Swarthmore College Bulletin (June 1998) - ITS

Editor: Jeffrey LottAssociate Editor: Nancy Lehman ’87News Editor: Kate DowningClass Notes Editor: Andrea HammerDesktop Publishing: Audree PennerDesigner: Bob WoodIntern: Jim Harker ’99Editor Emerita:Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49Associate Vice Presidentfor External Affairs:Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59Cover: Professor Richard Schuldenfreisays he’s not a philosopher—hejust teaches philosophy. The ideashe brings to class come from a pantheonof great thinkers, some ofwhom surround him here. Clockwisefrom top left (with appropriate credits),they are Hannah Arendt (UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN), Immanuel Kant(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/CORBIS), John Locke(CORBIS-BETTMANN), Karl Marx (CORBIS-BETTMANN), Wilhelm Hegel (CORBIS-BETTMANN), David Hume (LIBRARY OFCONGRESS/CORBIS), John Dewey (LIBRARYOF CONGRESS/ CORBIS), and Plato (CORBIS-BETTMANN). The photo of Schuldenfreiis by Deng-Jeng Lee.Changes of Address:Send address label along with newaddress to: Alumni Records,Swarthmore College, 500 CollegeAvenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397.Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mailalumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.Contacting Swarthmore College:College Operator: (610) 328-8000Admissions: (610) 328-8300admissions@swarthmore.eduAlumni Relations: (610) 328-8402alumni@swarthmore.eduPublications: (610) 328-8568bulletin@swarthmore.eduRegistrar: (610) 328-8297registrar@swarthmore.edu©1998 Swarthmore CollegePrinted in U.S.A. on recycled paperThe Swarthmore College Bulletin(ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volumeXCV, number 5, is published inAugust, September, December, March,and June by Swarthmore College, 500College Avenue, Swarthmore PA19081-1397. Periodicals postage paidat Swarthmore PA and additionalmailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620.SWARTHMORECOLLEGE BULLETIN • JUNE 199810 How Do You Live a Good Life?For more than 30 years, Philosophy Professor Richie Schuldenfreihas been asking Swarthmore students that question. They don’tleave with the answers. What they get are ideas about how todefine a moral life and how to measure their own lives against it.By Vicki Glembocki14 Home Is the SpiritLaura Markowitz ’85 came out as a lesbian in her junior year atSwarthmore. At the 10th annual Sager Symposium, she recalledher early “emotional homelessness” and the process of cominghome psychologically to her family and friends—and the College.By Laura Markowitz ’8520 Can’t a College Be More Like a Business?Significant economic differences exist between an institution ofhigher learning and a for-profit corporation. Paul Aslanian, vicepresident for finance and planning, explains the reasons, basedon the College’s choice to remain small yet of the highest quality.By Jeffrey Lott64 What Lucretia Mott Means to MeShe spoke on women’s rights, asked for stronger action againstslavery, and fought for American Indian rights. Jamie Stiehm ’82talks about her love of the Quaker woman who helped found theCollege and was a major player on every front of social progress.By Jamie Stiehm ’822 Letters4 Collection24 Alumni Digest29 Class Notes32 Deaths58 Recent Books by Alumni

T E R SPericles’ funeral speech. I had beento dinner with him and his lovelywife and had walked with him alongthe Crum.But it wasn’t until I walked intohis office one afternoon andannounced that I had decided toleave Swarthmore College that Itook a fuller measure of the man.He immediately telephoned thesource of my trouble and, with afirmness and command that surprisedme, reversed my apparentmisfortune and saved me from astupid act I would have regrettedthe rest of my life.I’m sure he has his faults. Who iswithout faults? He is also one of thefinest human beings I have everknown.MIKE PETRILLA ’73Upper Darby, Pa.A rare giftTo the Editor:David Wright’s [’69] fine tribute toGilmore Stott stirred warm feelingsin me. My respect, love, and appreciationfor Dean Stott have grown asI have grown and as I have come tounderstand what is rare in theworld and what is common. Whathe gave to me is rare.I was the first in my family toattend college. Dean Stott affirmedme as a person when he encouragedme to come to Swarthmoreduring an interview during mysenior year in high school. Hisincredibly soft, deep voice soothedme as I looked with trepidation atmy future college experience.I don’t remember talking withDean Stott much during my time atSwarthmore. But in the spring of myjunior year, after we had tied PennState in lacrosse, my roommate toldme the following: Dean Stott, sittingin the stands next to my roommate,asked who had made the goal to tiethe game. When given my name, heremarked something to the effect, “Iknew he could do it!” That pronouncement,though not heard byme personally, has been an inspirationto me throughout my life. Ihave drawn on it in times of selfdoubt.WILLIAM J. BOEHMLER ’60Wyomissing, Pa.JUNE 1998More letters on page 26P O S T I N G SAreport released in April by a commissioncreated by the CarnegieFoundation for the Advancement ofTeaching sharply criticized the teachingof undergraduates at research universities.By implication it said that liberalarts colleges were doing the best sort ofteaching, combining close interactionwith professors and opportunities to doreal research at the undergraduate level.Some excerpts of the report follow:• In a great many ways, the highereducation system of the United Statesis the most remarkable in the world....Half of the high school graduates in theUnited States now gain some experiencein colleges and universities;we are, as acountry, attempting tocreate an educated populationon a scale neverknown before....• The country’s 125research universitiesmake up only 3 percentof the total number ofinstitutions of higherlearning, yet they confer32 percent of the baccalaureatedegrees....• Nevertheless, theresearch universitieshave too often failed, andcontinue to fail, theirundergraduate populations.... Recruitmentmaterials display proudly theworld-famous professors, the splendidfacilities, and the ground-breakingresearch that goes on within them, butthousands ... graduate without everseeing the world-famous professors ortasting genuine research....• Many students graduate ... lackinga coherent body of knowledge or anyinkling as to how one sort of informationmight relate to others. And all toooften they graduate without knowinghow to think logically, write clearly, orspeak coherently....• These are not problems that havebeen totally denied or ignored; there isprobably no research university in thecountry that has not appointed facultycommittees and created study groupsor hired consultants to address theneeds of its undergraduates.... Even so,for the most part fundamental changehas been shunned....• Every research university canpoint with pride to the able teachersIt seemsthe smallliberal artscollegeis doingsomethingright.within its ranks, but it is in researchgrants, books, articles, papers, andcitations that every university definesits true worth. When students are considered,it is the graduate studentsthat really matter....• What is needed now is a newmodel of undergraduate education atresearch universities that makes thebaccalaureate experience an inseparablepart of an integrated whole.• There needs to be a symbioticrelationship between all the participantsin university learning that willprovide a new kind of undergraduateexperience available only at researchinstitutions. Moreover,productive research facultiesmight find newstimulation and new creativityin contact withbright, imaginative, andeager baccalaureate students,and graduate studentswould benefit fromintegrating their researchand teaching experiences....And from the report’sconclusion:• Captivated by theexcitement and the rewardsof the researchmission, research universitieshave not seriously attempted tothink through what that mission mightmean for undergraduates. They haveaccepted without meaningful debate amodel of undergraduate educationthat is deemed successful at the liberalarts colleges, but they have found itawkward to emulate. The liberal artsmodel required a certain intimacy ofscale to operate at its best, and theresearch universities often find themselvesswamped by numbers. Themodel demands a commitment to theintellectual growth of individual students,both in the classroom and out, acommitment that is hard to accommodate....Almost without realizing it,research universities find themselvesin the last half of the century operatinglarge, often hugely extended undergraduateprograms as though they aresideshows to the main event....The commission’s full report is availableon the World Wide Web at http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf.3

COLLECTIONS W A R T H M O R E T O D A YRobert Gross ’62 named dean of the CollegeRobert J. Gross ’62, who for the past year has served asacting dean of the College, has been named dean.In making the announcement last month, PresidentAlfred H. Bloom said, “We look forward to the extraordinaryimpact of Bob’s wise and humane leadership in furtheringthe College’s ability to respond to the personal and academicneeds and aspirations of students, and in enablingSwarthmore to be a model of an inclusive, generous, andprincipled community.”Gross had been associate dean of the College since 1991and became acting dean last June when Dean Ngina Lythcottresigned.After receiving an M.A.T. and an Ed.D. from Harvard andserving a stint as director of secondary teacher educationat SUNY at Stony Brook, he joined the Swarthmore facultyin 1977 as assistant professor of education. After six yearsGross left to become head of the upper school at FriendsSelect School in Philadelphia. He was working on finishing amaster’s degree from the Bryn Mawr Graduate School ofSocial Work when the associate deanship at Swarthmorebecame available seven years ago.At Parents Weekend last year, Gross talked about his philosophyof helping students develop. “The deans, I believe,play a special role in modulating the balance between challengeand support. Proactively we may design resident lifeprograms. Or we may work with faculty on advising andacademic support systems, or work with student groups ondiversity training. Or we may react to roommate crises, academicmeltdown, or existential angst. But we always try tobe sensitive to the developmental process. Thus the Dean’sPrayer: ‘Lord, give me the strength to afflict the comfortable,the compassion to comfort the afflicted, and the wisdomto know who needs what.’”Gross says of the art of being a dean: “We need to provideenough support so the challenges are accessible and achievablebut not so much support that students fail to develop autonomy.”ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSNew College librarian Peggy SeidenOne for the books: Collegeselects new librarianArmed with both library and educationalcomputing experience, Peggy Seiden joinsthe College as the new librarian. She is currentlycollege librarian at Skidmore College.A graduate of Colby College, Seiden holds anM.A. from the University of Toronto and a masterof library and information science from Rutgers.She has been at Skidmore for the past sixyears. Prior to that she was head librarian at thePenn State campus in New Kensington, Pa. Seidenalso worked at Carnegie Mellon University,where she was librarian for educational computing,reference librarian, and software manager.She will begin her duties at Swarthmore laterthis summer.4 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

A year in the Dean's Office:an ethnographic experienceBy Joy Charlton, professor of sociologyIt’s been with considerable professional and intellectualinterest that I’ve spent the past year as interim associatedean for academic affairs, working with students inways that I normally don’t as a faculty member andobserving aspects of the College that professors seldomsee.When asked about my year in the Dean’s Office, I’veoften replied that I’m having an “ethnographic experience.”Ethnographic research—studying social groups bymeans of participant observation and interviewing—iswhat I like to do as a sociologist; substantivelymy research interests haveincluded studying work and organizations.So I’ve been thinking about someof the same issues involved in my professionalresearch—about work, itsmeaning, and its challenges—only thistime with students’ work and deans’work as the focus. Part of the fun of thisyear has been to sometimes serve as abridge between faculty, staff, and students.Given the organization of the Collegeand its division of labor, aspects ofwhat we all do remain invisible to eachother.As a faculty member, I think primarilyabout students’ development in theintellectual realm and about my ownacademic territory. As a dean I’velearned more about the richness andcomplexity of students’ lives, which aremore complex than I had ever imagined.This year I’ve observed many studentssuccessfully accomplishing 87 taskssimultaneously, working on multiplemajors, concentrations, theses, communityservice, internships, athletics, participationin student organizations, andmaintenance of personal relationships.And I’ve come to see how complex thereasons can be when students are notsuccessfully completing their tasks, particularly the academicones. Because any student admitted to Swarthmore is,we assume, capable of doing the work here, academic difficultyalmost always involves other difficulties that interferewith academic success.As a dean I have come to more fully appreciate how difficultthe first year of college is. Going to college is a centralrite of passage from adolescence to adulthood, fromfamily to independence. Our students make this transitionin an environment that is, in some ways, benign and protected(as parents hope) but is also fraught and pressurefilled (as students fear). Students are rigorously challengedto perform intellectually, even while still unfamiliarwith student skills particular to Swarthmore, and they arealso challenged to make choices—on their own, to lesser“Students’ lives are more complex thanI had ever imagined,” says ProfessorJoy Charlton, who spent the past yearin the Dean’s Office as interim associatedean for academic affairs. Thisarticle is adapted from a talk she gaveon Parents Weekend in April.and greater degrees—about their identities, their socialrelations, their political positions, their sexuality, and theirfuture. And they have to do all of these things at the sametime.Meanwhile some of our students are dealing with extraordinarilydifficult personal problems, some of which areat home. It is not uncommon for parents, having stayedtogether “for the sake of the children,” to choose thismoment to dissolve a marriage, precisely because the childrenhave now left home. The impact on the college studentcan nonetheless be profound.In addition, more students than I had previously understoodsuffer from clinically diagnosed psychological problems,particularly depression. Why so many Americanadolescents should be clinically depressed is, I think, astory worth trying to understand; as asociologist I can’t help but think thatthe way we organize schooling in oursociety must be an enormous contributor.Some of our students seem toarrive with a sense of burnout already.Having worked so diligently as highschool students to get to the college oftheir choice, some seem to be tired andat a loss once they’ve made it.And bereavement. I think of our studentsas young and their parents asyoung; however, more students than Iwould have imagined are coping withthe recent or imminent death of a parentor other immediate family member.We as a culture don’t provide much inthe way of time or rituals to help eachother adjust to such losses.It’s often difficult to know whetherwhat’s going on with a student—or students,collectively—is normal developmentalprogress, normal adjustment tostress, or serious abnormal psychologicaldifficulty that requires professionalintervention. Deans routinely makejudgment calls about how to respond tostudents, just as faculty members dowhen they decide whether a student’sdifficulty calls for extending a deadlineor for holding the line in the interest ofequity for all students. But I’ve learned that neither facultyexperience nor good instincts alone are enough for doinga dean’s job well. Doing the job well requires experience,and not a day has gone by that I haven’t asked some memberof the dean’s staff for information or advice.Which leads me to something else I’ve learned: Thedean’s staff members at Swarthmore College are verygood at what they do. As a group, and with the faculty,they work hard, and sometimes invisibly, to support theacademic enterprise here. And they work collaborativelyin a way that has been a great comfort to me, as I hope itis to students, parents, and alumni.Spending the year learning about the work lives of studentsand staff and faculty has led me to greater compassionand respect for all of us.JUNE 1998 5

COLLECTIONALL PHOTOS FROM HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF THE JEWISH AUTONOMOUS REGION, BIROBIDZHANHow the Soviet Union triedto make a Jewish homelandand publications in both Russian andYiddish.Incentives to the Jews included providingmigrants and their families witheither free or significantly discountedtravel and food subsidies. The governmentalso extended credit, tax exemption,and other material benefits tothose who engaged in agriculture.“But the authorities did little to preparethe newcomers, most of whomhad no agricultural experience, for thehardships in an unknown and forbiddingregion,” Weinberg said. “Nor didthey provide the settlers with decenthousing, food, medical care, and workingconditions.”The population, continually searchingfor viable niches outside agriculture,either left the countryside for lifein one of the larger cities in the regionor returned home. Moreover, by 1939Jews accounted for only slightly morethan 15 percent of the region’s population,composed primarily of Russiansand Ukrainians. “The plan to resettlelarge numbers of Jews on the land wasstillborn,” Weinberg said.Despite the failure in creating anagricultural utopia, some Soviet Jewsremained interested in a Jewish homelandwithin the Soviet Union, especiallyafter World War II, when “personal lossand a sense of tragedy motivated manyprospective migrants to seek new livesin a new venue.”But by 1948 Stalin began conductinga murderous campaign to destroy allJewish intellectual and cultural activitythroughout the Soviet Union. By thetime he died in 1953, the Birobidzhanexperiment had been dealt a mortalblow.Today, says Weinberg, only a smallpart of the region’s population is Jewish.Many who have left the JAR havegone to Israel, diminishing the prospectsof revitalizing a Jewish community.Says Weinberg: “There is no signthat the official designation of the JARwill be taken away, but the state ofaffairs strongly suggests that the futureof Jewish life in the region is bleak.Notwithstanding a positive turn ofevents since the collapse of the SovietUnion, the hopes and aspirations thatso many of the pioneer Jews placed inthe Birobidzhan experiment still havenot been fulfilled.”Clockwise from top: In the 1930s JARauthorities tried to show satisfied and happysettlers; two Soviet propaganda posters, thefirst urging settlers to “Build a socialist Birobidzhan”and the second proclaiming, “Letus give millions to settle poor Jews on theland and to attract them to industry.”JUNE 1998 7

COLLECTIONELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSWired ... When senior Allison Marshsearched for a way to pique interest inscience among school children, shedecided to think small. Armed with a$1,000 grant from AT&T and the Instituteof Electronics and Electrical Engineers,Marsh wired her childhood dollhouse,modeling the National ElectricCode to scale (1 inch equals 1 foot).“I’ve made this as a teaching tool,”Marsh said, “to explain how a house iswired and show how switches interact.”The control panel is color coded,with large appliances, such as theoven or clothes dryer, getting their owncircuits. Using a computer simulation,she’s able to determine which branchoutlets draw the most—and theleast—in monthly consumption. A doublemajor in history and engineering,Marsh has won a Watson Fellowship,with which she hopes to combine bothmajors in producing an engineers’guide to Europe.ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSWomen's track and field team capturesits first Centennial Conference outdoor titleCatherine Lainé ’98 led thewomen’s track and field team toits first-ever Centennial Conference(CC) outdoor crown by earningPerformer of the Meet honors. Lainéwon the 400-meter run, setting a new CCrecord of 58.36 seconds, and ran a legon the winning 4 x 100 relay squad withDanielle Duffy ’98, Desiree Peterkin ’00,and Wonda Joseph ’00. She also finishedsecond in the 400-meter hurdles, longjump, and triple jump. Peterkin was awinner in the long jump and the triplejump, setting conference records inboth events. Peterkin topped her ownmark in setting a school record in thetriple jump with a leap of 37'6.5", justedging Lainé by half an inch. Both athletesqualified for the NCAA Division IIIChampionships. Head coach Ted Dixonwas honored as the 1998 USTCAMideast Regional Women’s OutdoorCoach of the Year in guiding the Garnetto a 5-0 record and the CC Championship.At the NCAA Championships, bothPeterkin and Lainé earned All-Americanhonors.The men’s track and field team posteda season record of 4-1 and placedfourth at the conference championships.Steve Dawson ’00 led the Garnetwith a second-place finish in the highjump, a fourth-place finish in the longjump, and fifth place in triple jump.Mason Tootell ’99 placed third in the110-meter hurdles, fourth in the 400-meter hurdles, and fifth in the longjump. George Bealefeld ’99 placed fourthin the shot put, and Keith Gilmore ’01ran fourth in the 400-meter run.The women’s lacrosse team qualifiedfor the ECAC Mid-Atlantic Championshipfor the second consecutive season.The Garnet lost a 12-11 overtime heartbreakerto Drew University in the firstround of the ECAC Championships tofinish the season at 10-7. The trio ofHolly Baker ’99, Betsy Rosenbaum ’98,and Alicia Googins ’00 led the squad onoffense, scoring goals in all 17 games.Baker led the Garnet with a career-best72 goals and 21 assists for 93 points toearn Second-Team All-American, First-Team All-Region, and First-Team All-Centennialhonors. Baker now ranks fourthon the Swarthmore career points list,with 155 goals and 57 assists. Rosenbaumscored a career-best 60 goals and18 assists for 78 points to finish 10th onthe Garnet all-time scoring list, with 94goals and 38 assists. Googins netted acareer-best 53 goals and 20 assists for73 points to earn Second-Team RegionalAll-American honors. Sarah Singleton ’99was named to the Second-Team All-Region and Second-Team All-Centennialsquads, and Jane Kendall ’00 earnedSecond-Team All-Regional and Centennialhonors.The men’s lacrosse team posted a3-12 overall record and a 1-5 mark in theCC. The Garnet Tide snapped a 16-gamelosing streak, with an 8-7 victoryat Shenandoah, and earned their firstCC victory since the 1995 season with a12-4 win over Dickinson. The GarnetDanielle Duffy ’98 won this year’s GladysIrish Award. A three-time Centennial ConferenceMVP in field hockey, co-captainDuffy led the team to three consecutiveconference championships and earnedFirst-Team All-American honors. Duffy alsoco-captained the women’s track and fieldteam, capturing three Outstanding Performerof the Meet awards, leading thesquad to two indoor Centennial championshipsand this year’s outdoor title. Sheholds six Centennial and nine Swarthmorerecords in indoor and outdoor events.A biochemistry major, Duffy is also athree-time regional Academic All-Americaselection. She was also named to the 1997GTE Academic All-America Fall/Winter At-Large First Team. She will attend medicalschool at the University of Pennsylvania.8 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

players were led onoffense by Mark Dingfield’01 and Mike Lloyd’01. Dingfield scored 28goals and eight assistsfor 38 points to lead theTide, and Lloyd tallied18 goals and 12 assistsfor 30 points. MidfielderAlex DeShields ’98 ledthe squad with 134ground balls, and defenderAaron Hultgren’98 led the defense with51 ground balls. Defensivestalwart TuckerZengerle ’00 receivedCC Honorable Mentionrecognition. GoalkeeperSig Rydquist ’00 posted13.33 goals againstaverage while turningaway 178 shots andscored a goal.The men’s tennisteam reached the NCAATournament for the20th consecutive year,the 24th time in the last25 seasons. The thirdseededGarnet traveledto Amherst, Mass., totake on the host teamin the NCAA EastRegional Championships.The Garnet led1-0 after the teams ofGreg Emkey ’99 andPeter Schilla ’01 andDennis Mook ’01 andJon Temin ’00 were victorious, eachby an 8-4 margin, to capture the doublespoint. However, the Lord Jeffs won thefirst four singles matches to win 4-1. TheGarnet sent a contingent of four playersto the NCAA Division III IndividualChampionships. The doubles team ofJohn Leary ’00 and Temin, ranking secondin the East Regional, bowed out inthe round of 16. The Garnet finished theseason with a record of 9-9.The women’s tennis team posted an11-4 overall record and was 8-2 in the CCto finish in a tie for second place. JenniferPao ’01 reached the finals of theCentennial Individual Championships,where she placed second and wasnamed First-Team All-Centennial. Paoposted a 10-2 overall record at No. 1 singlesand went 7-1 in CC competition.Wendy Kemp ’99 was perfect in CC play,posting a 7-0 record at No. 4 singles anda 10-1 overall mark, andKrista Hollis ’01 reachedthe quarterfinals of theCC Championship andfinished the season witha 9-3 mark. Hollis andPao teamed to post an8-2 CC and 12-2 overalldoubles mark, earningSecond-Team All-Centennialhonors. The team ofRani Shankar ’98 andLaura Brown ’00 reachedthe semifinals of the CCDoubles Championship.In singles play Brownwas 9-1 overall at No. 5singles and 5-1 in CCplay.The softball teamposted a 10-23 mark, capturingits most winssince the 1992 season.Co-captain MichelleWalsh ’98 hit .500 (56 of112), with 52 RBIs, 13doubles, seven triples,four home runs, and a.848 slugging percentage.Walsh led the CC in overallaverage, RBIs, andtriples and finished inCatherine Lainé ’98 second place in doublesset a Centennial Conference and home runs to earnrecord of 58.36 seconds in the Second-Team All-Centennialhonors. Co-captain400-meter run, winningPerformer of the Meet honors Dana Lehman ’98 led theand leading Swarthmore to its CC with 172.1 inningsfirst-ever conference title. pitched and was secondwith 68 strikeouts toearn Second-Team All-Centennial honors.The baseball team started out hot,winning its first three games in Florida,but then lost 22 games in a row beforesnapping the streak with a 4-2 win atHaverford. The Garnet finished the seasonwith an overall record of 4-25. JoshRoth ’99 led the team with a .365 battingaverage and four triples.The golf team posted an 8-7 mark tocapture its first winning season since1987. Matt Kaufman ’01 led the Garnetwith an 82.4 average, recording teammedalist honors in six of seven matchesincluding a season best 73 in a victoryover Widener University.The Garnet tied Haverford 9.5-9.5 inthis year’s Hood Trophy competition,and thus the Fords retain the bowl foranother year.—Mark DuzenskiMARK DUZENSKINew tennis and fitness center ...Ground was broken this month for anindoor tennis facility that will housethree courts and a 4,000- square-footfitness area. The building, which willbe located behind Ware Pool, isexpected to open in February 1999.Principal donor Jerome Kohlberg ’46has asked that the facility be namedthe Mullan Tennis Center, in honor oflongtime tennis coach and professorof physical education Mike Mullan.The center will feature championshipcalibercourt surfaces, lighting, andspacing.They really like us! ... A record of4,578 applications for admission werereceived by the College for the Classof 2002. Of those, 888 students(including 142 notified during earlydecision periods) were accepted.Based on previous admissions patterns,the College expects to yield afirst-year class of 360. More of theadmitted students declared “undecided”as their intended major than anyother. Next, in order of popularity, areengineering, biology, English, andpolitical science.And the champ is ... Swarthmore,which bested 45 other colleges anduniversities to win this year’s NationalAcademic Quiz Tournament undergraduatechampionship. Members ofthe winning team included seniorsFred Bush and Joe Robins, junior EdCohn, and sophomore John Miller.The tournament is the largest andmost active College Bowl league inthe country.To your health ... Of the 45 Swarthmorestudents and alumni whoapplied to medical school throughthe College’s Health Sciences Office,76 percent were accepted for admissionlast fall. This was an increaseover last year’s acceptance rate of 63percent and twice the national rate of37 percent.JUNE 1998 9

HOW DO YOULIVE AGOOD LIFE?Philosophy professor Richard Schuldenfrei has been askingSwarthmore students this question for 30 years.Richie Schuldenfrei is pacing. Hespeaks slowly, reminding hisclass where the discussionended last time, stretching out histhoughts, long and careful and quiet.“For a long time ... moral philosophy ...caught between Kant and Hume.”A student, tardy and knowing it,appears at the door and sits sheepishlyin a nearby chair. A few secondslater, another appears, tardy andknowing it and not caring, and sauntersto a seat in the front where hepulls a sandwich out of his bag. Richiedoesn’t look at them. In fact, he hasn’tlooked in the eyes of any of the studentsin the random semicircle ofchairs in 324 Papazian. He’s stillwarming up.He rolls up the sleeves of his navyblueshirt, hanging boxy over a wornpair of Levis. Still pacing. “The basicview ... virtue ethics ... what is rightand just.” He knows they remember.He knows they’re clear on virtueethics. He knows they understand thedifference between the theories ofKant and Hume, between a life drivenby duty and a life driven by comfort.He knows they’re prepared. He’s theone who needs to pace, who needs tofind the pace, the momentum. Especiallytoday, the third-to-last class ofthe semester. The school year, thestudents, are all winding down. Wearingout. So is Richie. And today it’sraining.He stops behind the podium. Heputs on his glasses, glances at hisnotes. He takes off his glasses, holdsthem in his left hand. He looks up,ready now, leaning forward farenough that the podium balances onone thin edge. Then, the question:“How do you live a good life?”The question.Richie Schuldenfrei has been askingSwarthmore students this questionfor 30 years. And for 30 years,he’s been asking himself as well.Schuldenfrei is not a philosopher.He just teaches philosophy. Atleast that’s what he says after class,sitting in his office, in his trademarkblack leather swivel chair, a chunk ofcardboard holding up one leg. A philosopher’schair. The place where for30 years he’s chatted and argued andcounseled students, backed by a walllined with Plato and Aristotle andLocke and Rousseau and Hegel andNeitzsche and Dewey and Kant andHume. “I have no answers,” he says.What Richie does have is a following.The senior class has selected himas the faculty speaker at Last Collectionfour times. Then there’s the list of58 alumni who consider Richie to betheir greatest Swarthmore influence.The list is impressive for its numberand its range—some who graduatedin the early ’70s and some who graduatedjust a few years ago.“I don’t think a week goes by whensomething in my professional interactionsdoesn’t get me thinking aboutRichie,” says Vishu Lingappa ’75, aphysiology professor at the Universityof California. “He constantly questionedhimself ... and us. I’ve taken onthis trait of his. I thrived on it. He and Iwould walk around campus and talkabout Hume or Hegel or something weBy Vicki Glembockiwere studying in class. An hour wouldgo by, us wandering around, arguing.”“He taught us what philosophyshould be,” says Noah Efron ’82, whoteaches history of science at MIT. “It’sa set of personal questions thatbecomes personal obsessions aboutthe way you live your life.”For Richie, philosophy is personal.Teaching it is personal. “I want toteach them something that they cantake away with them. I want to helpteach them something that’s going tomake a difference in their lives, notjust a little patch of knowledge thatthey’ll never have any reason to bringup to live memory in the future,” heexplains.Teaching students “somethingthat’s going to make a difference intheir lives.” The words ring with thesweet and noble naïveté of a youngprofessor, fresh out of grad school,but Richie never fit that picture. Hearrived at Swarthmore in 1966 a “reddiaperbaby with a radical disposition”—andwith a bachelor’s and master’sfrom Penn and a doctorate fromthe University of Pittsburgh.He says he fit right in with Swarthmorestudents then, when their tonewas what he describes as “an olderform of American radicalism, somethingbetween American populismand a classical sort of left-wing politics.”When politics came to the forein the late ’60s, Richie was drawn tothe radical side, “fumbling my way toexplicit Marxism.”“Every day students made connectionsbetween what they were learningin the classroom and what theywere hearing on the news,” says Bob10 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

DENG-JENG LEEDiPrete ’70, now director of the OregonHealth Council. “After the U.S.invasion of Cambodia [in April 1970],students went on strike. The reasonwe weren’t attending class wasbecause of what we were learningfrom Richie—he had such a rigorouscode for holding himself responsible.It became necessary for us to take astand.... We had to hold ourselvesaccountable.”Ultimately, Richie couldn’t helpexamining what he was thinking andteaching in light of the bloodbath thatfollowed in Cambodia. Looking backhe thinks the story sounds clichéd,and he is almost embarrassed to tellit. But eventually Pol Pot and theKhmer Rouge atrocities drove himaway from Marxism, from the moraland political philosophy he’d chosento guide his life. “It is wrong for humanbeings to define all the terms of theirown existence,” he says, “and to think,therefore, that what they see as legitimatemeans to their goals are, in fact,legitimate. There are some things thatyou just don’t do.”He learned something, and hechanged. “Marxist radicalism waswhat my life led up to and away from,”he says. “I’m surprised now to seehow short a period that was in my life,but it was pivotal.”Marxism in the killing fields hadlost its moral compass, and as aresult, Richie Schuldenfrei startedlooking for boundaries, for solid linesthat defined what was right and whatwas wrong. The question—“How doSchuldenfrei says he is not a philosopher—hejust teaches philosophy. Ofhis students, he says, “I want to teachthem something that they can takeaway with them ... that’s going tomake a difference in their lives, notjust a little patch of knowledge thatthey’ll never have any reason to bringup to live memory in the future.”you live a good life?”—had changedfrom a political one to an ethical andmoral one. He discovered Judaism.Raised in a “vigorously unobservant,wholly Jewish community” in Brooklyn,Richie went to Hebrew schoolfour days a week when he was ingrade school. But still, when he left forcollege, the religious aspects ofJudaism weren’t a part of him. “I waslike a fish in water—I didn’t know thatI was wet,” he says of his Jewishness.Now, reflecting back, Richie thinks hemay have stumbled into philosophybecause he was looking for guidancethat he hadn’t realized through religiousstudy.“I see now that I inherited this Jewishtheoretical concern with livingright. Philosophy is my version ofbeing a yeshiva bochur—a young boywho spends his time studying Talmud.That’s the real impetus for me inphilosophy—the search for what Jewishstudents were looking for generationsago by studying the Talmud.”As a young professor at Swarthmore,Richie had a reputation forthrowing things. He would scream andjump on desks and whack kids on thehead with newspapers. Susan PerkinsWeston ’81, now executive director ofthe Kentucky Association of SchoolCouncils, tells a story that’s become aSchuldenfrei classic. Her class wasdiscussing a moral issue when onestudent made the mistake of tellingRichie he couldn’t prove what he wassaying. Richie held a chair over thestudent’s head and asked, “Can yousay, without a doubt, that if I let thisgo, it will fall?” The student said, “No.”And Richie asked, “Do you think thatyou have enough information to inferthat it might fall?” The student said,“Yes.” And Richie asked, “Do you haveenough information to have a strongconviction about what’s going to happen?”And the student said, “Yes.”Weston calls them “Richie Stories.”Her classmate, Maria Eddy TjeltveitJUNE 1998 11

’81, now an Episcopal priest in NewJersey, recalls running into Richiewhen she was test-driving a car. “Hetold me, ‘The only way to lose tenureat Swarthmore is to buy a large American-madestation wagon,’” she says.Noah Efron remembers his first day ofphilosophy class his freshman year.“Some guy in the class started spoutingoff—‘Dialectical’ this, ‘dialectical’that—and Richie said, ‘Dialectical?You can’t use that word any more thissemester. I’ve been studying philosophyfor 20 years, and I don’t knowexactly what that word means, so youcan’t possibly understand it enoughto use it.’”Even now, when Weston and herSwarthmore friends get together, theytalk Richie-isms. Richie on television:“Television is caged fire, and we’resupposed to sit around and watch thefire.” Richie on capitalism: “Sara Leepound cake and Wishbone dressingare the greatest accomplishments ofcapitalism.”“I always tell about the time Richiethrew an Alasdair MacIntyre bookacross the room at me. I’m sure he’sstopped beating his students,” Westonjokes. “He has to have calmeddown some.”These days Richie doesn’t feel theneed to inject such enthusiasm orenergy into his classes artificially.That doesn’t mean he’s stopped beingenthusiastic or energetic; he’s just notas apt to throw a copy of Plato at thewall. “When I started teaching Plato, Ithought his arguments were so weak,so uninteresting, that I started beefinghim up. ‘Maybe he means this.’‘Maybe he means that.’ Then one day Irealized that all this stuff I thought I’dinvented was actually there. It was somuch more complicated than I everimagined, and it did things that Ididn’t know you could do in philosophy.”Richie is comfortable with Platonow, comfortable with all of the theorieshe teaches. And, because of it, heenjoys philosophy more—so much sothat he thinks this past semester washis best in 30 years.“He’s not all angst anymore,” saysEfron, who’s kept in close contactwith Richie over the years. “But thepyrotechnics weren’t what was important.There was something profoundbehind it all. He may scream less andthrow things less, but I’m sure hiseffect is quite the same.”The effect may be, but Richie himselfis clearly not the same personhe was in 1966. He’s married now toHelen Plotkin ’77. He has 7- and 11-year-old daughters. At 56, he’s morerespectful of traditions, of family, ofreligion. And he’s more conservative.In that sense the new Richiedoesn’t quite fit in with the schoolthat Swarthmore is today. But then,he didn’t entirely fit in back in 1966either. “I thought that I was pretty instep with ’60s politics when I got toMarxism inthe killingfields had lost itsmoral compass,and Schuldenfreistarted lookingfor boundaries.He found Judaism.Swarthmore, and the College wasn’t.But then those politics became themainstream and ‘won’ over the College.You could smell the egalitarianismin the air.” As the institution grewmore liberal, Richie started movingaway from what he calls the “radicaledge.”“Later came this frenzy of politicalcorrectness,” he says. “I’d seen it coming,but I wasn’t prepared for howextreme it became. Deconstructionism.Multiculturalism—it was so exaggerated.But that energy is sort ofgone now. The extreme has passed.”In effect Richie and Swarthmoreswitched places. “We’ve both changeda lot.”But in one fundamental way, RichieSchuldenfrei is Swarthmore. AndSwarthmore is Richie Schuldenfrei.Both believe in liberal education. Bothexist to challenge students to think oflife in all of its moral dimensions. Bothwant young people to see the connectionsbetween what they learn andwho they are and how they act in theworld.“In class yesterday a student askedme what he should write when he’swriting about Hume—‘Hume argued’or ‘Hume argues?’ I said, ‘Humeargues.’ I want the kids to think ofHume as sort of there to argue withthem. I want Hume to represent aposition with which they can actuallyhave a discussion in their own heads.After they leave here, when they haveto ask themselves questions, whenthey make decisions in their lives, Iwant them to ask themselves, ‘Whatwould Kant say about this?’ ‘Whatwould Hume say about this?’ ‘Whatwould Aristotle say?’ I want to givethem the vocabulary to ask thesequestions.”“Richie gave me a set of gnawing,serious, fundamental questions—neuroses,more—that has moved me eversince,” says Efron. “What does it meanto live a good life? How do you knowwhat sorts of things you’re supposedto know? I think of those questionsevery day when I open The New YorkTimes or look at my daughter or findmyself at synagogue.”However, Richie sees the dark sideof the personal nature of his teaching.He once read a letter from a studentthat said, “My whole education waswrecked by that asshole Schuldenfreiwho let his personal problems interferewith his teaching.”“There are some people out therewho I didn’t do well by because Icouldn’t take a detached academicstance. I don’t disapprove of that kindof teaching, I just can’t do it. And I feellike I owe apologies to all the studentsI’ve taught who have been hurt by mypersonal style.” Most often, Richiesays, he can’t live up to the high standardshe teaches in class. “Personally,I’m more like Woody Allen than JohnWayne.”Either way, Richie doesn’t give hiskids rules or instructions. He doesn’tgive them complete scholarship orscientific theory. He doesn’t give themsolutions to particular moral dilemmas.He certainly doesn’t give themanswers. What they leave with aretheories, mirrors, means to isolatedimensions of moral life and holdtheir lives up to them. He gives hisstudents something that’s going tomake a difference in their lives.Today, on this rainy Thursday afternoonin 324 Papazian, the subjectis vices, Ordinary Vices, a book by contemporaryphilosopher Judith Shklarwhich offers a new approach to beingmoral. Already, the class has flushedout Shklar’s theory—that people must12 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENG-JENG LEEAs Swarthmore became more liberal,Schuldenfrei saw himself moving awayfrom what he calls the “radical edge.”learn to live with commonplace vices,such as hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal,and misanthropy. Eradicating theminevitably leads to a much worsevice—cruelty, especially mass socialand political cruelty, Nazism, Stalinism,and the like. Shklar puts crueltyfirst and tells us not to be so afraid ofthe other vices, which can’t be avoidedin the modern world.Richie wants to know if the classthinks she’s right. Is avoiding crueltythe goal of a good life? Is cruelty theultimate vice? What about betrayal?What about Chapter 4, “The Ambiguitiesof Betrayal?”“It’s impossible not to betray,” saysthe student with the sandwich. Richielets this comment hang as he sitsdown in a chair and throws his armover the back of it, crossing his legs.The drama is there; it’s just subtlerthan it used to be.“Is it, then, impossible to be loyal?”Richie asks, his Bronx accent as thickas an East Village cab driver’s.One student sitting under the windowin the back of the classroom isn’tsure if it’s a good thing to live withbetrayal but also isn’t sure how to livewithout it. He wishes Shklar weremore clear-cut. “She uses marriage asan example,” he says. Richie standsup and puts his hands on his hips.He’s finished warming up now. He’sready to roll. “Infidelity and divorcemay look like a betrayal,” the studentcontinues, “but if a person is unhappyand decides to stay in a marriage, isn’tthat person betraying himself?”“Well,” answers Richie. “She’s obviouslynot advocating the Liz Taylorapproach to this problem, but she’salso not advocating the CatholicChurch’s. Hmmmm ... let’s see. Whatwas the title of this chapter? ‘TheAnnals of Betrayal?’ Noooo. ‘The Disasterof Betrayal?’ Noooo. Wasn’t it,‘The Ambiguities of Betrayal.’ Right?”Everyone laughs. The guy sittingnext to the student leans over andwhispers, “He got you that time.”A Richie story, no doubt. ■Vicki Glembocki is a writer based inState College, Pa. She is associate editorof The Penn Stater magazine.13

A personal account of coming out at Swarthmore.It is March 1998, and I am sitting in a building onthe Swarthmore campus—the Lang PerformingArts Center—that didn’t exist when I was here inthe 1980s. I am back for the first time in 13 years,invited to speak at the Sager Symposium’s 10thanniversary—an event that didn’t exist when I washere—about coming out at Swarthmore.I scan the room and note that the students todaylook not so different from the way we looked, exceptfor the trend toward shaven heads and nose rings. Butsitting in front of me is something I never experiencedat Swarthmore. It is a son sitting next to his father—unmistakably related by the same bend of theneck, sweep of the hair, tilt of the head. It is Parents’Weekend, and this father has accompaniedhis son to a seminar on being queerat Swarthmore. I wonder if my fatherwould have come to such a lecture whenI was a freshman, had anything likethis even occurred 17 years ago.In the years since I left college,lesbians and gays have been onthe cover of News-week; havehad a popular televisionshow; have died of AIDSand started a nationalhealth campaigntopreventtheHomeistheSpiritBy Laura Markowitz ’85spread of HIV; have been addressed by a sitting president;and have come out in every walk of life, includingthe foreign service, military, academia, and entertainmentindustry. Some of the queer students at Swarthmoretoday were “out” for more than five years beforethey came to college; are already mentors for otherqueer youth; went to their high school proms withsame-sex partners; speak easily about parents, brothers,and sisters who are queer. Swarthmore has thenewly endowed James C. Hormel Professorship inSocial Justice, thanks to James Hormel ’55, a gay manwho serves on the College’s Board of Managers. [Seepage 43 for more on Hormel.]Swarthmore also has the longest-standing queersymposium on any college campus, ever, anywhere.What’s clear to me, as I survey the crowd at the 10thanniversarySager Symposium, is that queers have“arrived” at Swarthmore.Icame out for good in 1984, during my junior year ofcollege. A close friend who came out around thesame time I did recently remarked on how beinggay means spending your entire life coming out. “It’s aprocess that never ends,” he said. “You make newfriends, change jobs, move house, meet family membersand all of these events typically require us tocome out anew. I think how you come out changes,how you feel about coming out changes, your desire tocome out or not changes with time.”I had started to come out on my first day of college,to a new friend I met in the hallways of Willets—inthose days the rowdy, party dorm for freshmen. Thisnew friend and I went for a walk and tried to analyzewhat faux pas we had made on our housing form to beassigned to Willets. Eventually, we talked about ourhigh school boyfriends and then she said she thoughtshe might be a lesbian, and I said out loud, for the firsttime, “I know I am.”I was astonished at myself for having said outloud what had been terrifying to acknowledge tomyself. I was 17, and I had nowhere to put this informationabout myself. The fact was, I had neverknown an “out” lesbian before. I wasn’t sure what itmeant to be one, apart from the obvious attractionto women. But I did know it wasn’t safeto be out. In this, my experience as ayoung lesbian was much the same as itis for queer youth today. A recent surveyof 2,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexualyouth ages 10 to 25 shows thatmost take three years to come outto someone else.SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Laura Markowitz ’85 gave thekeynote address at this year’s10th-anniversary Sager Symposium.This essay is adaptedfrom her speech.The next week, I met my first real,live lesbian. My roommate and I,both feminists, were planning ongoing to a meeting of the Alice PaulWomen’s Center, but herboyfriend—a worldly sophomore—warned us that “it was full of lesbians.”Of course then I really wantedto go. I spent the whole time at themeeting trying to figure out who was alesbian.There was one woman—a senior—who dressed in black and wrote poetry,so I figured she must be the lesbian. Iwatched her from afar, trying to figureout what a lesbian was like. I heardthat some guys on her hall had sether door on fire, that they had spraypainted“Kill the Dyke” on the walloutside her room. I heard peopleshouting humiliating commentsabout her when she walked throughSharples Dining Hall. I promptly started datingmen. I didn’t consider my relationships withmen those first two years at college a “lie” becausethere was genuine affection. But I wrote in my journalat the time, “It is as if I am waiting for something,maybe a new language, so I can tell myself the realstory about who I am.”Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was often in thecompany of lesbians in the form of my teammates. Iplayed a sport, and there was, I later learned, a tightknitgroup of women on the team who were lovers withone another. They were not political feminist lesbians.They avoided the Gay and Lesbian Union (GLU) likethe plague. Maybe they didn’t even call themselves lesbians.When a classmate matter-of-factly told me thattwo women on our team were lovers, I was fascinatedby this first lesbian couple I had ever known of, and Iobserved the way they kept their affection for eachother hidden. I never stopped to wonder why. It wasobvious: They were surviving. They didn’t want theirdoors spray-painted. They didn’t want the nasty commentsand stares.There was another, similar type of lesbian at Swarthmorein the early 1980s, I later discovered. These werewomenfriends whowere havingintensely intimate andsexual relationships with each other, but theynever told anyone. Some even had serious romanticinvolvements with men as well as having womenlovers. When I finally came out publicly, it wasn’tuncommon for one or both in such a couple to seekme out and confess their secret affair. I could understandtheir reluctance to come out. How intrusive tohave to declare something so sexual and private to theworld, yet how difficult it was for them to hide their©1998 MARTY KATZJUNE 1998 15

omance and endure their friends’suspicious speculation.Almost every single one of thesewomen is now married to a man andhas children. We didn’t use the word“bisexual” back then, but perhapsthey were bisexual. There seemed tobe two choices back in the early1980s: straight or lesbian. (My junioryear, just back from Asia where I hadbecome an ardent meditator, I founda convenient third option: spiritualcelibacy.) Before I graduated someonedid start the Bisexual and QuestioningCircle, but many people—myself included—figured “bisexual”meant “too scared to come out allthe way.” Many of us—straight andqueer—still have trouble fittingbisexuality into our dichotomousview of sexuality.There was no language for what Ifelt about myself as a lesbian.Saying the word “lesbian”didn’t resonate with me because I had no clear imageof what a lesbian was, what a lesbian life would looklike. I admired from afar a student a few years behindme who had come out during high school—how hadshe survived? I couldn’t imagine it. I had never met anout, adult lesbian. There was not a single one that Iever knew of at Swarthmore during all the years Iattended. I didn’t know that there were lesbian professorsat Swarthmore, although we all knew of a few gayprofessors—it seemed safer for men in academia tocome out, but double jeopardy for women. Those werethe days when we fought to get Women’s Studiescourses on campus, and all feminists were suspectedof being lesbians.My years at Swarthmore before coming out wereneither tortured nor unhappy. This may be because Icould pass for straight. My gender presentation was“normal” feminine, no one walked behind me andyelled, “bulldagger” or called me “sir” by mistake. I hada friend a few years older who, before and after shecame out, spent a lot of time asking us if we thoughtshe was “too butch.”Despite being closeted and confused, if you hadasked me what I thought of Swarthmore my first twoyears there, I would have told you I loved it, and Iwould have meant it. I loved being with my friends,feeling intellectually awake, and finding my niche in thecommunity. For the first time in a long time—afteryears of living at home with my mother’s illness anddeath and my family’s disintegration—I wasn’t lonely. IIwas filledwith my ownfears andstereotypes ofbeing queer....Not only was Iunable to feel athome in myself,there werecrucial ways inwhich I couldn’tfeel at home atSwarthmore.was happy, but I survived by periodicallyforgetting I was a lesbian. I survivedby never allowing myself tohave a single crush on any woman. Isurvived by forgetting I had used theword “lesbian” to describe myself, asif I had never known it and, in notknowing it, could not be it. I washappy, true, but I was also shut offfrom myself.Shutting ourselves off, editing ourselvesso we can pass, is one of thepsychological effects of oppression.Even though I wasn’t out yet, I wasfilled with my own fears and stereotypesof being queer and intimidatedby the casual undercurrents ofantiqueer sentiment all around me,in a population of teenagers andyoung 20-year-olds. Not only was Iunable to feel at home in myself,there were crucial ways in which Icouldn’t feel at home at Swarthmore.“Home isn’t just a place to sleepand hang your clothes,” wrote familytherapist Kenneth Hardy in an issue of my magazine, Inthe Family. “It is also a state of being, a sense of intrinsicallyfitting in to the community around you andbeing welcomed, invited, accepted, and free to be complete.”All of us long for a sense of place, of belonging,and in the peer world of college, the need to fit in andbe accepted is even more intense. When I finally cameout to my friends, I found them unsurprised, supportive,and loving. In this, I was lucky. Many queers hadthe opposite experience.The psychological wound caused by homophobia isa kind of emotional homelessness. Hardy writes, “Lesbiansand gays can’t operate in the world with a basictrust in life’s fairness, nor can they ever assume theywill be regarded as full human beings by other membersof society.” During my senior year, the GLU wasbattling the Admissions Office because the informationabout GLU had deliberately been left out of the materialson clubs and activities sent to prospective students.They didn’t want to scare anyone, the admissionspeople told us. Parents of prospective studentsmight not want their kids going to a college thatseemed to support queers. The College apparentlywasn’t worrying about the message it was sendingthose isolated, scared, queer prospective studentsthrough this deafening silence.Such silences taught me implicitly what Hardy calls“learned voicelessness,” a process by which I came tounderstand that I was not entitled to say who I was,what I knew, or what I experienced. When I fell in love16 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

with a woman and really let myself feel it, I was terrified.I went to the counseling center to talk about it.The young counselor—probably a graduate intern—heard me say I thought I might be a lesbian, and herresponse was, “Did you ever think you might not be?”Then she changed the subject.Learned voicelessness is the “Don’t ask, don’t tell”policy in many families. The utter silence in my familyabout homosexuality was a lesson of omission. Likemost parents, my father wasn’t glad to hear that I wasa lesbian. But when I came out to my father during winterbreak of my senior year, I didn’t expect him to beupset. We had always seen eye to eye on things, and Iwas in love, happy, and relieved that I had finallyaccepted this information about myself. I somehowwasn’t prepared for his ashen look, as if I had told himI had cancer. He wouldn’t speak a word. Hugging himin the kitchen, I could hear his heart beating, and Icould feel his breath rising and falling. Time stoppedfor us both. I asked him to say something, and hecould only tell me, “I don’t want to say the wrongthing.”Always close, particularly since my mother haddied, we were very careful with each other for the nexttwo years. I knew he wouldn’t cut me off because heloved me. I was his child, and it would have been asinconceivable for him to cut me off as it would havebeen for him to amputate his own arm. But I felt that totalk about my lesbianism would drive us further apart,and so I colluded in the silence. I stopped telling himanything about my life. My sister, on the other hand,always helpful, sent him books like So Now You Know.Although he was struggling with what it meant tohave a lesbian child, my father was perfectly pleasantand welcoming to my lover, as he was to all myfriends. He occasionally asked if this or that onewas gay, and he was pleased, I could tell, that notall my friends were queer. I think he still heldout hope that I would grow out of this “phase,”and the fact that my best friend was a heterosexualman helped him feel that I hadn’tjoined some sort of man-hating cult.I’m sure it’s difficult for parents to figureout why their child happens to bequeer. After I came out to him, myfather ran into an acquaintance whoseson had graduated from Swarthmoreseveral years before I arrived. Mydad asked him what he thoughtabout the College, and theman—whose son, it turns out,is gay—growled, “It’s full oflousy homosexuals!” Myfather remembered thatconversation, and during one of our frustratingattempts at talking about my lesbianism, he related itto me and suggested that Swarthmore was to blame. Itold him, if it was, then please send the College a bigcontribution because I was very happy about being alesbian. This surprised him, I think. What he was seeingas a tragedy, I regarded as a great relief and blessing.It took us many years to reconcile our differentviews of my lesbianism. Just as I had never hadany role models of adult lesbians, neitherhad he.Although I didn’t have any direct experiencesof harassment while I was a student,I saw other gays, lesbians, and bisexualsbeing harassed and threatened. Someoneleft a half-dissected lab animal onthe library carrel of a lesbian friendof mine. Unfortunately, episodeslike these still happen atSwarthmore. At the SagerSymposium I was toldthat there were severalantiqueer incidentson campus this year.The Sager Fund —“a sense of belonging”In an effort to combat homophobia and related discrimination,sculptor Richard Sager ’74, a leader inSan Diego’s gay community, established a fund at theCollege in his name in 1988.The fund, administered by a committee of womenand men from the student body, alumni, staff, faculty,and administration, sponsors events that focus onconcerns of the lesbian, bisexual, and gay communities.It also promotes curricular innovation in thefield of lesbian and gay studies and supports theannual Sager Symposium.“One of the wonderful outgrowths of the fund,”Sager said recently, “is that it has created a sense ofbelonging for lesbians and gay men who graduated10, 20, or 30 years ago.” The focus of this year’s 10thanniversarysymposium was on those alumni, whodiscussed their experiences of activism on campusand living as open homosexuals after graduation.In the last 10 years, the symposium has presentedtopics including “Screen Tests: Experimental Identitiesand New Queer Media,” “Queer the Institution/Institutionalize the Queer,” “Coalitions Across QueerDifferences,” and “Social Policy and Activism.”The Sager Fund continues to grow through contributionsmade by Richard Sager and by alumni andfriends of the College.JUNE 1998

I spoke with students who feel bitter and disillusionedby the fact that Swarthmore, which has a reputationfor being open and accepting of queers, is not a completelysafe place for them. Their complaint was notthat the hate crimes happened, but that the administrationdidn’t take any action beyond a statement officiallycondemning the harassment.I worry that the conditions of learned voicelessnessand psychological homelessness are being replicatedhere today, right now, because, as students report, theincidents get muffled, and they feel that no oneaddresses their eroding sense of safety. Are we sayingto these students, “Look, now, no one was hurt, sodon’t make a fuss. You’re at Swarthmore! Don’t youknow how good you have it?"After graduation I left for a year on a Watson Fellowship.My father still hadn’t told a soul, noteven my stepmother, that I was a lesbian. Hehardly wrote to me, and when he did, he didn’t saymuch except that he loved and missed me. I missedhim, too. It was strange to feel so viscerally connectedto him yet so unable to speak about what was reallygoing on between us. I was grateful in a way for hissilence while he grappled with his ambivalencebecause I knew how different it could have been. I hadqueer friends whose parents had cut them off,screamed insults at them, kicked them out of thehouse. My father’s biggest worry was that the worldwould be unsafe for me. At one point, I told him, “I canhandle the rest of the world’s problem with it; it’s yourdisapproval that’s hard for me.” He heard that, and theair between us began to lighten.When I finally returned home, I moved to Washington,D.C., and shared an apartment with a good friendfrom Swarthmore who was gay. We were both scaredabout being out in the adult world. He had friends whowere dying or dead from AIDS. We went to a gay/lesbianbar for about 20 minutes and then fled. Neither ofus had come out at our jobs, but we regaled eachother with stories of who might or might not be gay atthe office. It took a toll on me, not coming out at work. Ifound it impossible to have genuine friendships withmy co-workers because I was keeping this big secret,Why “Queer”?In April 1997, In the Family, the magazineI publish, ran a special issueabout straight allies of lesbians, gays,and bisexuals. The cover line read:“What Makes Straights Wave theQueer Banner?” Soon I received a callfrom an angry lesbian subscriber.“How could you print that terribleword ‘queer’ on the cover of yourmagazine?” she asked me.Language and labels are deeplypoliticized—and also deeply personal.Although the word “queer” has beenused to humiliate and degrade homosexualsin earlier generations, thesedays “queer” is the new, all-inclusiveterm for anyone who doesn’t identifyhimself or herself as heterosexual.Queer theory has become a cuttingedgeacademic pursuit encompassingquestions of gender, sexual orientation,and culture. While older lesbiansand gays who remember the daysbefore gay liberation recall how“queer” was hurled at them as aninsult, many younger people preferthe term “queer” because it is openendedand doesn’t rigidly describeany specific sexual orientation. Itleaves room for ambiguity, which isalso a kind of privacy.The names of campus groups overthe years reflect a changing consciousness—notonly of of how lesbians,gays, and bisexuals presentthemselves but of the changing campusclimate. The appearance of theword “lesbian,” the inclusion of“bisexuality,” the involvement ofstraight allies, and finally the generaluse of the word “queer,” are markersof the movement’s history at Swarthmore.The following list of campusgroups was compiled through aninformal survey of alumni and studentsat the recent Sager Symposium.1970s: Gay LiberationEarly 1980s: Gay and Lesbian Union(GLU)Mid-1980s: Bisexual and QuestioningCircle (BQC)1986: Merger of GLU/BQC1989: Alternative Sexualities Integratedat Swarthmore (AS IS)1991: Action Lesbigay1992: Lesbian Bisexual Gay Alliance(LBGA)1992: Association for Sexual OrientationRights and Awareness(ASORA), composed mainly ofstraight allies1993: Fluid Women1995: Swarthmore Queer Union(SQU)1996: Our Glass (previously FluidWomen)1997: Queer Straight Alliance (QSA)When you get into the tangle oflabels and identity, there is always thequestion of who is allowed to callwhom what. For instance, manyAfrican Americans are offended whenblack comedian Chris Rock uses theword “nigger.” Lesbians may refer tothemselves as “dykes,” but is it OK if astraight person uses that term? Contextis everything. When a gay friendof mine calls himself a “queen” or a“fag,” it doesn’t mean he would feelcomfortable if a straight person calledhim that. For years lesbian feministsprotested that calling them “gay” wasas sexist as referring to all humans as“men.” At the same time, some gaywomen can’t relate to the word “lesbian.”When Ellen DeGeneres wasinterviewed by Diane Sawyer, she saidthat the word “lesbian” sounded like adisease, but a few months later shewas calling herself a lesbian.As a writer and editor, I appreciatethe economy of “queer”—imaginehaving to find fresh ways to say “lesbian,gay, bisexual, transgendered,and questioning” at least twice a paragraph.—L.M.18SWARTHMORE COL-LEGE BULLETIN

ut I also didn’t feel safe coming out.I worked at a typical nonprofit thinktank, mismanaged by a charismaticjournalist and his two sidekicks, oneof whom made inappropriate, sexuallyexplicit passes at all of us youngfemale interns. I quit within sixmonths in protest, and a half-dozenof my colleagues followed. I felt thatif I had come out, I would have lostcredibility—I would have beenlabeled a “man-hating dyke” and mycomplaints about the harassmentminimized or dismissed.It was scary being out in the “realworld,” and because of that I am nolonger startled by the number of lesbiansI knew in college who are nowmarried to men. I wish them all well,but it is always hard to hear aboutyet another “has-bian.” What does itmean about lesbianism, about thestress of being queer? Was it just thatthey had been “experimenting” incollege, where it was reasonablysafe, but once they got into the realworld they didn’t want the struggle?At Swarthmore, I had not felt menaced,and I took for granted that it would always feelthis way to be a lesbian in the world. I hadn’t yet realizedhow fortunate I had been to come out in a relativelysafe, accepting environment, and how privileged Iwas to be white, middle class, and educated. All ofthese things rendered me more acceptable in the mainstreamand, therefore, cushioned me from some, butnot all, of the physical and emotional danger of comingout.When I took my second job as a staff editor for asmall magazine, I decided to come out from day one. Iwas the first and only lesbian almost everyone therehad ever met, but they got used to me, and I felt comfortableand happy there. After two years, I startedworking at the Family Therapy Networker, where I’vebeen for nine years or so, and I began writing aboutgays and lesbians in the family.A big turning point in my relationship with myfather was when I wrote about him in the Networker. Iwrote about the problems we had been having, andour inability to talk about my lesbianism. He loved thearticle and gave it to everyone he knew, and in thatway he finally came out to his world. When he brokethe silence, I could come home emotionally and psychologically.I could reconnect with my aunts, uncles,and cousins without the burden of having a secret. Icould talk openly and happily about my life and knowI graduatedwithout aclear sense ofwhether ornot I was anembarrassmentto the College.Until recentlyno one wascelebrating thegenerations ofqueer studentswho had madetheir mark onthe school andin the world.that my father wasn’t standingbehind me, flinching.For the past 11 years, my partner,Mary Kay, and I have become eachother’s family and have asked ourfamilies, insurance company, neighbors,and friends to treat us like afamily. My brother and sister putMary Kay’s picture next to mine ontheir refrigerators so their childrenrecognize both their aunts. Mycousins ask us when we’re going tohave a wedding. Mary Kay’s fathergoes out of his way to include me ininvitations for family holidays. Whenwe wanted to take a romantic tropicalvacation but worried whether itwould be dangerous to be openlyaffectionate in those heterosexualmeat markets, my parents offered tocome along to protect us, and sureenough, they followed us down thebeach while we held hands, watchingour backs.Until the Sager Symposium invitationsstarted coming in the mail, Inever knew where, exactly, my placewas as a queer alum of Swarthmore. Igraduated without a clear sense of whether or not Iwas an embarrassment to the College. Until recentlyno one was celebrating the generations of queer studentswho had made their mark on the school and inthe world.If home is the spirit we hope to find in others, anend to being pushed out in the cold because of somedifference that is deemed unacceptable, then I feel Ihave finally come home to Swarthmore. I hope thescores of queer alumni out there—many of whomcame out after graduation, some of whom are comingout at midlife and older age—can also come home. ■Laura Markowitz ’85, majored in religion at Swarthmoreand is senior editor of Family Therapy Networker, amagazine for psychotherapists. Winner of a NationalMagazine Award for writing, she is a freelance writer forUtne Reader, Glamour, Ms., and other publications. In1995 Markowitz launched In the Family, a magazine forlesbians, gays, bisexuals, and their relations, whichreceived the 1997 Excellence in the Media Award. Forsubscription information, write In the Family, P.O. Box5387, Takoma Park MD 20913.Swarthmore alumni who would like to know moreabout future Sager Symposia may be placed on a mailinglist by writing to Chair, Sager Committee, SwarthmoreCollege, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397.JUNE 1998 19

Why can’t a college beAs Swarthmore’s comprehensive fee breaksBy Jeffrey LottMabel Clement Lee ’34 still hasone of her Swarthmore Collegeinvoices, dated “NinthMonth, 8, 1933.” In an era ofcomputer-generated bills, its typewrittencharacters have the look of amedieval manuscript. Yet puttingaside the quaint Quaker nomenclaturefor September, the real curiosity is thefull price of Lee’s senior year at college.Including room, board, and aspending account deposit, it came to$950.In August Swarthmore will mailinvoices for the 1998–99 academicyear. The bottom line for those payingfull price: $30,740. But then, not everyonepays full price, and every studentat Swarthmore—including those whopay $30,740—receives a significantsubsidy from the College’s endowment.“Price” is the key word here, saysPaul Aslanian, vice president forfinance and planning, and it is quitedifferent from “cost.” Next year theCollege’s actual expenditure per student—thecost of a Swarthmore education—willbe approximately $51,000.Thus the College will subsidize theeducation of every enrolled student,whether or not that student receivesfinancial aid, with about $20,000 infunds from sources other than tuitionand fees. Significantly, this figure doesnot include the funds set aside fromthe budget for outright grants to aidedstudents. It is pure “value added” forevery Swarthmore student, and itcomes largely from endowmentincome and to a lesser extent fromother annual gifts.Still, the price of quality higher educationis perceived as being steep,and Aslanian is often asked why theCollege can’t be run more like a busi-20 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SHERRI JOHNSONmore like a business?the $30,000 barrier, it’s a good question.ness. The implication of the question,he says, is that “if you guys could runa tighter ship, college wouldn’t cost somuch.” He argues that wherever possible,Swarthmore does run a tightship, but there are significant economicdifferences between a for-profit corporationand an institution of higherlearning—especially a first-rank collegelike Swarthmore.Aslanian, a former economics professorwho was treasurer of MacalesterCollege before coming to Swarthmorein 1996, points to two fundamentaldistinctions: the inability to substitutecapital for labor, as has occurredin business, and the College’s desireto stay small, which places limits onfaculty productivity.“If you were to look at a manufacturingplant, the way people are doingbusiness in 1998 is significantly differentfrom the way it was done in 1963,”explains Aslanian. “Technology andnew machinery have hugely increasedthe output per worker and consequentlymade the factory more efficient.This phenomenon has morerecently been extended to white-collarjobs in many industries.“Now look at the underlying economicsof how a Swarthmore facultymember teaches a class in 1998 versus1963. You may see a difference inteaching style, but at the end of theday, he or she has taught just aboutthe same number of students as 35years ago.“We’ve made the choice, based onour understanding of what constitutesthe highest-quality undergraduateexperience, to have small classes, personalinteraction between faculty andstudents, and collaborative researchopportunities at the undergraduatelevel.” At just under 9:1, Swarthmore’sstudent-faculty ratio is among the lowestin the nation.JUNE 1998 21

higher education and the modern corporation.school like Swarthmore, says Winston,is that they allow the College tobe highly selective in choosing its students.Swarthmore and other topschools have significant excessdemand for their services (more than4,500 applied for 360 positions in theClass of 2002), but instead of expanding“production,” as any prudententrepreneur would do, the Collegebecomes more selective in choosingthe students it serves.Students educate studentsWinston calls this “customer-inputtechnology,” and it’s another majordifference between higher educationand business. As anyone who hasstudied in a college like Swarthmorewell knows, students help educatestudents—something known and documentedas the “peer effect.”“Swarthmore students set highstandards for each other,” says ProfessorMark Jacobs of the BiologyDepartment. “Particularly in seminarsthe pressure to do well is coming notfrom the professors as much as fromthe other students. This is somethingyou learn as a freshman here—thatthe juniors and seniors aren’t competingwith you for grades but are passingalong their expectations for excellence.”Winston shows that the schoolswith greater subsidies from endowmentand contributions are able toattract better students, who, in turn,bring more of the same, creatinggreater demand and further raisingthe quality of education.A key component in bringing thebest students to Swarthmore, regardlessof their ability to pay, is financialaid. Scholarship grants have a longhistory at the College. Even in 1933,Mabel Lee received a $350 scholarship,for which she was required towork eight hours each week in thelibrary. Though the College’s annualfee was then $950, actual price paid byher family—Lee’s father was afarmer—that year was $600.In the academic year just completed,Swarthmore provided financial aidto just under half of its students. Theaverage financial aid package, consistingof outright grants, loans, and campuswork, was just shy of $21,000, andthe grant portion itself—essentially agift—averaged almost $17,000. Thusthe average price paid by the aidedfamily was $10,200, a little over a thirdof the “sticker price.”In sum Swarthmore and its peerinstitutions use their donated resourcesto add value to their programsand to create subsidies, whichfurther enhance their reputation.They choose their student bodiescarefully from an applicant pool thatfar exceeds their enrollment capacity,using financial aid to assure that onlythe brightest, most able studentsmatriculate. A “feedback loop” is created,raising the school’s reputationever higher, attracting evenbetter students and facultymembers—and more donationsto sustain the process.Infinite-life institutionAll of this is made possible,at least at the top ranks ofAmerican higher education,by philanthropy. “This is aninfinite-life institution,”asserts Paul Aslanian. “Peoplewho have gone throughhere before have believedin this place and have madeit possible for these studentstoday to be here.“I sometimes wish thatmembers of the facultywould stand in front oftheir classes and explain totheir students—even thosewho are paying the fullprice—that not one of themis paying the full cost, and that it’s thecommitment of their predecessorsthat has made all this possible. It’s notan economic calculus; it’s a moralargument to say that you have thesame obligations to future generations.”■Swarthmore usesits donatedresources to createsubsidies, whichfurther enhance itsreputation. It selectsstudents from anapplicant pool thatfar exceeds itsenrollment capacity,using financial aid toassure that only thebrightest, most ablestudents matriculate.JUNE 1998 23

A L U M N IRecent EventsGarnet Sages: David Cohen ’77,former chief of staff to Philadelphia’smayor, spoke at the Sagesreunion dinner on Alumni Weekend.Associate Dean Gil Stottattended as a special guest.Austin, Texas: Bob ’52 and DagmarStrandberg Hamilton ’53hosted a poolside gathering attheir home, with help fromCathy Horwitz ’96 and AndrésZuluaga ’94.Boston: Young alumni attendeda potluck barbecue at the homeof Isa Helfgott ’94 and NoahNovogrodsky ’92.Cleveland: Jeff Zinn ’92 ledSwarthmore runners JeremyWilliams ’93, Scott Kane ’93,Albert Kim ’93, Rohit Malhotra’95, and Bernhard ’93 andChristina Saunders Sturm ’91 inthe Revco-Cleveland Marathon.Jeff encouraged Swarthmorespectators to pledge money tothe College for every mile completed.Metro NYC Connection ChairDebbie Branker Harrod ’89 createdthe quarterly Artist Newsletter,in which Swarthmoreans listupcoming performances andexhibits. The first edition featuredperformances by HarrietZinnes (mother of Alice Zinnes’77), Marcy Gordon ’78, andPaula Allen ’82. Deb also coordinatedhousing for Swarthmoreengineering students and alumniHomecomingOctober 3 and 4Homecoming Weekend ’98 isscheduled for Oct. 3 and 4.This will be an opportunityfor alumni and parents tosample College events, toenjoy the campus at itsautumn best, and to help welcomePeter Alvanos, Swarthmore’snew football coach.Senator Carl Levin ’56 (right), serving his fourth termrepresenting Michigan, conducted a personal tour of theCapitol for 28 Garnet Sages in April. Shown with Levinin the rotunda are (l. to r.) Howard Bowman ’47,Howard Turner ’33, Frances Dering Stewart ’37, NancyFitts Donaldson ’46, Walter Scheiber ’44, Mary FairbanksFairbanks ’34, and Orlin Donaldson.Hayley Thomas ’93, Danielle Moss Lee ’90, and KristiCunningham ’91 enjoy some old photos during BlackAlumni Weekend in March.Nominations sought for honorary degreesThe College welcomes nominations forrecipients of honorary degrees atCommencement in June 1999. Criteriaused by the Honorary Degree Committeeinclude:• Distinction, leadership, or originalityin a significant field• Someone on the ascent in his or hercareer, or at the peak of achievement• Ability to serve as a role model forgraduating seniors, and to speak to themat a major occasion in their lives• Preference, but not requirement,that there is an existing affiliation withthe College.BRUCE REEDY ʼ68ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSwho displayed their hybrid electriccar entry at the South StreetSeaport before heading down theAtlantic coast in the Tour de Sol.Jim DiFalco ’82 offered a night atthe movies with the New YorkFilm Buffs, “a group of seriousmovie lovers.”Philadelphia: Jim and DenaJacobson Dannenberg ’54 organizedfamilies for a tour of theCrayola Factory and Museum.Outgoing Connection ChairMartha Salzmann Gay ’79 welcomesher successor, JennyRickard ’86, who will start coordinatingevents in the fall.Metro DC/Baltimore: Swarthmorealumni, parents, and friendsprovided housing for members ofSwarthmore’s hybrid electric carteam in the final leg of the Tourde Sol (see Metro NYC).Regional Swarthmore eventsare volunteer run, with supportfrom the Alumni Relations Office. Ifyou’d like to organize an event inyour area, please contact KatieBowman ’94, assistant director ofalumni relations, at kbowman1@swarthmore.edu or (610) 328-8404.Look for the latest informationon upcoming alumni events andactivities around the country on theAlumni home page: www.swarthmore.edu/Home/Alumni.The committee prefers to recognizeless honored candidates over those whoalready have received many honorarydegrees.Alumni who wish to make a nominationare asked not to inform the individualthat they are doing so. All nominationswill be kept confidential. Biographicalinformation, and a persuasive letteraddressing the criteria, should be sentby Friday, Oct. 2, to the Honorary DegreeCommittee, c/o Vice President MauriceEldridge, 500 College Avenue, SwarthmorePA 19081-1397, or e-mailed tomeldrid1@swarthmore.edu.24 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

D I G E S TAlumni serve the College, its students, and their communitiesSwarthmore’s 17,000 alumni arean enormous resource for theCollege, its students, our owncommunities, and our fellow graduates.In the past year, alumni againresponded enthusiastically to manyrequests for help. Examples of serviceabound.For a week in January and March,about 150 alumni and parents providedexternships for students, givingthem an exposure to possible careeropportunities. Others opened theirhomes to the students so that costwould not prevent anyone from participating.Career support marked anothervolunteer effort when about 50 graduatesattending Black Alumni Weekendand the Alumni Council meeting inMarch joined 70 students at the secondannual Alumni-Student CareerNetworking Dinner. It was organizedby the Career Planning and PlacementOffice in cooperation with AlumniRelations. Students questioned alumnion the value of various majors, gradschool options, job searches, and thejuggling of work and family responsibilities.Alumni in several cities providedhousing last summer, and are againthis year, to enable students to takevolunteer internships or low-payingjobs. This generosity not only offers ahome away from home but can alsostretch the limited funds availablefrom the College for summerresearch. Provost Jennie Keith hasencouraged the Alumni Council’seffort to expand this program.Alumni volunteers have representedSwarthmore for years at collegefairs, in prospective student interviews,and at “yield receptions” foraccepted students. Dean of AdmissionsRobin Mamlet met with Councilthis spring to explore more ways thatalumni can help her office extend itsoutreach to additional cities, schools,and students.Members of the Alumni Council volunteeredto participate in the subgroupsof the long-range planning processdescribed in President AlBloom’s letter to alumni in April, andthe Council was able to serve as asounding board for preliminary ideasfrom some of the groups.As reported regularly in thesepages, service projects organized byregional Connection volunteers drawalumni who like to meet old and newfriends while serving their community.Among them this year were a trailmaintenance workparty on a mountainnear Seattle,the City Year servea-thonin Boston,Christmas-in-Aprilin Washington,Jack Riggs ’64STEVEN GOLDBLATT ʼ67D.C., and a Habitatfor Humanity projectin Philadelphia.Service to otheralumni also motivates us. Washingtonareavolunteers organized about 50graduates into a book club that metmonthly in sections to read booksfrom a syllabus developed by PhilWeinstein, the Alexander GriswoldCummins Professor of English. Lastmonth he went to Washington to presenta concluding lecture and lead adiscussion for the combined sections,proving that faculty can match alumniin generosity.Alumni again gave their time andenergy as class agents, class secretaries,reunion coordinators,phonathon volunteers, Connectionchairs, Managers, Alumni Councilmembers, and more. The AlumniCouncil each year recognizes outstandingservice to the Collegethrough the Joseph B. Shane Awardand, starting last year, it honors alumnifor unsung service to their owncommunity through the ArabellaCarter Community Service Award.This month at Alumni Weekend,the Shane Award was presented toMargaret “Mickey” McCain Ford ’43 ofHockessin, Del., and Ken Matsumoto’58, of Tokyo. The Carter Award wasgiven to Stokes ’51 and Mary JaneWinde Gentry ’53 of Williston, Vt.One point stands out as I talk withthe organizers of volunteer activities:Most people who are asked to givetheir time do so and are happy to beasked. The challenge is to take betteradvantage of this generosity and offermore opportunities to those whowant to contribute. In the comingyear, the Alumni Council will try tohelp meet this challenge.—Jack Riggs ’64President, Alumni AssociationAlumni News BriefsSend in thatdirectory informationThe Alumni RecordsOffice will send a mailingto every Swarthmoregraduate this month toconfirm or update informationfor the 1998Swarthmore CollegeAlumni Directory. For thefirst time, the directorywill be produced both ina soft-cover edition, tobe distributed free ofcharge, and an on-lineversion. If there’s sufficientdemand, a CD-ROM also will be available.Alumni who don’treceive the mailingshould contact AlumniRecords at (610) 328-8435, or e-mail alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.Apply for a LuceScholarshipAlumni under age 30 areinvited to apply for theLuce Scholars Program,which funds a year inAsia. Candidates musthave no previous careerinterest or academicconcentration in Asianstudies, and little or noexposure to East orSoutheast Asia. Applicationsare due Monday,Nov. 2. Information isavailable from TomFrancis, director of theCareer Planning andPlacement Office:phone (610) 328-8352,fax (610) 328-8549, ore-mail tfranci1@ swarthmore.edu.JUNE 199825

✍LettersContinued from page 3Celebrate the athletes,not the criticsTo the Editor:There are many athletes at SwarthmoreCollege who, for one reason or another,have decided not to compete. Someconclude that they cannot balance therigors of academics and athletics. Otherscite personal differences betweenthe coaching staff and their own philosophies.In these cases it is in the bestinterest of the individual and the teamfor the athlete to remove himself or herselffrom competition.However, in the Bulletin (“Postings,”March 1998), J.T. Haskins cites a lack ofcompetition at the Division III level asone reason for his departure from thevarsity men’s basketball team. I foundhis article to be insulting to the manyathletes who compete on a daily basiswhile wearing the Garnet uniform. Certainlythe level of talent in Division I isgreater than that in Division III. However,I would argue that competition withinthe Centennial Conference is verystrong, and a rigorous academic loadprovides constant challenge for the athletes.I find it ludicrous to think that thestarting point guard for a winless men’sbasketball team would quit after sevengames, citing a lack of competition andchallenge.I would ask that the Bulletin chooseto celebrate those student-athletes whoare competing on a daily basis and notthe critics who would sit on the sidelinessmugly believing that they are better.The real story lies in the heroics ofa men’s basketball team that, after losingits starting point guard and going 0-22 in the regular season, was victoriousover Haverford College in the final contest.ADRIENNE SHIBLESHead Women’s Basketball CoachAcademics aren’t thewhole of educationTo the Editor:J.T. Haskins’ article about why he quitthe basketball team perpetuates thenotion that the Swarthmore studentathleteis not a valued member of thecommunity. By publishing it the Bulletinpromotes the idea that academics arethe sole purpose of attending Swarthmoreand that athletics are not a worthyendeavor.What often seems to be overlookedin the discussions of athletics at✍“Swarthmoredemands excellencefrom its deans, facultymembers, and students;however, this attitudedoes not extend acrossthe tracks to the playingfields and courts.”Swarthmore is the importance in oureducation of what occurs on the playingfield, court, or swimming pool. Accordingto the Swarthmore Athletic Department,“athletics should teach the valueof teamwork, commitment, perseverance,communication, and leadership.”These characteristics are invaluableassets in a person’s life. Mr. Haskins’overgeneralization that “regardless ofwhether or not we choose to participatein sports, all of us came to Swarthmoreto get an education that will makeour lives successful” dismisses theimportance of what athletes learn duringcompetition.Swarthmore demands excellencefrom its deans, faculty members, andstudents; however, this attitude doesnot extend across the tracks to theplaying fields and courts. The undervaluationof athletics at Swarthmore is representedby the publication of Mr. Haskins’article. For athletes and the College,remaining competitive should not bethe goal; success should be. Until we, asa community, move beyond the ideathat as long as we beat Haverford,everything else is OK, student-athleteswill never truly excel.DOUG ROUSE ’98Varsity Basketball Captain“Impolitic generalizations”To the Editor:Although it is healthy that J.T. Haskinshas dashed his dreams of playing in theNBA—few of the players who starred inthis year’s Final Four will get drafted—itis lamentable that for four months outof the year he cannot splurge two hoursa day on honing the fundamentals ofteamwork, lessons that will have asmuch impact on his success in businessor politics as the analytical skills henourishes in the classroom. I sincerelydoubt that any of this nonsense wouldhave been printed had it been by a studentditching the Philosophy Departmentbecause he found it beneath hisintellect. The hubris!On one point I can enthusiasticallyagree with Haskins: If he aspires to a lifein politics, he needs to spend as muchtime as possible studying the trade.Such impolitic generalizations as “DivisionIII athletics are perfect for a schoollike Swarthmore, where sports areviewed primarily as a release from thestresses of studying,” or “The commitmentnecessary to be successful in DivisionI requires an enormous amount oftime that Swarthmore students do nothave because of the College’s high academicstandards” lead me to concludethat Mr. Haskins has either (1) not donehis homework, or (2) needs to enlist theservices of another speechwriter. Tocompete in Division I does not necessarilyrequire a surplus of time as muchas an unusually high level of talent.And now for a little boorish egocentricity:Nearly every starter on Swarthmore’s1985 baseball team, which postedthe best record in College history(26–3) and won Swarthmore’s onlyberth ever in the Division III WorldSeries, was recruited by a Division Ischool. Like Mr. Haskins, we too foundthe tug of Swarthmore’s educationalstrengths too mighty to pass up. We allgraduated—some with highest honors—includingtwo players who wereoffered professional contracts. Duringthis period, which is beginning to looklike the golden era of Swarthmore athletics,we had many football, lacrosse,and tennis players who threw over DivisionI scholarships for the rigors of aSwarthmore education.Like Mr. Haskins I also hope that“athletics will continue to be a majorpart of life at Swarthmore.” But to doso, Swarthmore must continue to pursueathletes who are talented, competitive,and have a firm grasp of the teamconcept.CHARLES GREEN ’85Dallas, Texas“White Western culture”claim needs contextTo the Editor:I feel that I have an obligation torespond to a claim in the introductionto the article “Faces Like Mine” (December1997) and in particular to my col-26 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

league and fellow alumnus ProfessorRichard Valelly’s [’75] letter to the editor(March 1998). Although I agree withRick’s statement that “Western cultureis not white,” there is more to be said.The original claim reads (in part)“the faculty is recognizing that to educateleaders for the next century,Swarthmore needs to help its studentsredefine and renegotiate the relationshipof white, Western culture to thenew international political, social, andcultural landscape.”Rick points out what is obvious tome but certainly not to all: that nonwhiteshave already shaped and willcontinue to shape the Western political,social, and cultural landscape in asmany ways as whites. In fact in Americatoday, I think it would be quite difficultto name any one group that has shapedthe country any more or less than anyother group. Though I most certainlyapplaud and agree with Rick’s correctionof the author’s claim, I add the followingto complete the discussion.• In May 1998 there were noAfrican-American chief executiveofficers of Fortune 500 companies.• One of 100 members of the Senateand fewer than 7 percent of themembers of the House are AfricanAmerican. Section 2 of the VotingRights Act was changed in 1982 tomake it more difficult for courts touphold drawing district lines so asto increase minority representationin Congress.• As we move further into thetechnology age, we must note thatno more than 3 percent of theAmerican citizens earning a Ph.D.in mathematics in any given yearhave been African American—ever. Similar statistics, someworse and some better, hold foralmost every field of science.• In 1996 A Profile of the WorkingPoor by the U.S. Department ofLabor says that “although nearlythree-fourths of the working poorwere white workers, black and Hispanicworkers continued to experiencepoverty rates that were morethan twice the rates of whites.”So, is Western culture (or, moreappropriately in this context, the Westernpolitical, social, and cultural landscape)white? No. Should we be quickto point this out to those who wouldsay it, even while trying to make apoint? Absolutely. However, there is areal danger, particularly in today’s climate,to not also mention the issuesinherent in the facts stated above in thesame breath that we remind people, toparaphrase Rick, of the diversity wehave always had in the “appreciationand production” of Western culture.The full context of the claim was topoint out the commitment SwarthmoreCollege has made “to hire more facultymembers of color and expand the curriculum”in its mission to “educate leadersfor the next century.” Given statisticslike the preceding, and the fact thatearly in the 21st century whites willcease to be a majority over nonwhitesin America, I believe this commitmentto be not only important but crucial. Itis my hope that the Swarthmore CollegeBulletin will continually revisit theissues addressed here.GARIKAI CAMPBELL ’90Swarthmore, Pa.gcampbe1@swarthmore.eduCampbell is a Minority Scholar in Residencein the Department of Mathematicsand Statistics.✍“It’sOK to celebrateSt. Patrick’s Day,German-American, or Italian-American day with publicfunds, but anything black,Hispanic, and so on is seenas further widening the gapbetween the races.”Richard Valelly replies:I agree with your points wholeheartedlyand strongly. The claim in my letterwas that Western culture is not—andnever was—“white.” I often find myselfreacting strongly (as I did in my letter)when I detect what I think is an effort toassume away the rainbow character ofWestern culture. (An autobiographicalnote: This somewhat trigger-happypropensity of mine is due to my havingspent many months in 1992 at the DuBois Institute for Afro-AmericanResearch at Harvard.) But there is asuggestion in your letter that my pointabout the deep and inherent diversityof Western culture has a potentialdownside to it. I agree. It shouldn’t havesuch a downside, but in our currentpolitical context, as your letter rightlyimplies, it does.The downside is that pointing outthe existence of a historic culturaldiversity, as I do, may also inadvertentlylend sanction to a standpat attitudeabout the educational, career, economic,and political representation outcomesyou describe. It can even inadvertentlybolster a standpat attitudeabout the character and degree of culturaldiversity that exists today. I don’thave any such complacent views aboutthe issues you bring up, and I appreciatethe opportunity to say so.Whites want exclusivityonly for themselvesTo the Editor:Pete Beck’s [’57] letter (March 1998)reflects sentiments frequently expressedamong nonwhites in this country.From his opening statement, “In aday when most Americans want to endracial barriers based on race and ethnicity,”to his ending statement, “withoutrational, good-faith discussion, theCollege, the students, and the rest of usare doomed to be prisoners,” Mr. Beckplods on narrow-minded, simplistic,and uninformed ground.During the time that Mr. Beck attendedSwarthmore, the presence of minoritieson campus was minimal. Swarthmorewas a campus where acknowledgmentand appreciation of minorities’cultural backgrounds consisted of anoccasional intellectual discussion followedby a field trip into Chester.Mr. Beck’s characterization of theGospel Choir and other campus organizationsas exclusionary or bigoted isnot only insulting but displays his limitedunderstanding of their origin. It’s“just singing,” as Mr. Beck puts it, soeveryone who can sing should be ableto participate.The Gospel Choir has been anambassador of Swarthmore College formore than 25 years, and most of thestudents in that choir had close ties totheir cultural and ethnic backgrounds,grew up in predominantly blackchurches, and to a degree shared thecommon experience of being treateddifferently because of their skin color.It is ironic that the finger is beingpointed at minority organizations forcreating the “race problem” and furtherdividing the races. There is an ongoingdichotomy: white America wanting toexclude nonwhites from its professionaland social organizations, then openlyresenting it when we form our ownorganizations to sustain us culturally,spiritually, socially, and economically.It’s OK to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day,German-American, or Italian-Americanday with public funds, but anythingblack, Hispanic, and so on is seen asJUNE 1998 27

further widening the gap between theraces.This country doesn’t ever ask itswhite citizens to divorce themselvesfrom their ethnic or cultural backgroundsin order to be an American. Onthe contrary, it has embraced those originsand takes pride in them. But nonwhiteethnic or cultural backgroundsare not valued on the same level.W.T. BOYKIN JR. ’77Teaneck, N.J.Don’t ignore freedom astouchstone of American historyTo the Editor:Professor Sarah Willie’s article (“Doesequality mean treating everyone thesame?” March 1998) sets up straw menfor opponents. Many Americans did not“erroneously assume that formal equalityinstantly created informal equality aswell” in 1965. Americans know thatthere is more than one sort of equality—forexample, civil equality, equalityof economic opportunity, and equalityof economic condition. Americans disagreeas to how many of these equalitiesare proper goals of the nation.Many Americans do not believe it is theproper place of government to enforceanything as vague as “informal equality.”Nor did the ethic of assimilation evermean that “everyone was supposed toaspire to the same things,” with noqualifications. American assimilationcreated a large core of common cultureand values that encouraged an enormousvariety of individual aspirationsand cramped or destroyed the collectiveaspirations of many groups ofAmericans. Americans praised theresult of unprecedented individual difference.The argument is not betweendifference and uniformity, but betweentwo conceptions of difference.Willie talks of “a national history ofsystematic oppression and imperialism.”If she means that Americans areguilty of murder, rape, enslavement,and conquest, and that we have talkedloudly of our virtues while committingcrimes, I agree. If she thinks these areAmerican traits rather than human sins,she is wrong. She is also willfully blind ifshe looks at America and cannot seethat freedom is the touchstone of itshistory. At the very least, she shouldmention that this ideal (which shouldnot be confused with equality) hassomething to do with our past.I disagree with almost everythingelse Willie wrote. The letters of PeteBeck ’57 and Rick Valelly ’75 have inthem much of what I would have said. Iurge Willie to address the actual argumentsof her opponents and to modulateher views of history to include bothliberty and the lash.DAVID RANDALL ’93New York✍“ManyAmericans donot believe it is theproper place of governmentto enforce anything as vagueas ‘informal equality.’”Students need moreeducation about alcoholTo the Editor:I am writing regarding “Q&A: DoesSwarthmore have a drinking problem?”in your December 1997 issue.In my experience it is easy for anystudent to sail through Swarthmorewith a drinking problem without beingchallenged in any way about his or herbehavior. Associate Dean TeddGoundie’s definition of problem drinkingas that which “plays a role in ... vandalism... and in ... misconduct—includingsexual misconduct and the rare fistfight,”leaves out the more common andmore damaging effects of alcohol consumptionthat I imagine are still rampantamong Swarthmore students. Irefer to the negative emotional, physical,and spiritual consequences ofhabitual social drinking.The alcohol policy at Swarthmoreappears strong on institutional controls,but there are some areas thatclearly need more attention. Althoughthe College is not responsible for thepoor choices some students makeregarding substance use and abuse, it isresponsible for educating young people.A single orientation-week alcoholseminar is inadequate. Students needmore information about addiction,more challenges to habitual drinkingbehavior, and more information andsupport about processes of recoveryfrom addiction. It’s not just the obviousinstances of abuse that are harmful.I am not suggesting that the Collegepolice drinking on campus, but thatconcerned groups of students, professors,and administrators come togetherto find ways to raise student awarenessof the range of drinking behavior.JENNIFER M. GALLOWAY ’90PhiladelphiaAn excellent startfor women in scienceTo the Editor:I would like to echo Maxine FrankSinger’s [’52] words in the Back Pagesarticle about Swarthmore as a trainingground for women scientists. (“I can doit,” March 1998) Like Singer I was aNational Science Foundation Fellow,and I have gone on to a diverse andrewarding career in research. Half ofmy graduating class in chemistry,including the three top students, werewomen. The best chemistry students inthree classes ahead of me were alsowomen, whom I met in the dorm orstudying in the Underhill ScienceLibrary.These statistics crystallized for meseveral years ago while I was writing aremembrance of retiring ProfessorPeter Thompson, who was the chemistryprofessor who most encouragedme while I was at Swarthmore. I wasstartled to realize how unusual the supportof the department had been at thattime.Questions abound in our professionabout “doing science” in a competitivefunding environment and being awoman in a male-dominated field, butthese are not things I thought about inschool. I was impelled by the excitementof science and my own curiosity.However, the fact that I never thoughtabout gender and science until I workedfor a company with a male-dominatedengineering culture says that my educationalroots were well nurtured atSwarthmore.ANNE M. THOMPSON ’70Greenbelt, Md.Externship programstarted in ’70sTo the Editor:“Network News” (March 1998) providedseveral fascinating examples of studentsworking alongside alumni in theexternship program organized by theAlumni Council and the College’s Officeof Career Planning and Placement. Ihope other Swarthmore graduates andparents are inspired to offer jobs orhousing next year.The reference to the Council“launching” the program, however, maybe misleading. Although dormant untilbeing revived in recent years, the originalexternship program was actuallylaunched by Jed Rakoff ’64 and his fellowCouncil members in the early1970s.JACK RIGGS ’64President, Alumni Council28 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

CLASS NOTESWe’re not sure when this picture was taken, nor who theseSwarthmore students are. If you know, please write to us.JUNE 1998 29

The budget doctorEconomist William M. Capron ’42 creates finance systems in developing countries.William Capron with his home economicspartner—Peg Morgan Capron ’42.It’s no secret that Swarthmore Collegeproduces extraordinary individualswho lead extraordinarily active and successfulprofessional lives, which oftenextend into their retirement years. Still,how many septuagenarians can claim tohave avoided bombs planted by theTamil Tiger rebels in the streets ofColombo, Sri Lanka; or, while on assignment,admired the freshly regilded“mushroom domes” of Kiev’s churchesstrung out along the banks of the Dnepr;or sailed down the Yangtze River inChina?William M. Capron ’42 can. He did allof this after “becoming inactive” as professorof economics at Boston Universityin 1991. Capron, 78, has worked in SriLanka, Zambia, Macedonia, the Ukraine,and China as a member of a team ofeconomists. Capron’s role has beenadvising the ministries of finance ofdeveloping countries on how toimprove their budgetary systems.“There’s this myth,” says Capron modestly,“that I know a lot about publicbudgeting—and, well, I don’t do a lot tokill the myth.”Besides, it really isn’t a myth. An economicsmajor at Swarthmore, Capron’sinterest in government budgeting wasstimulated in Roland Pennock’s seminaron public administration. He graduatedwith high honors in 1942. Capron’scareer since then includes graduatework at Harvard; a stint with the RandCorporation; seven years on the facultyof the Economics Department of StanfordUniversity (where he is still a visitingscholar); and service on the Councilof Economic Advisers in Washington,D.C.The high point of his professionallife, he says, came when he was appointedassistant director of the U.S. Bureauof the Budget under President John F.Kennedy. He was involved in developingthe Great Society programs, in particularthe War on Poverty, but left duringthe Johnson administration when thewar in Vietnam diverted both fundingand the president’s attention from theprograms. Later, as associate dean ofHarvard’s John F. Kennedy School ofGovernment, Capron helped build itsPublic Policy Program. In 1977 heassumed the chairmanship of the EconomicsDepartment at Boston University.During consultation visits of typicallyfour to eight weeks, Capron becomesfamiliar with extreme geographical, climatic,historical, and political differencesin the settings of his workplaces.He describes Sri Lanka, which he visitedin 1991, as a “tragic country,” whoselong-lasting conflict with the Tamils paralyzesthe government and obstructsenduring positive change. A year laterhe was called to Zambia, where withinthe framework of sweeping economicreforms, Zambian finance ministersmade efforts to improve their budgetsystems along the lines suggested bythe American group, yet political instabilityin the country makes consistentgrowth difficult.In Macedonia, a former province ofYugoslavia, in 1993, Capron became“passionate” about a nation eager forautonomous government, but, likemany other Eastern European countries,they are struggling in the midst ofthe transition from a centrally plannedto an openly democratic market economy.No longer mere administrators followingorders from Belgrade, the Macedonianshave become policy-makerswith little experience of making policy.A similar situation exists in theUkraine. Capron bemoans the fact that,because of political gridlock in the parliament,one of the most potentially productivecountries of that part of theworld is languishing. When in China lastsummer and fall, he was surprised tofind a much more decentralized politicalsystem than he had expected. “It’snot run with detailed control from Beijingat all,” he says. “When we hear ofthis communist country with everythingbeing controlled right up there at thecenter—well, it just ain’t so.” Hebelieves that China, though facingformidable challenges as it shiftstoward a market economy, will continueto gain in importance as it becomesmore democratic. “It’s wonderful, fascinating,and absolutely puzzling,” hesays, and he looks forward to returningfor a follow-up visit.Despite the varied national scenarios,Capron says, “I’ve been more surprisedat the similarities than at the differences.”He finds that a common budgetaryproblem in both well-developedand underdeveloped countries is thatthe top political leadership, althoughhaving a general understanding ofwhich areas need improvement, is oftenill informed on how money is actuallyspent and, therefore, incapable ofassessing what remedies should be recommended.“We don’t advise them on specifics,”he says. “We’re not telling them if theyshould run a deficit or not. We’re tellingthem how they can improve the waytheir systems function.” Capron and hisfellow consultants propagate systematicanalysis of public programs; they suggestto the ministries of finance methodsof collecting and organizing informationin such a way that they will be ina better position to make decisions onresource management. At the sametime, they try to balance these moreglobal suggestions by encouraging theidea of decentralizing the detailed managementof the programs down to thelevel where services are actually delivered.Although positive results of his workare not immediately visible, whetherbecause of political unrest or the naturalresistance of bureaucracy to change,Capron hopes that their suggestionswill make a positive difference in time.And it wouldn’t be the first timeCapron has won out in the face of resistance.During his Freshman Week at theCollege in 1938, he met classmate Margaret“Peg” Morgan. “I knew right awaywhom I was going to spend the rest ofmy life with, but she was a slow learner,”he jokes. They have been marriedfor almost 60 years. And she joined himon the Yangzte—“the highlight of myoverseas trips.” Now there’s a systemthat has endured.—Carol BrévartJUNE 1998 37

“A simple matter of discrimination”James Hormel ’55 still waits for a Senate vote on his nomination.President Bill Clinton’s nomination ofJames C. Hormel ’55 to be U.S.ambassador to Luxembourg has languishedin the Senate for more than sixmonths because of opposition by asmall number of lawmakers who arguethat Hormel, who is openly gay, will promotea gay rights agenda in the tinyEuropean country. In March SenateMajority Leader Trent Lott rejectedpleas from 42 senators to lift “holds”that four senators have used to block avote on the nomination.Hormel, who has been a member ofSwarthmore’s Board of Managers since1988, is chairman of Equidex Inc. in SanFrancisco. The firm manages Hormelfamily investments and philanthropy.After graduating from Swarthmore,Hormel received a J.D. from the Universityof Chicago Law School and laterserved as assistant dean of studentsthere. He has been active in Democraticpolitics and was appointed by PresidentClinton as alternate U.S. representativeto the U.N. General Assembly, receivingeasy Senate confirmation in 1997. Hormelhas also been a delegate to the U.N.Human Rights Commission. He was afounding member of the Human RightsCampaign.Hormel is a member of the board ofdirectors of the American Foundationfor AIDS Research and serves on theboard of the San Francisco Symphony.In mid-May an effort was being madeby the administration to force a floorvote on the ambassadorial nomination,which had been reported out of the ForeignRelations Committee in November1997. As he awaited Senate action, weasked Hormel to comment; he told theBulletin that he could not discuss thenomination pending confirmation.But his son, James C. Hormel Jr., hadno such constraints. The younger Hormel,37, argued in the following editorial,which was published in severalnewspapers across the United States,that his father should be confirmed.Jim Hormel ’55 was easily confirmed fora U.N. post, but some senators want toblock his appointment to Luxembourg—because he’s gay.When I was 11 years old, my father,James C. Hormel, told me that hewas gay.I didn’t find this an easy bit of informationto digest, but I heard my father’sgreat concern for how this disclosurewould affect his son. This was not alifestyle choice. Being gay was part ofhis personal makeup, something he hadstruggled with greatly his whole life.Now President Clinton has nominatedmy father to be U.S. ambassador toLuxembourg. This has made us, as afamily, quite proud. When my father satbefore the Senate at his confirmationhearing, the entire family—including mymother and stepfather—attended toshow our unified support. After hearingnothing but high praise from committeemembers and other senators, we feltsure that a vote of approval would follow.A week later we learned that severalsenators had placed “holds” on thenomination. The reason, they said, wasthat they thought my father would usehis position as ambassador to further a“gay agenda.” This delay in the confirmationprocess gave other senatorstime to launch a smear campaign.My father has dedicated a majorityof his work throughout his life to philanthropyand diplomacy. He is committedto helping others. His qualifications as adiplomat have never been disputed.For these reasons I have concludedthat those senators blocking his nominationdo so as a simple matter of discrimination.Those who oppose my father’s nominationon the premise that sexual orientationaffects “family values” are notfamiliar with the strength of our family.While I was growing up, my father nevertried to influence my sexuality in anyway. What he did teach me was kindness,acceptance of others, honesty,self-esteem, and standing up for whatyou believe.I have just returned to Californiafrom Washington, D.C., with my father,three of my sisters, my brother, twobrothers-in-law, my wife, two nieces,one nephew, and my father’s partner.We were in Washington for a meetingabout our family’s foundation, whichmy father established to encourage usto participate in philanthropy.He has taught us through his owngiving, to organizations like SwarthmoreCollege, the Holocaust Museum, VirginiaInstitute of Autism, the Universityof Chicago, the American Foundationfor AIDS Research, the Breast CancerAction Network, and the San FranciscoSymphony, that to give as a family isone more way to strengthen our ties.My father’s agenda for our family isto encourage closeness and integrity.His agenda as ambassador to Luxembourgis to represent our country. It justso happens that he is gay. The Senatedeserves the opportunity to act on theAmerican agenda—to deliberate andvote on my father’s nomination.—James C. Hormel Jr.Reprinted by permission of the PacificNews Service.JUNE 1998 43

Barefoot at the StatehouseCheryl Warfield Mitchell ’71 knits together policy at Vermont’s Human Services Agency.Mitchell begins her day at 5:30 a.m. by feeding thesheep on her family’s commercial sheep farm.By Stacy ChaseIt’s Sunday afternoon, and CherylWarfield Mitchell ’71 is knitting ababy sweater for a friend, softlyclicking the needles in the sunroomof her home in pastoral NewHaven, Vt. More than a distraction,the sweater binds together thethreads of Mitchell’s personal andprofessional lives. The coarse,cobalt blue yarn she uses wasspun from wool from a flock of 80Finn-Cross ewes just outside herdoor. And the baby who wears itwill be just one more child helpedby Mitchell, deputy secretary ofVermont’s Human Services Agency.In 1993 Gov. Howard Deanappointed Mitchell, 50, to the No.2 post at the agency, which employsabout 3,000 people and spends $700 millionannually—roughly one-third of theentire state budget.Human Services is the umbrellaagency responsible for more than 10divisions, including the departments ofPublic Health, Medicaid, Social andRehabilitative Services, and Corrections.Mitchell sets state policy for familyand children’s services. Yet she says:“If things are going to go well for kids inthis state, it cannot be top-down, wherethe state mandates what’s going to happen.It needs to be a partnership amongfamilies and communities and state entities.”Part of her work is oversight of Vermont’s“Success by Six” program andother initiatives in early childhood education.“What I’m passionate about reallyhas to do with the way we, as a society,support—or fail to support—familieswith young children,” Mitchellexplains. “I think that if we got organizedto do that well when kids werebabies, we’d end up being in greatshape as kids got older.”As a country we are doing an“abysmal” job of supporting familieswith young children, Mitchell says.However, Vermont is consistentlyranked as one of the nation’s leaders inprenatal care, childhood immunization,and child support collection. It also hasthe lowest teen birthrate in the country.Before being named deputy secretary,Mitchell spent 12 years as cofounderand co-director of the AddisonCounty Parent-Child Center in Middlebury,Vt., which provides family supportand education to about 1,600 familiesin rural Vermont.Mitchell has served as either founderor president of numerous organizationsdedicated to the welfare of children,including the Vermont Association forthe Education of Young Children, theVermont Child Care Association, theVermont Children’s Forum, and the VermontDay Care Council. As early as1974, she was director of a day care centerin Middlebury.When she and her husband, authorand shepherd Don Mitchell ’69, movedto Vermont, Mitchell had aspirations ofbeing a high school English teacher. “Ialways took care of kids. In some ways Ifell into it,” she says of her career.She earned a master’s degree in educationfrom the University of Vermontin 1981 and is currently pursuing a doctoratein social policy and spiritual practicefrom Union Institute in Cincinnati,Ohio, through a guided independentstudy program.Mitchell has been spotted aroundthe Vermont Statehouse carrying paperworkin a wicker basket instead of abriefcase. She wears loose-fitting floraldresses—and shoes (secondhand sandals,with socks in winter) only whenshe has to. It’s as if being barefoot isprecisely what keeps Mitchell sogrounded.Mitchell’s job consumes 70 to 80hours a week. She begins her day at 5:30a.m. by feeding the sheep and leaves forher Waterbury, Vt., office two hourslater. En route, she dictates reports andletters; she works on projects at homein the evenings and on weekends.STACY CHASEHusband Don runs TrelevanFarm, the family’s 138-acre commercialsheep farm perched on arocky landscape in the shadow ofSnake Mountain. The Mitchells’passive-solar home, without a singletelevision set, features a breathtakingview. Cheryl says her homefeels “absolutely like the center ofthe universe.” They have two children,Ethan, 21, a crew managerfor Habitat for Humanity in Baltimore,and Anais, 17, soon to be asenior at Mt. Abraham High Schoolin Bristol, Vt.“People in politics like to use theconcept of boardroom decisionmaking.It’s really bottom line driven,sort of high-powered,” she says.In her public life, Mitchell saysshe’s grateful for the things SwarthmoreCollege taught her. “The way decisionswere made at Swarthmore, by consensus,has always been the way I’ve runorganizations ever since,” she says. “Itoften seems as if positive changes comefrom a sort of kitchen-table approach.People who really care about somethingcome together and say, ‘What can wedo to make this different?’ and thenthey do it.”Mitchell recalls when she and herhusband moved to the farm in thespring of 1973.“People from the Soil ConservationService stopped by, and they said,‘We’re so glad you’re here’ and whatcould they do to help? The guys fromForest Management stopped by, andthey said, ‘We’re glad you’re here. Anyquestions?’ And the Agricultural ExtensionService offered classes on canningor gardening or something,” Mitchellsays.“But when you had a baby in thosedays, nobody said anything.”So Cheryl Mitchell set out to do herpart to make a difference.“It feels as if it’s going somewhere,”she says. “When a national reportcomes out that says Vermont’s got thelowest teen pregnancy rate in the countryor that Vermont’s got the best welfaresystem in the country, I’m part ofthat. A world that’s full of healthy,happy kids is a much more pleasantworld to live in. And it’s not that hard todo.”Stacy Chase is a reporter for theBurlington Free Press.50 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

A reversal of the heartAmy Verstappen ’83 is an adult survivor of a congenital heart defect.By Terri Pyer ’77One can hardly imagine words you’drather hear from your doctor than,“You’re fine, don’t worry.” For years,this is just what every doctor told AmyVerstappen ’83, despite her havingbeen born with a heart defect. And tobe fair, Amy was fine: She felt healthy,grew normally, and engaged in normalactivities. But in 1995, two years afterthe birth of her daughter, Amy washearing quite different words: “Yourheart has deteriorated so badly that theonly hope is a transplant.”“I just flipped out. My echocardiogramshowed that the valve was completelyshot and the heart muscle wasso damaged that the right ventricle wasnot working the way it should,”recounts Verstappen. “Everyone hadalways told me that I was going to befine. But it turns out that I was profoundlynot fine.”At birth doctors could tell that Amyhad a heart defect because her skinwas blue and she had a heart murmur.It was not until a catheterization wasperformed when she was 4 years oldthat the precise nature of her conditionwas discovered: congenitally correctedtransposition of the great arteries. “It’sas if someone took the lower half of myheart, my ventricles, and rotatedthem,” Verstappen explains.Approximately one of 125 babies isborn with a congenital heart problem.More than 100 types of defects exist,and some children are born with morethan one. About 10 percent have atransposition. When the transpositionis incomplete, blood moves throughthe body without ever making it to thelungs, and these patients need immediatesurgery or die soon after birth. Verstappen’scondition is called “congenitallycorrected” because the ventriclesand the valves are completely reversed,allowing blood to be oxygenated as itmoves through the system.In Verstappen’s case annual visits tocardiologists never revealed new problems.Some time after marrying RichardGilbertie ’82, Verstappen asked her doctorsabout the advisability of becomingpregnant. She was assured that herheart was fine and should not be affectedby a pregnancy. Lena Margaret Verstappenwas born in 1993.Two years later, when Verstappenand her husband were consideringadding to their family, Amy just didn’tTold that her only hope of survival was aheart transplant, Amy Verstappen ’83looked for another answer. She wentback to some of her old doctors, consultednew ones, and turned to the Internet.feel like herself; she had never regainedthe energy she had before her pregnancy.She returned to a doctor to inquireabout her fatigue and was eventuallygiven surprisingly bad news. She wastold she had dilated cardiomyopathy, aswelling and thinning of the heart muscle.Without a transplant, doctors toldher, she would die.How could this be? How could allher previous doctors have been sowrong? Verstappen sought answers.Many factors emerged to explainwhy Verstappen’s case had been mismanaged.When Verstappen became anadult and needed advice on matters offamily planning and adult health maintenance,few doctors could meet thoseneeds. Though the entire patient loadof pediatric cardiologists typically comprisescongenital cases, most adult cardiologistsdeal almost exclusively withnoncongenital cases. Until fairly recently,children with serious heart defectsusually did not survive into adulthood,so adult congenital cardiology was virtuallynonexistent. A new cardiologyspecialty is slowly emerging, but thereare obstacles to it.Verstappen says that the currentcompetitive model for the delivery ofAmerican medical care discourages thecreation of regional centers where suchexpertise can be concentrated.“If you see doctors who have fewcongenital patients,” Verstappenexplains, “there’s an extremely lowchance that they will ever have encounteredanyone with what you have.”In 1997, Verstappen was finally seenat two national adult congenital heartcenters—in Cleveland and at the MayoClinic in Minnesota—where she wastold to her great relief that the previousdiagnosis of dilated cardiomyopathywas incorrect. In fact, her heart couldstand surgery to replace a deterioratingvalve. She did not need a heart transplant—atleast for now.Amy Verstappen had successfulheart valve replacement surgery onMarch 15. “I feel like I have been giventhis huge gift, which is that I have 15 to20 years to not worry about dying. Ivalue my time in a different way. Ispend more time with my daughter andmy husband, and I have a more balancedlife. I tell people that this is thebest thing that ever happened to me,”says Verstappen.One of the saving graces for Verstappenwas the information and supportshe found on the Internet. “The Canadianhealth care system is light-yearsahead of us in regionalizing knowledgeand services, and the Canadian AdultCongenital Heart Network has a greatWeb site where I got a lot of information,”exclaims Verstappen. “Anotherthing that was really helpful was talkingto other heart defect patients on theInternet. Without the Internet I wouldhave gone through life without evermeeting another individual with thesame defect.”Her thoughts for others in her situation:“Be an advocate for yourself. Makesure that you are getting the best possiblecare. Know all you can about yourcondition. And get on the Internet.”Verstappen may need a transplantat some point in the future, but shesays “treatments change so rapidly.You just don’t know.” In the meantimeshe is working with others to create anational support and information networkto serve adults with congenitalheart defects.To join in an Internet conversation onadult congenital heart defects, send ane-mail message to majordomo@tchin.organd include as the subject “subscribeachd.” The Canadian Adult CongenitalHeart Network’s Web address is http://www.cachnet.org.JUNE 1998 55

Recent Books by AlumniWe welcome review copies ofbooks by alumni. The booksare donated to the Swarthmoreanasection of McCabeLibrary after they have beennoted for this column.May T. Miller and SusanButts Burton ’84, A Batch ofPatchwork, American Quilter’sSociety, 1997. In additionto instructions for 12quilts, this book containstips and instructions onchoosing fabrics, cutting,stitching, pressing, borders,backing, binding, tying, andquilting.Jill (Morrel) Coleman ’52,WaterYoga: Water-AssistedPostures and Stretches forFlexibility and Well-Being,Eglantine Press, 1998.Designed for anyone who hasto cope with back problemsor arthritis, this guideexplores combining the art ofyoga and the use of warmwater to increase flexibilitythrough stretches and gentlemovements.Alzina Stone Dale ’52, MysteryReader’s Walking Guide:Washington, D.C., PassportBooks, 1998. This guide giveseight walking tours of thecapital’s neighborhoods asthey are described by morethan 200 mystery writers.Each walk is accompanied bya map of the route as well asrecommended restaurantsand places of interest alongthe way.Joshua Gamson ’85, FreaksTalk Back: Tabloid TalkShows and Sexual Nonconformity,University of ChicagoPress, 1998. Taking the criticismthat talk shows turneverything they touch into“freak shows” as a startingpoint, Gamson asks whathappens when the so-calledfreaks talk back, exploitingthe media system thatexploits them.Frank E. Vogel and Samuel L.Hayes III ’57, Islamic Law andFinance: Religion, Risk, andReturn, Kluwer Law International,1998. This bookdescribes the field of Islamicbanking and finance as practicedin the modern era andlooks at this unique form ofcommerce over the past 20years as wealth in the MiddleEast and parts of Asia hasexpanded.Stephen Henighan ’84, ThePlaces Where Names Vanish,Thistledown Press, 1998.This novel tells the story ofMarta, who escapes the grimlife of her village in Ecuadorto endure only poverty,humiliation, and abandonmentin the linguisticallydivided society of Montreal.Dana Lyons ’82, Cows withGuns, Penguin Studio, 1998.This book (with accompanyingmusical CD) tells the taleof cow guru Cow Tse-Tongueand his bovine followers,who take on America’s meateatingpopulation.Richard Martin ’67, AmericanIngenuity: Sportswear1930s–1970s, MetropolitanMuseum of Art, 1998. Publishedin conjunction with anexhibition at the MetropolitanMuseum of Art, whichruns through August 16, thiscatalog showcases designerswho were “the pioneers ofgender equity in their useful,adaptable clothing.”Ellen (MacDonald) Mutari’78, Heather Boushey, andWilliam Fraher IV, Genderand Political Economy: IncorporatingDiversity into Theoryand Policy, M.E. Sharpe, 1997.This collection of articlesextends the boundaries ofpolitical economy by exploringthe theoretical and policyimplications of incorporatingdiversity into economic theoryand public policy.Pamela Miller Ness ’72, pinklight, sleeping, Small PoetryPress, 1998. This limited editionchapbook of poetry elicitsvisions of seasons and thecolors they evoke. Copiesmay be ordered from theauthor, 33 Riverside Drive,Apartment 4-G, New York NY10023 ($6 postpaid).Martha M. (Merrill) Pickrell’60, Dr. Miles, Guild Press ofIndiana, 1997. The founder ofthe Dr. Miles Medical Company(now Bayer), FranklinMiles was a physicianentrepreneurwho developednonprescription remedies tolessen stress. This biographytells the story of a manwhose interests ran frommedicine to innovative projectsin agriculture.Don Scarborough ’62 andSaul Sternberg ’54, Methods,Models, and ConceptualIssues, MIT Press, 1998.Focusing on conceptualissues and methods, this volumeincludes work in artificialintelligence, neural networkmodels, animal cognition,signal-detection theory,computational models, reaction-timemethods, and cognitiveneuroscience.Peter A. Selwyn ’76, Survivingthe Fall, Yale UniversityPress, 1998. One of the firstAIDS doctors, Selwyn detailshis initial feelings of helplessnessas he watched hispatients die and how thisforced him to care for hispatients in a different way—to witness and relieve theirsuffering and to learn how toaccompany them throughtheir illness.Mary McDermott Shideler’38, The Years of Confusion:Stage II in the Series Visionsand Nightmares, Ends andBeginnings, A Woman’s LifelongJourney, Scribendi Press,1997. The second in a fivepartseries of books abouther life, Shideler interweavesher outer and inner experiencesof marriage and exposuresto cultures radicallydifferent from her upbringing,from the year of hergraduation to 1954.Simon St. Laurent ’92, XML:A Primer, MIS:Press, 1998.This guide is for Web developerson the use of a newtechnology that promises toreplace HTML, giving themincreased power and flexibilitynot before possible.Dynamic HTML: A Primer,MIS:Press, 1997. A newscripting language for Webdevelopers, dynamic HTMLwill provide them with theability to create “deep” Webpages capable of respondinginstantaneously to a user’sactions. Cookies, McGraw-Hill, 1998. This guide givesthe full picture of how cookiesfit into the Web toolkitand how they work withother tools. St. Laurentexplores the truth aboutcookies’ power to invade privacy,spread viruses, andbreach security.Anne C. (Christian) Tedeschi’56, Book Displays: A LibraryExhibits Handbook, HighsmithPress, 1997. Written forsmall- and medium-sizeschool, public, academiclibraries and museums, thishandbook offers the fundamentalguidance to improvingexhibits and avoidingdamage to display copies.Maochun Yu ’87, OSS inChina: Prelude to Cold War,Yale University Press, 1996.Drawing from recentlydeclassified materials fromthe U.S. National Archivesand on previously secret Chinesedocuments, Yu tells thedramatic story of the intelligenceactivities of the Officeof Strategic Services in Chinaduring World War II.58 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

O U R B A C K P A G E SWhat Lucretia MottMeans to MeBy Jamie Stiehm ’82Lucretia and I go back 15 years, tothe day in 1983 I decided to writemy senior history thesis on theQuaker whose blue eyes sparkledfrom beneath a bonnet in the portraitthat once graced Parrish Parlors.Worthy Lucretia Mott was elevatedto her rightful place in thepantheon of U.S. history inJune 1997, when a statuedepicting her and two otherwomen’srights leaders, ElizabethCady Stanton and SusanB. Anthony, was dedicated inthe Capitol rotunda. The threeknew each other; Mott representsthe start of the suffragettestory, Stanton themiddle, and Anthony—well,the beginning of the end.At the dedication a chorusof schoolgirls sang while lightstreamed through the Capitoldome, which Sen. Olympia J.Snowe of Maine called “theepicenter of American democracy.”Snowe said, “Whatadorns the rotunda matters”and expressed the hope thatother heroines of history,such as Sojourner Truth,would not be far behind.Maryland CongresswomanConstance Morella, who ledthe Promethean battle tobring the statue upstairs afterCongress had let it languish inthe dark crypt of the Capitolfor 76 years, opened herspeech by saying, “Welcomehome!” to the three women.It’s worth noting that twoof the three, Mott and Anthony,were Quakers. Also notable is thatnot one of them lived to see the daythat women would vote, notwithstandingAnthony’s last words spokenin public before her death in 1906:“Failure is impossible!” Mott died in1880, four decades before womenwere enfranchised in 1920, the causeshe championed the last 30 years ofher life.Better late than never that this allaroundsocial do-gooder, who byrights should be a heroine to Americanschoolgirls, is finally in the sameroom as George Washington andAbraham Lincoln. One can only guessat the conversations that their ghostscould hold in the dark, after the lightsgo off.Where would we all be without theunwavering vision of this extraordinarywoman who became a Quakerminister in Philadelphia at age 28?Lucretia Mottwas neverexposed to thesocial myththat portrayedwomen as helpless,fragile beings.(This was not unusual for a woman inthe Religious Society of Friends, but itwas a rare distinction for someone soyoung.) Married to a merchant and amother of two at the time, by 1821 shehad already emerged as a gifted publicspeaker on the burning socialissues of the day.Let me tell you about Lucretia andwhat she means to me. She was bornon Nantucket, an isolated whalingisland where most of the men wereaway for years at a time on their voyages.That left women to takecare of the day-to-day businessnot just of households but theentire island economy. So faraway from the mainland didlargely Quaker Nantucketseem that it stayed neutralduring the Revolutionary War.Nantucket women had noother choice but to be sturdyand self-reliant in the bestAmerican sense of the word.As a Quaker girl born in 1793,Lucretia Coffin was neverexposed to the social myththat portrayed women as helpless,fragile beings. Moreover,women’s weighty responsibilitiesfostered a sense of camaraderieamong them.It was on Nantucket that herdeep-rooted Quaker conceptionof absolute human equalitywas planted, ideas that laterinspired her activism in theabolitionist and women’srights movements. She drewno distinction between blackand white, male and female,and did not put one causebefore the other.Some historians have writtenof the suffragette movementas an afterthought or offshootof abolitionism. Mottshows us otherwise. For herthe two were one, all of a piece, andboth sprang from her Quaker andEnlightenment beliefs in universalequality.Abolitionism, if anything, showedhow unenlightened the world waswhen it came to women. During theWorld Anti-Slavery Convention in Londonin 1840, Mott as a female delegatewas barred from speaking or voting.FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY OF SWARTHMORE COLLEGE64 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

O U R B A C K P A G E SWilliam Lloyd Garrison joined her“behind the bar” as a protest.London was a landmark for anotherreason: That was where the great“meetings of the minds” took placebetween Mott and Stanton. “Mrs. Mottand I walked home, arm in arm.... Weresolved to hold a convention andform a society to advocate the rightsof women,” said Stanton, who cherishedthe memory.Eight years later, in 1848, came thehistoric Seneca Falls, N.Y., convention,when for the first time womendemanded the full rights of citizenshipin a declaration of their own.Mott was the main speaker at SenecaFalls. She often emphasized thatwomen want “nothing as favor but asright.”Meanwhile, the Mott house inPhiladelphia was a stop on the UndergroundRailroad. Frederick Douglassnever forgot his first sight of LucretiaMott, when he heard her speak inLynn, Mass., and marveled at herpresence and spirit “on every line ofher countenance.” Douglass becameas engaged in the long quest forwomen’s rights as Mott was in abolitionism.Imagine what a bitter irony, then,to be denied suffrage even after theCivil War was won. First things first,men said. Republicans called it “theNegro’s hour.” Wait your turn, ladies,until the next century rolls around.And that is the reason the marblestatue looks unfinished—becausethese women’s work was never done.In fact, even in 1997, it took privatecontributions from citizens—about$80,000—to get the statue, sculptedby Adelaide Johnson in 1920, from theCapitol crypt to the rotunda. Still,Congress did not approve a permanentplace, reserving the right toremove it after a year—and Congresshas still not voted to give the suffragettesa permanent home there.But now that it is there for folksfrom all over the United States toadmire, Lucretia will no longer be thebest-kept secret of Swarthmore College,which she helped found in 1864.Sometimes it seems she’s a secreteven at Swarthmore. Recently I met astudent with a double major inwomen’s studies and religion who hadAdelaide Johnson’s 1920 sculpture of feminist pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton, LucretiaMott, and Susan B. Anthony is now on display in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C.Mott took time from her work for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery to help foundthe College. Congress must decide whether to keep the sculpture in the rotunda.never heard of her. But perhaps that’sbecause her portrait no longer hangsin Parrish. Too valuable for such publicdisplay, it has been removed to theconfines of the Friends HistoricalLibrary.That brings me to why I love Lucretiaso much: the wholeness of herworld view. You name it—she wasthere on every front of socialprogress, just the opposite of today’ssingle-issue narrow-mindedness.As one history of Quaker womennotes: “She spoke in Boston onwomen’s rights, visited state legislaturesto ask for stronger actionagainst slavery, toured the South, andlaid the groundwork for a newPhiladelphia charity”—not to mentionAmerican Indian rights and supportingIrish hand-loom workers in a strikefor higher wages.She came, she saw, and shechanged the world in the Quaker way:slowly but surely. ■Jamie Stiehm is a reporter for The BaltimoreSun, where this article originallyappeared. It is reprinted by permission.ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL

ALUMNI COLLEGE ABROAD – JUNE 17–29, 1999The Elbe River from Prague to BerlinNext year marks the 10th anniversary of the fall of theBerlin Wall, the most powerful symbol of the Sovietempire’s collapse. Swarthmore alumni, parents, andfriends are invited to mark this milestone with a memorabletrip to a region that’s emerged from decades of ColdWar isolation.The adventure begins in Prague, a medieval city with aunique combination of attractions and ambience. Thenthe river ship MS Clara Schumann will take the AlumniCollege Abroad up the Elbe to Dresden, Meissen, Torgau,Wittenberg, Potsdam, and Berlin, the dynamic capital of areunited Germany.Leading the Swarthmoreans will be two cosmopolitaneconomists, Frederic and Zora Pryor. Newly retired fromthe economics faculty, Fred studied in Berlin early in hiscareer and has lectured at German universities and theCzechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He has publishedbooks and articles on the economies of Eastern Europeand has been a consultant for the Soros Foundation. Zora,a native of Prague, was educated there, in Geneva and inParis, and she earned a doctorate at Harvard. Until thisyear she taught at St. Joseph’sUniversity, specializing in internationaleconomics.This trip will be rich inhistory, in masterpiecesof art and architecture—and in learning how avital part of Europe ismeeting monumentalnew challenges. A brochurewill be available inOctober. Please call(800) 922-3088 for details.Fred and Zora Pryor