To the Editor:
Reading about Gil Stott in the March edition of the Bulletin brought back many warm memories.
In 1968, before I left for Oxford, I visited Swarthmore and called on Gil and Mary. They asked me to stay for dinner. I remember our holding hands while they sang grace, drinking the cranberry wine they had made, and washing the dishes after dinner. Most of all, I remember their warm welcome.
Thus began 30 years of correspondence with this wise, good man--a relationship that has enriched my life and been a constant source of encouragement. It is no surprise that Gil has played the same role for generations of Swarthmore students.
Bill Clinton
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Editor's Note: Gilmore Stott was for many years the American secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship program, and the future president met him in that capacity.
To the Editor:
Seeing Gilmore Stott's warm, intelligent face on the cover of the March 1998 Bulletin seems so appropriate. For me, along with so many others, the best of Swarthmore is synonymous with Gil Stott.
After my admissions interview with Gil, I told my parents that if I were accepted by Swarthmore, I'd feel really bad if I chose another school because "that man" was so decent and so nice. I had been worried about the idiomatic Pennsylvania Dutch speech I had picked up during my childhood in rural Pennsylvania; Gil encouraged me to "flaunt it."
Two weeks into my first year at Swarthmore, I found a note in my mailbox from Gil, inviting me to "stop by the house for a cool glass of cider after chemistry lab." It was accompanied by a little hand-drawn map with directions to the Stott home. I went and have been rewarded ever since. The Stott home was my fantasy of college life come true: dark wood-paneled rooms, the fragrance of bread baking, musical instruments everywhere, pillows made of old carpets, happy children, invigorating conversation, and so much laughter. I was invited to stay for dinner, and there began a friendship that I treasure to this day.
Three years later I asked Gil's OK to take his course in ethics. He put his arm around my shoulder and said, "of course I'd love to have you, but are you sure you want to take it? It's dreadfully dull stuff." It wasn't.
In 1969, five years after Swarthmore, I applied for discharge from the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector (CO). Gil's nonjudgmental, wise counsel was invaluable; and the letter he wrote in support of my CO application was commented on by every hearing official I met as being one of the most persuasive documents they had ever read.
Gil has been a touchstone in my life. Soft of speech, he is a man of powerful moral force. He is warm, kind, wise, and a loyal and devoted friend and teacher. Nor can I think of Gil without thinking of his dear wife, Mary. I've never known a couple so devoted to one another and so willing to share love with so many others.
Swarthmore College has given me many things for which I am grateful; Gil Stott's friendship is right at the top.
Bennett Lorber '64
Philadelphia
To the Editor:
I was pleased to see Richie Schuldenfrei's confusion between morality and gravity make it into the historical record "How Do You Live a Good Life?" June 1998). He never did let that chair loose upon my head, but his arguments stretched our minds and passions. We read the Locke, watched the performances, pondered the utility of truth, weighed the connection (if any) between liberty and justice. Thoughts racing and other classes all but ignored, we knew Mr. Schul-denfrei had drawn us into the philosophical fray.
Allow me a metaphorical tribute that borrows from another great commentator I encountered at Swarthmore--Joseph Conrad, author of Youth:
But you here--you all had something out of life: money, love--whatever one gets on shore--and, tell me, wasn't that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks--and sometimes a chance to feel your strength.
Matt Lorenz '81
St. Petersburg, Fla.
To the Editor:
Congratulations on an excellent article about Richie Schuldenfrei. As a teacher at a teaching college, I know that it is life-changing teaching that really matters to students more than anything else we do. Richie is my model for a teacher who sees that as the main goal. It is appropriate for Swarthmore to honor its great teachers with recognition among the alumni--the audience that cares the most and the one that ultimately matters the most.
Beau Weston '82
Danville, Ky.
To the Editor:
Vicki Glembocki's article on Richie Schuldenfrei brought back more than memories for me--it conjured up powerful feelings about my years at Swarthmore. Richie and Thompson Bradley worked with me and a group of students in 1973 and 1974 to apply political and philosophical concepts to real-world events. We struggled with Kant, Marx, and Hegel to find guidance for our actions.
Richie and Tom helped us establish a political left that renounced violence as a means to the desired ends. We put out a little newsletter called Critical Times (not the typical Swarthmorean double meaning) and summoned up the nerve to pass it out to workers in Philadelphia. And despite these diversions, all of us managed to graduate.
What Richie did, and has apparently kept doing all these years, is instill the basic notion that ideas matter--that there is a connection between words and action. Like Richie's, my political and philosophical leanings have evolved over the years. Less an agitator than a peacemaker, I now work as a mediator of labor-management disputes. I still consider Richie (and Tom) as my greatest influences at Swarthmore. I am delighted that his lifelong contributions are being recognized.
Paul D. Roose '74
Oakland, Calif.
To the Editor:
I was a student at Swarthmore during the period when Richie Schuldenfrei moved toward an "explicit Marxism." Richie grappled with Marxism just as he engaged all other vital intellectual traditions: He challenged Marxism's basic ideas, he questioned its prescriptions for action, and he demanded clarity and consistency from its concepts. His struggle to understand Marxism in a critical, nondogmatic way had a tre-mendous impact on my political and intellectual development.
Several years after I graduated, I learned that Richie had decided that Marxism was, in some fundamental sense, complicit with the Gulag and with the horrors of Pol Pot. I was at the time and remain today disappointed by his shift from radical politics to "traditional" values. I continue to view Marxism not as a set of dogmatic truths but as a powerful intellectual tool for social analysis as well as a vision of a humanistic and democratic society. This notion of Marxism is not only inconsistent with the dictatorships and death camps of the Stalinist regimes but recognizes that the means and the ends
of political activity are integrally connected.
As a labor activist for 25 years, I wish that Richie had not rejected the notion of radical social change. Yet this letter is not meant to criticize Richie for his "betrayal" of the cause. Whatever his views about society and religion, the fact that Richie continues to challenge his students to think critically about the world and to live in accord with a set of principles is, in my view, far more important than his particular beliefs. I hope that Swarthmore students have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with Richie Schuldenfrei for many years to come.
Mike Slott '75
Montclair, N.J.
To the Editor:
Consider the words "Jim Crow," "lynching," "apartheid," "ethnic cleansing," "ghetto," "Aryan supremacy," and "genocide." Their mere mention reminds us that the urge to ostracize the "other" is perhaps the most prevalent source of contemporary evil.
Thus, when I learned that Swarthmore sponsors and funds groups that bar students of a different skin color or language background, I sent e-mail messages and a letter to the Bulletin to question and, ultimately, to protest. These were my first communications with the College other than routine alumni matters since graduation.
The groups involved, such as the Gospel Choir, are about culture--and to me culture is for communication, not segregation.
I anticipated disagreement. After all, similar policies exist in many other colleges--although not universally. For example, both my children belong to on-campus Jewish groups, but in both cases non-Jews are welcome.
But I didn't anticipate the fantasy and race baiting of W.T. Boykin Jr. '77 printed in the June Bulletin under the headline "Whites want exclusivity only for themselves." It's hard to imagine a more false and racist message, both in the headline and letter.
I never wrote nor do I believe that the Gospel Choir is "just singing," nor did I make the absurd claim that minorities are creating the "race problem." Mr. Boykin's quotations were merely fabricated. I never advocated that nonwhites be excluded from professional and social organizations of "white America." (In most cases it probably is, and certainly should be, illegal to bar nonwhites, however defined, from any professional organizations and from social organizations supported directly or indirectly by public funds.) I never said, nor do I believe, that "St. Patrick's Day ... or Italian-American day" should be treated differently from celebrations of black or Hispanic ethnic backgrounds.
I never said and certainly don't believe that "nonwhite ethnic or cultural backgrounds" should not be valued on the same level.
I merely questioned whether racial and ethnic exclusion--tools of the hate mongers--are appropriate for a small, elite liberal arts college. So far to me the answer is in the negative. Mr. Boykin's letter reinforces my conclusion.
Sigmund "Pete" Beck '57
Greenwich, Conn.
To the Editor:
In your article "Why Can't a College Be More Like a Business?" (June 1998), you quoted Professor of Biology Mark Jacobs on the "peer effect" at Swarthmore: "Swarthmore students set high standards for each other.... The pressure to do well is coming not from the professors as much as from the other students." He goes on to say that juniors and seniors pass along their "expectations for excellence" to younger students.
This reminds me of a converse story. I was teaching microbiology one spring and had four first-year students sign up to take it. These were students who had placed out of general biology with high Advanced Placement scores. I let them in the class and gave them extra tutorial sessions on writing because our upper-class students had been taught basic science writing skills in the general biology sequence.
I worried needlessly; these first-year students did exceptionally well. In fact some of the seniors, who had acute cases of senioritis, were shamed into better performances because of the high standards set by the younger students. I won't soon forget the acknowledgment that one senior wrote in his final paper: "Special thanks to the super freshman foursome, who shamed the likes of me into doing my very best, just to keep up with them. I know that I leave the College in their able hands."
Amy Cheng Vollmer
Associate Professor of Biology
To the Editor:
I am becoming unhappily used to seeing the word "fraught" used as a single adjective in less intellectually oriented publications, such as Newsweek. But I was appalled to find a Swarthmore professor, Joy Charlton, commit the same error in the June Bulletin ("A year in the Dean's Office: an ethnographic experience"):
"Our students make this transition in an environment that is, in some ways, benign and protected (as parents hope) but is also fraught and pressure filled (as students fear)."
My dictionary defines "fraught" as "laden, freighted, attended, accompanied." So the Swarthmore environment is laden, freighted, attended, accompanied--but by what?
Although Swarthmore professors and students soar to ever-greater intellectual heights, let them not ignore the humbler virtues of correct English usage.
Louise Zimmerman Forscher '44
Exeter, N.H.
Dear Editors:
Sigh. Has it been so long that you've forgotten what we looked like? It seems like only yesterday that the editors of the 1979 Halcyon posed under the sign at the Swarthmore train station for the picture on page 29 of the June 1998 Bulletin. You can find the original on page 210 of the 1979 yearbook.
Bob McLaughlin '79 is in back, Liz Burchard '82 is in the center, Sarah Humphrey DeCamello '79 is to the right of Liz, and I'm on the left of Liz.
It brought back a lot of good memories of that year putting together the yearbook. We worked very well together and had a great Swarthmore experience. In fact I had such a good time I went on to work for several different publishing companies. I'm glad you found the picture, and it didn't end up in the ashes of Tarble after the fire.
Pamela Juram Kuhn '79
Lake Bluff, Ill.
Editor's Note: Pam Juram Kuhn was editor of the 1979 Halcyon. Also chiming in with IDs for the photo above--and not always getting them right--were fellow editor Sarah Humphrey DeCamello '79, class president Andy Schultz, and six other '79ers: John and Carol Shapley Etter, Peter Koelle, Tobee Phipps, Bob Rakita, and Martha Kane Savage. Thanks for writing!
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 College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1397, or send by e-mail to bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
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