swarthmore football coach, lead-ing the Garnet to league championships in 1965 and 1966.

Elverson also coached track and field from 1951 to 1978,recording a .545 winning percentage and the most winsever by a Swarthmore track coach. He was athletic directorfrom 1976 to 1978 and served as chair of the Physical Edu-cation Department before retiring in 1978. Elverson’s contri-bution to the College is memorialized by the Lew ElversonCoachship, established by former players to support thehead football coach’s position.

He is survived by his wife, Josephine Elias Elverson ’40,his son Thomas Elverson ’75, daughter Sara-Jo LeForge, andthree grandchildren.

Lew Elverson, coachfrom 1937 to 1978, dies

Stephenson to leadinformation services

Stephenson Elverson

Remember your freshman roommate?

Did you become friends for life, or were you readywithin days to throw him or her (along with his orher really, really annoying habits) out the window?

Chances are you at least tolerated each other, says MyrtWestphal, who directs the residential life program for theDean’s Office. She’s been involved in the pairing processfor six years, although for the last two Jennifer Leigh ’94, asdirector of student activities, has been doing the actualmatchups.

After an initial screening to find incoming students withspecial needs (mobility limitations or other medical prob-lems), the winnowing process begins with:

• Sex: “We don’t have coed housing by room,” saysWestphal, “although we do have coed halls.”

• Smokers: “There’s a whole group of people who saythey prefer living on a smoking hall, but there are a grow-ing number who are allergic to smoke and can’t be in thesame environment,” says Leigh.

• Sleeping habits: “This can be hard because the kidwho had to get up and catch the school bus at 6:30 a.m.thinks he’s early to bed and early to rise,” Westphal says.“And then he gets here and doesn’t need to do that any-more, and he turns into a midnight oil person.”

• Neatness: “We have a category of compulsively neatpeople that we try to make sure are with other people whofeel that order is important,” says Leigh.

After making those combinations, “there’s a big group ofpeople who pretty much go with the flow,” Leigh adds.“They’re in between in their habits, so they’re very flexible.

At this point we look forcharacteristics tomake sure theyhave at least twothings in com-mon: They like toparty, they’reathletes, they’reoutgoing andwould not do wellwith a shy room-mate, they’re sub-stance-free and needtime alone.”

Once personal habits aresorted through, Leigh says the next step is to bring aboutgeographical diversity. “You come to a school where peo-ple are from all over the world, and part of the learningexperience is to be with people different from yourselves.”

The process isn’t perfect, and a lot of the conflict seemsto begin at home with filling out the questionnaire. SaysWestphal: “We get some false information. In some casesthe parents fill out the questionnaires or they’ll look overtheir child’s shoulder and the child won’t admit to thingsthey don’t want their parents to know (such as he or shesmokes). And sometimes students reinvent themselves, fill-ing it out as the person they want to be, not who they are.”

Another problem that arises is cultural: people whohave different styles of dealing with anger and frustrationor different values about sharing and privacy.

But serious problems are few, she added, which shesays is a credit to the students. “There’s a great propensityon the part of incoming freshmen to make it work.”

SH

ER

RIJ

OH

NS

ON

7SEPTEMBER 1997

By Kenneth J. Gergen

Ihave just completed one of the most exciting semesterssince I began teaching at Swarthmore almost 30 yearsago. My exhilaration is largely the result of a new

course: Technology, Self, and Society.The course was designed to explore the impact of the

20th-century explosion in technology on individual and cul-tural life. Of particular concern are the “social technolo-gies”—from the telephone, automobile, and radio early inthe century to television, jet transportation, and computercommunication in recent decades—that have so fully insin-uated themselves into our daily lives.

Too frequently our reaction to such technologies ismerely to ask what is the cost or what new opportunity orentertainment is being provided? We seldom address theways in which these technologies alter traditional concep-tions of the self, intimacy, relationships, commitment, andcommunity, for example, and the ways in which theychange the character of daily relations, fam-ily life, education, and politics. It was pre-cisely to this kind of deliberation that thecourse was directed.

From the very beginning of the coursewe worked collaboratively. Because of thevastness of the topic and its freshly mintedcharacter, there was no way that I couldserve as a learned authority on all issues.(And besides, if the course was designed tofoster critical deliberation, then monologuewas not a promising option.) The studentsand I searched for means of generating apedagogy that resonated with the coursecontent. For example, we established com-puter-based discussion groups. Each weekstudents checked into their group andoffered preliminary opinions on the week’sreadings. Further, the class of 15 was divid-ed into smaller units responsible (with col-laborative input from me) for generatingclass activities relevant to the readings foreach week. It was this latter departure from traditionalclassroom practice that gave rise to some of the semester’smost engaging experiences.

For example, students made ingenious use of the newlyavailable computer classroom in Kohlberg Hall. One weekwe created a virtual classroom in which we welcomed intoour discussion a media guru from the West Coast. Onanother occasion we explored a hypertext program thatenabled us to see how an audience could work interactive-ly with a playwright to create a collaborative work. Stilllater we visited the Website of a prominent New York artistand contributed materials that she might use in forthcom-ing techno-based art. Video materials were frequentlybrought in to supplement class discussion, and certainweeks we found useful resources could be drawn fromWebsites scattered across the globe. One afternoon we allremained in our rooms and offices while we communicatedvia computers in a frenetically spiraling multi-logue. Ineffect, the semester allowed us to create, experience, and

reflect on electronically mediated life—from the local to theglobal.

The enthralling sense of exploration did not stop here.One prominent outcome of the technological explosion isthe realization of the limits of oral and literary traditions ofexpression. With technological innovation, we open newforms of representing and communicating knowledge.When words, numbers, sound, images, color can all be con-verted to a single, digital modality, layered and interlaced,and then placed in continuous motion, there is an explo-sion in our potentials for communication. It thus seemedappropriate to invite students to use their term projects assites for communicative exploration. Although they werefree to write a traditional scholarly paper (and some wrotevery fine ones), I encouraged the class to take risks. If notnow, when?

At the semester’s end, I was treated to a galaxy of shoot-ing stars. Robert Dull ’97 wove prominentcourse themes into a stage production thatmade innovative use of technology to criti-cize the technologizing of human relation-ships. The play was subsequently present-ed to the student body. Kate Bernstein ’99took her camcorder into the field to gener-ate a fascinating ethnography of Rave cul-ture, where teenagers are drawn togetherby a dance and drug fusion in which tech-nological imagery and sounds play a keyunifying role. Richard Delgado ’97 generateda hypertext program enabling “the reader”to rove through the e-mail archive of classdialogues and to trace the range of intricateconnections. Meghan Falvey ’98 fabricateda series of prints bringing critical attentionto technology’s functioning in society. Herproject included posting these prints in var-ious center-city sites. Carew Kraft ’99 andJennifer Weiss ’98 each generated a collec-tion of paper fragments—bits of scholar-

ship, dialogue, drawings, and more—each treating differentissues raised by the course. The collections themselvesportrayed the fragmentation of knowledge generated bypresent-day technology. (The curious reader may hear afragment from Kraft’s postmodern answering machine bydialing [610] 328-8690.) Kylian Robinson ’97 treated theclass to a massive painting that, when illuminated by anaccompanying paper, explored the limits placed on commu-nication and understanding by using printed language.

As this course made apparent, the most exciting aspectof teaching is the opportunity to learn. One prominent les-son was that when students are given an opportunity tocreate forms of pedagogical practice tailored to a body ofmaterial, the old traditions of lecture/discussion seem morerelevant to a social and technological context that is rapid-ly deteriorating. Students growing up with unparalleledtechnological sophistication in a new information environ-ment are invaluable resources in creating a new vocabularyof educational practice.

Technology and cultural life: an adventure in education

Kenneth J. Gergen, the Gil andFrank Mustin Professor ofPsychology, is teaching a

new course called Technology,Self, and Society.

DE

NG

-JE

NG

LEE

acters spoke in pidgin English, which we’ve learned to fig-ure out in print but is impossible for us to understandwhen spoken quickly.”

• “Ghanaians are never in a hurry to do anything untilthey start driving—then nothing stops them.”

• “I am teaching dance composition to second- andthird-year students. They all come with a knowledge of thedances of their own ethnic group and some acquaintancewith the dances of other groups in Ghana. However, theyhave never been exposed to modern dance, so myapproach thus far asks them to draw on their traditionalvocabularies and combine them with more pedestrianmovement. Assignments using Ghanaian proverbs, poems,and musical structures all yielded wonderful results. Weseem to be developing a good sense of ensemble.”

• “The festival in Abidjan. We spent almost as muchtime getting ready to go to the Côte d’Ivoire as we didthere. It took an entire week to get our residency permitfrom Ghana extended, get a visa from the Côte d’Ivoireembassy, and pick up our tickets. I asked the ticket agent iffood was served on the flight. She told me ‘sometimes.’”

• “There is one television channel in the country, GTV,which carries CNN in the early morning and late evening.CNN also sometimes comes in on another channel, butthere is no obvious pattern to the times.”

• “Yesterday we watched a rehearsal/performance of adance and drumming troupe of children and teenagers ledby Sorelle’s drummingteacher, Johnson Kwad-zo Kemeh. During themore than 21/2 hoursthat the childrenrehearse, more peoplekeep coming. It is clearthat these sessions func-tion simultaneously tobuild community, toentertain, and to passon traditions. At the endof this marathon, Sorelleand I were drawn intothe act, drumming anddancing. People seemedgenuinely surprised anddelighted by our knowl-edge and efforts.”

• “As difficult aswe’ve at times found theadjustments to Ghana,now that we’re gettingto leave we realize thatit will not be easy toreacclimate to the Unit-ed States. We really didslow down. The idea ofdriving on the express-ways around Philadel-phia is truly terrifying.”


COLLECTIONEditor’s Note: Sharon Friedler, professor and director of theCollege’s dance program, her husband, Louis, professor of math-ematics at Beaver College, and their 15-year-old daughterSorelle, were in Ghana from January to June. Friedler was invit-ed to teach dance composition at the University of Ghana byProfessor Kwabena Nketia, director of the university’s Interna-tional Center for African Music and Dance, who was Cornell Vis-iting Professor at Swarthmore in 1995. Along with her teachingduties, Friedler gathered information for a book on traditionaldances of Ghana and how they are learned in the villages, atthe university, and taught cross-culturally. During their stay inAfrica, the family sent e-mails chronicling their adventures in theclassroom and out. Here are some excerpts:

• “We’re here, safe, and are slowly becoming acclimated tothe heat and the very different culture. We are living in ahouse that by American standards would be a modest middle-class house that a college faculty member could afford. Weasked if the house had air conditioning and were told the bed-rooms had. Wrong question. We should have asked if there isdependable electricity.”

• “Everything takes five times as long as it would at home.At home things run efficiently, but salespeople and clerks areoften rude. Here nothing runs efficiently, but everyone is

friendly.”• “This weekend we

went to Agogo, a villagenortheast of Kumasi. OnSunday (after the chief fedus two meals and thentalked to us about theimportance of the chieftan-cy) we went out into thecourtyard where about 250people, mostly in tradition-al dress, watched and lis-tened to a spectacle ofdrumming and dance. Mostof the dances we saw werefrom the Akan (Ashanti)tradition and their handgestures are usuallyproverbial in nature, suchthings as ‘I lean on yourwisdom’ in relation to thechief.”

• “We saw the play Mid-night Hotel by Nigerianplaywright Femi Oshfisan.It was a ‘bedroom farce,’which we found moderate-ly funny but the audiencethought was hysterical.Part of our problem waslanguage: One of the char-

Dance Professor Sharon Friedler (left) performs Adowa, atraditional dance of the Agogo region of Ghana, with anunnamed subchief at a durbar, a festival or celebration.

E-mail from Ghana

SEPTEMBER 1997 9

Women’s lacrosse team earnsfirst-ever postseason berthThe women’s lacrosse team reached the postseason forthe first time in school history. Posting an 11-6 record, theGarnet made its first-ever appearance in the ECAC DivisionIII Mid-Atlantic Championships. The Garnet was defeatedby Hartwick College, 14-11, in a semifinal contest. Swarth-more opened the season by winning its first five games,earning a No. 9 ranking in the IWLCA poll. Highlighting theseason was the Garnet’s first-ever victory over Ursinus Col-lege, a 14-12 decision, and the first victory over Franklin &Marshall since 1988. Led by Holly Baker ’99 (42 goals, 24assists, 66 points), Kristen Osborne ’97(25 goals, 20 assists, 45 points), and Ali-cia Googins ’00 (43 goals), the Garnetposted its fourth consecutive seasonwith 11 or more victories. Lia Ernst ’97(32 goals) and Kelly Wilcox ’97 werenamed to the USWLA All-Americansquad. Ernst, Wilcox, Baker, and LauraStarita ’97, and Samantha Peltz ’97 werenamed to the All-Centennial Conferencesquad.

The men’s and women’s track andfield squads both posted successfulmeet records. The men went 11-0 andfinished in second place at the Centenni-al Conference Championships, while thewomen went 11-1 and finished in thirdplace at the conference championships.In their final Centennial ConferenceChampionships, seniors Eric Pakurarand Shan Sutherland both brought homethe gold. Pakurar was a repeat champ,winning the 400-meter hurdles in a timeof 0:55.49, and Sutherland won the polevault, clearing a height of 12'11.5". Onthe women’s side, it was freshmanDesiree Peterkin who led the way for theGarnet. Peterkin broke the school, meet, and conferencerecords with a 37'6" triple jump to qualify for the NCAADivision III Championships. Peterkin, along with DanielleDuffy ’98, Catherine Laine ’98, and Jill Wildonger ’97, setschool, meet, and conference records in winning the 4x100-meter relay in a time of 0:50.29. Duffy was a repeat champin the 400-meter run, winning in a time of 1:00.81. Laine fin-ished second in 100-meter hurdles and third in the triplejump, qualifying for nationals in both events. At the nation-al championships, Peterkin became the first Swarthmorewoman to earn All-American honors by finishing in eighthplace with a jump of 36’11.5”.

The men’s tennis team reached the second round of theNCAA Division III East Regional Tennis Championships, fin-ishing 12th in the nation. Playing one of the toughest sched-ules in the nation, the Garnet posted an 8-9 record, earninga seventh seed in the tournament. Swarthmore squared offagainst 10th-seeded Rochester in the opening round, knock-ing off the Yellowjackets 4-3. Roger Werner ’98, Ed Ernst ’98,and Jon Temin ’00 were all victorious in their singles match-es, and the doubles teams of Werner and Ernst and Temin

and Sascha Sheehan ’00 gave the Garnet the doubles point.Advancing into the second round, Swarthmore ran intotheir nemesis, the second-seeded Amherst Lord Jeffs, los-ing a 4-2 decision.

The women’s tennis team opened the season with a 6-3victory over Peace College, but a combination of injuriesand inexperience saw them finish the season at 3-13 overalland 2-8 in the Centennial. Wendy Kemp ’99 led the Garnetwith a 10-5 overall record. The sophomore posted one ofthe best conference marks of the season, going 8-2 againstCentennial opponents. At the Centennial Championships,Neena Shenai ’98 was the lone Swarthmorean to advance tothe second round. Shenai and Elena Rosenbaum ’98 were

named to the Centennial AcademicHonor Roll.

After losing six starters to graduation,the baseball team used the 1997 seasonas a rebuilding year. The Garnet record-ed a 5-28 overall mark and went 4-14 inthe Centennial, finishing strong, winningtwo of the final three contests. A sign ofgood things to come came on the finalday of the season, as Steve Farneth ’00threw a no-hitter, blanking Haverford 8-0. It was the first no-hitter by a Swarth-more pitcher since 1978. Pat Straub ’97came in from the outfield to fill the voidas catcher, led the Garnet with a .417batting average, and was named to theFirst Team All-Centennial Conference forthe second consecutive season. JeremyBonder ’97 hit .381 on the season andwas named Second Team All-Centennial.

The softball team finished the seasonwith a doubleheader sweep of Haver-ford to post a 4-25 record. MichelleWalsh ’98 and Apryl Dunning ’99 wereboth named to the Second Team All-Centennial, finishing 2-3 respectively inthe conference batting race. Walsh hit

.495, leading the conference with 14 doubles and seventriples, and Dunning hit .488 and placed fourth in the con-ference with 30 runs.

The golf team recorded their first victory since 1995 inthe season opener, a 394-407 decision over PhiladelphiaPharmacy. The squad finished the season at 3-9-1. DavidMcKechnie ’97 and Ben Schall ’97 were named to the Cen-tennial Conference Academic Honor Roll.

The men’s lacrosse team looked to use the 1997 seasonas a rebuilding year after the graduation of eight startersfrom last year’s squad. Offensively the Garnet was led byPat Donaghy ’99, who recorded team-highs in goals (11),assists (seven), and points (18). Tucker Zengerle ’00, one offour freshman starters, stepped to the forefront earningSecond Team All-Centennial Conference recognition for hisstrong defensive play. Zengerle was the lone freshman to beselected to the all-conference squad.

Haverford snapped Swarthmore’s two-year run as HoodTrophy champions, earning a 11.5 to 7.5 victory. Thisspring men’s tennis, women’s lacrosse, and softball earnedfull points, while baseball split a point.

Holly Baker ’99 helped the women’slacrosse team reach its first-ever postsea-

son play with 42 goals and 24 assists.

MA

RK

DU

ZEN

SK

I

Above: The SwarthmoreProject, now in its third year,brings two choreographersand six to eight dancers tocampus for two weeks ofresidency to create newworks. The artists return tocampus during the academicyear for performances andworkshops. Here dancersrehearse a work by New Yorkchoreographer Wil Swanson.

Swarthmore Coach KarenYohanan Borbee runs 10- to15-year-old lacrosse playersthrough practice. Borbee’sFirst Draw day camp is amonga half-dozen sports campsthat teach everything frombaseball to scuba diving.

SUMMERTIMEand the livin’ is lively, boisterous, bustling, dusty,cacophonous—and just try to find a place to park.

Time was, between the end of AlumniWeekend and the beginning of freshmanorientation you could shoot a cannon

from Trotter to the train station and not be inmuch danger of hitting anything.

Boy, have things changed.In part some activities, such as myriad

sports camps and local dance school recitals,generate extra income for the College’s bud-get through facility rentals. In part some meetthe College’s commitment to act in the bestinterests of the community, such as UpwardBound and the Bridges Project of theChester/Swarthmore College CommunityCoalition. In part the campus was dotted withorange construction fencing as roofs werereplaced, walks repaired, and theTrotter/North Campus project finished.

Add to this legions of visitors, someprospective students and their families, somedoing family research in Friends HistoricalLibrary, some holding retreats, and weddings,wedding, weddings.

Since 1964 the College’s UpwardBound program has helped preparestudents from surrounding communi-ties for post–high school education.Here Anthony Jones offers advice inbusiness letter writing during the pro-gram’s six-week residential school.This year 50 students took part.

Photographs by Eleftherios Kostans


Area residents enjoy aconcert in the ScottOutdoor Auditorium. Onone Saturday each inJune, July, andAugust, “An Eveningin the Arboretum”invites people tobring a picnic dinner,stroll the campus on aguided tour, and enjoyfree entertainment.

Above: The Summer CommunityLearning Project, created by sixrising juniors in the EducationProgram, invited the adolescentfemale relatives of Collegefaculty and staff to take part ina two-week program that focusedon building self-esteem and self-understanding. Here the girlsperform a skit on having funtogether to the song “Lean on Me.”

SUMMERTIME

In June workers removedthe flagstone from thewalk in front of ParrishHall. It and the upper partof Magill Walk wererenovated to provide newdrainage, to create asubstructure that allowsaccess for heavy equip-ment (such as fire trucks)without destroying thewalk, and to comply withthe Americans withDisabilities Act. Someof the original stonefrom both walks wassalvaged and used torebuild Magill Walk.

Below: On an averageday during the summer,the Admissions Officewelcomes about 100prospective studentsand their families. Afterinformation sessionsand interviews, tours ofcampus—this one led byHugh Weber ’00—are derigueur.

SUMMERTIME

Music Professor John Alston runsmembers of the Chester Boys Chorusthrough vocal exercises during its six-week summer camp. Thirty handpickedboys rehearse for part of the daybefore karate lessons, tutoring in mathand reading, swimming, and baseball.Alston’s aim is to strengthen the boys’characters as well as their voices.

Left: A Quaker-styled commitmentceremony joins Adrianne Pierce ’84(right) and her partner, Laura Goodwin,in the Scott Outdoor Auditorium. Everyweekend is booked with weddings—andmany newlyweds who want their formalportraits taken in campus gardens.

As is the case every summer,faculty—mainly in the naturalsciences—conduct research aidedby Swarthmore students. Seniors(l to r) Nancy Koven, Kim Lombardo,and Anjolie Idicula prepare laboratoryrats for memory experiments inPsychology Professor AllenSchneider’s (in background) lab.

Below: Arts and crafts were part ofday camps run by Future Stars, anorganization that brings hundredsof youngsters to campus for sportstraining as well as weeklong ses-sions that combine artistic, athlet-ic, musical, and cultural activities.

Jane is preparing for an elegant dinner party. Fordessert she intends to make a Grand Marnier souffle.She’s wondering whether all of the elaborate andinvolved steps in the recipe are really necessary.She’d like to experiment, to see if the work can besimplified. But she won’t experiment today. Todayshe’ll follow the recipe as she has before, becauseshe wants a souffle that works.

Jack is a subsistence farmer. He wonders whethera different method of cultivation might produce alarger yield. He’d like to experiment too. The prob-lem is that his crops feed his family, and if his experi-ment fails, his family may starve. So he won’t risk it.

The point of these examples is twofold. First,there is no substitute for experimentation for unlock-ing the world’s secrets. But second, experimentationcarries risks. If we actually care about results—alight souffle or an abundant crop—we can’t alwaysafford to experiment.

Yet the commitment to experimentation hasenabled science to transform our understanding ofthe world. To cope with risk, science invented adomain for experimentation that is essentially riskfree: the laboratory, a place in which the pure questfor knowledge can be separated from its applied con-sequences. Engineers can’t do experiments with thebridges they build. But they can do experiments inlaboratories that lead to new techniques of bridgedesign.

Schools are—or should be—laboratories too. Stu-dents striving to achieve mastery should experimentwith the materials they study, exploring new ways tothink and talk and write about them. Even if thesenew ways prove unproductive, much will have beenlearned from the effort. Real mastery in the class-room demands risk taking; it demands experimenta-

tion. And when, on occasion, experiments inlearning lead to new ways of thinking that are areal improvement on the old ways, everybodybenefits.

Yet in many high school classrooms todayexperimentation is discouraged because so muchis riding on the results. Among today’s high-achieving high school students, the future seemsto depend on getting into selective colleges oruniversities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford—orSwarthmore. Despite the fact that these institu-tions now cost almost $30,000 a year, every oneof them has been experiencing an all-time recordnumber of applicants, to the point that applica-tions now outnumber places by more than 10 toone. (This year Swarthmore received more than4,000 applications for fewer than 400 places. Har-vard sifted through more than 18,000 to find 1,600new students.)

Why such intense competition? It is probably areflection of a widespread belief that the UnitedStates has become, in economist Robert Frank’swords, a “winner-take-all society.” For the fewwho make it to the very top, untold glories andunimaginable salaries await. For everyone elseit’s going to be a life of perpetual struggle anduncertainty. With the perceived stakes this high,any rational person will do whatever is necessaryto get a leg up on the competition. And of coursethis concern with being the “winner” doesn’t stopwhen the admissions letter arrives; it surely con-tinues all the way through college, if not all theway through life.

Though a good deal is now being written aboutthe unfortunate consequences of living in a “winner-take-all society,” the focus is characteristically on thelosers. I’m focusing here on the winners. Those whoapply to elite colleges and universities are hardly arandom sample of our national high school seniorclass. They are the best students at their respectivehigh schools. Almost every one of them is goodenough to succeed at Harvard or Swarthmore, butonly one in 10 will be given the chance.

What does such intense competition do to thekids who win? I believe it turns the high school class-


Barry Schwartz: Whyselective colleges shouldbecome less selective—and get better students.

Is“good enough”good enough

for Swarthmore?Two views of the college admissions “rat race”

1

SEPTEMBER 1997 17

room into the equivalent of a subsistence farm, wherethe stakes are so high that students can’t afford to takerisks. Everything they do is calculated to produce bet-ter credentials—high grades, great SAT scores, impres-sive extracurricular activities. Such intense competi-tion sacrifices risk taking, intellectual curiosity, and thedesire for mastery on the altar of demonstrable suc-cess—a light souffle. As a result, even though on paperthese applicants look better than ever before, theymay actually be learning less.

Thus by making themselves so competitive, ourelite colleges and universities are subverting their ownaims. They are admitting students who have done thewrong things for the wrong reasons in high school andwho are likely to be disappointing students in college.Is there anything, other than hand-wringing, to bedone? After all, these top schools can only admit somany students, and if 10 times that many want tocome, competition seems inevitable.

Not so. There is a simple step that elite institutionscould take that would dramatically reduce competitionand thus change the distorted adolescence that manyof our most talented students now experience. All thatis required is this: When Swarthmore gets its 4,000applications (or Harvard its 18,000), these schoolsshould screen the applications only to decide which ofthe applicants is good enough to be admitted. In thecase of Swarthmore, this might reduce the pool to, say,2,000. Then, these 2,000 names could be placed in ametaphorical hat, and the “winners” drawn at randomfor admission. While a bright high school studentmight have to distort her life substantially be seen asthe “best” (if that is what admission to a place likeSwarthmore requires), she won’t have to distort herlife nearly so much if all that is required is that she be“good enough.”

This modest proposal may seem preposterous atfirst, but it isn’t. There is little doubt that a randomfifth of the 2,000 applicants that survived an initialscreening would make a fine first-year class at Swarth-more. While admissions professionals like to believethat they have the discernment and diagnostic abilityto look at 2,000 wonderful applicants and pick 375 ofthe superwonderful from them, there is a large litera-ture on human decision-making that makes clear thatpeople in such positions are much more confident oftheir abilities than the data warrant. In other words,picking one-fifth of the qualified applicants at randommight be just as good a way of producing a great classas the hair-splitting scrutiny of folders that is the pres-ent practice.

With a procedure like this, the desperate efforts byhigh school students to climb to the top on the backsof their classmates could stop. Schools could onceagain be places for experimentation. Learning couldonce again be driven by curiosity rather than competi-tion. Adolescents could once again devote at leastsome of their time to figuring out what kind of peoplethey are and want to be. The result, I’m convinced,would not be worse students but better ones. !

Roll the dice ... “In many high school classroomstoday, experimentation is discouraged because somuch is riding on the results,” says Barry Schwartz. Heproposes that colleges like Swarthmore reduce thepressure on high school students by setting some basicqualifications for admission and then choosing theentering class at random. Schwartz is the Dorwin P.Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Actionand associate provost of the College. His most recentbook is The Costs of Living: How Market FreedomErodes the Best Things in Life (W.W. Norton). Theviews expressed in this article are his and do notreflect Swarthmore admissions policy.

ELE

FTH

ER

IOS

KO

STA

NS

It’s well-known that Swarthmore College is highlyselective in its admissions—which simply meansthat we receive many more applications from quali-fied applicants than we have spaces to admit. This isnothing new for Swarthmore, which has been a com-petitive school for a very long time. Yet in recentyears, preparing for admission to a first-rank collegehas come to be viewed as an academic grind thatrewards dutifulness instead of fostering intellectualindependence and curiosity.

No one—especially a dean of admissions—candeny that there is some truth to this. But the answeris not to randomize or mechanize the admissionsprocess, but rather to make it even more personaland more focused on the strengths, talents, andstartling human qualities that distinguish the beststudents from those who are merely building animpressive résumé. If college admissions is indeed arat race for young people (and I think it is for manyof them), then it is incumbent on our most competi-tive and selective schools to humanize their admis-sions processes so that these bright teenagers areseen less as numbers on a graph and more as thecomplicated, interesting, and sometimes vulnerablekids that they are.

Barry Schwartz is correct when he says thatexperimentation and risk taking are qualities that weshould encourage in our young people, and Swarth-more’s admissions process is designed to discoverexactly these qualities among our applicants. Thequestion is not whether students are “packaged,”but how well Swarthmore’s team of admissions pro-fessionals and alumni volunteers can come to knowthem as individuals, finding and ultimately admittingthose who are especially bright, intellectuallyengaged, and able to ask their own questions.

Admission to Swarthmore is indeed highly com-petitive. This fall’s entering class—the Class of2001—illustrates this better than almost any class inrecent memory. The College received completedapplications from 4,270 candidates, of whom weoffered admission to 994. About 38 percent of thoseoffered admission chose to enter Swarthmore, givingus an entering class of 382 students. (Note that 146of these were admitted during our two early admis-sions periods in December and January, with the restgetting the word in late March.) Overall, fewer thanone in 10 applicants for the Class of 2001 actuallyarrived on campus this month—and what a classthey are.

Being a highly selective college requires those of

us in admissions to make complicated and diffi-cult decisions about human beings. We all knowthat the best decisions are made by people whohave the most complete information, and atSwarthmore this means more than just compar-ing high school grades and test scores to createstatistical profiles of the candidates. It certainlymeans more than a thumbs-up or thumbs-downon whole groups of applicants—determiningwhich are “good enough” to do the work atSwarthmore and which are not. An admissionsprogram based on such a standard neither meetsthe needs of the anxious 17- and 18-year-olds whoapply nor the needs of the College as an institu-tion.

Swarthmore’s admissions process tries toreflect the humane values of a Quaker-foundedCollege by making every attempt to understandand respect each applicant as an individual. Ourperson-to-person approach makes this possible.While many colleges and universities have cutback on personal interviews, Swarthmore hasadded to its interviewing staff in recent years.Though we encourage prospective students tovisit our beautiful campus, Swarthmore admis-sions deans also travel extensively to meet guid-ance counselors and prospective students intheir own schools and communities. Each deanconcentrates on a particular geographic region,gaining an understanding not just of what appli-cants from that region look like on paper but ofwhere they are from and how their schools orcommunities have shaped them as individuals. Inaddition, hundreds of alumni interviewers aroundthe world provide personal contact with prospec-tive students, answering their questions aboutSwarthmore and helping us evaluate their poten-tial contributions to the College. By the time anapplicant’s folder is complete and the deans’ dis-cussions begin, we have tried to build as full apicture of a unique human being as we can.

Because of our individual approach, we believethat we can discern the difference between the“packaged” candidate and the ones who are trulycurious, intellectually excited, and academicallyable. We also come to know their schools, and insome cases, their teachers. The suggestion thatapplicants to Swarthmore are actually “learningless” while they “look better than ever before”ignores the intellectual risk taking and outstand-ing teaching found in many honors and advancedplacement courses—both in public and privateschools—all across the country. The difficulty comes(and this is another reason to keep the process on ahuman scale) when we find a bright, motivated stu-dent who comes from a less advantaged schoolwhere the teaching may not be as good. Then, to betrue to our values, we have to dig deeper, learnmore, and occasionally give greater weight to poten-tial than to performance. The meritocracy of the SAT


Robin Mamlet: Ourpersonal approach isbetter—both for thekids and the College.2

SEPTEMBER 1997 19

and the grade point average can only go so far in pre-dicting success at Swarthmore. Some students whomight not be deemed “good enough” under theseobjective criteria in fact turn out to thrive—evenstar—at the College.

As a liberal arts institution, we are particularly con-cerned that each entering class not merely be com-posed of intelligent, energetic, and highly qualifiedyoung men and women whose needs will be met bySwarthmore, but that these students in turn are able tomeet the needs of the College itself. For us, admissionsis a two-way street. Naturally we seek great studentswho will thrive in the intense intellectual atmospherehere, who will sustain the College’s academic excel-lence and make its classrooms come alive. But we alsoseek students who will bring their own gifts to Swarth-more and its many aspects, some of which are notstrictly academic but all of which contribute to thegestalt of this singular small liberal arts college.

We need string players for the orchestra, Latinscholars for the Classics Department, and, yes, footballplayers for the Garnet Tide. We need mathematicians,philosophers, artists, engineers, English speakers, andpeople for whom English is a second (or even a third)language. We especially need students with unusualpersonal qualities who will provide the spark for thesatire magazine, the steady counsel of the residentassistant, the leadership for student government, orthe compassion to become involved in the larger com-munity beyond the gates of the College. And finally weneed all kinds of diversity—socioeconomic, racial, eth-nic, and geographic. Such diversity not only brings awide variety of perspectives and backgrounds to theCollege but also sends Swarthmore’s superb educa-tion, critical thinking skills, and ethical concerns backout there to serve a much wider world four years later.

College admissions offices—like it or not—are thegatekeepers of access to privilege in a society that, asPaul Fussell has correctly observed, has replacedEurope’s heriditary ranks and titles with a “mechanismof snobbery” based on who has gone to the best uni-versity. There is no question that we are engaged in aform of social engineering, especially in first-rank insti-tutions like Swarthmore. Whether or not the propermission of higher education is to re-engineer societyitself—a question that is the subject of vigorousnational debate—we must consciously and humanely“engineer” each entering class to assure that a Swarth-more education remains broad and rich and deep in allthe ways that reflect our values as an institution. Lastyear more than 4,000 young people knocked on ourdoor and asked to be a part of that.

“Good enough,” no matter where you set the bar, isnot good enough for Swarthmore. As imperfect ashuman decision making is, it is better to touch thelives of individuals through their teachers, theirschools, their communities, and their families—andthrough their own voices. Only after we have doneeverything possible to know and understand them canwe make the difficult choices that must be made. !

Read the folders ... “Swarthmore’s admissions processtries to reflect the humane values of a Quaker-foundedcollege by making every attempt to understand andrespect each applicant as an individual,” says RobinMamlet, who became dean of admissions in 1996. Shepreviously served as director of admissions at TheLawrenceville School in New Jersey and as dean ofadmissions and financial aid at Sarah Lawrence College.The folders? Those are just A through Br....

ELE

FTH

ER

IOS

KO

STA

NS

Sitting in his tidy office at Har-vard’s John F. Kennedy Schoolof Government, Robert Putnam

’63 doesn’t strike you as a “publicintellectual.” In fact if it weren’t for theuniversity press books and volumesof policy journals that line the narrowroom’s bookshelves, you wouldn’teven guess that Putnam was an aca-demic. With his red hair and closelytrimmed beard that stretches in a thinline around the bottom of his face,Putnam more resembles an Amishelder than a professor of government.

But, as befits one of those rarescholars whose influence extendsbeyond academe and into popularpublic debate, “public intellectual” is alabel Putnam now wears. He has beensummoned to consult with PresidentClinton. (“It was exactly like a goodSwarthmore seminar,” Putnam says oftheir meetings, “lots of intelligent dis-cussion back and forth, people mak-ing strong arguments and listening toone another.”) His ideas have heavilyinfluenced two of Clinton’s State of theUnion addresses and were no doubtpartially responsible for Clinton con-vening last May’s Summit for Ameri-ca’s Future in Philadelphia. His nameis dropped frequently on op-ed pagesand public affairs shows. He evenreceived the imprimatur of Peoplemagazine, America’s ultimate arbiterof celebrity, which feted him in a fawn-ing profile.

What accounts for Robert Putnam’snotoriety? What about him couldsimultaneously interest Bill Clinton

and People magazine? Believe it ornot, his academic ideas. In 1993 Put-nam published a deceptively slim vol-ume titled Making Democracy Work:Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Haileda classic in The New York Times BookReview, Making Democracy Work rep-resented the culmination of a two-decade study of regional governmentin Italy by Putnam and two colleagues.In the book Putnam came to theunsurprising conclusion that govern-ments in the economically thrivingNorth of Italy outperformed those inthe economically backward South. Allin all, this sounds like a solid if unre-markable work of social analysis. Butwhat caused a stir was Putnam’s inter-pretation of this phenomenon.

Instead of settling on an economicor political explanation for the govern-mental performance discrepancy, Put-nam sought a social one. Using a slewof statistical measures and a rigorous-ly empirical analysis, Putnam rea-soned that the superior quality of gov-ernance in Italy’s North wasattributable to the region’s higher lev-els of something Machiavelli calledvirtu civile (“civic virtue”)—a public-spiritedness among citizens that mani-fested itself in their tendency to formsmall-scale, frequently nonpoliticalassociations. Borrowing from Toc-queville, Putnam argued that thesecivic associations furnish the citizenrywith the trust and cooperation—quali-

ties that fall under the rubric of “socialcapital”—that are essential to strongdemocratic governments. In Italy’sNorth, people tend to belong to theseassociations, and in the South, theydo not. “Good government in Italy,”Putnam concluded, “is a by-product ofsinging groups and soccer clubs.”

While it advanced an interestingand provocative thesis, MakingDemocracy Work remains a typicallyobscure academic book about a gov-ernment and society in a foreign coun-try. Though it was well-receivedamong social scientists, this was stillnot the stuff of cultural celebrity. ButPutnam’s study of Italy had convincedhim that social capital is, quite literal-ly, what makes democracies work. Sowhat he did next made sense: Heapplied his theory of social capital tothe United States.

Two articles, one brilliantly titled“Bowling Alone” (Journal of Democra-cy, January 1996) and another called“The Strange Disappearance of CivicAmerica” (The American Prospect,Winter 1996), contained his initialobservations. They were not pretty.Culling data from a variety of sources,including survey research and associ-ation membership rolls, Putnam con-cluded that over the past severaldecades, as the advent of televisionhas privatized leisure time, Americanshave been rapidly disengaging fromcivic life. As bowling league participa-tion has declined, voter turnout hasdropped and church attendance hasfaltered. Associations as diverse as


“Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam’s argument that declining civicinvolvement is dangerous to American democracy, brought him

to the White House—and to the pages of People magazine.

By Jason Zengerle ’96

the League of Women Voters, the ElksClub, and the Red Cross have all expe-rienced precipitous declines in mem-bership.

He elucidates his premise late oneafternoon as the corridor outside hisoffice fills with students and profes-sors calling it a day. “Fundamentally,my argument about America is that avariety of social and technologicalchanges over the last generation haverendered obsolete a stock of Ameri-

can social capital, which is just jargonfor saying that because of television,and two-career families, and divorce,and Wal-Mart, and a number of otherfactors, people no longer feel comfort-able going to the PTA. The channelsthrough which people a generationago connected with their communitiesaren’t serving the purposes that theyused to. I think America is sufferingfrom a social capital deficit.” And with-out a solid base of social capital, Put-

SEPTEMBER 1997 21

Robert Putnam ’63, Hon. ’90, hastouched a national nerve with hisresearch on civic involvement.“Because of television, and two-career families, and divorce, andWal-Mart, and a number of otherfactors, people no longer feelcomfortable going to the PTA. Thechannels through which people ageneration ago connected withtheir communities aren’t servingthe purposes that they used to.”

©19

97P

ETE

RS

ER

LIN

G

nam thinks, America might well be introuble.

Putnam is not the first person toargue the importance of strong com-munity ties. Political theorists fromAristotle to Tocqueville to communi-tarians today have been usingabstract principles or anecdotal evi-dence to say largely the same thing.But Putnam, a social scientist bytrade, is one of the first to articulatethe point with statistical rigor. WhenPutnam frets that Americans are los-ing touch with their communities, heoffers a copious amount of data to jus-tify his concern. And when he pre-dicts that this weakening of civic lifebodes ill for American society, he canbase his prediction on his twodecades of research in Italy. WhilePutnam’s argument undoubtedly hasa certain gooey-eyed appeal—if wewere only just more involved in ourcommunities, the world would be amuch better place—his brief for it isfar from sentimental. Sifting throughthe myriad graphs and tables thataccompany his writings (he presentsmore than 50 of them in just 185 pagesof text in Making Democracy Work),it’s hard to accuse Putnam of soft-headed speculation.

To say that Robert Putnam’s imageof the lone bowler has struck a

chord with Americans would be agiant understatement. “I’ve writtenabout 50 articles in my life—a lot ofthem intellectually better than thisone,” Putnam admits. “But this piecehas gotten so much attention becauseso many Americans feel discontentabout the state of their connectionswith their communities.”

“Bowling Alone” has transformedPutnam from an academic (a promi-nent one, to be sure—he received anhonorary Doctor of Laws from Swarth-more in 1990) into a certified publicintellectual. His counsel is now soughtnot just by heads of state, but by pris-oners in federal penitentiaries whowrite him to ask about the implica-tions of civic engagement on theirlives once they are out of jail. He over-hears people in airport terminalsdebating about whether he is right orwrong. And inevitably his ideas takeon lives of their own.

From the time “Bowling Alone” firsttranscended the academic realm and

began receiving national press atten-tion, Putnam has been worried thathis arguments might be misconstruedor used to advance causes or agendaswith which he did not agree. “If you’retalking in a seminar and somebodymisunderstands your argument, youcan correct them on the spot,” Put-nam explains. “But if you’re speakingin a national context, you can’t imag-ine going around and trying to correct

everybody who’s misunderstood thisor that point.” Recognizing the futilityof micromanaging his theory, Putnamhas resisted the urge to weigh in onits various interpretations. Given itsinitial widespread acceptance, it hashad many.

Liberals originally embraced Put-nam’s theory because, as Putnam

intended, it gave them a way toaddress an issue that conservativeshad typically owned. America’s socialmalaise was not the result of ’60sexcesses but could be attributed tosomething more ideologically neutrallike a decline in community participa-tion. Liberals also liked Putnam forpragmatic reasons. As NicholasLemann wrote last year in an analysisof Putnam’s work for The AtlanticMonthly, “[It] suggests the possibilityof solving our problems through rela-

tively low-cost association-strengthen-ing local initiatives that don’t requirehigher taxes.”

Conservatives, to Putnam’s cha-grin, also seized on his theory—moreproof, they said, that big governmentis the problem. If democracies ulti-mately derive their strength fromlocal volunteer groups like bowlingleagues and Shriners, then there’s noneed for a strong central government.Furthermore, conservatives like Fran-cis Fukuyama argued, big governmentinitiatives actually discourage civicinvolvement as the public sectorcrowds out the philanthropy of theprivate sector.

After its initial spate of universalacclaim, however, both sides recog-nized that Putnam’s theory had anelastic ability to skewer not just theiropponents’ shibboleths but their ownas well. Some liberals turned on Put-nam when they realized that inherentin Putnam’s idea of stronger commu-nities was a criticism of the liberalrights revolution. While Putnam isquick to caution that he is not arguingfor a return to the 1950s, his ideas donot exactly place a primacy on theautonomy of the individual. To someliberals, this is heresy. Katha Pollit,writing in The Nation, went so far as tolabel Putnam “square.” Others playedthe guilt-by-association game, sayingthe most obvious manifestation ofPutnam’s cherished American procliv-ity for association is the militia move-ment. One such critic alluded to thebowling alley outings TimothyMcVeigh once made with his co-defen-dant in the Oklahoma City bombingtrial, Terry Nichols. “Perhaps wewould all have been better off if Mr.McVeigh had gone bowling alone,” hewrote.

Some conservatives, on the otherhand, could not countenance Put-nam’s indictment of television, which,taken broadly, can be seen as anindictment of the free market they socherish. As conservatives envision it,the free-market system is ultimatelydependent on the same privatizationof leisure time, brought about by tech-nological advances such as television,that in the end Putnam blames forcivic disengagement. If Americanswere to spend more of their nights atPTA meetings or choir practices, thenthey would spend less time in front of


After a spateof universal

acclaim, bothliberals andconservativesrealized thatPutnam’s theoryhad an elasticability to skewernot just theiropponents’shibboleths buttheir own as well.

their televisions being exposed toadvertisements or other cathode-rayinducements to consume. Volun-teerism is fine, these conservative crit-ics seemed to think, as long as itdoesn’t cut into profits.

Thus conservatives soon went onthe attack against Putnam, claimingthat America’s civic life was fine andthat his theory was bunk. Many citeda June 1996 report by the Roper Cen-ter’s Everett Ladd, which scrutinizedPutnam’s numbers and accused himof making statistical errors. Othersrelied on less authoritative sources,the most memorably absurd being aLos Angeles Times article headlined“Bowling Alley Tour Refutes Theory ofSocial Decline,” which reported onseveral thriving LA bowling alleyswhere bowling league participationhad declined but, because of birthdayand office parties, “nobody bowlsalone.”

That all of this back and forth doesnot terribly bother Putnam is par-

tial testament to an academic’s com-mitment to the dialectical process ofinquiry. “The academic conversa-tion—whether I’m in a Swarthmoreseminar room or the wider world ofthe academy—is not about someoneannouncing truth,” Putnam says. “It’sabout people stating points of view,listening to what their opponents orwhat all other people have to say, andthen reformulating their argument.”To this end, Putnam wrote his twoarticles, which contained his initialand incomplete thoughts on civicAmerica, to elicit both positive andnegative responses that he could thenprocess and incorporate into a bookhe is writing on the subject, BowlingAlone: Civic Disengagement in Americaand What to Do About It, due out in thecoming year from Simon & Schuster.“Some people have made some impor-tant insights that have led me andforced me to develop my thoughts indifferent ways,” he says.

But Putnam’s openness to criticismis also attributable to a somewhatnonacademic characteristic: He has asocial action agenda. While Putnambelieves academics should still con-cern themselves with developing sta-tistical techniques, learning formalmodels, and studying things that noone really cares about, he views his

work on civic life as part of a largereffort for social and political renewalin America—an effort in which hehopes others will enlist.

His work has sparked an academicgrowth industry in what can looselybe termed social capital studies. Sincehe wrote his two articles, a number ofsocial scientists have subsequentlylaunched their own projects on civicengagement. The American Prospect,

which ran Putnam’s second article,has seen its pages turn into a forumfor a debate on civic engagement, witha host of prominent academics(including University of California atSan Diego Professor Michael Schud-son ’69 and Swarthmore AssociateProfessor of Political Science RichardValelly ’75) weighing in with theirviews on the topic. All of this attentionbeing paid to his theory—and theproblem it seeks to address—pleasesRobert Putnam. In this sense he is notan academic who stakes out his turfand then bristles at the thought of anyintrusions onto it. Rather, Putnam islike a doctor who has diagnosed adeadly disease and is now hard atwork searching for a cure. That others

have joined him in this search, andmay indeed find a cure before hedoes, he finds heartening.

Putnam’s current focus is on dis-covering new channels through whichpeople can connect to their communi-ties and build social capital, since hisfindings of civic decline suggest thatthe old channels—like Rotary Clubsand bowling leagues—no longer dothe job. He looks back to the 1890s forinspiration. Then, as now, the countryhad just gone through a 30-year peri-od of dramatic economic, social, andtechnological change; and, like today,the changes had left Americanssearching for new civic institutions toreplace the ones rendered obsoleteby social transformations. Since Amer-icans in the 1890s were able to buildnew civic institutions, like the RotaryClubs and bowling leagues that haveonly recently faded away, Putnam hashope that Americans in the 1990s cando the same. “We need to think of newways through which we can connectwith our communities,” Putnam says.“We need to reinvent the Boy Scouts.”

Certainly Putnam’s work on civiclife has taken him in some interestingdirections, away from what might beconsidered traditional academic ter-rain. He has founded a group calledthe Saguaro Seminar, which hasbrought together 30 people with aninterest in civic life, ranging from Clin-ton adviser George Stephanopoulos toa community organizer from Oakland,Calif., to look for ways to replenishAmerica’s stock of social capital. Hehas also been traveling around thecountry to observe social capital for-mation at the grass roots. All of this,Putnam believes, is just part of hisjob. “I think the role of an academic isto listen carefully to what people haveto say about their experiences,” heexplains. “An academic then has theability to generalize from those experi-ences and share that message informs that people elsewhere canhear.” When you’re appearing in boththe Journal of Democracy and Peoplemagazine, you can be pretty confidentyour message is being heard. n

Jason Zengerle ’96 was assistant editorof The American Prospect fromSeptember 1996 until August 1997. Heis currently on the staff of The NewRepublic.

SEPTEMBER 1997 23

“We need to think of new waysthrough which we can connect withour communities,” Putnam says. “Weneed to reinvent the Boy Scouts.”

©19

97P

ETE

RS

ER

LIN

G


Drive up to it unaware, andyou’d have a hard time dis-tinguishing WindSong fromany of the other upscale

condominium complexes in the Wal-nut Grove section of Langley, BritishColumbia. Here, developments withnames like Chelsea Garden and DerbyHills spring from the earth like two-story, picture-windowed cash cropson the disappearing farmland of west-ern Canada.

Look again, though. Steeply pitchedglass roofs straight out of an Arthur C.Clarke novel peek above the facade.You park your car in one of the fewvisitor spots. Despite the building’sample size and the fact that down-town Vancouver is an easy 20-minutecommute, there is no evidence of

UNDERONE ROOF

Traditional housing has lost its front porch.Cohousing is bringing it back.

By Beth Grubb and Chuck LucePhotographs by Anil Kapahi

additional ground given over tomotorized conveyances.

Someone has to buzz you in. Step-ping into an entry foyer the size of abasketball court, you realize you’renot in Kansas anymore.

But you’re not in Oz, either. Wind-Song is a successfully functioningcohousing community, only the sec-ond in Canada. The 60 adults and 40children who live here will tell youthat life here is a world apart from theanonymity of the traditional housing

developments. It is an intentional safe-ty net of neighbors whose lives over-lap as much in emotional space as inliving space. It’s all about repairing ahole in the human spirit that so manyof us feel these days but can’t quiteput our fingers on: the kind of supportand satisfaction that once came withextended families and small towns.

Can I Help You?We arrive early on a Thursday after-noon, and we’re not in the door 10seconds before someone spots us. Ahandful of kids and adults scurryabout, some hauling discarded furni-ture from a pile in the middle of thefoyer to a pickup truck outside.

A man asks, “Can I help you?” He isfriendly, but it’s clear he aims to findout what these strangers are doing inthe enclave. We ask if he can direct usto the home of the woman we’vecome to see, Deborah Hyman ’81.

Passing through a set of heavy grayfire doors, we enter the heart of Wind-Song, one of two biosphere-like hous-ing wings. Hyman greets us, dressedin T-shirt and shorts. She and her hus-band, David Wright, and their twodaughters, Joanna, 8, and Morgan, 5,live in an 1,100-square-foot, two-storytownhouse that shares walls withneighbors on either side. These con-temporary row houses face a similarset across the “lane,” a mere 18 feetfrom the Hyman-Wright front door.

Well above us, the immense glassroof we saw from the street coversthis narrow pedestrian way, forming adaylight-filled atrium where childrenplay and neighbors congregate. Thefront doors of all the units open ontothe atrium, and the area around eachentry is furnished to suit its owner’staste. Flowering plants, potted trees,benches, tables, Persian rugs, fabricawnings, and a smattering of artworksoften the clean lines of the building.Chairs and couches are grouped inalcoves. The atrium makes WindSongfeel like a safe and nurturing place.

Hyman invites us into her house totalk, shooing her children and one oftheir friends out into the atrium. Theirlaughter and shouts fill the communi-ty space and spill in through the openwindows.

One of the best things about livinghere, Hyman says, is the influence onthe children: “My kids learn how to

SEPTEMBER 1997 25

Deborah Hyman ’81, at left with daughterMorgan, lives at WindSong, a cohousingcommunity in Vancouver, B.C. Her“street” is a daylight-filled atriumthat contains 17 other housing units.

cooperate and care for others. Theylive with people of different ages, reli-gions, and points of view. They learnabout diversity and live with it.”

Hyman takes us on a tour of Wind-Song, which includes two glass-cov-ered wings joined by a large commonarea, underground parking for 60 cars,a garden, and a narrow yard. Thereare 34 housing units, ranging in sizefrom one-bedroom flats to four-bed-room, three-story units with base-ments. The common areas includelaundry facilities, meeting rooms, anoffice, an arts and crafts room, a guestroom, and a playroom.

To one side of the foyer is the com-munity dining room, with brightly col-ored tablecloths ready for the nightlypotlucks. WindSong’s communitykitchen is not yet finished. When it is,dinners will be cooked and served insome organized fashion that hasn’tyet been agreed on.

A leap of faithHyman and Wright are Americansplanning to obtain joint U.S.-Canadiancitizenship. She is a social worker,specializing in parenting education,and he is a landscape architect for thecity of Langley.

In 1990 they moved from Syracuse,New York, to a suburb of Vancouver,where they bought a townhouse. Butthey felt isolated there, far from familyand friends. Neighbors in their areaseemed uninterested in getting toknow each other. Two years later theysaw an ad in an alternative paper

about a cohousing community thatwas forming. The concept intriguedthem, so the couple attended one ofWindSong’s planning sessions. Whatthey found was a warm, caring groupof people, although Hyman andWright reached that realization at adifferent pace.

“For me, it was instant,” Hymansaid. “David was more cautious.”

Wright had a professional and per-sonal interest in the environmentalaspects of the project, and he wastired of the stress and isolation he felthis family was suffering.

“It was easy to see WindSong met alot of needs,” Hyman says. “It provid-ed an extended family and support

with practical things, like child careand car pooling and cooking. We likedthe idea of raising our kids with amodel of adults working things outtogether.”

Making a leap of faith, they decidedto sell their condo and invest themoney in WindSong, becoming thegroup’s sixth equity partners. Theyrented an interim house in Langleywith another equity couple, regularlyattended long Sunday afternoon plan-ning meetings and potlucks, andbecame well-acquainted with otherfamilies involved in the project.

Every decision was made by groupconsensus. Wright calls the planningphase of cohousing, which took thisgroup 51/2 years, a shedding process.“It’s the longest and most expensivepersonal development workshopyou’ll ever do,” he says. “You learn toshed expectations. You learn youdon’t need as much as you thought—as much space, privacy, things. I ammore content than I’ve ever been. Itseems so natural. We feed on thesepeople, and they feed on us.”

Risky businessThe risks along the way to realizingWindSong were monumental, Hymansays. Once a building site was located,eight founding households pledgedtheir life savings and anything theycould beg or borrow to buy the land,even though multifamily zoning hadnot yet been approved.

When approval came, it included


It took more than five years to plan and build the community, and every decision wasmade by consensus—a process Hyman’s husband, David Wright, described as “the

longest and most expensive personal development workshop you’ll ever do.”

Cohousing is a cross between a’60s commune and an ’80s gated-

community, but without the extremesof the former or the rigidity of the lat-ter. Proponents try to balance theindependence of private home owner-ship with the advantages of living in aclan-like extended family.

Cohousing communities areplanned and organized by their resi-dents. Dwellings are pedestrian-orient-ed and designed for efficiency. Resi-dents share meals, child care, tools,gardens, and some common areas,and they commit to a time-consumingand sometimes tedious governanceby consensus.

The concept began in Denmark in1964 and quickly spread as a popularhousing option there. In 1988 it wasintroduced in the United States by amarried couple, Kathryn McCamantand Charles Durrett, both architects.They co-authored a book, Cohousing:A Contemporary Approach to HousingOurselves, which serves as a primer inNorth America. The couple is active inpromoting cohousing with slideshows and talks.

There are currently two dozensuch communities in the United Statesand Canada, with more than a hun-dred others in various planningstages.

Balancing independence and community

an unexpected restriction from theMinistry of Environment to keep abuffer of four acres of their propertyundeveloped because of a salmoncreek that runs through it. That leftfewer than two acres on which tobuild, impossible for the project theyhad planned up until then.

“At that point, we could havethrown up our hands in defeat,”Wright says with a slight grin. “Wedidn’t. We took on the challenge.”

“The group came up with a radical-ly different and ultimately more costlydesign,” Hyman says. The homeswould all be closer together, under aglass roof, parking would be under-ground, and the four acres ofgreenspace surrounding the creekwould be preserved. The resultingatriums were an innovation the resi-dents are now grateful for.

“We couldn’t have had quite asvibrant a group without the atrium,”Wright says. “It makes us all closer.”

But another sizable challenge facedthe founders as construction of theproject was completed. According totheir agreement with the contractor,sales on all 34 homes had to close onthe same day, but only 30 had beenpurchased.

“Everyone dug deeper,” Hymansaid. She and Wright took out a largepersonal loan. “Everyone did that, andwe came up with enough money tosecure a group mortgage on theremaining homes.” The 30 familiesmoved in on schedule in summer1996, and within five months the otherhomes were sold and the membersrepaid.

Common groundThis summer, as the group celebratesits first anniversary at WindSong, onefamily has decided cohousing isn’t forthem, but the rest of the group isintact.

Hyman describes the residents:“We are retired business people, NewAge entrepreneurs, healing profes-sionals, artists, bureaucrats, engi-neers, librarians, electricians, teach-ers, accountants, and stay-at-homeparents. Members range in age frombabies to retired people, with a highpercentage of children under the ageof 6. We have single-parent families,two-parent families, couples with nochildren, and singles. We are vegansand omnivores, Christians, Jews, secu-lar humanists, and agnostics. Andwith all that variety comes a range ofvalues and priorities regarding ourmaterial needs, parenting styles, foodpreferences, and political persua-sions.

“Still, we manage to live togetherunder one roof, share many meals inour common dining room, run cooper-ative child care that meets most of theneeds of working parents, plan inclu-sive celebrations and rituals, andcome to consensus over the manyissues involved to maintain our physi-cal and administrative structures.”

“For the most part,” she muses,“people here are positive. They seechallenges as opportunities; they areproactive. These are people who arein charge of their destinies. Theyknow that whatever happens in life,you have a choice.”

High maintenanceLife philosophies aside, we wonderaloud how the practical work of main-taining the facility is accomplished.

“Peer pressure,” Hyman says.Although most cohousing communi-ties resist imposing rules aboutchores and involvement level, co-housers also tend to be people whowant control over their environment.“Our inner sense of ownership andresponsibility for the communitymakes it almost impossible to walkpast a mess without cleaning it up.”

Hyman explains that just last weekthe group decided on a system for tak-ing care of common areas and mainte-nance to the buildings. Each adult isexpected to perform 10 hours a weekof a chore chosen from an agreed-upon priority list. “This is still evolv-ing. All cohousing communities haveto work this out for themselves.”

We are surprised to learn there areno criteria for new members. Noscreening of values, politics, aesthet-

SEPTEMBER 1997 27

It was easy tosee WindSong

met a lot ofneeds,” Hymansays. “We likedthe idea of raisingour kids with amodel of adultsworking thingsout together.”

There are few rules at WindSong, but one is only two cats and two dogs per household.

ics, or even willingness to participatein the community. Not even back-ground checks for financial or crimi-nal histories.

Hyman explained the group’s poli-cy as “self-selective. Criminal activitywould be so out in the open, thosepeople wouldn’t come here. This is anincredibly safe environment. Saferthan any alarm system or guard dog.There are always people around.”

“It’s crime prevention through envi-ronmental design,” Wright adds,pointing out that most crime preven-tion methods endeavor to keep peo-ple out and things locked up.

“In the United States and Canada,it’s seen as a model of success to haveyour own home and business and toacquire things and protect them. Theprice we pay is that we’ve forgottenhow to get along. We’ve lost the socialskills needed to live together.

“Accepted theory is to keep peopleseparated to avoid conflict,” he says.“Conflict is not something to be afraidof. Conflict is an important part of life.Cohousing is the idea that there’s noreason to be afraid of each other.”

Living by consensusHyman could think of only two rulesat WindSong: no smoking in the com-mon areas and only two cats and twodogs per household (nobody has thatmany pets at this writing).

“You need a lot fewer rules in yourlife if you communicate,” Hyman says.“Respect is more important.”

An example, provided by Hyman:Suppose someone in the communityis allergic to cats and someone elsehas a cat that is allowed to roam thecommon areas. “The first reaction isto make a no-cats rule. But here, wejust talk about it, and we find a wayeveryone can live with it.”

Then there’s the trampoline story,a textbook case of participatorydemocracy. Three of the WindSongfamilies brought trampolines withthem when they moved in, and want-ed to set them up in the commonyard. Some of the parents, Hymanincluded, were adamantly opposed. Aseries of community meetings, withthe children fully involved, ensued.

The kids in the group, who natural-ly wanted full access to the trampo-lines, were able to discuss the situa-tion, propose solutions, block accep-tance of ideas they didn’t like, and

work toward compromises. In theend, the impasse dissolved. Hymanand others became convinced thatthe tramps were safe enough for olderchildren to jump on alone and foryounger children when supervised.Guidelines for use were agreed on,and a trampoline expert was hired bythe group to give lessons and safetytips. And everyone went away happy.

“That’s the difference between con-sensus and a town-hall approach,”Hyman says. “In a town hall meeting,everybody votes, but somebody goeshome a loser. That’s divisive.”

Consensus-based decision-makingseems very Quaker to Hyman. Shesays in college she attended QuakerMeeting, where there are no leadersand everyone has a voice, dependingon how the spirit moves them.“Swarthmore people are interested incommunity,” Hyman says. “I alwaysexpect to run into other people from

Swarthmore at cohousing conven-tions. So far, I haven’t.”

Members of the community con-tribute in their own ways, Wright tellsus. He scrounged landscaping plantsand materials to build the playground,which he designed. Hyman presentedan abbreviated seder for Passoverand a Hanukkah feast of potato latkesfor her neighbors. A retired womansometimes offers craft classes for thecommunity children. Others haveorganized classes in ballroom danc-ing, spinning and weaving, and activi-ties such as Christmas caroling, a NewYear’s Eve dance, and cabaretevenings. Families going on picnics orswimming outings take along extrachildren.

This is one of Wright’s favoriteaspects of cohousing.

“I began to realize that I wanted thespiritual growth that only came after Istarted to extend myself to the com-munity,” he explains. “And it’s notonly at home—I go into the outsideworld not nearly as defensive as Iused to be.”

Group parentingWe attend one of the nightly pot luckdinners, which takes place in the com-mon house. Offerings range frompizza to a spicy African stew—and sal-ads, lots of salads. Conversation islight and friendly, and we are intro-duced to the 25 or so people in atten-dance that night.

Suddenly, in midsentence, Wrightjumps up and dashes out of the diningroom to the adjacent outdoor play-ground to rescue a small child, not hisown, who needs a boost climbing up aramp.

With all these kids, we ask, is theresome kind of group parenting stan-dard? There must be different ideasabout discipline and tolerance.

“We’ve had a lot of discussionabout parenting,” Hyman acknowl-edges. She spearheaded a parent dis-cussion group that meets once aweek. “Of course everyone has theirown standards of what is OK and whatis not. I tend to keep close tabs on mykids, but other parents are less cau-tious. My kids have a structured bed-time, while other kids’ bedtimes arelooser.

“After a lot of talking, we decidedthat any grown-up can say anything toany child about anything, as long as


Being here hasfreed us up to

think about whatwe want out oflife, to look atwhere we want tobe in five years.Our stress level isless than what weused to have.”

they’re respectful. If you see kidsabout to harm themselves or someproperty, you can feel free to restrainthem, and if that doesn’t work, you goget the parent.” There’s no hitting orswatting. And if the parent doesn’tcorrect a behavior that you thinkneeds correcting, you have to let it go.

“That was hard, at first,” she says,since talking to another adult abouttheir kids is not usually a comfortablerole. “But it gets easier,” she adds.

Hyman says she has discoveredher parenting style has changed in herfamily’s first year of cohousing. “I’mmore relaxed,” she says.

People in glass houses“When you need privacy, you can getit,” Hyman tells us. The houses areconstructed with lots of soundproof-ing, blinds on all the windows, and aprivate deck in back of each unit,overlooking the greenspace and theGolden Ear Mountains.

“If you choose to move into a placelike this, you’re choosing to live inclose contact with other people,”Hyman says. “If something’s goingon—a couple’s having trouble, or afamily has some problem—you knowit. But not in a gossipy way; it’s not asoap opera. We all know we’re goingto go through these things.”

Hyman says the openness creates alot of trust among neighbors. It alsoserves to let the group know whensomeone needs help. And help isalways offered. “It can be just moralsupport or offering to watch the kidsso you can get away for a weekend.”

Inevitably, cohousing has its draw-backs. For one, it’s expensive—athree-bedroom unit at WindSong sellsfor just over $200,000. Such communi-ties tend to be upper-middle-class,although a movement to makecohousing available to lower-incomefamilies is developing. “There’s moreprogress on that in the States, wherethere are many more cohousing com-munities than in Canada,” Hymansays.

Of course cohousing is not foreveryone. “You have to be able to giveup your sense of boundaries,” Wrightsays. “And you have to have courageto face things you don’t know aboutyourself.”

Hyman agrees that cohousing issometimes hard work.

“It’s not utopia,” Hyman says. “You

don’t like all of your neighbors all ofthe time. You still argue with yourspouse, worry about your children,have to make mortgage payments,and put money away to replace theroof. Nobody expects to move hereand have all their problems solved,but you have more support under-neath you.”

For Hyman, living at WindSong isan answer to the struggle of being aworking mom and of needing a sup-portive, close connection to others.

“Being here has freed us up to think

about what we want out of life, to lookat where we want to be in five years.Our stress level is less than what weused to have. We feel supportedenough to think about a richer experi-ence.

“I am happier now than I have beenin years,” she says. “Much of that hasto do with living here.” !

Beth Grubb is editor of SUN Magazine,the alumni magazine of Seattle Univer-sity. Chuck Luce is co-editor of Con-necticut College Magazine.

SEPTEMBER 1997 29

WindSong co-founder Howard Staples and a friend.


A L U M N I

Alumni CouncilMembers1997–98For the address or telephone number of anymember of the Alumni Council, call theAlumni Office (610) 328-8402, or [email protected].

Officers of theAlumni AssociationPresidentJohn A. Riggs ’64 (Zone D)President DesignateElenor G. Reid ’67 (Zone F)Vice PresidentRichard R. Truitt ’66 (Zone G)Vice PresidentBetty Jo Matzinger Lash ’87 (Zone D)SecretaryStratton C. Jaquette ’66 (Zone G)

Members of Alumni CouncilZone A (Delaware, Pennsylvania)

Elizabeth Killackey ’86*Lansdowne, Pa.Doris Morrell Leader ’44York, Pa.Matthew R. Lieberman ’95West Chester, Pa.Joseph M. Ortiz ’72Merion Station, Pa.Jack Schecter ’96Quakertown, Pa.Barbara Seymour ’63Moylan, Pa.Anne Titterton ’86Philadelphia, Pa.Peter R. Warrington ’69*Kingston, Pa.

Zone B (New Jersey, New York)

Penelope Owens Adelmann ’66Scarsdale, N.Y.Andrew R. Feldman ’96New York, N.Y.J. David Gelber ’63*New York, N.Y.Willa Freeman Grunes ’47*Ithaca, N.Y.John W. Harbeson ’60Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.James A. Perkins ’34Princeton, N.J.

Robin M. Potter ’72Haddonfield, N.J.Kenneth Reeves ’88White Plains, N.Y.Harlan Stabler Sexton ’79City Island, N.Y.

Zone C (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts,New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont)

Christine Frasch Caldwell ’74Stratham, N.H.Roberta A. Chicos ’77Arlington, Mass.J. Andrew Daubenspeck ’66Lebanon, N.H.Dean W. Freed ’43Acton, Mass.Margaret D. Gold ’95Hartford, Conn.John F. Leich ’42*Cornwall Bridge, Conn.Ruth Jones McNeill ’70*Medford, Mass.

Zone D (District of Columbia, Maryland,Virginia)

Margery G. Dunn ’63Washington, D.C.Catherine L. Fernandez ’80*Bethesda, Md.Stephen L. Gessner ’66*Baltimore, Md.Cynthia Norris Graae ’62Washington, D.C.Anne Newman Hirshfield ’70Columbia, Md.Barbara D. Merrill ’69Washington, D.C.Andrew D. Pike ’72McLean, Va.

Zone E (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska,North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, SouthDakota, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin)

Diana Scott Beattie ’56Morgantown, W.Va.Dagmar Strandberg Hamilton ’53Austin, TexasLinda J. Lee ’69New Berlin, Wis.Melissa Dietz Lojek ’72Grand Rapids, Mich.Richard W. Mansbach ’64*Huxley, IowaJoanna Bailey Van Harn ’88*Grand Rapids, Mich.

Zone F (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Geor-gia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, NorthCarolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, territo-ries, dependencies, and foreign countries)

Timothy M. Kuykendall ’89*Mooresville, N.C.Eileen Nixon Meredith ’65Atlanta, Ga.

Christine L. Moe ’79Atlanta, Ga.Mark T. Shullenberger ’72Paris, FranceJean R. Sternlight ’79Tallahassee, Fla.Elizabeth Pierce Swift ’42*Hilton Head, S.C.

Zone G (Alaska, Arizona, California, Col-orado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada,New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington,Wyoming)

John B. Collins ’59*Seattle, Wash.C. Geoffrey Davis ’73Burlingame, Calif.Marian Westover Gade ’56*Kensington, Calif.Joanna Dalrymple Stuart ’55Portland, Ore.

Member at Large

Cynthia A. Jetter ’74Philadelphia, Pa.

Connections Representatives

Chair of Connections: Don Fujihira ’69New York, N.Y.Boston: Chair pendingChicago: Chair pendingLos Angeles: Walter Cochran-Bond ’70Altadena, Calif.New York: Jim DiFalco ’82New York, N.Y.North Carolina: Priscilla Coit Murphy ’67Chapel Hill, N.C.Paris: Chair pendingPhiladelphia: Martha Salzmann Gay ’79Fort Washington, Pa.San Francisco: Sohail Bengali ’79San Mateo, Calif.Seattle: Deborah Read ’87Seattle, Wash.Washington, D.C.: Chair pending.

*Elected to Council in 1997

SEPTEMBER 1997

D I G E S T

Recent EventsNew York City: Thirty alumni fol-lowed David Wright ’69 to the NorthFork of Long Island for a day of histo-ry, geography, and wine. They pic-nicked at the home of Eric Bressler ’72and Gail Wickham ’73 before touringHargrave Vineyard. In the city JimDiFalco ’82 and Rachel Preiser ’91 leda visit to the Metropolitan Museum’sCloisters.

Debbie Branker Harrod ’89 andTeam Swarthmore entered the “Racefor the Cure” for breast cancer in Cen-tral Park in September.

Durham, N.C.: Triangle-area alumnigathered for a poolside potluck picnic,organized by Priscilla Coit Murphy ’67and George Telford ’84.

Philadelphia: The Philly Connectionreturned to the Philadelphia Museumof Art to see a photography exhibit,“India: A Celebration of Independence,1947–1997.”

Wickford, R.I.: The Pan-Twilight Cir-cus attracted alumni from RhodeIsland and southeastern Massachu-setts. Anne-Marie Atkinson ’82, CeliaGelfman ’82, and producer TomSgouros ’82 invited alumni to a Shake-

speare circus, Prospero’s Magic Island,or A Tempest in a Big Top.

Seattle: Deborah Read ’87 organizedSeattle alumni into a trail maintenancework party on Cougar Mountain, oneof the largest wildland parks in a U.S.urban area.

Upcoming EventsPhiladelphia: Martha Saltzmann Gay’79 has sent out a full schedule, includ-ing tours of Dock Street Microbreweryand CoreStates Center and gardeningin the city with the Pennsylvania Hor-ticultural Society.

Outgoing President Alan Symonette ’76 (left) hands the gavel to new Alumni AssociationPresident Jack Riggs ’64. Riggs, director of the Program on Energy and the Environment atthe Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., will serve a two-year term as Alumni Council leader.

The Alumni Association wants to hear from you!Please write to Jack Riggs ’64, president, Swarthmore College Alumni Association,in care of the Alumni Office, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397.

Candidates for Alumni Council: __________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

Candidates for Alumni Managers: ________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

Suggested alumni speakers for Alumni Weekend Collection and other campus

events: ________________________________________________________________

I’d like to be a resource for the Career Planning and Placement Office.

My job/career is: ______________________________________________________

Any issues for the Alumni Council to address? ____________________________

______________________________________________________________________

Name/Class year: ______________________________________________________

31

1997–98ALUMNI EVENTS

Volunteer Leadership WeekendSeptember 19–20

Fall WeekendOctober 24–26

Black Alumni WeekendMarch 20–22

Alumni CollegeJune 3–5

Alumni WeekendJune 5–7

SWARTHMORE HAPPENINGSS

TEV

EN

GO

LDB

LATT

’67

limit in advance the extent of theirtreatment.

Do we really need physician-assistedsuicide, then, or could its availabilityactually diminish the support offered tothe dying and disabled? Even for thoseof us most ill, the precise time and man-ner of our death cannot be known withcertainty in advance, and it can beaffected by a wide range of options thatrequire a patient’s full knowledge andchoice. Some will prefer a treatmentwith only a small chance of cure, choos-ing painful side-effects over certaindeath. Others will not. Some maychoose operations or medicines to buytime in order to see a grandchild getmarried, or to restore the use of a limbfor a while before death comes. Otherswould elect only rest and relief of pain.

The choice can and should be deter-mined by a patient’s values but can alsobe influenced by the hopelessness andhelplessness that arise from depres-sion, unrelieved pain, inadequate sup-port, or overwhelming expense. Thecurrent market-driven orientation ofhealth care has restricted patients’access to mental health care, long-termcare, and home services, and it hasincreased out-of-pocket expenses. Achoice of suicide in this setting is hardto accept as free and unencumbered.

A patient’s choice can also be influ-enced by a physician’s presentation ofhis or her options. If in the past physi-cians may have been too inclined toencourage interventions, the oppositeis increasingly true. Faced by monthlyprintouts comparing his or her expendi-tures with others’, and by arrangementsthat tie physician income to “perfor-mance” in restraining costs, doctorsmay subtly encourage less expensiveoptions, least expensive of which isphysician-assisted suicide, though thepatient’s choice can be steered in lessdramatic, but still cost-saving, ways.

For those concerned with the auton-omy of the very ill, physician-assistedsuicide is the wrong cause. Instead, weshould be struggling to preserve andexpand what is necessary to allow truechoice for these vulnerable people, peo-ple whose circumstances we may oneday experience. We should overturn thefinancial incentives to undertreatmentas much as those to overtreatment,support the expansion and improve-ment of care for physical and mentalsuffering, and assist the dying and dis-

abled to live as fully as they wish,rather than accepting that the best wecan do is to hasten their death.

ELISHA H. ATKINS M.D.’72Cambridge, Mass.

Offending the teacher-graderTo the Editor:In his article on Honors, Professor CraigWilliamson wrote, “We let Swarthmoreinstructors finally give grades to theirstudents in Honors preparationsbecause we no longer thought that thiswould undermine independent inquiryor free debate.” Herewith a commentfrom an Honors student in the daysbefore “people grew tired or irritated orskeptical about the Honors Program”:

When I arrived at Swarthmore as afreshman, I had a thin skin of sophisti-cation over a subcutaneous layer ofdefensive arrogance, these two cover-ing a jellied core of immaturity. In short,I was unpromising. What success Ienjoyed came largely in the Honorsyears through the patience of fourteachers—two men and two women—who overlooked my prickly affectationsand gently pushed me toward rationalbehavior. Of knowledge, Swarthmorewas generously giving, and I am grate-ful. (I can still diagram the Battle ofAgincourt.) But I am grateful for some-thing rarer than knowledge—wisdom. Itwas wisdom that I absorbed because ofclose association with Mary Albertson,Elizabeth Wright, Phil Hicks, andTownsend Scudder. And that closenessflowered when, blessedly, they taughtme but did not grade me, when friend-ship was not (to use an archaic phrase)apple polishing.

The architects of the “new” Honorsdon’t think that grading will “undermineindependent inquiry or free debate.”Perhaps, but offending the teacher-grader in these days of struggle for fel-

lowships or grants is daunting indeed.Perhaps today’s undergraduates arenot as half-baked as I was and need onlya good fill-up from the fountain ofknowledge, but I’m glad that my associ-ation with my four mentors lasted formany years after college and that theykept on helping me in the accumulationof wisdom.

HEYWOOD HALE BROUN ’40Woodstock, N.Y.

Freedom in complexity?To the Editor:I was very glad to learn about the “new”Honors Program in the June Bulletin.The student profiles were especiallyuseful in understanding it. It seems tome that the principal differencesbetween the original (pre-1968) HonorsProgram and the current one are in (a)a very clear structure vs. a very com-plex structure—if any at all; (b) a pro-gram covering the entire junior andsenior years vs. one that covers halfthat; (c) an individualistic approach toeducation vs. a more collaborative one;and (d) no grades vs. grades.

I felt enormous freedom to learn inHonors in the 1950s despite the appar-ently rigid structure, but I presume thatit is just this complexity and flexibilitythat gives students the same feelingtoday. It must be maddening for somefaculty and administrators, however.

I also had my freedom for two fullyears rather than for an apparent hop-scotch year’s worth of study within atwo-year period. Finally—but perhapsmost of all—I felt that freedom becausethere were no grades. The current col-laborative opportunity I think is excel-lent, and as you say very plainly, some-thing new was needed or there’d be noHonors Program at all.

CHARLES A. MILLER ’59Lake Forest, Ill.

One last word on the bicycle guyTo the Editor:When I saw that picture in the Marchissue [of the man on the bicycle—seealso “Letters,” June 1997], I did notthink about Bob Bartle ’48 [whothought it was himself] at all. Of courseit is Frank Johnson ’44, who started outin my class.

JUERGEN HEBERLE ’45Eggertsville, N.Y.

Charlie Newitt ’44 called to concur. Sorry,Bob.—Editor


Letters Continued from page 3!

Letters to the Bulletin

The Bulletin welcomes letters con-cerning the contents of the maga-zine or issues relating to the Col-lege. All letters must be signed andmay be edited for clarity and space.Address your letters to: Editor,Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500College Avenue, Swarthmore PA19081-1397, or send by e-mail [email protected].


Twice a year at six-month intervals, 12or 13 traveling companions board a

plane in Washington, D.C., bound forEcuador. They surely present an unusu-al group of passengers, each carryingtwo large boxes and a suitcase, theirbaggage allowances exploited to capaci-ty. Anything to declare? Well—howabout toothpicks, green ink, stuffedtoys, or electrocoagulators? Length ofstay? Usually about two weeks. Purposeof trip? To drastically and wonderfullyalter the lives of Andean children whosefutures otherwise would look bleak. Theteam is led by Swarthmore biologymajor Dr. Thomas Koury ’45.

Koury, a maxillofacial/reconstructivesurgeon, has been in full-time practiceat Washington General Hospital since1959, where he is founder and chiefattending surgeon at the Clinic for Chil-dren with Special Needs. He came toWashington General after Swarthmore,via the dental and medical schools ofTemple University; Veteran’s Hospital inPhiladelphia; and the Marine Corps. Healso serves on the faculty of George-town University, where in 1986 hetrained a Peruvian doctor in plasticsurgery. After returning to Peru, theyoung South American doctor foundhimself overwhelmed by the number ofchildren needing treatment for cleftpalates and other congenital deformi-ties and asked Koury for help. In 1989Koury took his first team to South Amer-ica and continued to make biannual vis-its to Peru until 1993, when a closeencounter with a terrorist bomb in Limacaused him to seek a safer location inEcuador.

During the typical seven to 10 daysof work there, the team performs about60 operations. Coordinating each trip toLatin America is no mean feat; thepreparation takes six months of tirelesseffort. Not only does Koury have toassemble a team of surgeons and oper-ating-room personnel, all of whom arewilling to coordinate their vacation timeand fund their own airfares, but he alsohas to provide all the necessary sup-plies. At his side throughout the entireundertaking is his wife, Elizabeth, who,says Koury, “really does all the work.”

The trips are funded through a non-profit foundation, “I Care—Children ofthe Andes,” formed by Koury and hiswife in 1989, and by support from theRotary Club (Koury is chairman of theinternational lane of the Bladensburg

chapter). Using donations of money,pharmaceuticals, and leftover suppliesfrom four local Maryland hospitals, theyobtain all the equipment needed to fur-nish a fully functioning operating the-ater. They fill their two-car garage withmonitors, electrocoagulators, oxyme-ters, and electrocardiograms, not tomention sheets, gowns, gloves, andsutures. They even take their own largesupply of toothpicks, each of which Eliz-abeth painstakingly sterilizes and sealsin plastic wrap—they are used, afterbeing dipped in green ink, to mark theareas of incision on the child’s face. Theteam also takes a supply of stuffed ani-mals collected and repaired by a youngGirl Scout in Gaithersburg, Md. Theteam members—Koury and his wife,two other plastic surgeons, two anes-thesiologists, four operating-room nurs-es, a recovery-room nurse, a helper, andan interpreter—transport the suppliesin boxes to their quarters in Ecuador,where the army usually houses, feeds,and provides them with hospital space.Koury says, “It’s quite a cooperativeeffort; the military acts like the publichealth service there, so it’s ideal.”

The doctors’ visits are advertised inadvance on radio and television, so onarrival they are typically confrontedwith 150 to 200 potential patients, all ofwhom they screen to select a group of

60 or so that they will operate on. Thosefrom wealthier backgrounds, also seek-ing to enjoy the high level of skill andtechnology that Koury’s group offers,are eliminated. The children chosen, hesays “are all mountain children fromvery poor environments, living in condi-tions with no running water, no cookingfacilities other than charcoal fires.”

Working 12- to 14-hour days, Koury’sfirst priority is to treat facial deformitiesthat would prevent a child from latermaking a living or from taking his or herplace in society—such as open congeni-tal deformities, large birthmarks, defor-mities of the eyelids, nose, or lips, andsevere burns; cleft palates, which dis-tort speech; and also deformities of thehand that prevent the victim from work-ing. Koury does not perform purely cos-metic surgery on the children. In somecases, if the team cannot help apatient—for example someone requir-ing major cranial-facial surgery—thefoundation pays for the child to bebrought to the United States, put in thecare of a foster family, and operated onhere.

Koury is seeking to widen his field ofaction to include other poor countriessuch as Bulgaria and Sierra Leone. Inspite of the complications arising fromlack of time, having to pay one’s ownway, and work for no monetaryrewards, he has a huge backlog of doc-tors and nurses who wish to serve withhim. The experience is an eye-openerfor team participants, who have includ-ed as nonmedical team members Eliza-beth Koury’s children, Samantha, 27,and Gregory, 24. Transported from thepristine conditions of U.S. hospitals to arelatively primitive hospital environ-ment, they have to learn to improvise.“We’ve made arm restraints from sani-tary napkins, used Caesarean sectiondrapes for children’s bed sheets,” saysElizabeth Koury. “I tell the nurses, ‘Youuse your brains, and you find a solutionto your problem.’” And they know thatthe children depend on them. “Thesechildren are grateful, beautiful chil-dren,” says Elizabeth. “They don’t wantperfection, just improvement. And whenthe nurses see these little children whoare not going to get surgery unless it’sfree, and it gets to 6 p.m., and we say,‘Shall we finish up?’ they say ‘No.’ It real-ly changes their lives.” Not to mentionthe lives of all those children of theAndes. —Carol Brévart

By rebuilding faces, plastic surgeon Thomas Koury ’45 helps to rebuild lives.Magician of the Andes

Thomas Koury ’45 with patient JuanaSegura. Juana was brought to the UnitedStates for extensive surgeries.


In 1991 sexual harassment was in theair. That was the year Clarence

Thomas and Anita Hill faced off and thecountry took sides. Cynthia Grant Bow-man ’66 was aware of the debates takingplace in homes and workplaces, but ittook a call from Newsweek—and a per-sonal encounter—to get her engaged.

The Newsweek reporter wanted toknow whether Bowman, a law professorat Northwestern University, thought awoman could take legal action if shewas harassed on the street. “I stumbledmy way through the interview,” sheremembers, “thinking up lawsuits as Iwent along.” Shortly thereafter Bowmanwas stopped at a red light, when a carfull of men drove up next to her, callingout and jeering. “I rolled up my window,felt all the things women feel—fear, dis-comfort, degradation.”

Bowman, a scholar and teacher inthe emerging field of feminist legal theo-ry, realized that street harassmentcould have a real, damaging effect on itstarget and that there appeared to be lit-tle or no legal protection from it. Herensuing study resulted in the publica-tion of her article “Street Harassmentand the Informal Ghettoization ofWomen” in the January 1993 HarvardLaw Review—and interviews with theChicago Tribune, ABC News, and Nation-al Public Radio. The time was right, andthe public was willing to consider some-thing that two years earlier might havebeen dismissed as trivial.

Street harassment is among manyissues pertinent to women that arebeing re-examined through the lens offeminist legal theory, also called femi-nist jurisprudence. Cynthia Bowmanbegan her work in this field in 1989,when a group of female law studentsapproached her about teaching acourse on the subject. She agreed—onthe condition that her students wouldhelp her design the course. The class,which was held in a Swarthmore-style

seminar format, was a success, and thestudents surprised Bowman with someof the issues they introduced. Thecourse led to one of the main casebookson the subject, Feminist Jurisprudence:Taking Women Seriously, co-authoredby Bowman with Mary Becker and Mor-rison Torrey and published in 1994. Inaddition to the variety of legal theoriesespoused by feminist legal scholars—formal equality, dominance theory,hedonic feminism, pragmatic feminism,socialist and postmodern feminism—the book covers a wide range of issues,including rape, sexual assault, domesticviolence, abortion, surrogate mothers,pornography, prostitution, and sexualharassment in a variety of settings.

Cynthia Bowman came to law as asecond career. After graduating fromSwarthmore with a degree in politicalscience, she received a Ph.D. fromColumbia in political theory, which shetaught for six years at the Illinois Insti-tute of Technology. Then, in search ofmore job security than the liberal arts

could offer, she earned a J.D. fromNorthwestern University in 1982 andpracticed law for five years before join-ing the Northwestern faculty as a clini-cal professor in 1988.

Lately Bowman’s academic interestshave drawn her into an examination ofrecovered memories of childhood sexu-al abuse and their treatment in the legalsystem. Bowman advocates a balancedapproach to court cases relying onrecovered memories, in which judgesand jurors accept the possibility of validrepressed memories, treating them likeother memories, which can be accurateor flawed.

In connection with this, she has alsoadvocated limitations on third-partylawsuits—where someone accused ofabuse sues a therapist who has helpeda patient recover memories of abuse.Bowman thinks third-party lawsuits arean inappropriate use of the legal sys-tem. When recovered memories areaccurate, these suits allow an abuser todisrupt a victim’s relationship with hertherapist. If a “recovered” memory isfalse, she believes other avenues to jus-tice are more appropriate: A client cansue her therapist if the therapist usedheavy-handed techniques in creating afalse memory; or, if the patient insistson the veracity of her memory, thewrongly accused party can sue thealleged victim directly. Bowman alsoworries that allowing third-party suitscould deter therapists from taking onabuse clients.

Cynthia Bowman spends her “free”time on a variety of projects related tothe legal rights and welfare of women.She is also at work on a scholarly proj-ect concerning the images of batteredwomen who kill their abusers—not onlyin case law but also in history, litera-ture, criminological studies from theturn of the century to the present, andin contemporary closing arguments.—Nancy Lehman ’87 & Katie Bowman ’94

Cynthia Grant Bowman ’66 is a leader in an emerging field of law.IInn sseeaarrcchh ooff aa ffeemmiinniisstt jjuurriisspprruuddeennccee

Cynthia Bowman challenges man-madelaw as a professor at Northwestern.

JIM

ZIV


Working to effect a posi-tive change in people’s

lives and society. Simple tosay. Harder to do. But itdescribes the work of publicinterest lawyers ArthurBryant ’76 and Jill Chaifetz’86, whose preparation,paperwork, time, and effortgo into legal cases that canyield rewards, but some-times also heartache.

Arthur Bryant is executivedirector of Trial Lawyers forPublic Justice (TLPJ) inWashington, D.C. Founded in1982 with the help of con-sumer advocate RalphNader, the international pub-lic-interest law firm is anadvocacy group and mem-bership organization com-prising more than 1,500 attor-neys around the world whowork with six TLPJ staffattorneys to handle the casesthat private lawyers wouldn’tnormally take. Bryant saysthe cases TLPJ takes on usu-ally raise important issues ofprinciple and “hopefully havean impact and change peo-ple’s lives for the better.”

From an early age, Bryantsays he was “precociousabout politics.” He leaflettedfor Lyndon Johnson at age 10and worked on the cam-paigns of Eugene McCarthyand Bobby Kennedy in hisearly teens. He says he iden-tified with the efforts to stopthe Vietnam War, but whenhe observed the protestersat the 1968 Democratic Con-vention being beaten bypolice, he decided that thissort of politics would not befor him and turned to the

legal process.“In politics it’s about com-

promise, not fighting for prin-ciples. You fight until youcan cut the best deal youcan,” says Bryant, who grad-uated from Harvard LawSchool in 1979. “Politicsfocuses on political powerand who has more of it. Incourt you could lose, but youfocus on right and wrong—the merits, not who theyliked more.”

TLPJ handles cases rang-ing from civil rights and con-sumer safety to employmentdiscrimination and toxictorts (suits in which some-one is wronged by exposureto toxic material). Privateattorneys working on TLPJcases receive reduced feesand contribute a portion ofthem to the organization.

“The common theme ofthe cases we take is that theyare precedent-setting casesof social significance wheretrial lawyers’ skills can havean impact,” says Bryant.“This is not a job for the per-son who likes to specialize.You need to be a generalistat a refined level.”

Although administrativeand fund-raising responsibili-ties are part of Bryant’s dailyroutine, he spends the major-ity of his time litigating cut-ting-edge cases. In the pastfew years, Bryant has servedas co-counsel for the plain-tiffs in the Title IX lawsuitagainst Brown University,which found the universityliable for sex discriminationagainst women in its intercol-legiate athletic program. Hewas also co-counsel for the

plaintiffs in Cox v. Shell Oil,which resulted in the coun-try’s largest property dam-age settlement—$950 mil-lion—to people whosehomes were damaged byfaulty plastic plumbing. Andin the first state case of itskind, Bryant persuaded theNew Hampshire SupremeCourt to hold that crash vic-tims could sue the FordMotor Co. for not installingairbags in its cars.

Named this year as one ofthe nation’s top young publicsector lawyers by the maga-zine The American Lawyer,Bryant says he even findscases by watching TV orreading newspapers. “Occa-sionally, I see somethingthat’s outrageous and I knowI can do something about it.It’s a joy to work on issuesthat make a difference in peo-ple’s lives,” says Bryant, whois married to poet NancyJohnson and has a 21⁄ 2-year-old son, Wallace.

Bryant believes our soci-ety needs an organizationsuch as TLPJ because “thereare still large injustices in theworld that need to be fought,and the general market oflawyers has a focus on mak-ing profits. Our focus is ondoing justice.”

“I’ve always wanted tohelp make the world a justplace,” says Jill Chaifetz, legaldirector of The Door: A Cen-ter of Alternatives in NewYork City. “Many people inour country don’t get theminimum of what they need.As an attorney I found I coulduse my skills to make a bigdifference in people’s lives.”

The Door is a five-storyrenovated warehouse in mid-town Manhattan, sort of aone-stop shopping facility forpeople age 12 to 20 whoseneeds are not being met bythe government, their fami-lies, or other social serviceagencies. The multiuse cen-

Public interest lawyers Arthur Bryant ’76 and Jill Chaifetz ’86 litigate for principles.And justice for all

Arthur Bryant ’76 Jill Chaifetz ’86

HE

RM

AN

FA

RR

ER

SEPTEMBER 1997 55

ter, founded in 1972, pro-vides medical and mentalhealth care, substanceabuse prevention, socialservices, entitlement assis-tance, educational and voca-tional training programs,job placement—and legalservices.

The majority of TheDoor’s legal cases, whichChaifetz oversees, involveissues of immigration, pri-marily undocumentedyoung people; family law,such as foster care, paterni-ty, child support, divorce;neglect and abuse issues;housing and public benefitsissues such as food stampsand Medicaid eligibility.

Chaifetz and her staff ofthree lawyers also offer pre-ventive services throughpamphlets and in education-al workshops given to youthorganizations across NewYork City. “We reallyencourage the clients tounderstand how the systemworks and how they canhelp themselves,” Chaifetzsays. The legal divisionclosed more than 700 casesin 1996, and Chaifetzexpects almost 800 thisyear.

Chaifetz graduated fromNew York University LawSchool in 1989 after major-ing in political science atSwarthmore. She first joinedThe Door as a volunteerattorney and in 1992 washired to create the legal ser-vices center. In addition toher staff, she coordinatesthe work of 65 volunteerattorneys and law students.

A typical day for Chaifetzincludes court hearings ormeetings with clients out-side the building. In the

afternoon there are staffmeetings and problem-solv-ing issues to be dealt with.In the evening hours, thereis intake of new clients. Allher professional activitiesare intertwined with herpersonal ones, whichinclude 20-month-oldtriplets Isaac, Leila, andMilo. Chaifetz, who lives inNew York City shares thecredit of raising the childrenwith her “amazing hus-band,” Daniel Seltzer.

One of the hardest partsof her job at The Door isfinding funding to continueto serve her clients. “Theneed is so great,” Chaifetzsays. “We are one of onlytwo organizations in NYC toserve kids with these legalproblems, but finding fund-ing is a constant challenge.I’m always looking for inno-vative sources for funding.”

Chaifetz says it’s rarethat a client comes to TheDoor with just one problem,and recognizing the enormi-ty of a young person’s prob-lems can be humbling andat times emotionally drain-ing. But she emphasizes forherself and to her staff theimportance of talking aboutor dealing with their ownconcerns.

“I tell the staff not to puttheir grief on the client butalso not to bottle it up. I goto other attorneys, and wetalk about recognizing it anddealing with it,” she says.“It’s not easy to hear hardstories. But if our actionsput a client in a safe place,help her get enrolled inschool, get a job legally, andsupport herself, it’s worthit.”

—Audree Penner


We welcome review copies ofbooks by alumni. The booksare donated to the Swarth-moreana section of McCabeLibrary after they have beennoted for this column.

Jacqueline Carey ’77, Wed-ding Pictures, ChronicleBooks, 1997. Told throughdialogue and full-color paint-ings, this novel follows thecommuter romance of 30-ishcouple Bonnie, an attorney,and Kip, a corporate consul-tant, as they wend their waythrough the uncertain roadto matrimony.

Joshua Foa Dienstag ’86,Dancing in Chains: Narrativeand Memory in Political Theo-ry, Stanford University Press,1997. Analyzing three majorfigures in the history of politi-cal thought—Locke, Hegel,and Nietzsche—Dienstagargues that political philoso-phers have commonly pre-sented their readers with anarrative, rather than a logic,of politics.

Barbara E. Walvoord, LindaLawrence Hunt, H. Fil Dowl-ing Jr. ’57, and Joan D.McMahon, In the Long Run: AStudy of Faculty in Three Writ-ing-Across-the-Curriculum Pro-grams, National Council ofTeachers of English, 1997.This study, based on inter-views, questionnaires, andother information from 700faculty members involved inwriting-across-the-curricu-lum courses, reports resultsnot so much in terms ofteaching strategies butrather changes in teachingphilosophies.

Ross Eckler ’50, Making theAlphabet Dance: RecreationalWordplay, St. Martin’s Press,1996. In this book of wordmanipulations, Eckler pre-sents an array of alphabeticalmind-benders and conun-drums, with examples rang-ing from acrostics and palin-dromes to word squares andisograms.

Harley Erdman ’84, Stagingthe Jew: The Performance ofan American Ethnicity, 1860-1920, Rutgers UniversityPress, 1997. Uncovering theroots of Jewish characteriza-tion in popular culture, Erd-man sheds light on how theyreinforced the stereotypingof the day and on thegroundbreaking actors andactresses who changed themold.

S. James Rosenfeld, MaryH.B. (Boyce) Gelfman ’57,and Linda F. Bluth, EducationRecords: A Manual, EDLAWInc., 1997. Written to meetthe needs of educationadministrators, teachers,parents, educational supportpersonnel, and attorneys,this manual is a working toolfor those having questionsabout the applicability of theFamily Educational Rightsand Privacy Act.

Richard Martin ’67, Versace,Universe Publishing, 1997. Inthis volume of text and pho-tographs, Martin presentsthe fashions of the late Gian-ni Versace, “at once as thedesigner of the ByzantineMadonna, of the performerMadonna, of modernsportswear infused with Ital-

ian Renaissance pageantry,of 1930s-inspired slinkygowns, and of an entirelynew 1990s couture vision.”

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne’64, Blue Genes and PolyesterPlants: 365 More SurprisingScientific Facts, Break-throughs, and Discoveries,John Wiley & Sons, 1997.Which came first: the floweror the insect? What malemammal makes breast milk?The anwers to these andother facts about everythingfrom blue roses to deepearthquakes are contained inthis overview of modern sci-ence.

Stephen Nathanson ’65, Eco-nomic Justice, Prentice Hall,1998. What must society doin order to be economicallyjust? Nathanson presentsphilosophical reflection andanalysis to help arrive at abetter understanding of thedemands of justice.

Pamela Miller Ness ’72,Driveway from Childhood,Small Poetry Press, 1997.This limited edition chap-book offers, in haiku, snap-shots of the poet’s memoriesof growing up. Copies are $5postpaid and may beordered from the author at33 Riverside Drive, Apt. 4-G,New York NY 10023.

Susan L. Cocalis and FerrelRose ’83 (eds.), Thalia’sDaughters: German WomenDramatists from the Eigh-teenth Century to the Present,Francke Verlag, 1996. Thiscollection of critical essaysoffers an overview of

women’s dramatic produc-tion and their often over-looked role in the history ofthe German stage. Alsoincluded are interpretationsof individual works.

Maxine Frank Singer ’52,Exploring Genetic Mecha-nisms, University ScienceBooks, 1997. Molecular analy-sis has only begun to revealthe varied genetic tacticsthat account for the diversityof organismal form, habitat,behavior, and function. Thisbook aims to introduce tostudents and scientists howsuch complexity is being ana-lyzed.

Nancy Hope Wilson ’69,Helen and the Hudson Hornet,Macmillan Books for YoungReaders. The Hudson Hornetmight have cracked seatsand broken windows, butwhen 5-year-old Helen sitsinside it she can drive any-where. When she learns thata stranger wants to buy it,she worries she will neverride in that old car again.

Claudia Whitman and Julie(Biddle) Zimmerman ’68,Frontiers of Justice, Volume 1:The Death Penalty, BiddlePublishing Company, 1997.This anthology presentsessays by people who havebeen touched by capital pun-ishment personally (inmates,their families, and their vic-tim’s families) or profession-ally (law, criminal justice,government, religion, jour-nalism, and advocacy) whodeplore the use of “legalizedkilling” to solve America’scriminal justice problems.

Recent Books by Alumni

By Elizabeth Weber ’98

The year was 1947. With the end ofthe Second World War and the

return to civilian life, Swarthmore’sstudent body grew to unprecedentednumbers. Half of the men in the stu-dent body were veterans of the armedforces. The cost of a year’s room andboard had risen to $600. And at thebeginning of that September, 50 yearsago, Paula Adler (Golden) ’48, BobbieDarrow (Hays) ’48, and Larry Weis-krantz ’49 attended the first Congressof the U.S. National Student Associa-tion (NSA), in Madison, Wis.

“We went to the meeting withunqualified skepticism,” Weiskrantzsaid later in the Phoenix. “We re-turned, however, with overflowingenthusiasm and a deep convictionthat an organization had been formedthat could play a significant role in theprogress of American education.”

The goals of the convention weretwofold: Students wrote a constitutionfor the association and also attemptedto map out its goals for the comingyear. Convention delegates discussedthe formation of an information ser-vice to educate student councilsabout each other’s actions, drew up aStudent Bill of Rights, and arguedabout how strongly the NSA shouldencourage actions to ease racial seg-regation and discrimination.

Even before the convention began,controversy raged over an importantquestion: Should the NSA affiliate withthe communist-dominated Interna-tional Union of Students, which hadbeen formed in Prague in 1946? It wasagreed to send an American delega-tion to Prague the following year toenter membership negotiations withthe IUS, but in March a communistcoup in Czechoslovakia and the sub-sequent crackdown on the Czechoslo-vakian Student Union—an actionapplauded by the IUS—had settledthe question. The 30 Swarthmore stu-dents who had applied to be membersof the negotiating team for the NSAwere doubtless disappointed to miss

a chance for a trip to Prague, butSwarthmore had found other ways tobecome involved with the NSA.

The student body had voted to affil-iate with the NSA in November 1947,and at the organizational meeting ofthe Pennsylvania Region of the NSAthat December, Swarthmore’s delega-tion agreed to host the region’s racerelations clinic “to investigate, com-pile, and disseminate information con-cerning racial and religious discrimi-nation in the colleges of the Pennsyl-vania Region and to recommend pro-grams of action which can alleviatesuch discriminatory practices.” ASwarthmore freshman, Ralph LeeSmith ’51 was elected regional publici-ty director, and Newt Garver ’51 waschosen to head the committee toinvestigate fund drives for internation-al relief by colleges in the region.

The regional race relations clinicwas conducted by members ofSwarthmore’s own Race RelationsClub, which had been lobbying theCollege for increased minority enroll-ment. Its members surveyed everycollege and junior college in the stateabout discriminatory practices andrecommended increased educationalefforts among their fellow students.

Swarthmore continued its activerole in the Pennsylvania Region of theNSA over the next several years. Therace relations clinic remained at theCollege, and Ken Kurtz ’51 succeededSmith as regional publicity chair afterSmith became regional president, aposition Kurtz held the following year.Both moved on to run for positions atthe national level—Smith was nationalpublicity chair in 1949–50, and Kurtzran unsuccessfully for national presi-dent the following year. But by the fallof 1948, the Phoenix noted, “Despitethe fact that the NSA represents theentire Swarthmore student body, theactual participation in its programscame from only a very few students....At the Albright (College) regionalmeeting just held, it was quite appar-ent that Swarthmore had lost the highplace she once held in the Pennsylva-nia region.”

Smith attributes this decline to amore general loss of enthusiasm fornational and international actionacross the country as the “veterans’

generation” neared graduation.“There was a tremendous feeling thata great war had been fought, and nowcame the peace, and we wanted to beinvolved.... I regard the veterans’ gen-eration at Swarthmore and nationallyas the last of the Victorians,” he says.“We had a tremendous faith inprogress, faith in rationality in thelong run, faith that you could accom-plish something by working within thesystem. The weakness of the NSA wasthat it could never develop a domesticprogram that was interesting. Studentgovernments just didn’t know what todo with it between meetings.”

Indeed coverage of the NSA in thePhoenix shows some of this tensionbetween national and local actions. Atthe national level, the organization


Swarthmoreand the NSA

O U R B A C K P A G E S

STATEHISTOR

ICAL

SOCIETYOF

WISCO

NSIN

Fifty years ago, threeSwarthmore studentshelped to launch theNational StudentAssociation, but theorganization’s post-war idealism wasultimately sweptaside by the realitiesof the Cold War.

issued resolutions on such things asloyalty oaths, student rights, discrimi-nation in American colleges, and theKorean War. It investigated collegeathletics and organized a nationwidesystem of student discount cards. Thenational organization also negotiatedwith the International Union of Stu-dents to arrange student exchangesand organized summer tours ofEurope.

By contrast the regional NSA orga-nized student music and arts festivals,sponsored workshops on how tomake student councils run moresmoothly, lobbied against Pennsylva-nia laws requiring loyalty oaths fromprofessors, and worked to makeabsentee voting legal in Pennsylvania.

“Most of Swarthmore’s participa-tion in the NSA was attending meet-ings and conventions, and, on one ortwo occasions, hosting those conven-tions. The appeal was that it had astrong international aspect,” saidFrank Sieverts ’55.

Sieverts believes that Swarth-more’s participation in the NSAbrought something unique to thePennsylvania region. “There was anundercurrent of civic courageinvolved,” he says. Sieverts was elect-ed regional president in his junioryear, and he brought the regional con-ference to Swarthmore in December1953. “This was the era of JoeMcCarthy,” he explains. “Swarthmorehad a reputation as a liberal campus,upholding the cause of liberty in theface of all this. We had professorswho were refugees from Berkeley andthe (California) loyalty oaths and pro-fessors who were refugees from Ger-many. Swarthmore was an oasis offree thought, and there was a sensethat we had a responsibility to bringthat spirit to the NSA.”

After the mid-’50s Swarthmore’sleadership in the NSA dissipated.While students continued to attendregional and national conferences,they generally turned their attentionsto other things. When the NSA experi-enced financial difficulties in the early1950s, small groups within the nation-al leadership knowingly acceptedfinancial support from foundationsthat were fronts for the Central Intelli-gence Agency. The CIA and the State

Department were taking a keen inter-est in student political movementsduring the Cold War, and, accordingto a history of the NSA by Angus John-ston, the NSA leaders who were “inthe know” (apparently not all were,especially those on the domestic side)were asked to provide information onforeign student activists.

The CIA relationship was exposedin the February 1967 issue of Ram-parts magazine. At Swarthmore thestudent council resolved to withholdits annual dues “pending a completeinvestigation of NSA’s effectiveness onour campus and its involvement withthe Central Intelligence Agency.” Inthe Phoenix Barry Wohl ’69, sponsorof the resolution, explained what hehad learned about the NSA–CIA con-nection and suggested a course ofaction. The CIA had been stronglyinfluencing which students wereselected to lead the national organiza-tion for the previous 15 years, hewrote, suggesting that “the next stepis to encourage other small, liberalschools to follow our lead, withdrawfrom NSA, attend the Congress withus, and rejoin only when the NSAmakes itself more democratic.”

Swarthmore sent Bruce Campbell’70 to the summer 1967 NSA conven-tion. Upon his return he reported inthe Phoenix: “I did gradually becomeconvinced of one thing: that the ques-tion of Swarthmore’s membership inNSA is not very important. Swarth-more’s dropping out of or remainingin NSA will obviously not stronglyaffect either institution.” A vote by thestudent body in November was repre-sentative of Campbell’s ambivilence:211 students voted to withdraw fromthe NSA, and 153 voted to remain.

In December the student councilvoted to end Swarthmore’s member-ship in the National Student Associa-tion. Twenty years had passed,almost to the day, between the ideal-istic vote by Swarthmore students toaffiliate with the national studentmovement and their disillusioneddecision to terminate this affiliation. n

Elizabeth Weber ’98 is an economicsmajor. Her articles about College histo-ry have appeared frequently in thePhoenix.

O U R B A C K P A G E S

What happenedto the NSA?

After the 1967 revelation of itslongtime CIA funding, the frac-

tured National Student Associationmanaged to find a new voice andbecame an independent force in thepeace, civil rights, and human rightsmovements of the late 1960s andearly 1970s. “The ideal moderate-lib-eral-left coalition that had guided NSAand other groups through the previ-ous decade was evaporating as stu-dents across the country were radi-calized by assassinations, govern-ment brutality, and the continuingwar,” writes Angus Johnston, a histo-rian and former national corporatesecretary of the United States StudentAssociation (USSA), the NSA’s succes-sor organization.

NSA activists supported the BlackPower movement, were involved inthe “Dump Johnson” campaign duringthe 1968 presidential election, cham-pioned gay rights, and broke with theInternational Student Secretariat, theorganization set up in the 1940s tocounter the communist-dominatedInternational Union of Students. TheNSA leadership was proud to havebeen placed on Richard Nixon’s infa-mous “enemies list” after the associa-tion’s president visited North Viet-nam in 1972.

In the late 1970s, as the country’smood moderated, the NSA focusedmore on student issues such as eco-nomic access to higher education. Itunited with a former splinter group,the National Student Lobby, in 1978,forming the USSA, which has concen-trated on legislation affecting federalfinancial aid and equality of opportu-nity for students. It has also placednew emphasis on grassroots campusorganizations and has worked toexpand the influence of people ofcolor in its leadership.

Today, the 50-year-old USSA is thenation’s largest student organization,representing 3.5 million students. Asfar as can be determined, however,Swarthmore College never rejoined.

PASTFALL WEEKEND ’97

Swarthmore’s Next Decade

October 24–26

Autumn is a special time at Swarthmore.

The brilliance of the foliage seems

intensified by the subtle gray stone of

campus landmarks, and the crisp air carries a

bracing sense of anticipation.

The College community invites alumni, par-

ents, and friends to join us for Fall Weekend ’97,

October 24–26. Visitors will enjoy a wide spec-

trum of activities, from student performances

and exhibits to men’s and women’s athletic

events. They also can get a firsthand look at

striking enhancements on the north campus,

including the picturesque Isabelle Bennett

Cosby ’28 Courtyard at Kohlberg Hall, already a

favorite spot for alfresco conversations, and the

newly renovated Trotter Hall.

A highlight will be a program on

“Swarthmore’s Next Decade,” a special oppor-

tunity to participate in an early phase of the

long-range planning effort that will sharpen the

College’s focus on its most significant priorities.

Among areas under consideration are the scope

and nature of the curriculum, innovations in

technology, the size of the College, balancing

teaching and scholarship, and meeting the chal-

lenge of emerging trends in higher education.

More information on Fall Weekend is avail-

able from the Alumni Office, (610) 328-8402, or

on the Internet at [email protected].

PRESENT

FUTURE?

swarthmore college bulletin (september 1997)bulletin.swarthmore.edu/bulletin-issue-archive/wp... ·...

Documents