Swarthmore College Bulletin (March 2001)
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AA Walk Walk inin the the WoodsWoods 32 12 72 80 68 7 ON THE COVER: “THE BEST WAY TO TEACH STEWARDSHIP IS BY EXAMPLE,” SAYS BIOLOGIST ROGER LATHAM ’83 OF THE 11 EFFORT TO PRESERVE SWARTHMORE’S PRICELESS CRUM WOODS. PHOTOS BY TERRY WILD. STORY ON PAGE 16. F e a t u r e s Five Swarthmore P o e t s 1 2 When was the last time you wrote a poem? Departments A W a l k 16 in the Woods 16 L e t t e r s 3 The College is raising The athletics controversy its Crum consciousness. C o l l e c t i o n 4 By Susan Milius ’75 P r o f i l e s The campus is alive. Finding an End M o r e T h a n Alumni Digest 36 to Rollovers 46 1 5 S e c o n d s Swarthmore events o f F a m e 2 4 Joe Kimmel ’44 indexes a a serious auto safety problem. Winning on Millionaire, ClassNotes 38 College Bowl, and Jeopardy News of classmates and friends By Audree Penner goes beyond money and fame. By Andrea Hammer D e a t h s 4 3 Sticking With Swarthmore remembers. t h e U n i o n 6 0 B a r n a r d ’ s Stan Baker ’68 helped spark W o b b l e 2 8 Books&Arts 52 Vermont’s new Civil Unions Act. Creativity abounds. A scientific controversy at By Laura Markowitz ’85 Sproul Observatory I n M y L i f e 7 2 By Bill Kent Bath time A Hit of Poetry 62 You can read a new poet each By Marc Pachon ’96 day on Don Selby’s [’74] Web site. Ninth Man Out 32 Writer Eliot Asinof ’40 OurBackPages 80 By Daisy Fried ’89 celebrates life’s outsiders. Swarthmore friends for life By Jeffrey Lott By Andrea Hammer Sky Dancing 68 Amelia Rudolph ’86 dances on mountainsides and skyscrapers. By Cathleen McCarthy t’s no coincidence that this column appears opposite the letters to the editor. ITaken together, your letters to the Bulletin and my message to you represent a transaction that happens regularly in this magazine: Those of us who produce the SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Bulletin have certain information we want you to know about Swarthmore, yet we promise that if you will read what we send you, we will pay attention to what you Editor: Jeffrey Lott have to say to us. Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm The letters in this issue show the College’s need to have more dialogue with its Collection Editor: Cathleen McCarthy alumni, and we are determined that the Bulletin should provide a place for that to Staff Writer: Alisa Giardinelli occur. Since early December, when the Board of Managers acted to restructure the Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner athletics program, College administrators Designer: Suzanne DeMott Gaadt, We hope you will Gaadt Perspectives and Board members have received letters PARLORTALK Administrative Assistant: find in these and e-mails from more than 1,200 alumni, Janice Merrill-Rossi Interns: Andrea Juncos ’01, parents, and friends. The Bulletin itself Stephanie Gironde ’04 pages the same received an unprecedented 30 letters Editor Emerita: Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 intended for publication—about four times essential experience the usual number. Contacting Swarthmore College College Operator: (610) 328-8000 that every Editing your letters was difficult; www.swarthmore.edu I know—because I did it myself. We could Admissions: (610) 328-8300 [email protected] Swarthmorean not publish all of them, but those that Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402 appear in this edition’s expanded letters [email protected] has known here. Publications: (610) 328-8568 section not only reflect the range of opin- [email protected] ions expressed but represent most of the arguments, objections, and expressions of Registrar: (610) 328-8297 [email protected] praise found in your correspondence. (You can read the full text of every letter to World Wide Web the Bulletin on our Web site, including those that we did not have space to publish.) www.swarthmore.edu In a personal thank you to all who wrote to the magazine, I expressed gratitude Changes of Address that, no matter what their views, they cared enough about Swarthmore to commu- Send address label along with new address to: nicate. Many institutions would be frightened by 1,200 letters—some college mag- Alumni Records Office azine editors by even 30—but whether or not we agree with you, we value your pas- Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue sion for Swarthmore. Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail: Some alumni are fairly angry at the College these days. But whatever you think of [email protected]. the athletics decision (or anything else, for that matter), we want the Bulletin to be The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN everyone’s magazine. We hope you will find in these pages the same essential expe- 0888-2126), of which this is volume XCVIII, number 4, is published in rience that every Swarthmorean has known here. When information is presented August, September, December, March, and June by Swarthmore College, 500 accurately and fairly and dialogue—no matter how passionate, intense, or fraught College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081- 1390. Periodicals postage paid at with fundamental disagreement—is being conducted with civility, integrity, and Swarthmore PA and additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620. Postmas- mutual respect, everyone benefits. ter: Send address changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, —Jeffrey Lott Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. ©2001 Swarthmore College SWARTHMORECOLLEGEBULLETIN Printed in U.S.A. on recycled paper 2 KUDOS TO KATHRYN should it be our responsibility to prevent boutique hotels, Temple has discussed a LETTERS I was absolutely delighted when I picked Swarthmore from doing what it should not university guarantee of 4,000 room nights up my September edition of the Bulletin have been doing in the first place? How are a year. and saw Dr. Kathryn Morgan’s beaming we to know, until after the fact, just what Should an inn be developed, the College face on the cover. I couldn’t wait to read the list we have been put on? If Swarthmore is will incur significant subsidy charges for interview inside. When I did, all the memo- really interested in preserving the privacy both infrastructure and daily operation. ries of my Swarthmore experience flooded of its alumni (those “high standards,” Those funds will not be available for the back—good and bad. remember?), then surely it should not be educational purposes of the College, I recall very clearly that, among the selling alumni names in the first place. whether strengthening the curriculum, African-American students, it was so PETER KATES ’61 improving staff salaries and benefits, empowering (and so much like homecom- Norwell, Mass. expanding the library, or any other needs ing) to see this petite and striking black Paul Metzger ’54 also wrote to object. His let- characteristic of a liberal arts college. woman strut the campus in her always ter is on the Bulletin Web site. In sum, the inn does not further neatly coiffed Afro hair and long flowing Swarthmore’s liberal arts mission. It does African robe dresses, with her sassy ear- QUESTIONS ABOUT AN INN not seem to us a prudent use of Swarth- rings swinging in the breeze. We write in response to the December Bul- more’s finite financial and physical It was sheer joy to see from her inter- letin article on plans for an inn to be built resources. view that Professor Morgan is still as beau- on a section of the College campus. That ROBERT DUPLESSIS tiful—inside and out—as she ever was. article focused on the project’s purported Isaac H. Clothier Professor of History and ROSALIND PLUMMER ’73 economic benefits to the Borough of International Relations Philadelphia, Pa. Swarthmore, suggesting that the College RICHARD VALELLY ’75 seeks to improve the Borough’s economic Professor of Political Science PROTECT ALUMNI PRIVACY health. The letter from Kenneth [’47] and Virginia Whether better economic health will WHY SO UPSET? Stern Brown [’49] (December Bulletin) was result is, however, much less certain than I can understand the sadness felt by mem- disturbing. To learn that Swarthmore is the article implied. A consultant to the bers of the College community at the selling our names for profit, and thereby joint College-Borough task force on eco- demise of football at Swarthmore. As a for- actively cooperating in the encroachment nomic revitalization concluded in his mer member of the wrestling team, I share of the commercial-industrial complex on report that the inn would have no net eco- that sadness, for wrestling too will no our privacy, is ground for their legitimate nomic benefit to the Borough. It’s not even longer be one of Swarthmore’s sports. But I complaint. clear the inn is viable without heavy Col- am puzzled by the upset and anger that The response from Diane Crompton, lege subsidy. College-related business some alumni have expressed at the consid- director of development operations, was would generate optimal occupancy only ered and difficult decision to restructure appalling in its intellectual dishonesty. about 45 nights out of the year. In a 100- the athletics program. First, she claims that “only a tiny fraction room inn (the proposed size), that would I hope and trust the College’s mission of each purchase made with these cards leave 32,000 “room nights” to cover.