If this issue of the Bulletin looks a little different, it is. For the first time since 1983, the magazine plays host to the College's annual Report of Gifts--a record of donations to Swarthmore from July 1996 through June 1997. (Not in the electronic issue.) It also contains two important feature stories about how we relate to each other and to our communities. I think the two are connected.
Creating community is a big issue these days. Social scientist Robert Putnam '63 ("Investing in Social Capital,") has voiced America's nagging feeling that something is wrong with our body politic--a problem he attributes to declining civic involvement. Putnam believes that voluntary organizations like bowling leagues and PTAs are essential to the health of a democracy, and his ideas have touched a national nerve.
Deborah Hyman '81 and her husband, David Wright, have felt the same thing on a more personal level. Their involvement in WindSong, a cohousing community in Vancouver, B.C., ("Under One Roof,") is a testament to their belief that the health of individuals and families is directly related to the quality of the social environment in which they live. They took great risks to help create an intentional community that meets their need to be something more than just another family lost in suburbia.
I'm fascinated by the wide variety of intentional groups we join in order to better our lives. As an inveterate joiner myself, I sometimes wonder whether we really exist as individuals unless we bind ourselves to families, neighbors, churches, baseball leagues, Scout troops, singing groups--or schools. Nowhere is this more evident than at Swarthmore College. Students growing to adulthood are deeply influenced by friends, teachers, and the small societies in which they live and work. Swarthmore changes peoples' lives, and I believe that both Deborah Hyman and Robert Putnam are doing what they do today because of something they took away from Swarthmore, something as much spiritual as intellectual.
Like a WindSong or a bowling league, a great college is an intentional community, beholden to its founders, given life by its current members, and sustained by its alumni. In one way or another, you choose to be part of it, and whether or not your name is on one of the lists, as a reader of this magazine you continue to be a part of it. While it is not the job of the Bulletin to ask you for money, we hope that it shows you (and lets you enjoy once again) one of Swarthmore's greatest gifts to you--an extraordinary experience of community.
--J.L.