Swarthmore College Bulletin (March 2000)
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SWARTHMORE SWARTHMORECollege Bulletin March 2000 Correspondence forges lasting links among professors and their former students. SW AR TH M COLLEGE BULLETIN M A R C H 2 0 0 0 22 Features Don’t Forget to Write 14 Professors love to get letters from former students. By Ali Crolius ’84 The Drinking Dilemma 20 Swarthmore re-examines its alcohol policy. By Alisa Giardinelli Respect 22 To get it, you have to give it. By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot ’66 Native Voices 28 You can’t teach a “people” in a literature course. By Alisa Giardinelli Matchbox Flames 30 Enduring unions span Swarthmore’s decades. By Andrea Hammer On the cover: Correspondence between alumni and their former professors ranges from the personal to the professional. Have you written home to Swarthmore lately? Story on page 14. Graphics by Jeffrey Lott. 80 30 Departments Letters 3 ORE Our readers speak. Collection 4 Events and ideas on campus. Alumni Digest 38 Get connected here. Class Notes 40 Where everyone turns first. Deaths 42 Swarthmore remembers. Books & Authors 56 Television and social discourse. In My Life 64 Crying came easily. By Jack Satterfield ’72 Our Back Pages 80 The wonderwall in Hicks. By Sonia Scherr ’01 Alumni Profiles Never stop learning 52 Joseph D’Annunzio ’49 gets a law degree at age 73. By James Rosica High expectations 66 Sherry Bellamy ’74 is a pioneering telecommunications executive. By Carol Brévart-Demm In touch with the people 75 Law student Aaron Bartley ’96 leads a movement at Harvard. By Jeffrey Lott 9 Parlor Talk ’m not a big believer in destiny, but had I not entered a certain col- lege in a particular year, I would never have met my wife. We fell in SWARTHMORE Ilove during sophomore year and married two years later. If I can’t COLLEGEBULLETIN ascribe this good fortune to fate, what was it that brought our stars into alignment? Editor: Jeffrey Lott An admissions office, of course. Two distinct decisions made by a Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer committee in early 1966 brought a pretty young woman from Con- necticut and me from Pennsylvania to a small Vermont college town. Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm The result: 30 years of marriage, a family, and a life together. This Collection Editor: Cathleen McCarthy long-ago twist of fate—and this issue’s tender portraits of eight Staff Writer: Alisa Giardinelli Swarthmore couples (“Matchbox Flames,” page 30)—makes me won- der whether Swarthmore’s admissions staff considers potential Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner unions as they pore over those stacks of recommendations, essays, Designer: Bob Wood and test scores. Do they ever, even in jest, speculate on whether Intern: Andrea Juncos ’01 Heather from Honolulu might be just right for Mike from Michigan? “Well ... yes,” said Director of Admissions Jim Bock ’90 with a Editor Emerita: sheepish smile, “it does come up.” He hastened to add that Swarth- Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 more’s admissions staff prides itself on getting to know as much as Associate Vice President possible about applicants as individuals, and an admissions decision for External Affairs: would never be made on the basis of a candidate’s potential for Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59 romance. But he admits it’s not unheard of for the deans to speculate on how two students with similar interests might relate to each other. Changes of Address: Assistant Dean of Admissions Megan Smith ’96 said it’s the quirky, Send address label along unusual things about certain applicants that make her think of others with new address to: who might naturally become their friends at Swarthmore. She recalls Alumni Records Office reading a recent applicant’s essay about watching spiders on the Swarthmore College front porch and thinking immediately of 500 College Avenue Even if you don’t a Swarthmore sophomore who had writ- Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 ten about spiders two years before. believe in destiny, Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail: Should she introduce them, she won- [email protected]. college is definitely dered? Another time, when Smith actually a time and place Contacting Swarthmore College: did attempt to introduce two accepted to fall in love. students from separate high schools in College Operator: (610) 328-8000 www.swarthmore.edu the same city, she found that the pair had already met at home—and had been dating for several months. Admissions: (610) 328-8300 [email protected] Talk about fate. Whether you believe that such relationships spring from destiny Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402 [email protected] or mere coincidence, college is definitely a time and place to fall in love. In one admissions brochure, Swarthmore students are described Publications: (610) 328-8568 [email protected] as having “a passion for learning,” but clearly that’s not all. Their well- known love for ideas, activities, and causes is often coupled with a Registrar: (610) 328-8297 [email protected] passion for each other. Thousands of Swarthmoreans have met and married over the World Wide Web www.swarthmore.edu years, and although not all have managed to stay married, most con- tinue to share an additional passion—for the College itself. There’s a The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0888- reason. As Michael Graves ’69 wrote, “Our years at Swarthmore were 2126), of which this is volume XCVII, number 4, among the best in our lives. We learned a lot, became adults, and fell is published in August, September, December, in love.” You don’t have to marry another Swarthmorean to experi- March, and June by Swarthmore College, 500 ence this, but somehow these matchbox couples seem to feel a deep College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage paid at Swarthmore PA connection to the College. and additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530- It’s said that at freshman orientation, new students are asked to 620. Postmaster: Send address changes to look around at their classmates, and then told that about one in Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College seven will marry a fellow student. I’m sure that nervous laughter rip- Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. ples among the 18 year olds, but I know it’s true—because it worked for me. ©2000 Swarthmore College —Jeffrey Lott Printed in U.S.A. on recycled paper 2 Letters SCALING THE WALLS QUAKERS be compati- missed too quickly; the Vati- Because actual Book & Key AND ble, and I can recently reasserted the members remain so silent, SCIENCE join with existence of Satan. The seek- maybe I should contribute I was delight- Mr. Kratten- ing of evildoers still goes on. my own memories of the first ed with Tom maker and My early experiences with floor of their temple. We Krattenmak- other the religion of the street boys scaled the walls of the Book er’s “Religion Swarth- helped me understand how & Key building once or twice in the Age of moreans in Pope Pius XII could maintain during the early 1960s, in Science” that view. silence in the early 1940s, spontaneous nocturnal (December T. NOEL even though after 1943 there ascents led by members of 1999). I agree STERN ’34 was no doubt about the ulti- the Outing Club. Afterward, that religion South Dart- mate defeat of Germany. He we took care to try to reseal and science mouth, had seen the communist their roof against rain. can coexist if Mass. takeover of Russia; Hungary; During 1964, the first floor not riled by and, for a short time, Bavaria, reminded me of a Masonic/ dogmatists Professor where (before Joe Stalin Eastern Star facility— on either side. Holmes’ essay is excerpted on cleaned things up) the revo- although smaller and with The article reminded me page 77. T. Noel Stern wrote lutionary leaders were, as less fancy furniture and inte- of Jesse Herman Holmes, pro- more extensively about him in often as not, Jews. Those rior decorating. The few cos- fessor of religion and philoso- the June 1992 Friends Jour- schooled in the teachings of tumes that then remained phy during my undergradu- nal. the New Testament knew were also suggestive of ritu- ate days. He was probably that the Jews participating in als like Eastern Star public Swarthmore’s best-known DEVIL THEORY the crucifixion of Jesus took ceremonies. and most controversial facul- In 1930, when I was 6 years the guilt on themselves and W. “TUCK”FORSYTHE ’65 ty member, and like Ian Bar- old, I was informed by one of their descendants for all Ellensburg, Wash. bour ’44, he began his life as my street acquaintances that time. It had to be clear that a scientist before centering I, a Jew, was guilty of killing the militant anticommunism OLD NOTES on religion. Jesus Christ. of Adolf Hitler, a Roman Elizabeth Weber’s [’98] arti- Holmes was the scourge The Swarthmore College Catholic who, to this day, has cle on Book & Key (“Our of conservatives in the Bulletin (“Religion in the Age never been excommunicated Back Pages,” December 1999) Delaware Valley, an agnostic of Science,” December 1999) from the church, was indeed came at a serendipitous time. Quaker, foe of religious and now tells me of the renewed useful in eliminating these I was a member of Book & political dogma, and socialist interest in religion by some atheistic communists in the Key in the Class of 1955 and candidate for governor of current students. The article overall struggle to eradicate was cleaning out some old Pennsylvania. primarily deals with conflict the agents of Satan—among notes when I read her history He helped me return to between science and religion. them, the Jews who, knowing of the organization.