Swarthmore College Bulletin (June 1997)

SSWWAARRTTHHMMOORREE College Bulletin June 1997

The Future of Dying Tom Preston ’55 on physician- assisted suicide DENG-JENG LEE l g h l m S t E h L 2 S t c p i a h o a e c a 0 c i e l b u r e e i s h h n m 0 r n e m l g g t a l e o o o e 1 r c g i e e e s e a o r . u l l r ’ s s e s a a o n e y l n F r t u t r r o t u e “ r a o t g r a s s t e u F s p r r o i r , t n n M r f o u f t h r t e h o s n m d o t S u n e v i . a r c w L s n n d t o a e s L c o p t o a d h r a m r a C f a e l p e n e o p e l r m g n o c e l o g d t r a o e i h t l g C g v n i p l t g d O n b m v e e h l e g u e ’ g a y e . g p e 3 n E s o e s t L e 6 p s h 8 u L s r d F i t a . o o e o e n a g , u o n $ m , r e n s t m a f A t g 3 u t h n u g e h 0 p r o e o n e e o r w s i , i t f t ” l y n SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN • JUNE 1997

10 The New Face of Honors The Honors Program had fallen on hard times when the faculty voted sweeping reforms in 1994. Now enrollment is up, and students are enjoying new flexibility in preparing for external exams. Take a look at what’s happened to the College’s signature program through the eyes of faculty members and students.

Editor: Jeffrey Lott D Associate Editor: Nancy Lehman ’87 16 Elegant Euclid News Editor: Kate Downing Former math hater Nick Jackiw ’88 invented one of the most Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart F widely used software programs in mathematics education, Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner R Geometer’s Sketchpad. With it two 16-year-olds created a novel T Designer: Bob Wood solution to a problem first posed by Euclid 2,300 years ago. Editor Emerita: Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 A P6 P4 P2 By Eric Rich Associate Vice President for External Affairs: Barbara Haddad Ryan ’59 20 The Future of Dying Cover: Physician and Supreme Modern medicine has changed the nature of dying, argues Court plaintiff Thomas Preston ’55. cardiologist Tom Preston ’55, who has challenged a state law Photo ©1997 by Joel Levin. Article that prohibits doctors from helping terminally ill patients to end on page 20. their lives. His case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. Changes of Address: Send address label along with new By Thomas A. Preston ’55 address to: Alumni Records, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1397. Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail 28 Paying for the Final Years [email protected]. Should you be required use up your savings before applying for Contacting Swarthmore College: Medicaid to pay for nursing home care? Or is it OK to transfer College Operator: (610) 328-8000 assets to family members in order to qualify for this government www.swarthmore.edu assistance? Last November’s Bulletin provoked this lively Admissions: (610) 328-8300 correspondence about the legal and ethical issues involved. [email protected] Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402 [email protected] Publications: (610) 328-8568 68 Not With Their Feet Up [email protected] Registrar: (610) 328-8297 While most emeriti faculty members travel, take up hobbies, ©1997 Swarthmore College and do volunteer work, few have truly retired. Many continue Printed in U.S.A. on recycled paper. their research, writing, and even teaching—no longer constrained by the College calendar and student needs. The Swarthmore College Bulletin By Judith Egan (ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume XCIV, number 5, is published in August, September, December, March, and June by Swarthmore College, 500 2 Letters On the Road Again? College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 4 Collection Our annual 19081-1397. Second-class postage 32 Alumni Digest pull-out directory paid at Swarthmore PA and addition- for traveling al mailing offices. Permit No. 0530- 34 Class Notes 620. Postmaster: Send address 40 Deaths Swarthmoreans changes to Swarthmore College Bul- 62 Recent Books by Alumni follows page 34. letin, 500 College Avenue, Swarth- more PA 19081-1397. n the fall of 1953, as a first-grader in Pittsburgh, I was part of L E T a medical miracle. Every few weeks my classmates and I were lined up in the school gym for injections and blood Special Letters Section tests given by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. Due to the large volume of letters I received on the topic, readers will Like most kids I was afraid of the needles, but I could tell from find a special letters section, “Paying the way the grown-ups were acting that this was something very for the Final Years,” on page 28. important. I particularly remember a balding, white-coated man named Jonas Salk, who personally injected his experimental Ecclesiastes via Pete Seeger polio vaccine into my tensed-up arm. No kidding. By the next To the Editor: I had a fine time reading your article spring, he was a national hero—and, visiting our school for the on the folk song festivals of the ’50s last time, he signed my yearbook. and after. Although I knew nothing We’ve come to take such medical miracles as Salk’s polio vac- about them at the time, I can judge their quality by the fact that I had cine for granted. Immunizations, antibiotics, pacemakers, CAT heard almost all of the people men- scans, bypass surgery, and transplants—almost all unknown a tioned out in the “real world” and century ago—have become commonplace. Public health mea- that the festivals had a remarkably sures and high-tech medicine high proportion of all the best folk singers of the time. have postponed our deaths It was, however, the last page many times over. As Dr. Tom that set me in motion. When I saw Preston ’55 points out in “The the picture of Susan Reed in 1948, I PARLOR TALK Future of Dying” (page 20), walked down the street and gave the article to her. She was delight- Medical miracles like the “Today the fatal condition ... is polio vaccine have extended life ed. Susan has lived in Nyack for no longer a natural outcome of quite a long time, keeps an attrac- and changed the way we die. a life lived and completed tive shop that carries all sorts of things, and produces paintings and under natural conditions as it collages that combine a distinctive was in the time of Hippocrates.... Nowadays we live long enough character of their own with strong to succumb to the diseases of old age—heart disease, stroke, folk art qualities. And, needless to and cancer.” say, she sings. Her voice is still fine, she has an Irish harp like the one in Of course we remember the Hippocratic Oath and its famous the picture (and other instruments, dictum “First, do no harm.” But the fact is that Dr. Hippocrates too), and her repertory is bigger couldn’t do much good either. While we credit him with the idea than ever. My family and I have heard her often and were particu- that diseases have knowable natural causes, we also know that larly grateful when, a few months he believed illness was traceable to imbalances among the four ago, Susan closed a memorial meet- so-called “humors”—blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. ing for my wife by singing “Turn, In Hippocrates’ time death was just another part of nature, Turn, Turn,” which, as she said, is Ecclesiastes via Pete Seeger. something the physician could do almost nothing about. Now WILLIAM DIEBOLD ’37 we know disease isn’t just an imbalance of bile and phlegm, and Nyack, N.Y. medical science has given physicians great power to extend our lives—and indeed to extend our period of dying. In this issue We Work It In To the Editor: Tom Preston argues that because of these changes, we need to I have just received the March rethink our approach to dying itself, perhaps even rejecting issue, and I feel compelled to point another Hippocratic dictum: “I will give no deadly medicine to out that the players pictured in the photo at the bottom of page 21 anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel.” were not just members of “an infor- Swarthmoreans love a good debate—and so do Tom Preston mal jug band.” Rather, they were and his twin brother, Ted ’55. Tom the physician has taken the part of the We Work It In Jug Band, question of physician-assisted suicide to the Supreme Court. Ted and the photo is from the group’s Bond concert of 1964. The banjo the lawyer thinks the body politic—and the medical profes- player is Roger Shatzkin ’67, and the sion—should debate the question first, reaching some broad guitar player in the funny hat is consensus before ideas are made law. We invite you to decide for none other than my father, Bennett yourself, Swarthmore-style, where the truth really lies. Lorber ’64 (yes, the same one to whom the College gave an honorary —J.L. doctorate last June). My mother,

2 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN T E R S P O S T I N G S

Carol Finneburgh Lorber ’63, is also in the photo: Her face is partially am not a Christian. I am not a Jew. I quilt of all the hopes and dreams you hidden behind my father’s left Iam not a Muslim. I am not an atheist, outgrew. I am not the greatest love hand; next to her is my father’s a pagan, an agnostic, nor a devil wor- story of all time. I am not the protago- roommate, Jeff Heynen ’64. Finally, I shipper. I am not the Pope. I am not a nist of some picaresque novel. I am not would be remiss if I failed to men- Buddhist, a Taoist, or a monist. I am a preacher. I am not the Gimp nor the tion the presence of my grandmoth- not a Darwinist. I am not a creationist. I Gipper. I am not the night clerk in a er Ovilla Lorber, who today is alive am not an iconoclast. I am not a career cheap hotel. I am not a beat cop. I am and well and living in Emmaus, Pa.; criminal. I am not a vice presidential not a private eye. I am not a public eye. she can be seen peering over the candidate. I am not a bum. I am not a I am not a mote to trouble the mind’s shoulder of the white-shirted man citizen of the Prozac nation. I am not a eye. I am not Fortune’s fool. I am nei- in the front row. whore to psychiatry. I am not a good ther a poor player nor an idiot. I am SAM LORBER ’89 speller. not a Judas. I am not Lazarus, come Allston, Mass. I am not a sellout. I am not a greedy from the dead. I am not a Christ for Wall Street stockbroker nor a bureau- you to crucify. I am not a monster of Professors on Prozac? crat ruling the world with my own making. I am not To the Editor: all the double-talk manip- a rough beast, slouching In his letter published in the March ulation of a used-car or otherwise. 1997 issue, Sifford Pearre suggests salesman. I am not a I am not a hipster. I that “drugs” (by which he undoubt- loner. I am not a rebel What am not a pollster. I am edly means currently illegal drugs) without a cause. I am not not a youngster. I am not be made available by prescription a militiaman. I am not the I am a lobster. I am not my at low financial and high social cost. Unabomber. I am not the mother’s transvestite ex- This may seem a commonsense second shooter. I am not saying: husband’s ex-roommate’s solution to the “drug problem,” but the anonymous assassin lizard’s veterinarian who it is actually only another manifes- of Malcolm X, and I am “I am killed my own seductive- tation of the same set of prejudices not the one who held his ly obese stepsister. I am that underlie America’s pointless beautiful, bleeding head not the not a talk show guest, try- war on drugs. as he lay dying. I am nei- status quo.” ing to replace personal In suggesting that people who ther a prophet nor a fulfillment with cereal use drugs ought to be deprived of visionary. I am not an box celebrity. I am not a the opportunity to occupy posi- oppressed minority. I am rapist, a lootist, nor a pil- tions “involving public safety or not an oppressor of minorities. I am lagist. I am not a nudist. I am not a car- high-level decision making,” Pearre not the Man. I am not the status quo. I nival side show. I am not that goatee is overlooking the substantial num- am not a political prisoner. guy. I am not Pretentious Art Guy. I am bers of accountants on alcohol, I am not a compass. I am not a map. not a pop star. I am not the walrus. lawyers on Librium, doctors on Dal- I am not writing the Great American I am not a commercialized basket- mane, and professors on Prozac. Novel. I am not an original. I am not ball star. I am not the heavyweight He is forgetting that the distinc- Sam I Am. Yoda I am not. I am not what champion of the world. I am not a has- tions by which the use of certain I am, and that’s all I am. I am not a jazz been child star. I am not an American. I drugs is subject to sanction and musician. I am not the fifth Beatle. I am am not a Spaniard. I am not an Ethiopi- others not are almost entirely irra- not the Godfather, the Grandmother, an. I am not a victim of my own abuse. tional, determined much more by or even the Annoying Upstairs Neigh- I am not a survivor. racism and xenophobia and Puritan bor of Soul. What I am is what I am is I am not an anachronism. I am not a antipathy toward pleasure than by not a New Bohemian. I am not the next hypnotist, nor an illusionist, nor a any reasonable concerns. best thing. I am not a safe harbor in the magician, nor a shaman, nor a pick- Surely people who use psychoac- long dark night. I am not a bird in pocket, nor a propagandist. I am not a tive drugs of any legal status ought flight. I am not an icon. I am not mov- father of my country. I am not a keeper to endeavor to prevent them from ing on to a higher plane of conscious- of the gates. I am not an opiate of the hampering their performance on ness. I am not Rasputin. I am not a masses. I am not a Marxist. I am not a the job, behind the wheel, and in hemophiliac. I am not the secret twin bolshevist. I am not a Democrat. I am their relationships. The thrust of of Louis XIV. I am not the still-living not a Republican. I am not spying on Pearre’s suggestion is that people daughter of the last Czar. I am not a Ross Perot. I am not a soccer mom. I who use illegal drugs cannot be refugee of the Cold War. I am not the am not a driver on the Information trusted to do so, while people who last of the Mohicans. I am not a broken Superhighway. I am not a Generation use legal drugs can. There is no man. X’er. I am not a poet. I am not finished. basis for such a belief. It is purely a I am not ornamental. I am not cor- matter of prejudice. ruptible, exploitable, or expendable. I Mark Lotto just completed his freshman Indeed, I count as a major part of am not bought, sold, or processed. I year. “What I Am Saying” first appeared my Swarthmore education my am not stoppable. I am not a tall cool in Spike, a student humor and satire Please turn to page 35 drink of water. I am not a patchwork magazine.

JUNE 1997 3 COLLECTION S W A R T H M O R E T O D A Y

Future of information technology: whither services in the libraries, computing, and media services? foreseeable future

(within a decade) is N NSO JOH set of recommendations on the future of informa- likely to be desirable. RRI SHE tion technology at Swarthmore was released in Incorporating media March by the Librarian Search Committee. Initially services within com- fAormed last summer to create a job description and to puting or, more likely, begin the search for a new College librarian to replace the within the library should come soon, perhaps as soon as late Michael Durkan, the committee decided instead to the new library director takes office.” spend the current academic year seeking answers to • To foster increased collaboration among these depart- three major questions: ments by housing them in the same physical space. A • What should be the organizational structure relating plan should be developed for the renovation and expan- libraries, computing, and media services at Swarthmore? sion of McCabe Library to include computing and media Should they be merged or kept separate, and if separate, services, with the integrated facility ready for use in about how can fruitful collaboration among them be fostered? five years. • To whom or what at the College should these various • To add a new administrative position, associate provost services report? for information services, within the Provost’s Office. “At • Given the answers to the first two questions, what are some point in the future, the College may decide that it is the most important characteristics to be sought in well-served to have a full-time vice president for informa- Swarthmore’s next head librarian? tion services.” In a 15-page report that also included a draft job • To expand media services, both in space and by dou- description, the committee recommended: bling the personnel to at least three full-time staff mem- • Not to merge libraries and computing services at this bers. time, but rather to retain them with independent struc- The committee will begin the search for the new librar- tures, leadership, and budgets. The movement, however, ian this summer and plans to have the position filled by “toward a single, integrated department of information summer 1998. E E L G N E J - G N E D

Mighty Mouse ... Swat Bot, a robotic mouse programmed by University, Swat Bot worked its way through the maze in 51 a group of College engineers, captured first place in two inter- seconds, obliterating the second-place team, which posted a collegiate contests this spring. The robots are programmed to time of 2 minutes, 39 seconds. The second win was at Prince- explore a variable maze, return to the starting point, then fol- ton in April (although the College was not an official low the fastest path through it. Final scores are based on the entrant). Swat Bot is shown here with its creators (l to r) time each robot takes for its fastest run, plus a penalty for the Noah Salzman ’98, Silvio Eberhardt, assistant professor of total time spent exploring. In a meet held in March at Drexel engineering, John Rieffel ’99, and Ross Dickson ’97.

4 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN It seems like only yesterday ...

n the Bulletin’s special issue on The College Today (December 1993), we introduced four members of the Class of 1997 and the admissions essays that “worked” to help get them into Swarthmore. We thought you might I like to know how each has fared. Three were graduated this month and one a year ago. Martin Carrillo was drawn to the College because of “the chance to do frontline work” in lighting, set design, and construction in the Eugene M. and Theresa Lang Per- Moving on ... Dean of the College Ngina Lythcott has announced her res- forming Arts Center. A double major in theater and sociol- ignation effective June 30. “I have had ogy, he’ll be staying on campus for another year as the five wonderful years at Swarthmore center’s production intern. working with an outstanding staff, Carrillo, originally from Miami, then plans to head to extraordinary faculty, and amazing stu- California to reconnect with the San Francisco Mime dents,” wrote Lythcott in a letter to the Troupe, with which he spent the summer between his campus community. “Working with freshman and sophomore years. “Right now I’m suffering individual students on their academic Carillo from ‘senioritis,’ he said in May, “partly becoming nostal- advisement and personal development gic for being a student and partly wanting to get out and is what I loved most about being here. become independent.” Swarthmore is a community that has demanded a great deal but has given a Andrea Gibbons graduated in 1996 with a degree in great deal back, especially in the areas sociology and anthropology. Because she received of intellectual engagement, values- advanced placement credits and took one extra course based decision making, and a warm every semester, she completed her degree in three years. sense of community.” The letter went “I really have missed my classmates,” she said by phone on to say that Lythcott would be from her home in Tucson, “and I’ll miss graduating with “exploring a variety of career interests” them.” and that she wanted to “create more A native of Arizona, Gibbons spent the last six months time to nurture my inner life and val- working at an orphanage in Guadalajara, Mexico, helping ued personal relationships.” tend 130 children. “Only 20 of the kids were really President Alfred H. Bloom said: “We Gibbons will miss Ngina greatly. Her leadership orphans,” she said. “Most of the rest came from single- has markedly strengthened Swarth- parent families that simply couldn’t afford to take care of more’s ability to prepare students for a them.” complex and pluralistic world. The She returned to Arizona in late May and hopes to work vision she brought to us will be a sure for an immigration lawyer until she enters graduate guide to the goals we must continue to school in public policy. seek.” Shithi Kamal, a native of Bangladesh, completed a Robert J. Gross ’62, associate dean bachelor of arts degree with a double major in economics for academic affairs, will become act- and political science and a concentration in public policy. ing dean of the College while a national And in true Swarthmore fashion, she’s changed her mind search is conducted for Lythcott’s replacement. on a career. “Right now I’m looking into hydrology. My country is a delta formed over the last 10,000 years from Moving up ... Full professorship has Kamal soil washed down from the Himalayas. Fresh water is a been awarded to Nathalie Anderson, big concern.” English literature; Joy Charlton, sociol- Kamal will take a year off to be with her family, take her ogy; Sharon Friedler, dance; Frank GREs, and look for an internship in hydrology before Moscatelli, physics; Michael Mullan, physical education; Faruq Siddiqui, starting graduate school. “Swarthmore helped me grow a engineering; and Robin Wagner-Pacifi- lot,” she says, “and it will always be a frame of reference E ci, sociology. Appointments with con- E L for me. But I’m ready to leave.”

G tinuous tenure and promotion to asso- N E

J Alec Zimmer from Danville, in central Pennsylvania, ciate professorships were granted to - G

N came to Swarthmore with a twin love for engineering and Thomas Hunter, mathematics; Robert E D

Y his F horn and never deviated from either interest. He Paley, chemistry; and Micheline Rice- B

S Maximin, modern languages and litera-

O spent all four years as a member of the College’s wind T

O tures.

H ensemble and in April gave a senior recital. P Zimmer Zimmer did try the debate club and cross country— Moving in ... The College received a and even ultimate frisbee—for a while, but “engineering record 4,269 applications for the Class took over my life.” He will enter Stanford University in the fall to pursue a of 2001. Of those, 981 students (includ- master’s degree in structural engineering. “I think I worked harder than I ing 150 early-decision admittees) have had anticipated, but I’ve enjoyed being here,” he said. He now joins his been accepted. As of this writing, 392 father, William ’68, and grandmother Cynthia Swartley Zimmer ’42 in the have been admitted. The admitted stu- ranks of Swarthmore alumni. dents represent five continents, 40 nations, and 46 states.

JUNE 1997 5 COLLECTION

Political analyst Juan Williams on the media: They create crises to draw viewership E E

ashington Post writer and political analyst Juan L G N

Williams spoke to a capacity crowd in March on E J W - objectivity in the media. G N E The media, Williams said, strive “to dramatize news, to D make everything into a crisis” in order to secure readers and viewers. By focusing on theatrics, he said, the media Lang pledges $30 million to a ignore the real power processes of politics, disregard long- “Fund for the Future” of Swarthmore standing problems, and encourage interest-group ugene M. Lang ’38 has pledged the largest single gift politics. “These biases are ever received by the College—$30 million—for a “Fund dangerous when the media Efor the Future.” Lang, emeritus chairman of the Board of become a mirror for skillful, Managers, said that he and his family will work with College manipulative politicians” administrators over the next several years to determine the who use such theatrics to ultimate designations of the gift. “There is no college that give Americans subcon- more effectively challenges students intellectually while scious impressions of poli- nurturing active social conscience,” Lang said. “I have confi- tics and public figures. dence that this investment in Swarthmore students will T

S Williams, a past political help them become the kinds of leaders that our country O P

N analyst for CBS News, is a and world most need.” O T

G panelist on CNN’s Capital In announcing the gift, President Alfred H. Bloom (seen N I H

S Gang Sunday. He is currently above left with Lang) said, “Gene Lang’s extraordinary A

W writing a biography of for- vision and financial support have consistently reaffirmed Juan Williams mer Supreme Court Justice the College’s deepest values and allowed it to build on Thurgood Marshall. these values in new, vital educational directions.” His talk, followed by a student panel discussion on liber- Lang’s gift brings his total giving to Swarthmore over the al/conservative issues at the College, was this year’s sec- last three decades to $50 million, including the Lang Music ond McCabe Memorial Lecture. Paul Verkuil, former dean Building, the Eugene and Theresa Lang Performing Arts of the Tulane Law School and special master in the case Center, endowed professorships and support for faculty New Jersey v. New York over the sovereignty of Ellis Island, scholarly research, and the Lang Opportunity Scholarship was the first McCabe lecturer in February. Program.

“Gossip” by Arnold Roth ... was part of an exhibit of cartoons Lampoon, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. Roth’s dis- held in McCabe Library from April 4 through May 2. Roth is tinctive style has earned him national honors, including the probably best known for his longtime feature “Roth Report from National Cartoonist Society’s Cartoonist of the Year Award. Roth America” in London’s weekly magazine Punch. His work has came to campus April 10 to officially open the exhibit with a dis- also appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, National cussion of his work.

6 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Rehabilitating Jane Addams and “difference feminism”

By Carol Nackenoff extended beyond overturning restrictions on women’s Associate Professor of Political Science rights. She supported an inclusive citizenship in an age of exclusion and hoping that citizens could come to envision hen Jane Addams argued for women’s participa- their own well-being in conjunction with the well-being of tion in public life in the early decades of the 20th others. century, she did so as what we would now term a Difference feminism is again a hot issue at the end of the “Wdifference feminist.” She supported protective legislation the century. Is a ’90s feminist who stresses gender differ- for women and argued that women spoke in what Carol ences a radical or a conservative? The answer is anything Gilligan [’58] would term a “different voice.” It seemed then but simple. It depends, I would suggest, on the public women’s nature or their experiences with home and family, vision into which the imagery of women’s special knowl- when combined with their broader community experience edge is pressed. Feminists who emphasize women’s mater- working with poor and immigrant populations in America’s nal instincts celebrate the private sphere and wish women cities, could lead the way in transforming public values and would traffic less in the corruption, materialism, and com- the state. petitiveness of public life. Others, more in tune with Jane Along with many of her compatriots, Addams offered a Addams, believe the personal is political and that the stinging critique of materialism, militarism, selfishness, and boundary between public and private is artificial and nego- the industrial ethic. A firm believer in progress, she fought tiable. Addams saw this boundary as a “wavering line” that for women’s political incorporation not on the grounds that was increasingly blurred. women were like men, but rather because they brought Difference feminism has been attacked as a trap for something different—and yes, better—to women. In this view, arguments for a “differ- N O public life. Women might not monopolize I ent voice” emphasize biological difference, T C the social ethic, but they were, at least so E rehabilitate gender stereotypes, and L L O

long as they remained connected to the C enshrine women’s second-class status. If E experiences that gave rise to this ethic, the C women are more nurturing and less compet- A E driving force behind its expansion. P itive than men, then they cannot be expect- E R

New forms of consciousness have some- O ed to succeed in a man’s world; their mar- M H times emerged from what appear to be T ginalization in the economic structure is, R A

defensive or rearguard actions. Some femi- W then, nothing with which we need have any S /

nists in Jane Addams’ cohort were quite S reason to be politically concerned since it R E explicit about the defense of their tradition- P reflects women’s own choices and how they A P

al responsibilities as they argued for expand- S have been socialized. M A ing women’s public voice. Increasingly, D One current legal scholar, Joan C. D A

Addams and Charlotte Perkins Gilman E Williams, has even suggested that a major N A argued, Americans were becoming interde- J source of difference feminism’s appeal to pendent. The private sphere was shrinking, Jane Addams saw womens’ feminists and progressives is that its cri- leaving women with diminished influence, “difference” as an asset tique of capitalism is less likely to be dis- and women were losing control of functions in public life. credited than other incarnations of radical- once performed by them in the home. Food ism. It is, she suggests, Marxism to take and clothing production, education, sanitation, health, and home to mother. But she insists that it brings far more trou- philanthropy were increasingly socialized. Thus women ble than benefit to women seeking equality. needed to move into the public sphere in order to safe- I don’t deny the possibility that difference feminists run guard their traditional domains of concern and also to the risk of having their weapons turned against them by bring their wisdom and experience to public tasks. In fact punitive courts and policymakers. To the extent that they what was modern government but extended public house- offer alternative visions and values for public life, they can keeping? surely expect to be met with resistance. But language and Addams envisioned bringing women’s brooms, caretak- political narratives are always objects of struggle, and ing skills, empathy, and wisdom into the definition of sometimes the most potent weapons are those that speak mature, ethical democratic citizenship. She challenged the to tradition, history, and sentiment while transforming pos- power and utility of the pervasive model of citizenship sibilities at the same time. based in autonomy and independence, arguing that modern Jane Addams is being rehabilitated—and she deserves life negates self-sufficiency. The good citizen was no longer to be. This effort is more than just another attempt to ele- the independent man. An alternative vision of citizenship vate an important voice in American political thought to stressed not only human interdependence but mutual the position she deserves. Liberalism is in the midst of an responsibility for the well-being of other members of our identity crisis. Addams understood the impoverishment of community. Addams and her fellow travelers offered up a public values and the failure of the liberal state in her day, different and broader conception of the state—a concep- and modern-day Americans have much to learn by rethink- tion that helped prepare the emergence of some form of ing her world view. the American welfare state. Early 20th-century “difference feminists” sought some- Carol Nackenoff teaches constitutional law, feminist theory, thing more than liberal theory provided. Addams’ vision gender and politics, American politics, and political theory.

JUNE 1997 7 COLLECTION

he College has launched an effort to examine how their dual roles as teachers and scholars? Swarthmore should prepare to move into the future • How might growth and change in the College’s pro- and to develop a set of College priorities for the grams be related to the size of the student body? Tcoming decade. The planning process, which was initiated • To what broad trends in American higher education— by President Alfred H. Bloom and the Board both economic and pedagogical—does of Managers, will be coordinated by the the College need to respond? College Planning Committee (CPC), an 18- • How can Swarthmore become bet- member campus-wide group of Managers, College launches ter known? faculty and staff members, and students. Studies of academic issues began a “While planning goes on here every new long-range year ago in the faculty-based Council day,” said Paul Aslanian, vice president for on Educational Policy. Eight other plan- finance and planning and a member of the planning process ning groups were formed this spring to CPC, “from time to time it’s appropriate to study the student experience, financial take a longer view, to be more deliberate, aid, admissions, facilities, technology, and to expand our horizons. Right now staffing, the College’s relationship with Swarthmore is in a very strong position academically, finan- the local and regional community, and Swarthmore’s visibil- cially, in admissions, and in its overall reputation. It is from ity and leadership in higher education. Concurrently the this position of strength that we are beginning the process.” Student Council will constitute the core of an additional Among the many questions that have been raised are: group that will focus on student government and student • What new curricular directions might Swarthmore activities. take, and how can the College encourage curricular innova- The planning groups will aim to bring to the CPC by May tion and flexibility in response to rapid changes in the intel- 1998 a set of up to three priorities in each of the eight areas lectual world? that are believed to be most important for the College to • How will changes in technology affect the way Swarth- pursue. After broad consultation the CPC will draw up a more educates its students? final plan. • How can the College best support faculty members in E E L G N E J - G N E D

Sixteen for 16 ... A reunion concert featuring nearly every and Argentina to join current members in selections of the past and present member of the a capella singing group 16 Feet group’s greatest hits. Here Jorge Oria ’94 takes center stage was held April 5 to celebrate the 16th anniversary of its found- before a capacity crowd in the Meeting House with “Swarth- ing. Former members returned from as far away as Los Angeles more Girl” (to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl”).

8 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Men’s basketball makes ECAC semifinals; freestyle to earn All-American Honorable Mention recogni- women’s track takes conference title tion. The entire foursome took 12th place in the 800 freestyle and 16th in the 400 freestyle to garner All-Ameri- The men’s basketball team made its first-ever post season can Honorable Mention recognition. appearance with a trip to the semifinals of the ECAC South At the Conference Championships, the Garnet men, led Tournament—informally recognized as the NIT of Division by Brandon Walsh ’00, broke five College records. Walsh set III. The Garnet finished the season at 16-11, reaching the a school and conference record in the 200 butterfly Centennial Conference Championship game (the Garnet (1:53.46) and set school records in the 200 individual med- lost 90-59 to Dickinson). Senior co-captain Ben Schall led ley and the 100 butterfly. At the NCAA championships, the squad, averaging 15.2 points per game. Schall became Walsh placed 18th in the 200 butterfly and 27th in the 100 the all-time steals leader with 137 and finished his career butterfly. Andy Robbins ’98 also qualified for nationals, with 1,075 points, 566 rebounds, where he finished 17th in the 200 208 assists, and he became the and 21st in the 100. only player in Swarthmore’s 97- The women’s indoor track and year basketball history to record field squad won its first-ever Cen- the feat of reaching 1,000 points, tennial Conference championship 500 rebounds, 200 assists, and 100 at Haverford College. The Garnet steals. Schall also excelled in the topped eight other squads to grab classroom and was named a mem- the title. Danielle Duffy ’98 earned ber of the GTE Academic All-Amer- Co-Outstanding Performer of the ican regional squad. Senior co-cap- meet honors after winning the 200- tain Colin Convey finished his meter dash and running legs on career as Swarthmore’s all-time the winning 4 x 225-meter relay assist leader with 283 and became with Catherine Laine ’98, Jill the first Swarthmore player to Wildonger ’97, and Wonda Joseph receive First-Team All-Centennial ’00 and the 4 x 400-meter relay Conference recognition. Convey with Laine, Wildonger, and led the conference in assists and Stephanie Herring ’99. The 4 x 400- three-point baskets with 105 and meter relay squad broke the con- 63 respectively. ference record in a time of 4:12.24. 7 6

The women’s basketball team ʼ Laine earned a trip to the NCAA T T

posted a 7-16 record this past sea- A Championships with a record- L B D

son, matching the win total of the L breaking leap in the Triple Jump, O G previous season. For the first time where she jumped a distance of N E V

in Swarthmore history, the Garnet E 38’ 8.25” to break the school, T posted victories over Dickinson S meet, and conference records. and Western Maryland. Co-captain Garnet teammates Aaron Bond ’97, J.J. Purdy ’99, and Laine was also victorious in the Lisl Cochran-Bond ’97 led the scor- Ben Schall ’97 go up against a Dickinson player at the 55-meter hurdles. Head coach Ted ing, averaging 14.2 points per con- Centennial Conference Championship game. Dixon was named 1996–97 United test. Co-captain Pia Houseal ’97 led States Track Coaches Association the squad in rebounding, averaging nine a game. Holly Bar- Mideast Region Women’s Indoor Coach of the Year. ton ’99 led the squad with 25 three-pointers, netting 53. The men’s indoor track and field team posted a 7-1 The badminton team posted a 6-2 mark and a fourth- record and finished in second place at the Centennial Con- place finish at the Northeastern Collegiate Championships. ference championships. Pole Vaulter Nate Mason ’99 was Thanh Hoang ’97 and Vanya Tepavcevic ’97 led the Garnet. the lone first-place finisher in the Garnet’s balanced Hoang earned a trip to the national championships, while attack—he cleared 13’ to win the competition. Swarthmore Tepavcevic posted a team best 4-1 record at No. 2 singles. posted second-place finishes in the 4 x 225-meter relay, 4 x At the PAIAW Championships, the doubles team of Becky 400-meter relay, and a third place in the 4 x 800-meter relay. Fischer ’97 and Wendy Kemp ’99 won the “B” Flight Cham- Individually, Mason Tootell ’99 placed second in the 55- pionship over teammates Herrin Hopper ’98 and Jennifer meter hurdles followed by Reuben Canada ’99 in third. Co- E

E Klein ’98, while Catherine Chomat ’97 was a runner-up in captain Eric Pakurar placed second in the 400-meter run, L

G the “B” Flight Singles Championship. and Steve Dawson ’00 placed second in the high jump. N E J - At the Centennial Conference swimming championships, The wrestling team posted a 6-13 overall record and a G N

E both the Garnet men’s and women’s swimming teams fin- 3-3 mark in Centennial Conference matches. At the confer- D ished in second place. The women established three con- ence championships the Garnet finished sixth. Pete Balvanz ference bests and nine new school marks at the conference ’98 earned Swarthmore’s top finish, placing third in the 150- meet, sending Claire Arbour ’00, Kristen Robertson ’98, pound weight class, while Sean Lewis ’99 placed fourth in Cathy Polinsky ’99, and Jill Belding ’99 to the NCAA Cham- the 190-pound class. During the season Adrian Wilson ’99 pionships, where Swarthmore finished 29th. Belding earned led the team with a 17-5 record, collecting six pins in the All-American honors in the 200-yard butterfly with an 134-pound class. Wilson finished seventh at the NCAA Divi- eighth place finish. Arbour finished in 10th place in the 200 sion III East Regional.

JUNE 1997 9 eople are THE always NEW Pasking me about the new Honors Program. FACE OF They want to know what’s different, what’s traditional, HONORS what’s special about Honors. Sometimes my mind wanders back over years of teaching my Chaucer seminar, remem- bering the rich dialogues of students and pilgrims, all on a learning road, and I wonder how easily the special opportunity of Honors work can be put into words. Let me try to give you the glimpse of an answer.

Heather Mateyak ’97 Major: Linguistics Minor: Psychology Concentration: Computer Science Personal: First person from her high school in Tamaqua, Pa., to attend Swarthmore. Planned a program in engineering but gravitated instead to cognitive science. Chose Swarthmore because “I read a lot in high school and wanted to be in a place where we could talk about literature.” Entered the Honors Program late—at the end of her junior year—changing from a E

E double major in mathematics and lin- L G

N guistics to prepare for external exams E J -

G in linguistics and psychology. N E D

Y Honors Preparations: Two papers in B S

H theoretical linguistics on topics P A

R assigned by her examiners, plus a fall- G O

T semester thesis on “lexicalization”— O H

P how people come to recognize letter

10 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN We had an old Honors Program. ning with this year’s senior class. We We’ve had it since 1922. People stud- reduced the number of seminars from ied in seminars and labs; they argued; six to four so that students might find they analyzed; they ached for a break. the time and opportunity to study in They loved leading discussions or China or explore astronomy with a engaging in debates, poring over each late start or pursue work in a concen- other’s papers, learning new lan- tration. We invited concentrations to guages, burrowing for information in make up Honors minors so people the library, conducting experiments, could study things like women’s stud- arguing about an expert’s flawed anal- ies, public policy, or black studies in ysis. They feared and fought for the the Honors Program. We built greater privilege of being examined at the end flexibility into the modes of prepara- of two years by the people whose tion so that ecologists might work in books they had read and argued the field or actors on the stage. We about. made it possible to double major and Many of these things remain the do work in the Honors Program at the same: small classes or seminars same time. where people debate and search for We encouraged flexibility in the something-—if not the truth then for a modes of evaluation so that philoso- truer way of knowing. Greater inde- Professor Craig Williamson is chair of phy examiners could send in ques- pendence and responsibility. Work the Department of English Literature tions early for students to think and across disciplines in a major and a and serves as the coordinator of the write about for a semester, or so that minor. The chance to explore what Honors Program. This essay was adapt- physics majors could sit with a whole math has to do with ancient cultures ed from a talk he gave in January to panel of examiners and talk about or iambic pentameter. The opportuni- sophomores considering Honors. quantum mechanics or black holes. ty to reflect upon and integrate mate- We set up interdisciplinary and spe- rials and modes of learning. The People grew tired or irritated or cial majors so that students could chance to sit before an examiner who skeptical about the Honors Program study bioanthropology, or film and has written several books on the sub- in the early 1990s and bypassed the modern culture. We invited all depart- ject of a thesis and argue an alterna- program or dropped out. The faculty ments, programs, and concentrations tive point of view. decided to make some changes, begin- to participate and to help us understand the best way to learn in their respective disciplines. strings as actual words. (Example: We Intellectual Interest: Computational We made Honors the only way to don’t recognize t-r-a-v-e as an English models of language processing—how graduate with honorifics at Swarth- word, but why? And depending on its language is represented and where more because we believe that the use in different contexts, is it seen as a different aspects of language reside in surest test of learning is to be able to noun or a verb?) For her minor, the brain. enter into a dialogue not only with fel- Mateyak and five others in a seminar low seminar students or Swarthmore On Honors: “Under the old program, I did student-directed readings in psy- professors but also with outside wouldn’t have been able to do Honors cholinguistics (her specialty), abnor- scholars and teachers who work and in linguistics because the department mal psychology, physiological psy- publish in our disciplines and who offered only two seminars in my four chology, and cognitive psychology. write the books and articles we study years, and I had already taken them in and admire. We added a student port- Senior Honors Study: Two papers in my freshman and sophomore years. folio so that essays or projects or linguistics and the psychology semi- The new Honors gave me the chance research results for each and every nar served as the basis for Mateyak’s to design a linguistics major around student might be sent to examiners to Senior Honors Study. She also met my papers.” read. We asked more of examiners with the other linguistics Honors can- After Swarthmore: Graduate school and offered to pay them more for didates to examine theoretical ques- at Penn in computer science. “It was their time and effort. We let Swarth- tions and readings. tough to choose between linguistics more instructors finally give grades to Examinations: Linguistics: two papers and computer science, but at Penn I their students in Honors preparations on topics set by, and the thesis grad- can do computational linguistics—a because we no longer thought that ed by outside examiners—plus oral field that applies computer analysis to this would undermine independent exams. Psychology: a written exam language.” Hopes to combine interest inquiry or free debate. plus orals on the psycholinguistics in both to advance understanding of We created a new component, seminar. the “abstract principles of language at Senior Honors Study, to enhance and the neural level.” integrate work in the Honors prepara-

JUNE 1997 11 tions in the senior year. The modes of a thesis describing Senior Honors Study vary, but all research conducted in the include work in addition to that of the laboratory of Associate regular Honors preparations. History Professor Amy Cheng majors will revise their seminar Vollmer. Each of the semi- papers and put them into the portfo- nars expanded upon a lio. Biology majors will share their previous biology or psy- research and thesis materials in a col- chology course. loquium. Soc/anthro majors will write an intellectual autobiography. The- Research Interest: Exam- ater majors will join together to cre- ined oxidative stresses in ate a model of professional produc- bacteria by putting them tion. Every department, concentra- in an environment with tion, and program has a model for hydrogen peroxide and this. There may be too many models, then measuring the but in time we will find the ones that expression of a gene work best. These will be the models (katG) that controls the that enhance the preparations, inte- production of catalase, grate the methods and materials, an enzyme that neutral- enrich the arguments, and raise izes oxidation by turning important questions about the nature the H2O2 into H2O. Impli- of the work for students, teachers, cations: “Oxidative stress- and examiners alike. es may be related to The new Honors Program is built Parkinson’s disease, on the idea of dialogue. Small classes rheumatoid arthritis, or seminars where one has a chance some cancers, and even to speak. Responsibility for beginning the aging process itself.” the discussion with a paper or pre- Senior Honors Study: sentation. Speaking and writing with- The Biology Department’s in and across disciplines. Students research colloquium gives sharing research results or ideas its Honors candidates the about acting or interest in other cul- LEE opportunity to present tures. An exchange between students and test their research in and examiners who come not only to “poster sessions,” where assess work but to enter into a dia- DENG-JENG BY students and faculty mem- logue about it. bers provide “lots of feed- Chaucer says about his best Can- back about better ways to terbury student that he would “gladly present the data. You learn and gladly teach.” In the Honors PHOTOGRAPHS have to stand there and Program, the dialectic of learning and defend it—teach it. A lot teaching resolves itself into an Elizabeth Glater ’97 of the toughest questions came from exchange of ideas where everyone the other students.” Glater’s thesis learns, and the authority of teaching Major: Biology was evaluated by a senior microbiolo- floats naturally from one authorized Minor: Psychology gist at the DuPont Company. and enabled voice to another. And in this conflict and collaboration of Personal: Daughter of David and Mari- External Exams: In addition to her the- ideas we come to cherish the life of lyn Tindall Glater ’63 and sister of sis, three—in microbiology, biome- learning and be glad. Jonathan Glater ’93. As a high school chanics, and physiological psychology. student in Boston, she resisted con- On Honors: “It’s a little less intimidat- THIS STORY ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB sidering Swarthmore but changed her ing to do Honors in biology now, mind after visiting. “It didn’t make because there are more of us (four To join fellow Swarthmoreans in an sense that just because they went candidates this year, as opposed to a Internet discussion of Swarthmore’s here that I wouldn’t allow myself to.” total of seven in the period 1992–96). Honors Program send an e-mail mes- Glater has a strong interest in theater We’ve taken a lot of the same courses, sage to: [email protected] and has directed two plays—one by so I have a buddy to study with for G.B. Shaw and another by Tom Stop- more.edu. Leave the subject header each exam.” pard. This year she co-produced (with blank, and in the body of the mes- Amy Mai Hope ’97) a 25-minute video After Swarthmore: Looking for a job subscribe honors Your sage type: called Voices of Color, with interviews related to science research or writing. Real Name. If you have problems with women of color at Swarthmore. Expects to pursue graduate study in subscribing, send an e-mail to list- biology after “one or two years in the [email protected]. Honors Preparations: Two biology real world.” seminars, a psychology seminar, and

12 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN n June 2 nearly 23 percent of the Craig Williamson, who serves as Hon- Class of 1997 graduated with ors coordinator, along with other QUESTIONS O Honors, the highest proportion members of the Curriculum Commit- of any graduating class since 1989. tee, fielded literally hundreds of ques- With this Commencement the recent- tions about what can and cannot be AND ly reformed Honors Program seemed done under the new rubric. As the well on the way to fulfilling one of its academic year moved toward external main goals—to bring more students examinations in May, Williamson com- ANSWERS into the program. In addition this first piled a 12-page compendium of fre- class of “new” Honors graduates came quently asked questions that became, from a wider range of departments, in a way, the actual legislation of the ABOUT THE programs, and interdisciplinary con- new Honors Program. centrations than ever before. Because it’s so different from the Yet the new program is still evolv- “old” Honors—especially the system NEW ing, and in many ways members of the that existed until the mid-1980s— Class of 1997 have been guinea pigs in many alumni find the new program an unfinished educational experiment. hard to comprehend. “It seems more HONORS As Provost Jennie Keith points out, complicated because it’s more flexi- Members of the “This is a very significant revision in ble,” says Robert Pasternack, Edmund the College’s curriculum, and parts of Allen Professor of Chemistry, division Class of 1997 were it are still being specified.” Keith chairman of natural sciences, and a the guinea pigs as explains that when the faculty voted member of the Curriculum Commit- in 1994 to implement the new pro- tee. “Honors has been a transforming a revitalized Honors gram, it promulgated only a set of experience for many Swarthmore principles and “left it up to the Cur- graduates. What we’ve tried to do is Program emerged. riculum Committee to do the imple- create a new program for the modern mentation.” student that will provide the same By Jeffrey Lott Professor of English Literature kind of experience. The philosophy of

Matthew Miller ’97 Senior Honors Study: Three papers and further study extend- Major: German ing seminar work. One drew ideas from the Vienna/Berlin and mod- Minor: Philosophy ern novel seminars in a study of Personal: His parents’ Pennsylva- the modernist writer Alfred nia–German background sparked an Döblin, whose 1929 novel, Berlin interest in the German language. Alexanderplatz, captured the (Miller’s Amish-reared father spoke intellectual and social tumult of “Pennsylvania Dutch”—a dialect of the Weimar era. Another com- German—as a child in his grandpar- pared two of Goethe’s later nov- ents’ Lancaster County, Pa., home.) els. A third (for philosophy) First-generation college student. “I’m examined aesthetic responses to thankful for the opportunity to come Kant. to Swarthmore. Couldn’t have done it Examinations: Three written without financial aid and the support external exams in German, a of my parents.” paper in philosophy on a topic Preparations: Seminars in social, assigned by an outside examiner, political, and cultural changes in and orals in both German and Vienna and Berlin at the beginning of philosophy. the 20th century; the life and work of Intellectual Interest: The role of Goethe; and the modern German art in life. How does literature novel. In his minor: seminar on Ger- and other cultural expression man romanticism and idealism. affect peoples’ lives—especially Travel: Year in Germany as a high in times of transition, as in early school senior. Sophomore-year 20th-century Germany? semester in Grenoble (he knows After Swarthmore: A year at the French too) followed by travel in Ger- University of Hamburg followed many. Faber International Travel by graduate study in German at Grant for study in Vienna and Berlin, Columbia University. summer 1996.

JUNE 1997 13 the Honors Progam as originally envi- fortable with the two-track elitism of name—we might just want to call it sioned is essentially intact, but the the program.” ‘Swarthmore.’” mechanics have had to be reconsid- The new Honors, says Keith, is ered with the goals of the modern stu- “another step in the progression away Is there still “Course?” dent in mind.” from having separate academic Not really, asserts Keith. In principle For the modern—and not-so-mod- tracks.” Under the new program, every student at Swarthmore may ern—student, we offer the Bulletin’s enrollment has increased dramatically take every course offered in the cata- own list of frequently asked questions (about 30 percent of the Class of 1998 logue, so in effect there is no longer a about the new Honors Program: is enrolled), and departments whose two-track system. The only difference, majors had low participation have she says, is that some students decide What was the “old” been finding more students interested to take their work to external examin- Honors Program? in a program of study that leads to ers for the chance to receive Honors, The answer depends, of course, on external examinations. and some don’t. This fact is also the when you attended Swarthmore. Yet mere numbers were not the main rationale for the elimination of Begun in 1922 by President Frank only concerns, says Craig Williamson: the honorific known as “Distinction in Aydelotte, the Honors Program quick- “Our whole notion of the intellectual Course.” Now the only way to honors ly became the signature program of enterprise has changed, and I think is through the Honors Program. the College. Swarthmore’s best stu- the faculty has created a better, wiser There’s one practical problem: Cer- dents applied for admission to the tain popular seminars and courses are program and took just eight Oxford- oversubscribed, and students prepar- style seminars in their final two years ing for Honors still get preference. So of study. A distinctive feature of the the exclusivity of the program seems original program was—and still is— Q AND A not to be a settled issue. Says the opportunity to be examined by Williamson, “Even though the Honors visiting scholars. These external Program is no longer ‘separate,’ there exams created a powerful experience T H E N E W are aspects of the program, such as of shared academic purpose between research projects and Senior Honors Swarthmore faculty members and Study, that make it special.” their students. H O N O R S Until the mid-1960s, between 30 How do today’s students prepare for Honors exams? and 40 percent of Swarthmore stu- program than any of the previous dents were accepted to “read for Hon- The route to Honors no longer passes models. It’s an important and noble exclusively through seminars. Each ors.” The program continued basically experiment.” unchanged until 1968, when the num- Honors candidate’s program now ber of two-credit seminars was What’s wrong with includes four “preparations” for exter- reduced from eight to six in a effort to academic elitism? nal examinations—three in the major add flexibility to the junior and senior When President Aydelotte instituted and one in the minor, or all four in an years. A further change in the mid- the Honors Program in the 1920s, interdisciplinary or special major. 1980s gave Honors candidates addi- Swarthmore was a very different col- Preparations (“I’d have preferred to tional options in completing the lege—a place where the student body call them ‘fields,’” says Jennie Keith) required 12 credits of Honors study— was of quite varied ability. Aydelotte’s are defined by each department, and and for the first time opened Honors aim, according to Richard Walton’s while they are largely two-credit semi- seminars to students in Course. history of the College, was to “educate nars, they may now include such superior students to their potential” options as independent scientific Why change Honors again? and to break with the prevailing colle- research, projects in studio and per- To save it. By the early 1990s barely giate culture of the time. For decades forming arts, or specially designed 10 percent of Swarthmore students thereafter Honors separated one class combinations of courses. were “going Honors.” The steady of students from the other, so much Another feature of the new Honors decline in participation had not been so that after sophomore year, Honors Program is that students may minor in stopped by the two previous reforms, candidates would never again be edu- an interdisciplinary concentration which, says Provost Keith, were “tin- cated alongside certain of their peers. such as women’s studies, environ- kering around the edges.” She In today’s competitive admissions mental studies, or public policy. The attributes the previous program’s environment, says Keith, virtually new program also permits students to weaknesses to “pressures from two every student admitted to Swarth- do Honors in conjunction with a dou- directions: Students considering Hon- more has the ability to successfully ble major or as a special major of their ors wanted to be able to choose from complete the Honors Program. In fact, own design. the full range of the College’s curricu- Keith thinks it’s not unimaginable that lum, broadening their program to What is Senior Honors Study? all Swarthmore students might some- In addition to the four preparations, include such things as laboratory day participate: “If we really believe in research, study abroad, and projects all candidates for Honors participate this educational model, then maybe in a new course called Senior Honors in the visual and performing arts. And we should want everybody to do this. frankly, students in both Honors and We might just want to change the Please turn to page 67 Course became increasingly uncom-

14 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Tom Fennimore ’97 Major: Engineering (One of three Honors candidates this year alone. In the preceding five years there had been a total of two.) Minor: Mathematics Personal: Came to Swarthmore from Morrisville, Pa. Played offensive center in football all four years and is a member of Delta Upsilon. Professor of Engineering Nelson Macken describes him as “a leader—a really independent sort who loves research and can work at all levels.” Honors Preparations: Senior design project (done with four other students) was to build a Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) that combines battery and natural gas power for energy effi- ciency. With Professor Macken, the five took the HEV to a national competition in mid-May. (Look for race results in the summer Garnet Letter.) Fennimore and Al Molnar, another Honors candidate, designed the car’s computer control system. A written report on the car, along with an exam in Control Theory, was submitted to the external examiner. Other preparations were based on combinations of courses: Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer made up a preparation on convective heat transfer; Thermal Energy Conversion was combined with the HEV project for an exam on converting heat to energy; and (for mathmatics) Fenni- more combined two courses—Differ- ential Equations and Real Analysis. E E L G N

Senior Honors Study: “Two papers E J - G

gave me the chance to explore some N E new areas.” In math he studied D “wavelets,” a method of doing signal External Exams: Three in engineering After Swarthmore: Time to make analysis. In engineering he researched and one in math—all based on the some money on Wall Street. Fenni- a paper on “neural networks.” preparations. Fennimore expected the more will go to the investment bank- Intellectual Interest: Neural networks, examiners to give him “new types of ing firm Goldman Sachs and “maybe which he describes as a “control strat- problems that will take what we later” to further study in engineering. egy designed to mimic the neural sys- learned in our courses and ask us to Of the five members of the HEV team, tem of your body.” Future electric use it at a higher level.” only one (Pete Hamilton ’97) will go cars may be equipped with computer- directly to an engineering-related job. On Honors: Decided to “go Honors” at ized “neural” controls that “learn to Selverian will join Arthur Anderson, a the end of sophomore year, and (with program themselves, to correlate data consulting firm; Tom Makin ’97 will Kurk Selverian ’97) dreamed up the on things like battery charge and enter law school; and Al Molnar will HEV project early in his junior year. engine loading, and then see relation- “go fishing.” “Being in the first class of the new ships to how you use the vehicle—like Honors has been confusing and frus- learning your commuting schedule— trating at times, but under the old sys- in order to use energy efficiently.” tem I couldn’t have done this.”

JUNE 1997 15

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R C

ate. ergradu an und he was d while ketchpa eter’s S d Geom evelope iw ’88 d By Eric Rich ick Jack major N English

16 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN ave wears a tie dotted with rac- Dietrich taught at Greens Farms during bicycles. Dan’s sports full- “This is an area of ing the summer of 1995. On offering Dsailed spinnakers. the challenge to his students, the 56- Tall and lanky, Dave is at the chalk- mathematics that had year-old teacher declared: “You don’t board, assembling a growing snarl of have a prayer of figuring this out.” lines and angles that purport to been considered to “We went immediately to the com- explain his recent celebrity. puter because that’s where we’re Battling bronchitis, the shorter and be totally mined out,” most comfortable,” Dave said. With stockier Dan has taken an interest in a Sketchpad, the boys were able to spot on the floor, chiming in now and draw and redraw, configuring and again when his partner falters. says Nick Jackiw ’88, reconfiguring easily until a solution Dave Goldenheim and Dan Litch- emerged. Using a rectangle and a field, both students at Greens Farms developer of software series of diagonal and perpendicular Academy in Westport, Conn., have lines, the students discovered a logi- broken new ground in a field of mathe- that helped two cal, recurring pattern. matics long thought to have been They found their teacher eating thoroughly explored. teenage geometers lunch and told him what they had dis- With a combination of mathemati- covered. “He almost choked on his cal curiosity, luck, and naivete, the discover a novel hot dog,” Dave recalled. What the boys stumbled upon what mathemati- teacher knew and the boys didn’t was cians have hailed as the first novel solution to a problem that this was not Euclid’s familiar solu- solution to a problem originally posed tion. and solved by the Greek mathemati- posed by Euclid Dan and Dave’s solution displays a cian Euclid more than 2,000 years ago. rare and elusive quality that mathe- They published their work as a for- in 300 B.C. maticians know as elegance, said Ed mal math treatise in the January edi- Barbeau, a professor of mathematics tion of a scholarly journal called Math- Sketchpad the summer after his junior at the University of Toronto and a ematics Teacher. The paper created year. The project continued at Swarth- member of the editorial panel at Math- quite a stir in the math world, partly more until August 1990, when Sketch- ematics Teacher. “It was a nice bit of because, at 16, Dan and Dave are pad was sold to Key Curriculum Press thinking,” Barbeau said. younger than most math pioneers, of Berkeley, Calif. Jackiw went along, Theirs is one of fewer than half a and partly because, as Nicholas planning to usher the software dozen papers by high school students Jackiw ’88 put it, their work through a nine-month field test, and the journal has published since it was “dethrones Euclid, in a way.” he hasn’t left yet. founded nine decades ago. As word of their discovery spreads, Sketchpad allows users to tinker “It was highly unusual,” said Harry the boys are finding themselves very easily, while preserving the mathe- Tunis, director of publications for the much in demand. They’re booked for matical relationships among parts. National Council of Teachers of Math- more than a half-dozen conferences Geometric constructions that other- ematics, which publishes the journal. through the fall of 1998 and have been wise seem static reveal their inherent “They used technology well, and it’s a featured on a nationally syndicated dynamism, Jackiw said. good model for how classrooms radio program and on a segment for Sketchpad has been translated into should be running.” MSNBC. But behind their serendipi- more than a dozen languages and has Talk about elegant. Buried among tous discovery lies the key to their become one of the most widely used intracacies of Dan and Dave’s con- success: Geometer’s Sketchpad, a programs in math education. It’s used struction is a pattern of near mystical computer program created at Swarth- around the world, and it was used by significance to mathematicians: a more by Jackiw, an English major who Dan and Dave at their small private Fibonacci Sequence. Named for a was once a self-described math hater. school on the Connecticut shoreline. 13th-century Italian mathematician, “In high school I was sort of turned Euclid first laid out the problem such sequences (of the form off from math,” Jackiw (pronounced around 300 B.C., in his Elements of 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 ...) conceal a ratio known jack-eev) said, “both by the way it Geometry, Book 6, Proposition 10. It as the Divine Proportion, which has was taught and the subject itself.” was a single piece in the sprawling intrigued mathematicians and artisans Computers were a different story. puzzle of a mathematical system that, stretching back into antiquity. Though literary criticism was his pas- even in its infancy, spanned 15 books The ratio appears throughout the sion, Jackiw was already something of containing more than 400 proposi- universe: in the spirals of galaxies and a computer whiz when he enrolled at tions. Known as “regular partitioning,” in the spirals of a nautilus, in the Swarthmore. So when Eugene Klotz, it is essentially this challenge: Devise anatomy of a brain and the structure professor of mathematics, won a grant a geometric method to partition a line of a branch. It was a foundation for from the National Science Foundation of any length into any number of the Greek aesthetic of balance in and needed a Macintosh programmer, equal segments. architecture and form, and here it he knew where to look—the English The exercise is often included in was, appearing on the boys’ computer Department. high school geometry classes—as it screen. Jackiw began work on Geometer’s was in the accelerated class Charlie Dan and Dave recognized it imme-

JUNE 1997 17 uclid drew a ray off They drew a line the left end of the Euclid vs. the Sketchpad from the top left cor- Ehorizontal line that ner to the midpoint of was to be partitioned the horizontal base- into, say, four equal line (DP2) and, pro- parts. Using a compass, D M C ceeding as before, he cut from the ray four intersected it with a equal segments of any line from the bottom length. Then he drew a G left to the top mid- line from the end of the H point (AM), revealing K fourth segment to the the point that cuts right end of the horizon- the bottom line in A P7 P5 P3 B tal line, creating a trian- fourths (P4). To cut it gle. Parallel lines drawn in sixths, they drew a from the endpoints of the Figure 1: Is AP= (1/n)AB? line from the top left other three segments on Goldenheim and Litchfield’ s method of construction: down to the point the ray intersect the hori- that cut the base in zontal line, partitioning it • On any line segment AB construct any rectangle ABCD. fourths (DP4). The 1 1 into four segments of • Find midpoint M of CD where DM = ( /2)DC = ( /2)AB. intersection of this equal length. • Draw segment AM. line with the one from Unaware of Euclid’s • Draw diagonal BD. the bottom left to the solution, high school stu- • Let G be the point of intersection of AM and BD. midpoint partitioned dents Dave Goldenheim 1 off one-sixth (P6 . • The foot of the altitude from G to AB is P3, where AP3 = ( /3)AB. ) and Dan Litchfield start- The rest is history. Note that when we write P for any positive integer n, we ed with a rectangle n But then there is the instead of a ray, and that mean the point closest to A so that segment APn is the first part rest of history. As it made all the difference. when segment AB is divided into n equal parts. turns out, the boys’ They drew a rectangle • Draw segment P3D. work isn’t entirely (fig. 1), with plans to par- • Let H be the point of intersection of AM and P3D. novel. Villard de Hon- 1 tition the horizontal line • The foot of the altitude from H to AB is P5, where AP5 = ( /5)AB. necourt, a 13th-cen- at the base. Cutting it in • Draw segment P5D. tury architect from half was easy: Diagonals • Let K be the point of intersection of AM and P5D. Picardy, France, used 1 from opposite corners • The foot of the altitude from K to AB is P7, where AP7 = ( /7)AB. a similar technique to intersect in the center of divide a page. the rectangle. A vertical The algorithm being established can be repeated to find any unit frac- Writing in Calligra- line dropped down from tion with an odd denominator. To find a unit fraction with an even phy and Palaeogra- that point revealed the denominator, start this algorithm at P2, the midpoint of AB (fig. 2). phy, a collection of midpoint of the base. essays published by To cut the base in Faber & Faber, Lon- thirds, they drew a line D M C don, in 1965, Jan from the bottom left cor- Tschichold describes ner to the midpoint of “a little known and the top line (AM), and F exciting gothic R another from the top left T canon” that “can be corner down to the bot- used to divide any tom right (DB). Dropping A B distance exactly into a line down from the P8 P6 P4 P2 any desired number point of intersection (G) Figure 2: APn are the unit fractions with even denominators of AB. of equal parts, with- to the base revealed a out use of another segment of one-third (P3). Once the The pattern emerged; Dave and measure.” But mathematicians first partition is located, a compass Dan were delighted. Dietrich nearly appear to have never taken note of can then be “walked over” to identify choked. Honnecourt’s canon. With his the others. To cut the baseline in But they were only halfway there. sketchbook, a manuscript en- fifths, they drew a new line from the They could cut a line into three, five, sconced in the Bibliothèque Nation- top left down to the point that cut or seven equal segments; but they ale de Paris, the canon was all but the baseline in thirds (DP3). Inter- had not yet partitioned it into four, forgotten. Seven centuries later, the secting this line, again with the line six, or eight equal segments. The two teenagers stumbled on a very to the top midpoint (AM), revealed boys went back to the computer. similar construction. one-fifth of the baseline (P5). (See fig. 2.) —E.R.

18 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN diately. “When we saw that, we said, ‘Oh, no. It’s the Fibonacci!’,” Dan said. Jackiw, 30, found out about the boys’ work through a letter from Diet- rich. “I thought it was pretty incredi- ble,” Jackiw said. “This is an area of mathematics that has been considered totally mined out.” But, he added, “There are plenty of new dis- coveries being made on Sketchpad all

the time.” Y M E

The software’s applications aren’t D A C limited to mathematics, said Jackiw, A S M

who is the Sketchpad project director R A F

at Key Curriculum. He said it is used N E E in optometry to teach optics and in R G Y

medicine to model bone fractures. S E T

“It’s useful any place where geometric R U O visualization is important.” C A child of two academics, Jackiw Green Farms Academy math teacher Charles Dietrich with his two has always been at home with com- prize pupils, Dave Goldenheim (center) and Dan Litchfield. puters. His father, Roman Jackiw ’61, is a theoretical physicist at MIT; his mother, Sharon Jackiw, is a German professor and an administrator at the “Ask Dr. Math” at Swarthmore’s University of Maine. “I grew up on college campuses,” he said. interactive mathematics forum on the Internet He was 9 years old the first time he hat began in 1985 as a project videos,” says Klotz, “and some of the used a computer, a PDP-8 at Chatham Wto produce computer-generat- folks I had working for me said, ‘We’ve College in Pittsburgh—a piece of ed videotapes to help teachers teach produced all these materials. How can machinery that now sits near the bot- geometry has evolved into one of the we get wider use among teachers? tom of the fast-growing junk heap of most popular educational sites on the How about using the Internet?’” antiquated technology. Internet. So in 1993 began the Geometry He was drawn in by games, endless It’s an evolution that began when Forum, a World Wide Website that and addictive. Gaming soon gave way Nick Jackiw ’88 became involved with created a new electronic community to programming, and by the time he Gene Klotz, professor of mathematics, of teachers, students, and researchers arrived at Swarthmore, he knew his who was leading the National Science who had an interest in geometry. One way around an operating system. Foundation–funded Visual Geometry popular segment of the Forum was “He would come up with really Project. “We were going to use the lat- “Ask Dr. Math,” staffed by a “Swat crazy ideas that, to my mind, you just est in modern technology,” says Klotz, team” of Swarthmore students who couldn’t do with computers,” Klotz “which at that time was computer- were on call fielding all kinds of math- said, “and then usually he’d make generated videotapes to help teach ematics questions. From there it was them work.” three-dimensional geometry. I thought “a natural growth to think more “I credit him with seeing the poten- we should also have an interactive broadly” and the Geometry Forum tial in someone who was so resistant computer program to make them a morphed into the Math Forum. to mathematics and encouraging me more effective teaching method.” It “Ask Dr. Math,” currently operated to go on and work in this field,” Jackiw was, says Klotz, a tale of the tail wag- by the College’s Math Forum, helps said. “He encourages the most cre- ging the technological dog. about 100,000 users a month with ative and fertile environment possi- The computer programs proved to everything from specific math ques- ble.” He never had a class with Klotz, be too specialized to keep up with the tions (“Why do we need zero?”) to but he said the math professor helped different videos, and Klotz and his extended dialogues about some math- guide him as Sketchpad—and Jackiw’s team decided they had to come up ematical concept. career—was slowly assembled. with a general purpose program for The Math Forum’s home page Jackiw says his aim with Sketchpad drawing Euclidian geometry. It’s (http://forum.swarthmore.edu/) gives is to let students feel that, rather than called dynamic geometry (no matter access to Dr. Math and a vast quantity learning about math that already how you change a figure the geometry of other math riches. exists, they are creating math. And underlying it stays in place) and out of Klotz and his team, which varies sometimes the math they create has it grew Geometer’s Sketchpad. The from 12 to 15 employees, will continue never been seen before. I software—along with rights to publish maintaining the site for at least anoth- the tapes—went with Jackiw to Key er three years under a new NSF grant Eric Rich is a reporter for the Hartford Curriculum Press in 1990. of just under $3 million. Courant. “I still had to finish up some of the —Kate Downing

JUNE 1997 19 The Future of Dying Should physicians—who now have the power to extend our lives beyond their “natural” ends—also be allowed to help us die? By Thomas A. Preston ’55

patient suffering greatly in the final stage of longer a natural outcome in the sense of a life lived and dying asks her doctor for pills with which to completed under totally natural conditions, as it was end her life. The doctor gives her the pre- in the time of Heraclitus or, for that matter, Hip- scription, and a week later she takes the pills pocrates. and dies. In a biological sense, all of life is avoidance of dying AIs this an act of killing? Did the doctor criminally and the process of evolving to an ultimate fatal condi- assist in a suicide? Or, as the question was recently tion. In the 20th century, most of us who live to “old asked before the United States Supreme Court, should age” do so because our waste goes to landfills and the patient have a “right” to die in this manner, such sewage treatment plants, our water comes from purifi- that the doctor who supplied the pills will not be cation stations, we wear seat belts, and toxins are elim- charged with violating the law? inated from paint, air, and food. The technology of pub- This is how the physician-assisted dying question lic health helps us avoid dying from coal miner’s dis- has been asked and debated over the last decade, cul- ease, asbestosis, or lead poisoning—but most impor- minating in a much-publicized hearing before the tant it gets us past the scourge of infectious diseases. Supreme Court on January 8—a case in which I was a We no longer die of cholera, the plague, or tuberculo- plaintiff. But I think such questions about “killing” and sis. Nowadays we live long enough to succumb to “assisted suicide” miss the point and misguide the heart disease, stroke, and cancer. debate because they isolate a single act from the real The processes of dying will continue to change, and issue of how we die. The question of physician aid-in- this will be the result of man-made, technologically dying is but the last sentence in a novel of Tolstoyan driven changes, not natural changes. Nevertheless our dimension, which revolves around the way people die modern avoidances or omissions of traditional modes in the age of technological medicine. It is even more of dying go unnoticed except in broad statistical analy- concerned with the way most of us will die in the next ses. We consider it a natural death when a woman dies century. of a heart attack at the age of 79, although she most likely would have died earlier of some quite different The Process of Dying cause had it not been for the myriad technologies of About 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heracli- modern medicine and public health. The process of tus asserted that one cannot step into the same river dying has been unnaturally and invisibly altered for twice. Reality, his aphorism tells us, is not a thing, but most of us. a process. Rivers change in time, as do those who step into them. The way we die is also a process, changing Cures and Dying with time and circumstances. And if we look only at For those who survive long enough, there are two dis- the very end, the last hours or minutes of life, we miss tinct stages of medical intervention that occur in the the process of dying and thus the meaning of acts at process of dying. The first is avoidance of death the end of it. through a direct and lasting medical cure of a poten- On the surface the process of dying seems natural tially fatal condition. People are cured every day in enough. An elderly person gets a disease and dies. But hospitals and in doctors’ offices. The patient who suf- today the fatal condition, usually a disease, is no fers heart attack and is resuscitated from an otherwise

20 fatal arrhythmia may die years later from an entirely not step into the same river of dying. With the excep- different illness. People who are saved from an infec- tions of those who die suddenly and those who cannot tion by antibiotics, or from a blocked bile duct by or do not get medical care, virtually every patient with surgery, or from fatal melanoma by the removal of a a fatal illness has some technological prolongation of small skin cancer, do not die the way they would have life beyond so-called natural dying, whether it be by a without such cures. Probably more than half of us dramatic intervention such as an organ transplant or a don’t die as we would have died “naturally” had we simple treatment like a water pill or an antibiotic. not received medical intervention. This is one of the greatest achievements of modern The second stage of direct medical intervention is medicine. Yet for most people the extension of life is in the treatment of dying patients. ultimately accompanied by some The physicians of Hippocrates’ time degree of deterioration of various generally backed away from the organs, increasing debility, and a dying, as they could do nothing to new and different set of symptoms prolong life and did not wish to be and medical problems. Most fatally associated with the outcome. Even ill patients who have their lives as physicians came gradually to extended ultimately die from condi- attend at death beds, for most of tions unknown just 50 years ago. history this just meant holding the So there’s nothing natural hand of the dying person as the fam- about the way we die these days. ily looked on. Until fairly recently About 80 percent of Americans die there wasn’t much that doctors in medical facilities, most at a time could do. and in a way that has been pro- But dramatic changes in the pro- foundly affected by medical intru- cess of dying came in the mid-20th sions. For good purpose physicians

century with the development of N help patients extend life for as long I V E technological medicine. The mod- L as technologically possible, but the L E O

ern physician not only became able J unanticipated results of life exten- to cure some people but to extend Dr. Tom Preston ’55 is a co-plaintiff sion are new conditions of extended the lives of most others with fatal in Washington v. Glucksberg, which dying that Hippocrates never imag- conditions. Some patients die sud- seeks to overturn a state law ined—patients connected to artifi- denly, or within a few hectic hours against physician-assisted suicide. cial ventilators for weeks or months of gaining medical attention, but on end, patients with continuous most people who acquire fatal ill- intravenous infusions of nutrition, nesses receive medical care that prolongs life for days, drugs, or blood products, patients with pacemakers, weeks, months, or years. While they are not cured, heart-assist pumps, or kidney dialysis. treatment improves and prolongs their lives. And such medical intervention, or treatment, invariably alters “Do Not Resuscitate” the natural process of dying. Many have come to realize that these new modes of This is a fundamental change in the way people die dying are not always preferable to the old. Pneumonia and in the involvement of physicians in the manage- used to be called “the old man’s friend” because it ment of their dying. The man with lung cancer does took the dying away painlessly and swiftly. But now not die with the first pneumonia associated with his pneumonia is easy to treat, and the old man must live cancer but lives an additional year with antibiotics, to die later—often more slowly and with extended dis- chemotherapy, and surgery until the spreading tumor ability and suffering. Patients and their families began means he can exist only connected to a ventilator. The to rebel against medical extension of life when it result- patient with heart failure stays alive with medicines ed in processes of dying that robbed life of meaning and a pacemaker but dies slowly because his weak- and caused prolonged suffering. Faced with this prob- ened heart cannot supply kidneys, liver, and intestines lem, physicians began to find ways in some cases to with enough blood to function. Ever-increasing num- help patients end the excessive suffering of unnatural bers of us are dying this way. dying—or at least not extend it needlessly. In short, medical intervention means that we can- One of the most dramatic means of extending life—

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JANE OʼCONOR

21 homas Preston ’55 is one of four In an 8–3 decision handed down Tphysician plaintiffs in the case in March 1996, the circuit court known as Washington v. Glucksberg. turned the tables again. It reaffirmed Arguments on Glucksberg and a con- the original district court decision current case from New York state and declared the Washington law, as were heard by the U.S. Supreme applied to physicians and patients, Court in January, and a decision is unconstitutional. The majority deci- expected by the end of the current sion stated: “In this case, by permit- term. ting the individual to exercise the The suit was brought in early right to choose, we are following the R

1994 by Compassion in Dying, a Seat- O constitutional mandate to take such N O C tle-based support group formed ʼ decisions out of the hands of the O after the narrow failure of a 1991 bal- E government ... and to put them N A lot initiative in Washington that J where they rightly belong, in the would have legalized physician- hands of the people.” assisted suicide. Three of the doc- Once again the dissent cited the tors’ patients—all of whom died state’s interest in the preservation of shortly after the case was filed— The Case life, the protection of the interests of joined in the suit, which seeks to innocent third parties, the preven- overturn part of a Washington state See–saw decisions tion of suicide, and the maintenance law that makes knowingly causing or in the lower courts of the ethical integrity of the medical aiding another person to attempt profession. suicide a felony. have forced the Arguing this last point for the Attorneys for Preston and his co- Supreme Court minority, Judge Robert R. Beezer plaintiffs asserted that this law is echoed the ethics statement of the unconstitutional under the due pro- to consider physician- American Medical Association, cess and equal protection clauses of assisted dying. which currently prohibits physicians the 14th Amendment when applied from prescribing lethal medication. to physicians prescribing medica- uncoerced, mentally competent, ter- Beezer wrote that “physician-assist- tions for mentally competent, termi- minally ill adult.” The state of Wash- ed suicide is fundamentally incom- nally ill adult patients who request ington appealed. patible with the physician’s role as such medications to hasten inevi- In March 1995 a three-judge panel healer.... Patients should not be table death and end their suffering. of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals abandoned once it is determined A previous Supreme Court deci- reversed Rothstein’s decision by a that cure is impossible. Patients near sion (Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dept. of vote of 2–1. Writing for the majority, the end of life must continue to Health) had upheld a Missouri state Judge John T. Noonan Jr. found no receive emotional support, comfort law allowing such patients, subject constitutional right to aid in dying care, adequate pain control, respect to rigorous tests of the sincerity of and sharply criticized the District for patient autonomy, and good the patient’s wishes, to hasten death Court’s interpretation of Cruzan and communication.” by directing the removal of life-sus- other cases cited by the plaintiffs: The appeals court decided the taining medical treatment. The plain- “Unless the federal judiciary is to be Washington case on the basis of due tiffs also cited Planned Parenthood v. a floating constitutional convention, process and the liberty interest that Casey, a 1992 personal liberty case a federal court should not invent a the courts have long asserted as a regarding a Pennsylvania abortion constitutional right unknown to the result of that clause. (Roe v. Wade is law. past and antithetical to the defense the classic example.) In the New In May 1994 the U.S. District Court of human life that has been the chief York case, known as Vacco v. Quill, for Western Washington found in responsibility of our constitutional the Second Circuit Court of Appeals favor of the doctors and their government.” also found in favor of Compassion in patients. Citing the 14th Amend- In his dissent Judge Eugene A. Dying, basing its decision instead on ment’s protection of “the freedom to Wright took the opposite view: “The the equal protection provisions of make choices according to one’s right to die with dignity falls square- the 14th Amendment. With two dif- individual conscience about those ly within the privacy right recog- fering interpretations of the law in a matters which are essential to ... nized by the Supreme Court.” The case of such clear constitutional basic human dignity,” Chief Judge plaintiffs’ attorney, Kathryn Tucker, importance, the stage was set for a Barbara Rothstein went on to write moved for a rehearing by the entire Supreme Court challenge. A decision that “from a constitutional perspec- Ninth Circuit, and 11 judges—the is expected before the end of June, tive, the court does not believe that largest number ever to hear a case and may already have been ren- a distinction can be made between involving end-of-life decisions— dered by the time of this magazine’s refusing life-sustaining treatment heard oral arguments in San Francis- printing. and physician-assisted suicide by an co in October 1995. —Jeffrey Lott

22 resuscitation of a patient by an electrical shock to the When I heard of the incident I ran to see him, and he heart—became widely available in the 1960s. Physi- asked, “Why have you done this to me? Why will you cians had no trouble accepting this technological not let me die?” When I asked the same of the intern advance because the gain seemed so immediate and and resident who last resuscitated him, they replied, obvious. But restoration of life by unnatural means “Because it would be the same as killing not to do was not always acceptable. In the ancient myth, when everything possible to keep a patient alive.” For them Aesculapius, the first physician, transgressed against the issue was not the condition and wish of the the godly powers over life and death by raising a man patient, but the mode of dying. from the dead, Zeus slew him with a thunderbolt. The So long as people viewed “do not resuscitate” as meaning of the myth was clear: Control over life and killing, which technically it could be, there was bitter death is the exclusive domain of the gods. Yet with the division over the practice. The problem was not only advent of resuscitation, physicians buried the myth with the word “kill,” but also, I submit, with viewing and entered into very direct involvement in deciding nonresuscitation as an isolated act separate from the when patients die. Those who say that only God—not medical care that preceded it and made it an option. physicians, patients, and fami- Fortunately there is now broad lies—may determine when and acceptance of nonresuscitation in how a person dies, are selectively A man who had suffered cases like the one described ignoring this threshold change. above. The first form of physician- three heart attacks was The key to society’s eventual assisted dying was the policy of repeatedly shocked acceptance of DNR orders was in “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders understanding the futility of fur- for selected terminally ill patients back to life. “Why have ther treatment that would only dying in hospitals or nursing you done this to me?” add to the patient’s misery. homes. Just 25 years ago, many Implicit in the understanding was thought not resuscitating some- he asked. “Why will that prior to letting the patient one when it was possible to do so you not let me die?” die, everything reasonable had was “killing,” or against the law of been done, and the patient’s life God. Surely a physician who had actually been extended well could have resuscitated a young person whose heart beyond what would have been its natural course. Non- stopped after accidental drowning—but refused to— resuscitation is no longer seen as killing but as forego- might properly be accused of “killing.” But is it killing ing undesirable treatment and allowing the patient to when a physician decides, with the patient’s consent, die “naturally.” not to resuscitate someone wracked with incurable When society accepted this shift in focus from the cancer and in constant pain after operations and physician’s action (or, more accurately, inaction) to the chemotherapy? underlying disease, doctors became directly involved About 20 years ago, I helped care for a patient who, in how and when their patients died. Other means of at age 86, had had three heart attacks, was too weak to helping patients die soon followed. With the consent of sit up in bed, and was hospitalized because of severe informed patients or guardians who request it, physi- breathlessness. We had tried everything but had no cians now discontinue life-support therapy for termi- further effective therapy for him. On the day after he nally ill patients with no chance for recovery. A com- was admitted, his heart fibrillated, which, if left uncor- mon practice for ending the life of a patient being kept rected, would have been his end, but the house staff alive by a ventilator is to render the person uncon- used electrical shock to restore his scarred heart to scious, so as to avoid the distress of asphyxiation, and regular beating. His medicines were increased, but the to disconnect the ventilator, following which the same thing—with the same response—happened patient soon dies. This is an example of assisted dying again that evening. By then he was almost too weak to with active and direct physician involvement. talk, and with our most powerful medicines we could When such practices first began two decades ago, not keep his blood pressure at acceptable levels. I they too were widely opposed by persons who consid- informally suggested to the house staff that he not be ered them killing. In the famous case of Karen Ann resuscitated again, but for a third time his heart fibril- Quinlan, who was in a permanent coma and connected lated and he was shocked back to consciousness. to a ventilator, when her father went to court seeking

23 permission to disconnect her ventilator, the headline ern medicine sometimes turns against a patient when in the local newspaper declared, “Father wants to kill the medical intervention or intrusion cannot be turned daughter.” off. By definition, to kill is to “deprive of life.” For Consider a person with leukemia who has had patients dependent on medical support to stay alive, a chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. The physician’s act of disconnecting a ventilator, removing treatment first prolongs life but later fails, and no fur- a feeding tube, or stopping essential drugs leads ther curative therapy is available. In many such cases, directly to the death of the patient. To view it a differ- the transplanted bone marrow actually attacks the rest ent way, if a family member took matters into his own of the body and produces an entirely new condition hands and ended the suffering of a loved one by dis- called graft vs. host disease, plunging the patient into connecting a ventilator, the family member would an unnatural, medically induced condition of extended probably be prosecuted for murder. By narrow defini- dying that did not exist just 40 years ago. But where a tion the act kills, and the physician who performs the doctor can disconnect a ventilator, no physician can act is directly involved in aid-in-dying. “unplug” or take back the transplanted bone marrow. Yet as reflected in a series of Our modern dilemma is how to celebrated legal cases, society deal with the vastly increased has embraced these acts as ethi- numbers of patients with fatal cal and legal when done at the The Faustian bargain conditions who are dying with request of a dying patient. Cura- with modern medicine more intense suffering and debili- tive therapy initially prolongs life, ty over longer periods. but when it is no longer effective, sometimes turns against a Patients have struggled with even most people with prior reli- patient when the medical this condition of extended dying, gious or secular objections no particularly when ending life longer view stopping unwanted intervention or intrusion seems to be the only means of treatment as killing. We call it cannot be turned off. ending suffering. For those who “allowing the disease to kill the cannot die quickly by stopping patient.” This change from focus- life-sustaining treatments, the ing on medical intervention to blaming the fatal dis- only medical means of ending life is through adminis- ease allows us to view the final medical act as one of tration of a drug given specifically for that purpose. returning the patient to a condition of disease unen- And once again when we focus only on the specific life- cumbered by medical intrusions, from which the ending act, we run afoul of cultural or religious prohibi- patient dies naturally. tions against killing, not to mention the law in most This semantic change is convenient, but I think it states. ignores medical reality. In fact, from the time of first The physician’s professional ethos of sustaining life seeing a doctor for the treatment of a fatal condition, as long as possible presents a conflict in the deliberate the patient was prevented many times from “dying nat- ending of life. One solution now used by physicians urally.” It also ignores the decidedly unnatural state of who wish to end a patient’s suffering in the terminal a patient rendered unconscious before a ventilator is stages of dying is to straddle the issue by using “rou- disconnected. tine” medical practices that are not known for causing Regardless, by changing our language we have been death in their usual applications. able to embrace these acts by denying their contribu- The most common professional practice for ending tion to dying. And in so doing, we have accepted a life is the use of the morphine drip. A continuous intra- very direct practice of physician-assisted dying that venous infusion of morphine can abolish pain in 95–98 technically constitutes killing but does not harm those percent of terminally ill patients without ending life, who consent to it. Clearly we need a better way to although the dose required for pain control may in describe the process of helping people die humanely some cases render the patient nearly unconscious. But and peacefully. the physician also knows that morphine given in high enough dosage can stop breathing and thereby cause Extended Dying death. But what about the terminally ill patient whose plug is Under the principle of the “double effect,” approved not so easily pulled? The Faustian bargain with mod- by the medical profession, the law, and virtually all reli-

24 ’ve been asked innumerable times one time I was one of the leaders in Iby reporters what makes me pur- developing artificial pacemakers. sue this case when so few physi- But I’ve come to look with remorse cians are willing to speak out,” says on people in the later, medically Tom Preston. “I’ve always had the induced stages of dying and suffer- naive thought that if I simply said, ing. We doctors were becoming the ‘I’m a Quaker,’ then people would problem, not the solution, and our R understand, but that’s almost never O well-known arrogance was blinding N O C correct.” ʼ us to seeing our role in it all.” O

Preston, chief of cardiology at E Lawyer Ted: “When Tom walked N A Pacific Medical Center in Seattle and J out of the Supreme Court in January, professor of medicine at the Univer- he was frustrated that he had not sity of Washington Medical Center, been able to give his medical insight. became involved in the aid-in-dying But the case is about the law, about movement in the early 1990s, when the role of the state as much as the a referendum to legalize physician- role of the physician. The democrat- assisted suicide was narrowly ic process is more important than defeated by Washington voters. He The Plaintiff the result of this case. How do you quickly points out that he has The assisted-dying get the body politic to debate these “never knowingly written a prescrip- issues—that’s the question. A pro- tion for or supplied the medications case is not Tom nouncement by the Supreme Court to anyone” who was seeking to end Preston’s first won’t do this. But Tom’s most signif- his or her life. But, he says, his Quak- challenge to the icant contribution has been to help er father taught him—and twin initiate a national deliberation, a brother Ted Preston ’55—to help medical profession. national conversation on this issue.” people. To him, “The strength of But this time his Ted Preston credits the twins’ Quakers is in their giving to the dis- education at Swarthmore with advantaged and in working to twin brother, Ted, is teaching them that “what you do in relieve suffering.” rooting against him. life is important, and to do a good He recalls that as he finished job you have to look at your work medical school at the University of never tell the two apart, went on to carefully and critically. That’s what Pennsylvania, he seemed set for a law school. In recent years the attor- my brother has done, and if I’ve career in pediatrics, but “found ney and the doctor have had long made a contribution, it is to be criti- working with dying kids more dis- debates over the right to die, and cal (with him) in terms of what’s tressing than I thought I could han- the difference in their approaches is really important, what really mat- dle. The distress of seeing kids with striking: “I’m rooting for the ters.” leukemia or other fatal diseases Supreme Court to rule against Tom While Tom Preston is hopeful pushed me into internal medicine. and his co-plaintiffs,” says Ted. “It that his side will win the Supreme Maybe it was a cop-out.” isn’t because I don’t believe in their Court case, he is less sanguine about Maybe not. “Tom Preston is the cause, because I do, but I think that the prospects that the justices will most sincerely compassionate and a judicial decision in a case of this confront what he thinks are the real caring physician I have ever known,” sort is antidemocratic. The courts issues. At the oral arguments, he says Ralph Mero, a Unitarian Univer- should not be trying to resolve this says, “They asked questions that salist minister and founder of Com- on a yes–no basis when there’s been focused on the legalities of specific passion in Dying, the Seattle-based so little opportunity to develop at acts, such as prescribing pills. They counseling group that instigated the least some social and medical con- did not ask what constitutes a sui- aid-in-dying test case. Mero recruit- sensus.” cide. Nor was there any mention of ed Preston for the group’s medical Doctor Tom, who has throughout the modern process of dying or the advisory committee and was quickly his career pushed his profession to fact that physicians are already impressed with his abilities: “He has change (he wrote a groundbreaking deeply involved in determining the been a great source of moral author- book decrying the overuse of car- time and way patients die. Regard- ity as well as medical prestige in diac bypass surgery and later anoth- less of how the justices rule about legitimizing Compassion in Dying in er asserting that doctors make too the constitutionality of current state the Seattle area, and his work has many decisions that ought to be left laws, it is unlikely they will say any- helped other physicians ‘come out’ to patients), is frustrated that the thing about the great medical and and say that, despite the AMA guide- checks and balances of the legal sys- social issues of how we die, now or lines, there are ways to deal with tem do not take into consideration in the future.” That, says Ted Pre- intolerable situations.” what’s happening in the hospitals ston, is as it should be—at least for Ted Preston, who claims that and nursing homes: “As a physician I now. their Swarthmore professors could contribute to the extension of life. At —Jeffrey Lott

25 gious groups, it is acceptable for a physician to give a In the years to come, patients and their physicians drug such as morphine for the purpose of relieving suf- will face more and more decisions about therapies that fering even though it has a second “foreseen but unin- carry some possibility for the reasonable extension of tended consequence of death.” (The phrase is actually life but which also carry risk of failure and extension of from a papal statement enunciating the principle of dying with additional suffering. double effect.) A physician may, as a matter of good Let us take another, less hypothetical example. A medical care, give a morphine drip to a patient at end newborn baby with a complicated and fatal malforma- of life for the stated purpose of pain control, but then tion such as a hypoplastic left ventricle is being kept gradually increase the dose until the patient slips into alive on a ventilator. Surgery to correct the defect has a coma and dies. The actual incidence of this practice a 10 to 20 percent chance of long-term success, but it is quite unknown in the United States because it falls also carries a substantial risk of permanent brain dam- under the heading of pain control, or “medication,” but age or lingering dying over months or years if the oper- morphine drips are used by most physicians at one ation is only partially successful. After weighing the time or another to hasten inevitable death. odds, the parents may decide that the chance of suc- A less commonly used method of hastening death is cess is too slim and the probability of prolonged suffer- the practice of terminal sedation with secondary star- ing too great, and so they opt to let the baby die, a vation. When given intravenously medically and morally acceptable in sedative doses, barbiturates position. can render a patient unconscious In such cases the inability to without causing death. If a patient I submit that the physician’s end, if necessary, the process of is suffering grievously, the physi- act of prescribing extended unnatural dying leads cian can induce ongoing uncon- to rejection of the slim possibility sciousness for the purpose of lethal pills is medically of extended useful life. The dilem- relief of symptoms, and then the same as the act of ma arises because no one can allow the patient to slowly die of undo these treatments once they starvation. This practice is pro- disconnecting a ventilator. have been administered. Think fessionally acceptable because about the patient who decides to the drug is used ostensibly for take the gamble but loses and symptom control, while death comes “naturally,” from begins the prolonged stage of dying: If he then asks for starvation and the underlying disease. pills to end his life, society in general (and the law in In both the morphine drip and terminal sedation, we particular) looks upon this final act as killing. The have found the semantic means of deflecting attention word comes with a lot of baggage. away from the physician’s act and to the underlying Why do we carry this baggage? Is it because our “natural” disease. This solution allows physicians to narrow focus does not offer a semantic spin to call it assist patients in dying without appearing to be direct- otherwise? By fixing on one isolated act, we fail to see ly involved. This semantic mechanism has helped it as the last step in the long march of dying, often fol- relieve much suffering through termination of extend- lowing months or years of hundreds of treatments that ed dying, but it also has prevented medical and legal preceded it and sustained life. professionals—and the public—from seeing the final I submit that in terms of process—and the miser- medical act for what it is: the period that ends the long able condition of the patient—the physician’s act of sentence of the process of dying. prescribing lethal pills is medically the same as the act of disconnecting a ventilator. It serves the same pur- The Future of Dying pose. And yet by strict definition, the physician who Physicians have practiced euthanasia and covertly prescribes pills that the patient self-administers does assisted suicide to some limited extent for as long as not kill, whereas the physician who disconnects a ven- they have had the potions to do it. There is, however, tilator does, in fact, end the person’s life. no established tradition for assisted dying or any his- For most patients with terminal illness who die toric recognition of it as appropriate. Because the suf- slowly under medical care, the process is unnatural fering of extended, unnatural dying is a new phenom- and controlled by medical technology—and by those, enon, society is floundering mightily in dealing with it. including the patients themselves, who decide how to We still see—and label—life-ending acts in the old way. use it. It is the process as a whole that we must judge as

26 ethical or unethical, appropriate or inappropriate. In the hand that all carry the risk of partial success with case of the baby who has a 10–20 percent chance of ensuing long stages of dying. These patients, suspend- cure through an operation, the parents may want the ed in the half-cure of artificial life, will need and chance of the cure but only if they are able to opt out deserve a socially and legally acceptable means of ter- of prolonged dying if the operation doesn’t work. minating their dying processes if need be. We will need Would this be unethical? Should it be illegal? Similarly an honest and open use of physician aid-in-dying. the leukemia patient weighing the option of a bone Just as the word “killing” carries heavy baggage marrow transplant may be willing to take that risk only when considering the removal of life support, the if able to nullify it by ending her life if the transplant debate over aid-in-dying is distorted by use of the doesn’t work. word “suicide,” which implies ending a life that need What patients want is assurance that if they take a not end, a life with potential for continuation or medical risk they won’t be stuck if the treatment fails restoration. But if, just before losing consciousness at and creates extended dying. And to gain this assur- the end of his battle with heart disease, Barney Clark ance they need and ought to be able to have some sort had used the key and turned off his artificial heart, of agreement or contract that allows them to termi- would he have committed suicide? We have never nate the dying process with their physician’s help. before considered the word in this context. Can we foresee how we will We no longer say we kill a die? As medical technology push- dying patient who requests to be es against the margins of life, a DISCUSS THIS STORY ON THE INTERNET disconnected from a ventilator, contract to terminate extended To join fellow Swarthmoreans in an nor is he committing suicide, dying will become increasingly Internet discussion forum on physician- because we know there is no necessary if patients are not to assisted suicide, send an e-mail message capacity for continuation or risk being left in a limbo of suffer- to: [email protected]. In restoration of meaningful life. It is ing. In fact, this has already hap- the body of the message type: subscribe the end of the dying process. I pened in a highly celebrated dying Your Real Name. If you have prob- believe that a person similarly sit- case. When Barney Clark got the lems subscribing, send an e-mail to uated but not on life support who [email protected]. world’s first artificial heart in chooses to end the dying process 1982, his physicians with pills prescribed by a physi- knew it might not work well enough. For this reason he cian does not commit suicide either. was given a key with which he could turn it off if he The legislators who a century and more ago wrote found his condition unbearable. He had an agreement state laws that criminalized assistance in a suicide had to this effect in his written and duly transacted con- no conception of our modern processes of dying. Nor sent form. It was the first such contract made before were these processes known when the word “suicide” the treatment. found its way into common language. Semantically and The reason for giving Clark the option of ending his legally the word does not fit the termination of unnatu- life is illuminating. Dr. Willem Kolff, founder of the Uni- ral, extended dying. The end of the modern dying pro- versity of Utah’s artificial heart program, explained it: cess has nothing to do with traditional suicide. We “I think it is entirely legitimate that this man whose life need a better word. We are dealing not with suicide has been extended should have the right to cut it off if but with closure of the dying process. Physician aid-in- he doesn’t want it, if life ceases to be enjoyable.” The dying is medical closure, not assisted suicide. Utah team’s final criterion was whether the patient When Heraclitus said we cannot step twice into the wanted to continue his life, but the justification for giv- same river, he was speaking about nothing less than ing him the choice was that the treatment would the process of life and its myriad manifestations as already have extended his life beyond its natural end. they evolve over time and into the future. If we are to Most patients dying today are like Barney Clark in understand life and death as did this ancient Greek, we that they have had their lives extended by medical must understand and judge and deal with the entire technology and are in the final stage of unnatural dying process, not just the final moment. If we do not, dying. It is quite possible, if not probable, that within we will never be able to serve adequately those who the next 25 years half or more of all dying patients will step into the river for the last time. n have had an implanted prosthetic device, an organ transplant, or gene therapy. Patients will know before- ©1997 by Thomas A. Preston. All rights reserved.

27 Paying for the Final Years A correspondence on aging, Medicaid, and morality

Editor’s Note: Our features on aging in the November 1996 ’52 and June Miller Weisberger ’51 also contributed, pointing issue (“Final Years” and “Planning on Aging? Start Now.”) pro- out that “the assets that are being divested are not ‘family voked more letters than any article in recent memory. funds.’ They belong to the aging person.” In March we published two critiques of the practice Accompanying these letters was an invitation to readers to (described in the article by both Candace Watt ’59 and elder say more about this important question. The resulting corre- law specialists Armond Budish ’74 and Harry Margolis ’77) of spondence is published below, along with a response from transferring assets in order to qualify for Medicaid—a practice elder-lawyer Harry Margolis ’77, who was profiled in the origi- that is now limited under federal law. Judith Fagan Asch-Good- nal article. We close this debate—at least in the Bulletin—with kin ’55 wrote a letter about her mother, who exhausted all of these pages. Readers interested in further debate, however, will her assets before qualifying for Medicaid—of which Asch-Good- find no lack of it in their own communities as we all struggle kin said, “I certainly don’t feel resentful.” Elizabeth Stern Uhr with the continuing changes in our health care system.

have made it gating the last years of life. from my mother’s work and savings. Both my parents lived modestly Isn’t this what the money was for? He Iclear to my but maintained good health insur- too remained in his home until the children that my ance. Their responsibility to their last weeks of his life. three children was discharged when Two issues became clear through gift to them came they reared us in a healthy, loving my parents’ lives. After a wished-for environment and gave us the educa- reunion of her entire immediate four- in the form of health, tion we chose for ourselves. As we generation family, my mother wished reminded them during their last years, to die in peace. Unfortunately, our love, and education. the rainy day they had saved for had society would not honor this request, If my estate must come, and their savings were meant and so she lingered for another three to be used by them, either for plea- months, depressed, in discomfort, go toward my care, sure in good health, or for care when and needing round-the-clock nursing illness or frailty came. care at home. We need to find a way that is what it is for. For my mother this meant visiting to make such requests possible when nurses, home health aides, and finally life is obviously at an end. was perturbed by the article about around-the-clock practical nursing For my father, who was well but Ielder care and Medicaid, but before I care, but it allowed her to remain frail, we found the process of locating could draft a letter in my mind, I read where she wanted to be, at home, as honest, capable, appropriate help to the March issue and found that at she wasted away from cancer. We be a constant challenge. We were least two people shared my concern. children did the administrative work lucky, but the effort was great and this In light of your invitation to others to (making arrangements, hiring helpers, is one possible reason why otherwise address this issue, I would like to dealing with the HMO, checking on caring children turn to nursing homes, share my thoughts. medical advice, accompanying to particularly when they live at a dis- My reading of the original article appointments) as well as visiting, tance from the parent. In addition the left me with serious concerns that bringing meals, etc. cost is significant, and most insurance none of the ethical issues were really My father remained in good health bears little or no part of this cost, addressed, and concern for ethical liv- but frail until 93, and he required over even though the net result is cheaper ing was one of the things that drew time cleaning helpers; companions to and better than a nursing home. We me to Swarthmore so many years ago. drive, shop, and cook meals—first need to find a way to make such In addition I have lost both my par- once or twice a week and in the end choices less onerous and more afford- ents, one at 81 after a one-year battle almost every day—in addition to fami- able. with liver cancer, and one at 93 after a ly visits, outings, etc. All this was To return to the ethical questions: I brief episode of heart congestion, so I accomplished on Social Security, a fail to see why any child, unless dis- can speak from experience about navi- Red Cross pension, a small annuity abled, should assume a right to an

28 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN estate from a parent, particularly at estate for me by trying to qualify for the expense of taxpayers at large— Medicaid as soon as possible. and I certainly favor laws that would Yes, I am appalled by children who o we have the eliminate this abuse. Although I hope I believe and act as if their parents’ am far from making such decisions for money is their own by right and who Dpolitical will to myself, I have already made it clear to impose financial plans in their own, “expand the pie,” my children that my gift to them came rather than their parents’, interests. while I was living in the form of health, However, I don’t feel that I have the i.e., to spend more love, and education, and they have no right to condemn, for example, a problem with that at all. If my estate, healthy spouse who wishes to main- money on social such as it is, must go toward my care, tain his/her standard of living while and health needs? that is what it is for. If it is finally used still obtaining care for his/her ailing up, then I hope the federal or state spouse. And I am continually both- government will help me so that I ered by the inconsistency of people our factors to be considered from don’t become a burden to my chil- who see nothing wrong with paying a Fa public policy point of view are: dren. tax attorney to make full use of the 1. The assets of the elderly: If the CAROL MACINTYRE ’53 intricacies of the tax law in order to U.S. government accepts responsibili- Bethesda, Md. pay as little as possible in taxes, but ty for medical and/or custodial care who roundly condemn the same for all who need it, should the elderly behavior in order to pay as little as be exempt? Although we haven’t possible in long-term care costs. accepted medical care for all as an I think that the often punitive atti- absolute right, we are moving toward am bothered by tude toward lawful Medicaid planning that goal. To exempt long-term care is a symptom of a bias against those for the elderly goes in the opposite Ipeople who see receiving what we still think of as direction. nothing wrong with “welfare” and a bias against the elder- 2. The effect of divestiture on inher- ly, who are seen as unproductive itance: To require the elderly to spend hiring a tax attorney drains on our national well-being. The their own assets, thus leaving nothing punitive and unjust criminal provi- for the younger generation, is con- in order to pay as sions imposed in the Kennedy-Kasse- trary to American values and may dis- little as possible in baum bill are symptoms of these bias- courage saving for the future. es, and I reject them wholeheartedly. 3. The costs of medical and custo- taxes but who (I want to make it clear that here I am dial care: Costs of long-term care need responding to attitudes in society in to be addressed. Too much adminis- roundly condemn the general and not specifically to the two trative cost and cost of high-tech care very thoughtful and well-balanced let- at the very end of life add to the bur- same behavior in ters in the March Bulletin.) den. This could be—and in some order to pay as In the larger picture, we need to places already is—a part of state and open our minds to new long-term care national efforts to contain costs. little as possible in possibilities before we completely 4. Other competing social pro- empty our wallets. In Oregon the state grams: Perhaps the “pie” of money long-term care costs. pays for in-home care in preference to available for social support programs institutional care and covers residen- such as those for needy children ince I graduated from law school in tial care facilities, assisted living facili- should be expanded rather than divid- S1986, I have worked solely for legal ties, and adult foster homes as fully as ed differently. The United States aid organizations. For the last 81/2 nursing homes. Community-based spends less than other industrialized years, I have been a specialist in elder care is nearly always cheaper than countries on the social support net. law for Oregon Legal Services. About nursing home care, and elderly people I realize that in each of these fac- half of my caseload is related to Medi- receiving care in the community tend tors lies a host of questions and caid, with long-term care issues pre- to remain healthier and to have a far issues to be debated and solved. Not dominating. higher quality of life than if they had the least of these is: Do we have the Paying for long-term care is such a been placed in a nursing home. We political will to “expand the pie,” i.e., hugely important issue, for the elderly need to start taking more community to spend more money on social and needing care for their spouses and responsibility for the care of our frail health needs? families, and for society as a whole. I elderly, as well as putting more BARBARA BURT ARNASON ’44 think that the debate is generally resources into maintaining health. Loudonville, N.Y. entirely too simplistic. Nursing homes simply are not good Yes, I would prefer to have my par- answers for a large majority of our ents spend their own assets to main- elderly needing long-term care. Please turn to the next tain themselves as long as possible, JENNIFER WRIGHT ’82 page for more letters. rather than trying to preserve an Corvallis, Ore.

JUNE 1997 29 less, are provided for. Even if they are painful. don’t see it as family money that their I think this is going to take a long ne need only children deserve to inherit, they don’t time, partly because the only change think it’s fair. And they are right. The that might be marginally fair to every- Oread the system we have now is not based on one would be drastic and politically Medicaid laws and fairness and certainly not on advance unfeasible: Change the tax structure warning. so that everyone contributes from regulations to be On the other hand, the current income to the care of all who cannot state of the law allows these people to provide for themselves, including chil- convinced that needs preserve some of their assets for their dren, ill old people, perhaps even all analysis, let alone children. This results in accelerated ill people. I can hear the responses Medicaid eligibility and, as one of the now, beginning with: “Of course chil- logic, is not March letters said, the consumption dren cannot support themselves, but of resources that might (at least theo- old people, unless disabled at an earli- a major factor. retically) otherwise be used for poor er age, could have provided for this children who can hardly be blamed eventuality. Why should the taxpayers s an elder law practitioner for 17 for their plight. But can people who make up for their failure to do so?” Ayears, I have followed with great become ill in old age be blamed for American culture emphasizes self- interest the Medicaid planning discus- theirs? reliance and abhors taxes. sion in the Bulletin, especially the let- At least the current law does not My advice to my clients, the cur- ters in the March edition. require, as far as I know, adult chil- rent generation of older people, is I agree that the overriding public dren in any state to pay their parents’ this: “Don’t get sick. If you get sick, policy question is: Who should pay for nursing home costs. We haven’t have plenty of money.” Hardly a solu- nursing home care? In struggling to decided to penalize a second generation, but at least those with money, if arrive at reasonable answers to that tion that has done better than the first they choose to spend it to buy care, question, we must keep in mind how by requiring them to support their will have the most choices. For this public policy is formulated in this parents. But to flip the coin, have we generation, and probably for my own country. It is a democratic political decided that the parents who have as well, whatever change is politically process, and as we saw with the done well are to be penalized by being possible won’t begin to address every- recent attempts at health care reform, unable to provide advantages for their one’s concerns. the proposals that become law are children? PRISCILLA CAMP those that survive the process I agree with Elizabeth Stern Uhr Oakland, Calif. through negotiation of competing and June Miller Weisberger that we interests. One need only to read the need public policy that does not strip Medicaid laws and regulations to be the frugal elderly of their life savings, convinced that needs analysis, let nor encourage children to consider ooner or later, alone logic, is not a major factor. their parents’ assets to belong to the The subquestion is essentially: children, nor restrict efforts to deal Swe will have to What behavior is to be rewarded and with other groups in need, such as come around to a what is to be penalized? Since I am an poor children. But it is much easier to attorney, I must then ask the next say what we don’t want, and to agree publicly financed, question: How are people to be on some of those things, than to agree informed about these behaviors, so on what we do want. That’s how we locally controlled that they may plan and act according- got here in the first place. single-payer health ly? If we desire a public policy that Every group deserves effective says that unless you are unable, you advocacy, and as attorneys we are care system. must save your money in order to pay trained to provide it. Certainly legal for nursing home care, do we start issues such as unlawful discrimination n terms of long-term care costs, I that lesson at age 18 and repeat it and privacy rights must be consid- Ican only add the perspective of an often? With what generation do we ered. We can probably all agree that a already “aged” Swarthmorean who start doing that? And who determines war between the generations ought to has both studied gerontology and the exemptions? Each question leads be avoided, and perhaps allowing cared for terminal parents—and who to another, and in the meantime the some modest estate to be preserved has bought very expensive long-term political process is grinding away and for children should be considered. care insurance as well. decisions are being made on a quite One possible approach might be to The fact is, as we who have been different set of bases than the set we encourage the purchase of long-term paying attention are well aware, that might choose. care insurance in states with pro- there is no piecemeal solution to What I see in my practice now is grams along those lines. But, like all these dilemmas any more than there this: Some people resent having to big questions in a democracy, this one is any solution through the “managed spend their savings while people who involves difficult moral, ethical, and care” method of handling other health didn’t work, or didn’t save, or saved cultural choices—and those choices care costs.

30 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Sooner or later, according to my resources of their own should depend While some argue that older Ameri- congressman (Jim McDermott, 7th on what is essentially a welfare pro- cans owe nothing to the following gen- District, Washington), we will have to gram. Congress has never explicitly erations and should use all of their come around to a publicly financed, stated that Medicaid is intended to be savings for their care, I have clients locally controlled single-payer health what it has actually become: long- who are incensed that they must pay care system. His bill, HR 1200, which term care insurance for the middle anything toward their care after pay- he has patiently reintroduced each class. Yet Congress has instituted a ing taxes and saving pennies for 60 year, has been carefully analyzed by number of rules that implicitly years. Congress, it seems to me, has the Congressional Budget Office and expanded the program to assist mid- worked out a reasonable compromise, would cover all health care costs, dle-income families. Medicaid eligibili- even if it was largely unintentional: including long-term care, prescription ty rules contain significant protec- Pay half of your savings toward your drugs—even research and training— tions for spouses of nursing home res- care (up to a cap of three or five and would still contribute to deficit idents; they permit the preservation years), and then the state and federal reduction. We’re afraid of the federal of assets for disabled children of the government will pick up the tab. It government, yet we don’t seem to Medicaid beneficiary; and they allow should be noted that even then, the mind private corporations profiteer- the Medicaid applicant’s home to be government does not pay the entire ing from our health care. Wise up, preserved for dependent relatives cost. Except for a small personal America! (though it may be subject to a claim needs allowance, the resident must PATRICIA SEVRINGHAUS MELGARD ’47 by the state upon the nursing home still pay his or her income to the nurs- Seattle, Wash. resident’s death). In short, Congress ing home. has made a public policy determina- Ethical questions and unfairness tion that in certain circumstances the persist because Congress has never nursing home resident does not have clearly enunciated this policy. These ongress has to spend all of his or her assets on and other rules are not usually nursing home fees before becoming explained to nursing home residents, Cnever explicitly eligible for Medicaid. so some reap the benefits of certain stated that Medicaid The Medicaid rules regarding trans- exceptions and others do not. Those fers of assets may also be read as a who seek legal counsel are able to is intended to be policy determination that nursing structure their assets and protect home residents need only use half of their homes from post-death claims, what it has actually their savings on their care before and many people avoid paying half of become: long-term qualifying for Medicaid. In an effort to their savings by making transfers prevent people from giving away their prior to moving to a nursing home. care insurance for assets in order to qualify for Medicaid, The problems listed above can be Congress has imposed a penalty for resolved, but until a better system is the middle class. transferring assets—a period of ineli- developed—such as Medicare Part C gibility the length of which depends to cover long-term care—we will con- awyers generally give two respons- on the value of the property trans- tinue to rely on Medicaid. I don’t Les to challenges to their role in ferred. The applicant becomes ineligi- believe that it’s wrong for government Medicaid planning to pay for nursing ble to the extent that funds trans- to help those who suffer the misfor- home care: First, the lawyer’s role is ferred could have been used to pay tune of illness that requires expensive to help clients within the bounds of for nursing home care. For instance, if long-term care. the law. Each client must decide the average cost of private nursing HARRY S. MARGOLIS ’77 whether to seek the protection of this home care in a particular state is Boston public program to pay for nursing $4,500 a month, and if the nursing home costs. Second, lawyers draw home resident transfers $45,000, this parallels between Medicaid planning makes her ineligible for Medicaid for and estate tax planning. Both aim to 10 months. DISCUSS THIS STORY ON THE INTERNET preserve the client’s estate for the One result of this rule is that most next generation. Both are legal. And nursing home residents can now give To join fellow Swarthmoreans in both contribute to budget deficits, away approximately half of their an Internet discussion forum on one by increasing costs, the other by assets and ultimately qualify for Medi- Medicaid, elder law, and aging, decreasing revenues. Estate planning caid. In the above example, if the nurs- send an e-mail to: macjordomo@- protects those few Americans wealthy ing home resident has $90,000 in sav- scb.swarthmore.edu. In the body enough to be concerned about estate ings, she can give away $45,000 and of the message type: subscribe taxes, while financial planning for keep another $45,000 to pay for care finalyears Your Real Name. If you Medicaid protects the vast majority during the resulting 10-month period have problems subscribing, send with fewer resources. of ineligibility. (The maximum penalty [email protected] Of course these simple answers period for larger transfers is three an e-mail to: beg the larger public policy question years unless a trust is involved, in more.edu. of whether people with adequate which case it is five years.)

JUNE 1997 31 A L U M N I

SWARTHMORE HAPPENINGS

Philadelphia: More than 50 Swarth- moreans attended a private tour of the Rodin-Michelangelo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, organized by Martha Salzmann Gay ’79. Stephen Welsh ’84 presented an “explosive evening of new dance works,” and young alumni have begun to meet for monthly happy hours with Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Ivy League, and Seven Sisters graduates at local hot spots. Parents Council chairs Laraine and Peter Debra Pinder Symonette ’78, left, of Rothenberg of New York City, right, par- Philadelphia and Diane Crothers of Silver Seattle: The Pratt Fine Arts Center ents of Dan ’95 and Jason ’98, welcome Spring, Md., mother of Toby Patterson ’00, opened its doors to Swarthmore alum- the Council’s first alumnus member, David share a coffee break at the seventh annual ni for an evening of experiencing art Singleton ’68 of Wilmington, Del., and his Coolfont retreat in West Virginia in April. firsthand. Deb Read ’87 coordinated wife, Elaine, parents of Sarah ’99. When This was the first year that Bryn Mawr and the popular program. Swarthmore was founded in 1864, David’s Haverford participated in the event. The San Franciscans were invited in June great-great-grandfather, a Quaker in Brook- resort is owned by Sam Ashelman ’37. to the home of Seth Brenzel, Ellen lyn, N.Y., bought stock issued by the Col- Chen, and Petra Janopaul (all ’94) for lege. His family still owns the certificates. Recent Events a screening of Dykes on Ice, a “mocu- mentary” chronicling two lesbian ice Discussions with cast members fol- Madison, Wis.: Eric Brown ’67 gath- dancers’ quest for the bronze at the lowed each performance. ered 40 area alumni and their families 1998 Gay Games. The film was pro- in February for a pot-luck party at the duced by Janopaul and Kari Hong ’94. Israel: The Swarthmore Connection is Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Unitari- alive in Tel Aviv, where alumni met for an Universalist Church. Betty Moss Washington, D.C.: Artist and science an evening of conversation with Eco- Evanson ’56, Tim Kinnel ’85, Phyllis reporter Jane Warren Larson ’43 wel- nomics Professor Larry Westphal at Hasbrouck ’78, and Bill Raich ’93 comed Swarthmoreans to her Bethes- the home of Amy Singer ’82. helped organize the festivities, which da, Md., ceramics studio for a tour of her “wild tile” art. Guests learned how Garnet Sages enjoyed an April tour of attracted a third of Madison’s Swarth- the Hudson River Valley, led by more population. Jane transforms imprints of wildlife into clay vases and murals. Kristin Supreme Sage Elinor Jones Clapp ’46. New York City: Swarthmore theater- Johnsen-Neshati ’87 and Serge Seiden The trip included visits to Kykuit, the goers attended Ike Schambelan’s [’61] ’85 continued to engage area alumni Rockefeller family estate; the sculp- Theater By the Blind; the Pig Iron The- with productions by Theater of the ture gardens at Pepsico’s world head- atre Company’s Poet in New York, First Amendment and Studio Theatre. quarters; and the Union Church of starring Dito Van Reigersberg ’94; and Pocantico Hills, with its stained glass Home: A Boat, a play by Kate Wilson SUMMER & FALL windows by Chagall and Matisse. ’84, at the WOW Café. Folk music Upcoming Events enthusiasts enjoyed performances by EVENTS New York alumni can choose this Martha Leader ’71 and Steven Swartz Alumni College Abroad month among tours of a Long Island ’78. Completing the arts spectrum Ireland winery on June 14, the Metropolitan were a world premiere by Kloppen- June 10–18 Museum’s Cloisters on June 21, and berg Dance, featuring founder Brian Volunteer Leadership Manhattan architecture with Kaori Kloppenberg ’93 and Sally Hess, assis- Weekend Kitao, the William R. Kenan Jr. Profes- tant professor of dance at Swarth- September 19–20 sor of Art History, on June 28. more, and a talk on the late Willem de Kooning by Robert Storr ’72 at the Fall Weekend A Swarthmore alumni team competes Museum of Modern Art. Julia Stock ’94 October 24–26 June 21 and 22 on “Remember This?” continues to host monthly lunches at with Al Roker on MSNBC. Players are For information please call the Café Europa. And Swarthmore volun- Alumni Office (610) 328-8402, or Sheila Brody ’57, Carl Courant ’73, and teers had a fine showing on New York e-mail [email protected]. Jennifer Nolan ’90. They face Duke and Cares Day, led by Suzanne Kazenoff ’90. Columbia.

32 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN D I G E S T

Nominations welcome A new Alumni Council award for honorary degrees The College welcomes nominations honors service to community for recipients of honorary degrees at ver the past two years, the Alum- the Pennsylvania Abolition Society Commencement in June 1998. Criteria Oni Council’s mission has been to and as a member of its Committee for used by the Honorary Degree Com- encourage alumni to increase their the Laing School in South Carolina. mittee include: participation in service, both to the Although she never sought recogni- •distinction, leadership, or originality College and on its behalf. Not only tion for her service, according to the in a significant field; does this increased participation College’s archivists she made signifi- •someone on the ascent in their strengthen our collective loyalty to cant contributions to Quaker efforts career, or at the peak of achievement; Swarthmore, but it also enhances the toward peace and social justice over •ability to serve as a role model for College’s image and provides a critical three decades. graduating seniors and to speak to resource for students. At the Council’s At the end of its spring meeting, the them at a major occasion in their spring meeting March 21–23, we were Council, in conjunction with the Black lives; able to initiate and complete projects Alumni Weekend Committee and the •preference, but not requirement, that represented significant steps in Career Planning and Placement Office, that there is an existing affiliation furthering this hosted a career planning and network- with the College. mission. ing dinner with students. More than The Committee prefers to recog- The Council ap- 60 students attended and had the nize less-honored candidates over proved the cre- opportunity to talk with about 40 those who already have received ation of a new alumni representing a wide variety of many honorary degrees. award that is occupations. The response was over- Alumni who wish to make a nomi- intended to rec- whelmingly positive. We hope that nation are asked not to inform the ognize alumni this becomes a regular event on cam- individual that they are doing so. All who have unself- pus. More important, the Council nominations will be kept confidential. ishly given their wanted to encourage all alumni to Biographical information and a per- time and talents share their post-Swarthmore life expe- suasive letter addressing the criteria Alan Symonette ’76 in service to rience in general and their career noted above should be mailed by their local com- experiences in particular with stu- October 1 to the Honorary Degree munity. Swarthmore is an institution dents. The alumni in the Washington, Committee, c/o Vice President Harry that was founded on Quaker beliefs. D.C., area this semester shared their Gotwals, or by e-mail to hgotwal1@- One of the critical foundations of occupations and indeed their homes swarthmore.edu. these beliefs is an emphasis on ser- with student externs during academic vice. Many of our alumni give of them- breaks. Participating students report selves to their communities without that they received invaluable advice. A Folk Festival in ’98? recognition, and we felt that the Alum- We encourage all of you, when the Many memories about Swarthmore’s ni Association should recognize that opportunity presents itself, to take legendary folk festivals were evoked commitment. time to share with a student. by “If I Had a Song ...,” the cover story This year, during Alumni Collection As my term ends as Alumni Associ- by Ralph Lee Smith ’51 in the March at Alumni Weekend, the first Arabella ation president, the Council will be Bulletin. And the feature inspired a Carter Community Service Award was very involved in advising the College decision to consider a Folk Festival presented to Ross H. Ogden ’66. as it engages in planning for its future. Reunion as the Alumni College for Arabella Carter was one of the In addition the Council will continue June 1998. great unsung workers for peace and to create ways in which we all can This question was explored during social justice in the Philadelphia Year- communicate more easily to share Alumni Weekend ’97 at an informal ly Meeting. She was a student at ideas and experiences or just keep in Saturday afternoon hootenanny orga- Swarthmore College’s preparatory touch. I am sure that our new presi- nized by Ralph on Parrish lawn—a division from 1884 to 1886. A member dent, Jack Riggs ’64 of Washington, familiar venue for such gatherings. If of Byberry Meeting in Bucks County, D.C., will create new ways to intensify you didn’t make it to campus this Pa., she became the first peace super- our dedication to the College and its June but would like to help organize a intendent of the Philadelphia Yearly mission. He has been a tremendous celebration of two great musical Meeting when the Peace Section was help to the Council during my tenure, decades on campus, please contact formed in 1892. She remained its sec- and I am confident that there will be Ralph Lee Smith by phone at (703) retary until shortly before her death new and exciting projects during his 471-0724, by fax at (301) 249-0305, or in 1932. She was also active in issues leadership. I wish him the best. by e-mail at ralphleesmith@com- involving African-American rights, —Alan Symonette ’76 puserve.com. serving for 17 years as secretary of President, Alumni Association

JUNE 1997 33 Letters Continued from page 3 learning to use drugs more Mystery Cyclist or less responsibly—discov- To the Editor: ering, sometimes the hard On page 34 of the March Bul- way, that a hit of LSD is won- letin, you published several derful for understanding photos of unidentified stu- Keats’ negative capability dents—and one sailor (as if but of little help in writing a sailor could not be a stu- that insight down, that dent). I am strongly of the smoking a joint makes sen- opinion that the guy on the suous delights more so but bicycle in front of Parrish is makes a good lecture unin- myself, but I can’t read the telligible, that titles of the books in the amphetamines make all- basket to be sure. nighters possible but social The young woman pic- relationships lousy, that, in tured on the step is very short, certain states of con- familiar-looking, but without sciousness—including being checking over the class pic- sober—are beneficial tures, I cannot come up with (sometimes spectacularly a name. so) in some contexts and BOB BARTLE ’47 harmful in others. ANN ARBOR, MICH. Neither do I think that such learning is available Editor’s note: Jane Plummer only at an elite liberal arts Leimbach ’45 telephoned our college. It is probably just as offices to let us know that easy to teach children about “the young woman posing so the uses and liabilities of coyly against the wall” is drugs as it is to terrorize Connie Porter Mercer ’45. But them with DARE programs. Leimbach believes that the But that is not going to hap- man on the bicycle is Frank pen so long as people think Johnson ’44. Can anyone that it would be reasonable help sort this out? to withhold a driver’s license (and with it the abili- Correction ty to make a living, at least In Suzanne Braman McCle- in this country) simply on nahan’s [’52] “Dear Friends,” the basis of someone's (March 1997) the quotes choice of drugs, and without around the following phrase any regard for the intelli- were accidentally deleted: gence with which he or she “The past is another coun- uses them. try and they do do things GARY GREENBERG ’79 differently there.” The Scotland, Conn. phrase is from L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, although the emphases—which were also deleted—are McClena- han’s.

Writing to the Bulletin The Bulletin welcomes letters concerning the contents of the magazine or issues relating to the College. All letters must be signed and may be edited for clarity and space. Address your letters to: Editor, Swarthmore Col- lege Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397, or send by e- Bob Bartle ’47 mail to bulletin@swarth- or Frank Johnson ’44? more.edu.

JUNE 1997 35 Leaving the family at the factory door? That’s just not good for business, says management expert Lotte Lazarsfeld Bailyn ’51.

n this era of downsizing and re-engi- were constantly interrupted, and whose Ineering, studies show that employee family lives suffered. satisfaction has hit rock bottom. Should “We restructured the work day into management care? periods of quiet time to do individual “Managers have to care about em- work and other time for meetings and ployee satisfaction,” says Lotte Lazars- collaboration,” said Bailyn. “As a result feld Bailyn ’51, professor of manage- they did their work better, met dead- ment at the Massachusetts Institute of lines despite tight schedules, eliminated Technology and visiting professor at inefficient work, and had more time for Radcliffe College’s public policy insti- their families.” tute. “There are some down-the-road At another Xerox site in Dallas, 320 negative consequences of what they’re people were allowed to arrange their now doing to employees. Obviously, own flex time. The only caveat: The they’re not providing an environment work had to get done. Through group that allows employees to be creative, decisions the new arrangements adaptive, self-managing, and all the worked—absenteeism dropped by 30 G O

other good things they actually want Z percent, and creativity rose. R E

employees to be.” H What both work groups now have is . F

That employees are fearful and feel D more control. What the company has is R O

more like widgets than individuals is F better business results. The ability of D A

exacerbated, Bailyn says, by the move R employees “to have control over their B

toward contingency work, which “cre- © work and personal lives has to come ates even more uncertainties.” Managers need to provide “an environ- from business,” said Patricia M. Naze- Bailyn, who majored in mathematics ment that allows employees to be creative, metz, director of human resources poli- at Swarthmore and received a Ph.D. in adaptive, self-managing,” says Bailyn. cy and practice at Xerox. Management social psychology from Harvard, studies gives workers responsibility and the relationship between management accountability but usually not control, practices and employees’ personal being assailed for putting profits above the director observed. “Having control lives. Being able to fulfill family respon- all else, this study establishes that the results in better teamwork and collabo- sibilities is part of employee satisfac- best business strategy recognizes that ration.” tion. She was part of a team of experts greater employee satisfaction means And the impact on the bottom line is who did research for a project funded greater productivity, and, in turn, better that employee “empowerment here has by the Ford Foundation called “Relink- business results,” said Paul Allaire, chief resulted in improved quality and cus- ing Work and Life.” executive officer of Xerox. tomer satisfaction,” Nazemetz said. They studied Xerox Corp., Corning Bailyn says the purpose of her “The work is done on time, under bud- Inc., and Tandem Computers, and the research was both to ascertain facts get, and with less absenteeism.” results indicate that paying attention to and bring about change. “We found the Another result: “Our employees are sat- employees’ personal lives increases cor- real answer is to figure out how to isfied overall and are more satisfied porate productivity. restructure work, instead of focusing on over time,” she said. Though employers once exhorted helping individual employees, one at a And it’s because management cares. employees to “leave family responsibili- time,” she said, pointing to the work her ties at the factory door,” the study team did from 1991 to 1995 at a Xerox This article first appeared as a column by shows that the concept is unrealistic.” office in Webster, N.Y., with a group of Carol Kleiman in the Feb. 16 Chicago Tri- At a time when corporate America is 18 engineers who worked day and night, bune. It is reprinted by permission.

JUNE 1997 47 In the director’s chair ABC News co-director Ann Benjamin ’73 keeps her audience captive.

roadcasting the net- Benjamin grew up Bwork news used to be with the television news a lot simpler. You put business as it existed in your venerable anchor in the “old days,” when a front of the camera and news watcher’s options let him tell the nation the were limited to ABC, NBC, way things were. Now—in CBS, or bust. Her father, the age of MTV, seemingly Burton Benjamin, was infinite cable channels, executive producer of the and remote control—you newscasts of Mr. Anchor have to keep something himself, Walter Cronkite. catchy on the screen at all But dancing was Ann Ben- times to keep the channel jamin’s passion during

surfers from straying. C her time at Swarthmore, B A /

Such is the daily chal- A and she continued in that U Q

lenge facing Ann Benjamin A direction after gradua- L I V

’73, the longtime co-direc- E tion, spending a year in B

tor of ABC’s World News O France teaching and per- Z N

Tonight with Peter Jen- E forming. R O

nings. L Homesick and pessi- “The MTV generation “You don’t have time for fine-tuning,” Benjamin says. “You go on the air, mistic about her chance is so attuned to fast, ready or not. It’s exhilarating when it works.” of forging a career on the catchy graphics,” Ben- stage, she came back jamin says. “There’s an emphasis on the half-hour (19 minutes when you sub- home and took a secretarial job at CBS, how things look. It’s my job to keep the tract commercials) during which the her father’s employer. Her first assign- audience from deciding it’s time to program is shot and aired, live. Then ment didn’t suit her acrophobia, check what’s on ESPN.” you’ll find the director in the center though. She had a desk in the corner on If a network’s priorities are revealed chair in the control room, tethered to a the 44th floor, with nothing but glass by its latest technology investments, headset and focused on a bank of con- separating her from thin air. She asked graphics indeed are the new big thing at trols and monitors while calling the the Personnel Department for some- ABC. As Benjamin showed a recent visi- shots: “Stand by ... roll ... change graph- thing closer to terra firma and ended up tor, ABC headquarters in New York is ic ... dissolve,” Benjamin orders, instant- working as a secretary in the window- stocked with numerous new comput- ly changing what millions of viewers see less newsroom of WCBS, the network- ers—big, fast, art-producing work sta- on their TV screens. And when it’s final- owned New York affiliate. tions manned by computer-whiz artists. ly over: “Fade to black.” Apparently news was in her blood. Competitor NBC has gone even further Benjamin, who occupies that chair at Following her own initiative and curiosi- and faster in that direction, Benjamin ABC on the weekends and sometimes ty, she gravitated toward directing and says. The most tangible evidence of the on the weekday newscasts, describes it started making her way up that ladder. new emphasis appears over the as an experience that would subject Often volunteering for the worst assign- anchors’ shoulders while they read—a most people to information overload. ments and hours, she had advanced to graphic proclaiming “Economy” or During the show, the voices of as many associate director at CBS by the time “Health,” for instance. And then there as six different cameramen, producers, ABC wooed her away in 1978. are the “teasers,” the visual plugs for artists, and correspondents are coming She has worked closely with Jen- must-see stories coming up after the through her earphones with various nings—in the studio and at locations next set of commercials. needs and crises. In the meantime she’s around the world—since he became It’s the job of Benjamin and her long- trying to keep up with the anchor, ABC’s principal anchor in 1983. “I give time co-directing partner, Charles whom she’s watching through the moni- Peter a lot of credit,” Benjamin says. “I Heintz, to develop these visuals and get tor. Since it’s live, there’s no time to edit don’t know how many people would them lined up for the newscast. It’s or do it over when things go wrong. accept a woman director the way he often a last-minute scramble, since the “You don’t have time for fine-tuning,” has. He works incredibly hard. He’s not slate of stories for any given day isn’t Benjamin says. “You go on the air, just a reader—he gets involved in every finalized until air time, if then. Though ready or not. All your nerve endings are single aspect of the broadcast.” increasingly important, the graphics are stimulated during a live broadcast; Benjamin likes to crack grim jokes just one part of what goes into staging a there are a lot of inputs. It’s fun, though. about the demands of the job—like hav- newscast, however. As a director Ben- It’s exhilarating when it works.” ing her beeper going off next to her bed jamin has general responsibility for the The pressure would drive many peo- in the middle of the night, calling her in way things look—how Jennings and any ple to drink, but Benjamin has found a to help handle a breaking story. on-set guests are shot, for example— different outlet for the anxiety of net- “But that,” she adds with a grin, “is and for coordinating footage as well as work news. She vents it at the gym, exactly what you sign on for. It’s what live feeds from other cities. where she spends two hours a day makes this profession exciting.” The culmination of the work day is before reporting for duty. —Tom Krattenmaker

JUNE 1997 55 The Moose is Loose “Who else gets to wear a blue moose suit to work?”

t’s about 20 minutes before Igame time at Frawley Stadium M

in Wilmington, Del., and aging A H A

athlete John Farrell ’81 is suiting R G M

up for an afternoon contest I J Y

against the Salem, Va., Avalanche. Far- B S

rell isn’t exactly lacing up his baseball O T O

spikes, however. He’s donning a blue H moose suit. A grown P John Farrell is about to become man with a John Farrell ’81 is “Rocky Rocky Bluewinkle, the popular mascot beard and a Bluewinkle,” mascot of the of the Wilmington Blue Rocks, a Class A beer high- Wilmington, Del., Blue Rocks. Carolina League team. fives Rocky “New fur this year,” quips the unre- as he wades the kids—stand and wave their constructed frat-boy Farrell. “They may into the box arms along with him. By the time tell you different but chicks really do dig seats behind the song is over, Rocky’s showing fur.” He reaches into the freezer for a the third-base fatigue. “I wish they’d edit that vest of frozen gel packs. Even on a 50- dugout. “Hey, it’s the moose!” calls damn song to a shorter version,” puffs degree April day, the 40-pound suit is another fan. The seven-foot mascot Farrell through the moose mouth, hot. By midsummer Farrell will be losing leans down and tenderly shakes the breaking Rocky’s usual Marcel Marceau- up to 10 pounds during a game. hand of a toddler dressed in Blue Rocks like silence. “It’s all water weight,” says the for- pinstripes. The kid then high-fives the Farrell says the best part of the job is mer wrestler and still-active rugby play- blue moose paw. At 2 he seems to know the children. He remembers their reac- er. “I drank a half-gallon of Gatorade exactly how to do it—just like the big tion last June when a player for the Win- before I got to the park today. I gotta do guy with the beer. ston-Salem Warthogs tackled him this 70 times this year, so it’s a matter of Farrell became Rocky in May 1996. roughly from behind. (It was a hot day recovery, of staying in shape.” Over the He had auditioned when the Blue Rocks and Rocky had been dousing the ice vest goes a padded cotton under- franchise was inaugurated in 1993, but Warthog dugout with a Super Soaker.) body that makes the six-foot, 230-pound despite his excellent resumé he was “The little kids were crying. Even Farrell look, well, enormous. Zip up the “beaten out by a professional dancer.” though I was hurt pretty bad, I had to go jumpsuit, add an oversized Blue Rocks (The resumé included stints as the out again to show them I was OK. It was jersey (#0), pull on a moose head with Domino’s Pizza “Noid” during Daytona touching, their concern.” yard-wide antlers, and, as the stadium Spring Break and for a couple of sum- As the game ends, Rocky takes announcer intones at the beginning of mers at Myrtle Beach.) Farrell’s “day another turn on his bike, waving good- every Blue Rocks game, the moose is jobs” have been mostly in the restau- bye to the departing fans. The Blue loose. rant and hospitality business—running Rocks have won 2–0, but Farrell doesn’t Farrell leans out the door of the clut- bars and restaurants, training for Domi- even know the score. Back in the dress- tered storage area that doubles as his no’s, managing a bed-and-breakfast. But ing room, he strips off the costume, dressing room and calls for his trusty right now the former McCabe Scholar is spraying each piece with Lysol before assistant and guide, Lauren Hazewski, a unemployed—except for Rocky. He’s hanging it on a crucifix-like clothes tree. high school senior whose mother has hoping the moose will open doors into The now-thawed vest goes back in the written her an excuse so that she can other aspects of sports marketing. freezer. work the 1 p.m. game. They go over the “Baseball is becoming a theme park “Well, that was OK,” he says, talking day’s schedule, which includes all the with a game going on,” observes Farrell, about the game the way an actor talks usual minor league antics. while taking a third-inning break in the about his performance in a show. “I “Lots of new toys this year,” says clubhouse. “People want a clean, safe think I’m ready for tomorrow night. It’s Farrell with a prankster’s twinkle in his family environment. They want to have fireworks night, and a Friday too. The eye—like an air gun that can shoot a fun, be entertained by a good product— place will be packed.” balled-up T-shirt to the last row of seats. which includes a winning team.” And a Farrell, who says he learned a lot in “If you really crank up the pressure,” he winning mascot. Rocky Bluewinkle has college (“but not much of it was in marvels, “you can shoot it over the helped pull the 4-year-old Blue Rocks books”), doesn’t see being Rocky stands into the parking lot. It’s the silli- franchise into the top 10 in merchandise Bluewinkle as a career. It’s something to est damn thing.” marketing among all minor league do in the here and now, and it will prob- As if all of this weren’t silly. But teams. There are Rocky dolls, Rocky ably lead to something else tomorrow. that’s the whole point of a blue moose, shirts, Rocky hats, even Rocky sweat- Today he made Frawley Stadium a place isn’t it? Rocky’s first appearance each bands and refrigerator magnets. of joy for 1,145 fans, and it was fun game is a wobbly bicycle ride along the During the seventh-inning stretch, doing it. “Anybody can win a Nobel backstop, a sight that gets the giggles he’s out on the field again, dancing and Prize,” he jokes, “but who else gets to going. They don’t stop for the whole miming to the Village People’s “YMCA.” wear a moose suit to work?” nine innings. At least half of the crowd—and most of —Jeffrey Lott

JUNE 1997 59 Recent Books by Alumni

We welcome review copies of Other Family, Random House, I Hugh Rosen and Kevin R. region. Focusing on the town books by alumni. The books 1996. In her first novel, Carey Kuehlwein ’83 (eds.), Con- of Schwäbisch Hall, McIntosh are donated to the Swarth- explores what she considers structing Realities: Meaning- explores the causes and con- moreana section of McCabe one of the most significant Making Perspectives for Psy- sequences of the sluggish Library after they have been legacies of the late 1960s and chotherapists, Jossey-Bass recovery of the region’s noted for this column. early 1970s: the surge in mid- Publishers, 1996. Offering a urban communities. dle-class divorce. The story wealth of theoretical and I Elizabeth Abel ’67, Barbara follows two families and how case-based studies, this col- I Peter B. Murray ’50, Shake- Christian, Helene Moglen they break apart. lection presents the perspec- speare’s Imagined Persons: (eds.), Female Subjects in tives of scholar-practitioners The Psychology of Role-Playing Black and White: Race, Psy- I Jed Hartman ’90 and Josie on the themes of narrative, and Acting, Barnes & Noble, choanalysis, Feminism, Uni- Wernecke, The VRML 2.0 constructivism, social con- 1996. Challenging our under- versity of California Press, Handbook: Building Moving structionism, postmodern- standing of ideas about psy- 1997. Exploring a range of cul- Worlds on the Web, Silicon ism epistemology, develop- chology in the Elizabethan tural formations, traditions, Graphics, 1996. This guide mental constructivism, lan- era, Murray uses a new read- and ways of talking about the offers practical, platform- guage, and social discourse. ing of B.F. Skinner’s radical female subject, this anthology independent tips on how to behaviorism to demonstrate is a collaboration between create robots and people that I William Lashner ’79, Veri- its consistency with the psy- leading African American and walk and run, dogs that bark, tas, ReganBooks, 1997. In this chology of character forma- white feminists. and other interactive anima- follow-up to his first novel, tion and acting in writers tions using the Virtual Reality Hostile Witness, Lashner takes from Plato to Shakespeare. I James B. Atkinson ’56 and Modeling Language. his hapless attorney hero David Sices (eds.), Machiavel- from his shabby Philadelphia I Casey King and Linda Bar- li and His Friends: Their Per- I Neil R. Ericsson and John life to the jungles of Belize, rett Osborne ’71, Oh, Free- sonal Correspondence, North- S. Irons ’92 (editors), Testing where he gets caught up in a dom! Kids Talk About the Civil ern Illinois University Press, Exogeneity, Oxford University mob war and the machina- Rights Movement with the Peo- 1996. In this first complete Press, 1994. This collection of tions of an avaricious cult. ple Who Made It Happen, collection in English, this papers includes original Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. In a book contains the letters Nic- sources of the clarifications I Margaret Hodgkin Lippert series of 31 interviews con- colò Machiavelli wrote and and tests for exogeneity and ’64, Finist the Falcon: A Rus- ducted by children with fami- received during his adult life, provides a unified perspec- sian Legend, Troll, 1996. Lip- ly members, friends, and civil which reveal his personality tive on applied econometric pert retells the Russian leg- rights activists, this book tells and present a panorama of modeling in general and on end of the son of a czar who, the story of the civil rights life, people, and critical exogeneity tests in particular. in the guise of a falcon, finds movement through the peo- events in Renaissance Italy. his true love, Galya. But her ple who were there. I John M. Kerr ’83, Dinesh K. sisters conspire to thwart the I Robert D. Austin ’84, Mea- Marothia, Katar Singh, C. romance, sending Galya on a I David L. Pike ’85, Passage suring and Managing Perfor- Ramasamy, William R. Bent- long and arduous journey. Through Hell: Modernish mance in Organizations, ley (editors), Natural Resource Descents, Medieval Under- Dorset House, 1996. Intended Economics: Theory and Appli- I Terence McIntosh ’79, worlds, Cornell University for managers and project staff cation in India, Oxford & IBH Urban Decline in Early Modern Press, 1997. Taking the cultur- who strive to create a suc- Publishing, 1997. This book, Germany: Schwäbisch Hall and ally resonant motif of the cessful program for managing organized under the headings Its Region, 1650–1750, Univer- descent to the underworld as organization performance, of concepts, methods, and sity of North Carolina Press, his guiding thread, Pike this book covers such topics applications, focuses mainly 1997. During the Middle Ages, traces the interplay between as measurement dysfunction, on what distinguishes natural southwest Germany was one myth and history in medieval measurement as a motiva- resource economics from of the most prosperous areas and modernist literature and tional tool, and measurement agricultural economics and of Central Europe, but the suggests new approaches to for information gathering. other applied economic Thirty Years’ War brought the practice of comparative fields. devastating social and eco- literature. I Jacqueline Carey ’77, The nomic dislocation to the

62 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN I Rachel Pomerantz (nom de plume), A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, Feldheim Pub- lishers, 1996. This novel explores the challenges of Orthodox Judaism as two sisters struggle to resolve the conflicts between their secular ambitions and a rewarding Jewish life.

I Bruce L. Rockwood ’68 (ed.), Law and Literature Per- spectives, Peter Lang, 1996. Through classic and contem- porary voices, this book shows what the new field of law and literature may contribute to our common understanding of law, justice, and human nature in the 21st century.

I Bruce L. Venarde ’84, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890–1215, Cornell University Press, 1997. Interweaving narrative and statistical data, Venarde un- covers the story of women’s religious lives and puts female monasticism in the main- stream of medieval ecclesiasti- cal history.

I P.T.M. Marope and S. (Shel- don) G. Weeks ’54, Education and National Development in Southern Africa, Comparative Education Interest Group, 1996. This volume represents a sample of the 40 papers that were presented at the fourth annual Southern African Com- parative and History of Educa- tion Society Conference.

I Anne (Perry) Weir ’64, Mar- lowe: Being in the Life of the Mind, 2nd ed., self-published, 1996. This collection includes letters written by the 16th- century author as well as his- tories of the real-life people who functioned as a core for his plays.

JUNE 1997 63 an emphasis on independence, cre- those Honors candidates who protest- ativity, and scholarly work by the stu- ed: “I understand why there have to THE NEW dent.” He points to the SHS model be grades in Honors, especially for developed in the Chemistry Depart- those applying to professional HONORS ment that brings outside speakers— schools, but making an exact correla- Continued from page 14 many of whom will become the stu- tion between honorifics and the SHS dents’ external examiners—to campus grade defeats the purpose of Honors.” Study (SHS). Senior Honors Study “is to present their work in an Honors Wendy Williams ’97, an Honors candi- intended to capture those aspects of colloquium. Students then work with date in psychology, added, “People studying for Honors exams that we their future examiners to formulate a outside Swarthmore don’t understand found to have been most highly val- “library project” of joint interest or to the saying, ‘Anywhere else it would ued by alumni,” says Jennie Keith. identify a topic or theme for their lab- have been an A.’” Usually scheduled for the spring of oratory research. Ultimately the faculty modified the the senior year, SHS requires students proposal. Transcripts will now record to enhance, extend, and integrate the What about grades? levels of Honors with HHH, HH, and H, intellectual experiences of the prepa- A distinctive feature of the old Honors adding an explanatory note giving the rations. Program—the absence of grades in range of grades represented by each SHS can take a variety of forms the junior and senior year—has been Honors designation. Honors coordina- depending on the discipline. In abandoned. Except for theses submit- tor Williamson commented that “both 1996–97 departmental offerings ted to external examiners and Senior student and faculty concern about the included the revision of seminar Honors Study, Swarthmore professors grade equivalents caused the Curricu- papers, colloquia for the discussion of now give grades in all seminars and lum Committee to rethink the policy.” research and/or readings, essays inte- other Honors preparations. grating preparations in the major and Giving grades emerged as a key Will the Honors Program minor, or other innovations like the part of the reform because in recent change again? “intellectual autobiography” devel- years many students were opting out The faculty has directed the Curricu- oped for Honors students in sociology of Honors, worried about the reaction lum Committee to do a complete eval- and anthropology. of graduate schools to gradeless tran- uation of the new Honors Program Robin Wagner-Pacifici, associate scripts. after the fourth class graduates under professor of sociology and leader of Philip Weinstein, the Alexander the new rubric in the year 2000. Mean- her department’s Senior Honors Study Griswold Cummins Professor of while Honors coordinator Williamson colloquium, likes the flexibility of the English Literature, explains: “Students is collecting annual evaluations from new program. Wagner-Pacifici asked need some responsible reflection departments, outside examiners, and her students the question: How did from the College of the work they students. you get to this point in your intellectu- have done. We are evaluating and Some changes will be made even al life? “In addition to their theses,” assessing students all the time, and sooner. Jennie Keith thinks that per- she explains, “they present a portfolio since the mid-1980s we have been haps as early as next academic year, to their external examiners that will grading our Course students in semi- Senior Honors Study will settle into trace their developing interests and nars. I have seen no difference in the “two or three models that will be used the eventual focus of their studies. quality of the work.” collegewide,” and as other questions The thesis is where students can spe- While many faculty members agree are asked and answered, a stronger cialize, but in the Senior Honors Study with Weinstein, Professor Ken Sharpe, program will take shape. “It’s just colloquium they have to fit them- chairman of the Political Science plain difficult,” she says, “to make selves into the overall discipline.” Department, does not: “As soon as I changes on this scale.” Some professors have expressed grade their seminar papers, students Philip Weinstein, one of the key frustration about the widely variable begin to take fewer risks and be less architects of the new Honors, calls the design of Senior Honors Study. Donald provocative,” notes Sharpe, who says spring of 1997 “a fragile moment. We Swearer, the Charles and Harriett Cox that his department is trying to main- have been very conscious of bugs in McDowell Professor of Religion, sums tain as much of the old system as pos- the system as we try to get it launched up a view heard from several faculty sible and resist what he calls “the per- right. But our troubles this year will members: “Because Senior Honors versions of Senior Honors Study.” later be seen as a very payable price Study varies so much from depart- Students do not receive grades for launching this new program, ment to department, it’s unclear as to from their Swarthmore instructors for which I think will be very healthy.” what it is supposed to accomplish. their SHS work, but the final transcript Even Don Swearer, for all of his That reams of explanation have had to does contain a grade that reflects the doubts about Senior Honors Study, be generated isn’t entirely healthy.” overall level of honors given by the agrees. “This year has been difficult, Robert Pasternack of the Chemistry outside examiner. A controversy over but it has got us started on the shape Department agrees that SHS has these grades erupted this spring when of a program that will be better for the seemed to defy definition this year. the Curriculum Committee proposed College. None of the other changes But he says that “it is always geared to record A+ for Highest Honors, A for has opened the Honors Program to as toward making the Honors experience High Honors, and only B+ for Honors. many possibilities as this reform.” n a fuller and more integrated one, with Abraham Nussbaum ’97 was among

JUNE 1997 67 O U R B A C K P A G E S

nism that benefits both the College Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Clas- Not with their and the retiree. For individual depart- sics, has “no regrets whatever, ments it facilitates long-range plan- because I can devote myself entirely feet up ning. For faculty members it encour- to research and writing. My desire to ages thoughtful preparation for the teach is satisfied by four weeks each By Judith Egan years ahead at a time when they are spring giving a seminar at Tel Aviv still very active. A gerontologist by University.” Ostwald has published mages of retirement are ubiqui- training, Keith brings professional five papers since his retirement in tous, virtually iconic: A gray-haired expertise to her view of early retire- 1992 and has others in press. He was Icouple enjoys the amenities of a ment. “It offers participants a reason appointed a delegate of the American resort or foreign city, the pleasures of to plan, to gauge their options, and to Philological Association to the Ameri- an ocean cruise, or an elegant restau- avoid making hasty moves they might can Council of Learned Societies and rant meal. These images purportedly come to regret. For many people,” was awarded an honorary degree in reflect the relaxation and easy lifestyle Keith says, “the continuity makes 1995 by the University of Fribourg. He associated with the word “retire- sense.” says, “I am grateful to [the] College for ment.” With the commitment to teaching the amenities they afford me, especial- But academics, unlike many other that is so integral to Swarthmore’s ly a study in the library, photocopy- professionals, are just as likely to con- professional ethos, it might be expect- ing, telephoning, secretarial services, tinue the intellectual work of their ed that professors would miss this and e-mail.” employed years after they reach vital part of their work once it ceases. Helen North, the Centennial Profes- emeritus status—the term that typi- Yet an informal survey suggests this is sor Emerita of Classics, continues her cally signifies “retired” in the colle- not often the case. Some have contin- research on Plato’s rhetoric and the giate world. While travel, favored hob- ued to teach part time in the first cults of Hestia and Vesta in Greek and bies, and volunteer work have their years of retirement, while others have Roman religion, politics, art, and liter- place in the lives of Swarthmore’s embraced volunteer teaching (Paul ature, and she has published articles emeriti, few of your favorite profes- Mangelsdorf ’49, the Morris L. Cloth- in the Proceedings of the American sors are sitting back with their feet up. ier Professor Emeritus of Physics, and Philosophical Society and other publi- Most are busy conducting research, Alburt Rosenberg, associate profes- cations and various festschrifts. She writing and editing, and a few are even sor emeritus of natural science). also contributes reviews to classical teaching. As Jean Ashmead Perkins ’49, the journals. Said North, “Retirement has For the College, says Provost Jen- Susan W. Lippincott Professor Emerita given me more time to devote to sev- nie Keith, the scholarly work of the of French, puts it: “Retirement affords eral organizations with which I’ve had emeriti faculty has enduring impor- the opportunity to develop [your] a long connection, The American tance, both internally and externally. scholarly, professional, and personal Council of Learned Societies and the “It enhances our reputation and visi- life in a way that is no longer con- American Philological Association, Phi bility, since our very productive strained by the college calendar and Beta Kappa, and the American Acade- retired scholars continue to be identi- student needs.” Perkins has published my in Rome.” fied with Swarthmore. Internally it reviews and articles and given papers North and her sister Mary are fre- provides important models for our nearly every year since her 1990 quent travelers to Italy and Ireland, current faculty, a reminder of the sig- retirement, and she has continued her where they enjoy visiting gardens and nificance and richness of the scholarly professional associations with the megalithic sites. In addition North has life.” Modern Language Association and led Alumni College Abroad trips to the Based on past rates of early retire- American Society for 18th-Century Rhine–Mosel and to Turkey, and for a ment, Keith projects a significant num- Studies. private travel firm to the Black Sea ber of new emeriti in the next two Her view is echoed by Linwood and to Syria and Jordan. She has decades. The College’s early retire- Urban, the Charles and Harriett Cox found that her travels sometimes pro- ment plan offers tenured faculty who McDowell Professor Emeritus of Reli- vide inspiration for writing. have been full-time members for at gion. “I loved teaching while I was David Smith, the Richter Professor least 10 years the chance to fully doing it but do not miss it,” said Emeritus of Political Science, retired retire before the age of 70. In addition Urban. “I am enjoying a change of in 1992—well, almost. He continued to to a financial incentive, for a period of pace.” Urban published a second edi- teach a course in health policy until up to five years the retiree is offered tion of his book A Short History of last year and said the biggest surprise continuing tuition benefits for depen- Christian Thought and is at work on for him has been just how busy retire- dent children, research support, trav- another. In addition he serves as dean ment continues to be. el allowances for learned society of the Delaware Deanery of the Epis- Smith is an active volunteer in meetings, library privileges, secretari- copal Diocese of Pennsylvania, where activities relating to health policy and al help, and when available, office he provides support for the clergy of politics, one of his special interests space. 16 congregations. and areas of research during his Keith sees the program as a mecha- Martin Ostwald, the William R. teaching years. He serves on the

68 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN O U R B A C K P A G E S boards of the Chester Board of and Karl Kraus, 1909–12, to be pub- called the shared space, formerly a Health, Friends Life Care at Home, and lished in 1998. Avery is a frequent computation lab, “a happy situation” the Child Guidance Resource Centers. contributor of reviews on research for the three emeriti and sufficiently He gives occasional public lectures and criticism of Kraus, his circle, and large to accommodate the profession- and participates on panels dealing his opponents. al accumulations of their combined with health care, and he frequently Harry Pagliaro, the Alexander Gris- near-century of teaching. writes on the subject. With Chuck wold Cummins Professor Emeritus of Oleksa-Myron Bilaniuk, the Cen- Gilbert, professor emeritus of politi- English Literature and College provost tennial Professor Emeritus of Physics cal science and the College’s first from 1979 to 1984, has migrated from and certified FAA pilot and flight provost, he is engaged in a project on an office in the Engineering Dept. dur- instructor, has been physics editor the fate of “neutral competence” in ing his first year of retirement in and editorial board member for the the federal civil service. He also con- 1992–1993, to a study in McCabe five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine. tinued to serve the College as prelaw Library, to a room in Parrish base- He is also on the editorial board of the adviser and has “helped out a bit” ment. Through his peregrinations, Ukrainian Journal of Physics and is col- with premed advising as well. Pagliaro completed two books, a liter- laborating with Ukrainian lexicogra- Susan Snyder, the Gil and Frank ary life of Henry Fielding forthcoming phers on a 100,000-word English- from Macmillan (his teach- Ukrainian-English Dictionary of ing field was 18th-century Physics and Technology. and English romantics) and When psychology colleague Phil a memoir of combat in Kellman moved to UCLA, Bilaniuk sold World War II, Naked Heart: A Kellman his share of their jointly Soldier’s Journey to the Front, owned Cessna 182 and began flying published last year. rented aircraft. He also flies gliders. Says Peter Thompson, Last year near Reno, Nevada, Bilaniuk professor emeritus of chem- soared to 25,000 feet in an LS-4 David Smith Martin Ostwald Helen North istry, “I still come in to the sailplane (with oxygen mask, of College daily to pursue course). research in the area of com- “The essential element of a happy putational chemistry. And I retirement is to see it as a new life, not help out a little in the physi- an epilogue,” writes Bernard Smith, cal chemistry lab and enjoy professor emeritus of history, who that on a volunteer basis. I began retirement at the relatively liked teaching but in all hon- early age of 60 in 1985. Born in Great esty I can’t say I miss it.... Britain and educated at Oxford and Mark Heald Harry Pagliaro Pete Thompson Still, you become aware that Harvard, Professor Smith returned to you no longer really belong his home turf when he moved to a No longer tied to the calendar to the College life you lived tiny hamlet (population 20) in Wales. for 40 years. So there is Significantly Smith has taken his or the classroom, many emeriti some nostalgia.” own advice and may be the only one faculty follow their intellectual Thompson has taken up of Swarthmore’s emeriti faculty who woodworking, a hobby he is both retired and an undergraduate. interests into a rich retirement. says is getting to be serious. He is working to complete a B.A. in “I always wanted to build a classics at the University of Wales. building by myself,” Thomp- More in line with his major field Mustin Professor Emerita of English son says. And he has—a workshop (medieval history) are Smith’s transla- Literature, retired in 1993 and headed and garden shed for the family sum- tions of two treatises on 12th-century to Washington, D.C., “to be near the mer home in Canada. monastic life for the publication excellent research facilities at the Fol- Mark Heald, the Morris L. Clothier Oxford Medieval Texts. In addition ger Shakespeare Library,” where last Professor Emeritus of Physics, shares there is gardening and furniture-mak- year she was named scholar-in-resi- a Du Pont office with colleagues Paul ing, as well as travel to France, Italy, dence. Snyder has a book on pastoral Mangelsdorf and Oleksa Bilaniuk, Germany, Austria, Portugal, and Ire- poetry forthcoming from Stanford where he used a Mac Plus to produce land. Not to mention visits from his University Press, and she is currently camera-ready copy for the Solutions four children and former colleagues. at work on the Cambridge Edition of Manual to accompany the major revi- “The period since retirement has Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. sion of his textbook Classical Electro- been the happiest time of my life,” Since his 1994 retirement, George magnetic Radiation, for which he Smith adds. I Avery, emeritus professor of German, maintains a Website to provide addi- has completed an edition of the corre- tional references (http://www.swarth- Judith Egan is a freelance writer who spondence between Herwarth Walden more.edu/NatSci/mheald1/). Heald lives in Swarthmore. 7–25, 1998 ad, June 1 llege Abro Alumni Co

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