On
April 13, about 70 students and a few faculty and staff members,
dressed in black, marched quietly down Magill Walk and around the
streets of the Ville. They were protesting a recent incident
involving College students that led to accusations of "racialized
policing" by Swarthmore borough police.
Early on the previous Sunday, April 8, three African-American students from another college assaulted Randy Keim '02 in his Mertz Hall room after a Delta Upsilon party at which the four apparently argued. They beat him badly enough to require hospital treatment. About an hour later, Swarthmore borough police entered the off-campus apartment of Nii Addy '02 and Prince Achime '01.
Keim later said he had mentioned Achime as possibly knowing his assailants. In an apparently unrelated incident, a female student from Bryn Mawr was arrested for assaulting Keim earlier that night.
Addy and Achime claim the police entered their apartment while they were sleeping, then questioned and searched Achime. Soon afterward, officers received a tip from the College operator that a phone call had been made from the Willets Hall room of Sanjay Richards '03, requesting a taxi to 30th Street Station. Suspicious that the call was from the assailants, officers entered Richards' room without his permission, he says, told him to step into the hallway, asked if he had drugs or weapons, and then frisked him. "There was no reason for the search because we clearly did not fit the description the victim gave of his assail-ants," Richards later told The Swarthmorean. "I think we were searched because we were African Americans."
"I felt like [I was questioned in that manner] completely because of my race," Achime told The Phoenix. "No question on that one." Addy agreed that their treatment was racially motivated.
Members of the Swarthmore African-American Student Society (SASS) complained to the administration of "procedural abuse" by the police--including "frisking, harassment, and demeaning treatment" and entering without probable cause.
On the morning of April 13, President Alfred H. Bloom and Vice President for College and Community Relations and Executive Assistant to the President Maurice Eldridge '61 met with the borough's mayor and chief of police. "The College is investigating the matter and working with the police and independently to understand what took place," Bloom said afterward.
"We're deeply concerned that our students feel they're being singled out in terms of race," Eldridge said. "It's contrary to the principles of the College."
After the march that afternoon, the crowd convened near Parrish steps for a "speak-out." The mood was quiet and somber. "This is not a confrontation or an accusation but instead an opportunity for the College community to hear our testimonies," announced Brandyn White '03, a member of SASS and organizer of the rally.
African-American students spoke of encounters with borough police officers they suspected of being racially prejudiced, often while driving near campus.
Rodney Morris '01 closed the rally on an emotional note, after adding his own recollections of harassment, including being called "nigger" and "coon" while walking to the Ville three years ago. "Crying at the injustice of the world is not enough," he said. "This speak-out is a continuation of a struggle that's been going on long before today. At Swarthmore, we know how to change the world--but we need to put our faces behind it."
Discussions followed at the Black Cultural Center (BCC) to explore "ways in which we can keep such incidents as those shared during the speak-out from occurring in the future," says Timothy Sams, assistant dean and director of the BCC.
On April 19, SASS members met with the mayor, police chief, Eldridge, Sams, Dean Bob Gross '62, and Associate Dean for Student Life Tedd Goundie. SASS requested a meeting with borough police to discuss the official police report filed on April 8 and "what the police department perceives to be a healthy relationship between Swarthmore borough police and students." They also asked that police receive annual sensitivity training.
On May 1, a suspect in the assault was arrested in Philadelphia, then arraigned at Media District Court with bail set at $10,000. The investigation is ongoing.
At press time, SASS students were still waiting to hear from borough police regarding their requests. "The students didn't ask for anything unreasonable," Sams says. "There may also be ongoing meetings, whenever students have encounters with the police, to talk about ways to ameliorate the problem. Students are looking for a continuous relationship rather than waiting for disasters."
--Cathleen McCarthy
During the weekend of Feb. 24, a series of unrelated incidents left the College shaken. Several vehicles had their tires slashed in the parking lot outside the Lamb-Miller Field House, a student was arrested for disorderly conduct, and another student reported a sexual assault. All cases remain open at the Swarthmore Borough Police Department at press time.
"The assault, along with a mugging last semester, came as a stark reminder that we cannot afford complacency around the issues of safety and security," says Dean Bob Gross '62. "The College does not exist in a bubble." Subsequent meetings of administration and students resulted in a plan to heighten safety awareness and increase safety measures on campus.
The Student Council Safety Committee will work with the College's Public Safety officers in identifying areas in which to add lighting this summer. Campus directories and phones will be installed in several locations. Near the railroad tracks, where the mugging took place, Public Safety will install surveillance cameras and increase patrols.
The administration also plans to review the student-staffed Garnet Patrol shuttle and escort service, possibly adding staff positions--with the goal of extending the hours that safety escorts are available. "We also recognize that we need to do a better job of educating students about the need to take reasonable precautions," Gross says.
Administrators are also examining how alcohol use may have effected the February incidents. "We are concerned about the rowdiness and vandalism that seem to have increased recently, always as a result of alcohol abuse," Gross says. "Students report that a decrease in the number of public parties has resulted in more abusive drinking in dorm rooms. This is a perennial problem on college campuses, the result of the presence of so many 'adult but underage' drinkers.
"Most students at Swarthmore are concerned about what they perceive as a shift in the social climate. We need to work with Student Council and other groups to build the kind of campus culture we all want."
--Cathleen McCarthy
Coed
rooms will be introduced on a limited basis starting this fall. After
discussions with administrators, the Housing Committee endorsed the
proposal made by Timothy Stewart-Winter '01 and members of Swarthmore
Queer Union last December.
In his proposal, Stewart-Winter argued that "mandatory same-gender rooming is heterosexist, in that it fails to account for the comfort of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students. The basis for the ban on mixed-gender rooming was the assumption that this would prevent sexual tension or relations between co-habitants."
However, many homosexual students, he wrote, "are less comfortable living with same-gender roommates than they would be with roommates of the other gender because of factors like attraction and homophobia that complicate the usual issues of compatibility."
The option to choose an opposite-sex roommate will be offered in 50 spots--about 4 percent of student housing--in the Lodges and two sections of Worth that do not house freshmen. Both Lodges and Worth contain hall units that house four to six students.
"The experiment will be re-evaluated next year to see if it is indeed meeting the needs of our students, especially the queer students. At that time, it could be ended, enlarged, or remain the same," says Myrt Westphal, assistant dean of the College and director of residential life.
There is no guarantee that students who choose this option will receive it because the distribution of rooms will continue to be done through a lottery. Westphal does not expect many couples to request coed rooms. "At Swarthmore, there is a student culture that strongly suggests that you not live with a romantic partner," Westphal explains.
"Most people, I think, are doing it because they would feel more comfortable," Matthew Miller '04 told The Phoenix before the lottery. He was hoping to live with female friends next year but failed to land one of the allotted spaces. Because juniors and seniors have the option of single rooms, and freshmen are not allowed the coed option, it's an issue that mainly affects rising sophomores like Miller.
Alex Brennan '04 was also hoping to room with female pals but did not draw a lucky number. "There were too many sophomores who wanted coed housing," he said.
Danielle Keifert '04, on the other hand, got her wish. Next year, she will share a hall unit in the Lodges with her "four best friends," one of whom happens to be male.
--Cathleen McCarthy
When you throw liquid nitrogen around, people get excited," Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Phillips said with a chuckle. A dozen physics majors shared the laugh over lunch in Sharples during his recent visit.
Phillips was speaking from experience. Moments earlier, he had wheeled into the DuPont Science Building the liquid nitrogen and other props he would use during his evening lecture "Almost Absolute Zero," an updated version of the 1997 Nobel lecture he gave in Stockholm. Known for cooling and trapping atoms with laser light, Phillips also gave a physics and astronomy colloquium, "Optics With Matter Waves," that afternoon.
Professor of Physics Frank Moscatelli has spent the last two summers working in Phillips' lab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, where Phillips is a fellow. As this year's president of Swarthmore's Sigma Xi chapter, he invited Phillips to campus.
He seemed very interested in what the students at Swarthmore did," says Amy Reighard '01, an Honors physics major who answered Phillips' questions about her thesis over lunch. "He was not only obviously very smart but personable and friendly--the kind of person you hope wins a Nobel Prize."
This year, 889 students were admitted to the College, slightly more than 25 percent of the 3,530 who applied. The group is expected to yield about 376 first-year students.
Of those who come from high schools that report class rank, 56 percent of admitted students are in the top 2 percent of their high school class, and 91 percent are in the top decile. Fifty-seven percent come from public schools, 31 percent from private schools, 4 percent from parochial schools, and 8 percent from schools overseas.
Admitted students come from 6 continents, 42 nations, and 45 U.S. states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.
More admitted students declared an "undecided" major than any other. Next, in order, are English, engineering, biology, political science, economics, and history. Forty-three percent identify themselves as American students of color--19 percent as Asian Americans, 10 percent as African Americans, and 13 percent as Latino/a.
The following faculty members have recently been promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure: Aurora Camacho de Schmidt, Spanish; Nathaniel Deutsch, Religion; Ted Fernald, Linguistics; Steven Hopkins, Religion; and Paul Rablen, Chemistry.
One member of the Swarthmore faculty has found a new way to apply her scholarship. Andrea Stout, assistant professor of physics, appeared in April on the popular quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? She left with $64,000 when neither she nor her last "lifeline," former Mathematics Professor Chris Towles, knew that the late rapper Tupac Shakur had published posthumous poetry.
About 30 friends and family gathered at the Friends Meetinghouse in April to honor Hilde Cohn, professor emeritus of German, who died in her sleep in Haverford, Pa., on March 13 at the age of 92. Several of Cohn's former students and colleagues from the College attended.
After writing essays for Jewish youth organizations and other publications, Cohn emigrated to the United States in 1937, joining a network of German-Jewish scholars who enriched American higher education during that period. Cohn's father perished at Buchenwald the year after she left.
Cohn taught at Bryn Mawr College for 10 years, serving as head resident of the school's German House for many years. In 1948, she joined Swarthmore's German Department--which later became the German section of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures--and retired in 1975. Along with German-language courses, Cohn taught courses and seminars in German literature, ranging from Romanticism to 20th-century novels, poetry, and drama.
A team of students recently filed a provisional patent application for their design of an off-the-grid home-heating system to be used during short-term power outages. This student project is the first to lead to a promising patent application since Joseph Higgins '91 and Associate Professor of Engineering E. Carr Everbach received a patent for a sudden infant death syndrome crib monitor in 1998, which they share with Kevin Parker at the University of Rochester.
The home-heating system team is the third to work on the project initiated by Fred Orthlieb, professor of engineering, but the first to include nonengineers. Along with the team's other faculty adviser, Professor of Engineering Erik Cheever '82, and led by Honors engineering and mathematics major Tushar Parlikar '01, the students received a big boost in February from a grant of almost $18,000 from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance.
"By the end of the semester, we hope to have a working prototype that marketing people can show off at trade shows," Parlikar says. Engineering and physics majors designed the system, then economics and psychology majors worked together to market it.
The team plans to file the claims section of the patent application in July and hopes the patent will be issued next summer. "Then we will contact some players in the home-heating industry," Parlikar says, "such as boiler and zone valve manufacturers, to license out our patent on a nonexclusive basis."
--Alisa Giardinelli
Centennial Professor of English Literature Thomas Blackburn retired in January after a distinguished 40 years at Swarthmore, including six years as dean of the College.
In addition to his seminars on Shakespeare and Milton--a subject on which he has been widely published--Blackburn leaves a wide range of contributions behind. As a former college athlete, he was actively involved in recruiting and working with student athletes. During his first four years at Swarthmore, he helped coach the football team and, over the years, served as faculty adviser for football, lacrosse, and wrestling teams.
In the spring of 2000, he was a member of the Athletics Review Committee and a steadfast opponent of radical reductions in the College's intercollegiate athletics program. "Working with students in other areas--whether it's athletics or drama--helps you understand what's going on with them academically. It's one of the traditional ideals of the liberal arts college: to understand the whole persona of a student, not just the intellectual aspect," Blackburn says.
As dean of the College from 1975 to 1981, Blackburn reorganized the Dean's Office and helped revamp the mental health services offered by the Health Center. He was also an early computer enthusiast, teaching introductory computer courses to faculty and staff.
In 1985, he established the Writing Associates Program, based on one set up at Brown University by Tori Haring-Smith '74, in which students are trained to tutor other students in writing. For 15 years, Blackburn directed and refined the program. Surveys consistently reveal the program's value to faculty and students, and alumni report that the program helps in everything from theses to tactfully fixing up their bosses' writing. "Our aim was never better papers but better writing," Blackburn says.
Swarthmore students are "the kind of students who challenge, satisfy, and reward those who work with them in classroom and seminar," he said in his baccalaureate address last year. "To my mind, the great soliloquies by Shakespeare, like Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' … remind us that we must inevitably make choices in a universe where the consequences of those choices are always hidden in the future....
"I'm grateful that I was chosen to go to Oxford," continued the former Rhodes Scholar, "and [grateful] to meet there my best choice ever, Ann who became my wife... Only in that context does my choice to teach at Swarthmore come second…. I'm glad I have the choice now to retire from regular teaching--or at least, I think I'm glad because the ramifications of that choice and the choices that will follow all lie in the obscurity of the future."
--Cathleen McCarthy
Professor of Russian since 1962 and former Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures Thompson Bradley retires this year, leaving behind a legacy of activism that will last long after his jaunty signature beret, scarf, and goatee are no longer a familiar sight on campus.
Bradley is a Marxist, a Socialist, and a political activist with deep ties to the former Soviet Union. Students recall, in evaluations, lively debates in the professor's office--and departing, more often than not, with one of his books under their arms.
"He's deeply involved with the students," wrote a sophomore after taking his course The Russian Novel. "He constantly links Russian literature with Russian politics. I liked this because it taught me about Russian history as well as the literature."
Bradley sees himself as part of a school of political academics who came of age in the turmoil of the 1960s. "I think there are fewer and fewer people in academia today who think of their lives as having to do with a practice outside of academia. I can't imagine only doing activism or only teaching. To me, they seem as indivisible as literature and history," he says. Fortunately, he adds, "the College has always had a commitment to social change."
Before coming to Swarthmore in 1962, Bradley spent a year in Moskow, as 1 of 35 American scholars sent there as part of a cultural exchange. Working in the Lenin Library and the Gorky Institute of World Literature, he witnessed the downgrading of Stalinism. He also befriended members of the Soviet dissident movement. Last year, Bradley invited one of them, the legendary Elena Bonner, to speak at the College.
When Bradley began teaching at Swarthmore 39 years ago, he turned his focus to local activism and was instrumental in building community outreach to Chester, Pa. Next year, he will teach journal writing to inmates at the Phila-delphia Industrial Correctional Center.
"I was one of the luckiest people alive to have taught at Swarthmore," he says. "One thing this college encourages and inspires is intellectual seriousness--which fits in well with social activism."
--Cathleen McCarthy
Early this semester, the College adopted a revised policy on student cheating, produced by a faculty committee. Provost Jennie Keith and the Committee on Faculty Procedures (COFP) appointed the six faculty-member Committee on Academic Dishonesty in December 1999 to clarify cases of academic misconduct and reconsider ways to adjudicate them.
The group met throughout the academic year, first with the provost and deans, and finally with Tedd Goundie, associate dean for student life. Last fall, they presented a preliminary draft of their proposal to the provost, COFP, and faculty and department chairs. The revised policy was passed by the faculty in February.
"Some faculty members were wary of bringing students up on charges of academic misconduct because they feared the students would be automatically suspended for the semester," says Robert Weinberg, associate professor of history, who took over as chair of the committee last fall. "But if students are cheating on homework and quizzes, and faculty members handle it themselves without reporting it, the students may do it again in someone else's class," he says.
The appeals process was altered, and "we clarified what should be examined," Weinberg says. Before, if a suspicion of cheating was reported, the College Judiciary Committee (CJC)--consisting of two faculty members, two students, and one administrator--met to discuss whether the evidence merited a hearing. Now only faculty members of the CJC make this decision. If they decide on a hearing, the dean of the College convenes the entire CJC to meet with the accused student and decide the outcome.
The CJC also has a more detailed set of guidelines and procedures to follow. "The point is to take into account the extenuating circumstances and issues of intentionality. In other words, did the student mean to deceive the professor?" Weinberg says. "We underscored that the committee needs to look at the whole case and all the factors and make a recommendation based on that.
"Suspension does happen," he adds, "but it's not an automatic consequence." For example, stealing someone else's paper from their computer--something that happened recently--will result in suspension, he says, "but sloppy note taking or failure to properly cite a reference may not."
Appeals are no longer decided by the president. Now, a student must present a case for an appeal to the president and the provost. If they decide there are sufficient grounds, a new faculty/student committee is appointed to review the case.
After examining cases of dishonesty in recent years, Weinberg says, it became clear to the group that the expanded use of computers in academia has facilitated cheating. "Students don't have to leave their dorm rooms to find material on the Web and download it," he says.
The Web has made it easier to plagiarize--and made plagiarism easier to detect. Weinberg says the College is considering subscribing to a Web service that scans the Internet for duplications in student papers and other text.
"Certainly, computers and the Internet have made it easier and more tempting to cheat," Goundie agrees. In one recent case, a student lifted, from the Internet, part of a lecture given at the University of California at Davis, then failed to properly attribute the source in his paper.
Goundie says the number of reported cases of cheating has increased this academic year. Six were reported last fall. The norm, he says, is two to four cases per year. "I don't know if more faculty members are bringing cases before the committee or more students are cheating--or just not cheating as well as they used to," Goundie says. At press time, one case had been reported for the spring semester. Most cheating occurs at the end of the semester, he says, "when the pressure starts to increase."
A few academic departments have produced their own policies on academic misconduct. "It's time for the College to make a statement that we take academic integrity seriously and to make our policy clear to students," Weinberg says. "We want every faculty member to bring these cases forward."
--Cathleen McCarthy
In a scene redolent of Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Kurosawa's Madadayo, nearly 100 of William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Art History T. Kaori Kitao's students and colleagues from five decades gathered in February to celebrate her impending retirement.
The range of speakers and topics hinted at the breadth of Professor Kitao's own wide-ranging interests--she taught art history, architecture, and film studies--and the deep impact on her pupils. Symposium topics ranged from colonial architecture to Steven Spielberg, the Stonewall riots to Ellis Island, and the design of Kohlberg Hall to the importance of coffee in undergraduate education and wound through the Zen-like lesson of Kaori's famous lecture in introductory art history that began simply: "Rock. Garden. Rock Garden."
Not surprisingly, many of Kitao's former students ended up in art- and architecture-related fields. But there were also writers, business people, choreographers, and Web designers who came to honor Kitao's career and praise her influence.
"I wanted to follow in her footsteps. I asked her for career advice after finishing a degree when the market for teaching jobs was thin," recounted Kevin Murphy '82, an art history professor at the City University of New York. "She told me, 'Better to do something useful in preservation than to teach somewhere really lousy.'"
"She taught me the value of trying the impossible," recalled architect Margaret Helfand '69, who designed Kohlberg Hall and is co-designing the College's new science center. "Her singular way of looking at things upside down and sideways is fundamental to my work."
"She was extremely encouraging to me in pursuing a career in screenwriting and filmmaking when I was an undergrad, even though I majored in English," said Yongsoo Park '94, a New York-based filmmaker and author of the recently published novel Boy Genius. "Well after I graduated, she came to New York to screen the reels of my film one by one, giving me detailed feedback that made it possible to finish."
David Cateforis '86, a professor of art history at the University of Kansas, recalled Professor Kitao's skill in classroom analysis: "She always had three things to say in a critique. The first isolated the problem, the second provided a succinct commentary with a clarity that [produced] sudden insight, and the third provided a twist and a new dimension to the whole problem--and usually made you laugh as well. I've only recently begun to really appreciate, in refining my own teaching, the utter uniqueness of her teaching style in simultaneously making things understandable and making the student think."
Fred Wasserman '78, director of curatorial administration at The Jewish Museum in New York City, also spoke, as did Paul Jaskot '85, organizer of the symposium and a professor at DePaul University in Chicago.
At the reception, I discovered that many of Kitao's former students, like me, diligently preserve notes and papers from her classes. My notebooks have running lists of Kitaoisms in the marginalia. I even treasure her criticisms of my work. "You need to be more specific," Kaori commented on one of my papers. Several pages later, when verbosity had overtaken me, she wrote: "See comment, page 2. I take it back." On a similarly long-winded paper on Rembrandt, she crossed out the artist's name on my title page and wrote "Ramblant."
Professor Kitao has been notable throughout her career in expanding both her own horizons and those of the College. Arriving at Swarthmore in 1966 as a respected Renaissance scholar and the author of the definitive work on St. Peter's Square in Rome, she also pioneered courses in local architecture, film, and industrial and commercial design.
"She's brave and willing to take on new things," said Justin Hall '98, the host of Web Workshop on ZDTV, who, in a reversal of roles, was Kitao's teacher for a class in html. "Just look at her Web page [ at www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/kaori/tkitao1/]. It's technically accomplished, but even more, it's fairly unique in that it's deeply personal, surprising, and constantly updated."
On her Web page, Kitao writes: "Art history in my view is a misnomer. What I profess is study of art, and though the historical context of works of art is by no means irrelevant, the focus of my interest is their genesis in the creative minds as revealed in the works themselves rather than the social circumstances surrounding them."
"In the beginning, there were things," Kitao commented during the symposium proceedings. "Words and images are a reminder of things, but, even if you have 500 pages, they never replace the immediacy and experience of the object.… I like things more."
Asked about her plans for retirement, Kitao observed: "The whole point of the exercise is to have no plans."
--Matthew Wall
Attorney: Describe the conditions on the mountain that night.
Witness: It was snowing, sleeting, hailing. Temperatures were subzero. Winds were 70 mph. I couldn't stand up without falling over. Terrible.
Attorney: What did you do?
Witness: We did the only thing we could do. We clung to each other to wait it out. The next morning, P.J. was unconscious. I couldn't find a pulse. I tried to carry him, but I was too weak. So I returned to Camp 4 alone.
Attorney: What happened upon your arrival?
Witness: I told everyone about the storm. By then, P.J. had been up there on the mountain, exposed, for well over a day. We had to face the reality that he was gone.
No, this is not a scene from Law & Order--it's a round in the National Championship Mock Trial Tournament held in St. Paul, Minn., in April. Swarthmore team captain Dennis Cheng '01 is acting as defense attorney, questioning Payal Shah '03, who plays the guide of an ill-fated expedition up Mount Everest. Cheng and Shah--who won a "best witness" award at regional competitions--are part of an eight-member team. This trip is only Swarthmore's second to the national championship--and they're about to place second out of 393 teams.
Team captain Cheng, a double major in political science and economics, co-founded the group last year with friend BoHee Yoon '01, a double major in political science and women studies. In their first year, the team placed 10th and won Best New School, and Cheng won the prestigious Spirit of the American Mock Trial Association Award.
This year's competition involves the fictitious case of Gilbertson v. Everest Experience, based on events from the book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer, which chronicles the horrors of a 1996 climb that cost 12 lives. Each team has been instructed to read the book for background and build their case from legal documents and witness affidavits sent before the competition. Real lawyers and judges serve as the mock judges who decide the cases--and the competition winners.
Today, in the courtroom, the family of the fictitious "P.J. Gilbertson," who supposedly died while climbing Everest, has brought a civil suit against the guide who led the expedition. Like all student lawyers in the competition, Cheng is making up his lines as he goes, and, as in a real court trial, he is frequently interrupted by objections from competing lawyers and by the judge.
In the next round, Yoon steps up to cross-examine a student from another school who plays yet another guide from the expedition. In her gray suit, Yoon fires questions like a seasoned pro. "In fact, you would--and have--entrusted the defendant with your life," she says. "Isn't that correct?"
"Yes, I have," he responds.
"No further questions, your Honor," Yoon says curtly and spins around, ponytail flying, to return to her team.
After each team has played out the trial four times--the plaintiff's side twice and the defense side twice--winners are announced, and Swarthmore's team goes off to dinner elated.
"It's about 50 percent rehearsed performance and 50 percent improvisation," Cheng explains later. "The case is written so that there's no clear winner, and both sides have a strong case, but it's slightly slanted toward the defense each time because of the burden of proof. The strength of our team is definitely in the presentation and our witnesses--and also teamwork. It's very apparent when you watch us that we worked as a team."
Six of the eight members of Swarthmore's team were involved in Mock Trial competitions during high school, and none had professional coaching, as did many of the teams they competed against. Cheng estimates that about 90 percent of the teams at Nationals showed up with professional attorneys--some with as many as four or five coaches. Cheng says the team did get some helpful advice from Philadelphia attorneys Jonathan Cass '88 and wife Jacquelyn Caridad.
Many on the team hope to argue real cases some day. Cheng plans to attend law school after earning a master's in international relations from the London School of Economics. Yoon and Eden Wales '03, who won a "best attorney" award at the regional competition, have applied to law schools. "Some of us started thinking about becoming lawyers because of Mock Trial," Cheng says.
-- Cathleen McCarthy
Students looking for a respite from their studies at McCabe Library can now leaf through a comic book, thanks to two students and an alumnus who donated 350 comic books to the library this semester. The collection captures the breadth of contemporary comic-book subculture--from "A. Bizarro" to the "The Uncanny X-Men"--and is available in the current periodicals/newspaper lounge.
About two-thirds of the collection comes from Greg Erskine '01, the rest from Ben Myers '01, David Newman '76 (father of Sarah Newman '04), and Erskine's friend Jeremy Westphal. Erskine began collecting comic books in high school, graduating from superheroes to independents, including autobiographical and historical comics. "There is a lot of male-power fantasy in the attraction to superheroes," Erskine admits, about a genre that hasn't changed much over the decades. "It's still big muscle-bound men hitting each other." These days, they're also using lasers.
Such male fantasy abounds in the McCabe collection but so do "deconstructed" superheroes--parodies like Batman with a paunch--as well as self-contained stories like Ghost World, "about a couple of teenage girls after high school trying to decide whether to go to college," Erskin says. "These are less soap opera and more novel" than their forerunners.
The library has agreed to contribute $400 annually to building the collection, which Erskine will help organize, including graphic art novels and comic compilations. "Historically, comic-book authors have been mostly white males," Erskine says. "We're trying to get more by women authors and other minorities."
Meanwhile, Erskine is working part time in the McCabe coffee lounge/reading room, where he enjoys watching students reading his comics. "It's sort of an oasis in the middle of McCabe," he says.
--Cathleen McCarthy
Alison Bechdel, award-winning creator of the syndicated comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," combined social commentary with sophisticated humor during her March visit to campus. It's a balance that has made her strip a lesbian cultural institution.
Bearing more than a slight resemblance to her signature character, Mo, Bechdel spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in the Scheuer Room for the College Libraries' annual political cartoonist lecture. In conjunction, McCabe Library featured original drawings, memorabilia, and books in a monthlong exhibit of her work.
When she started her strip in 1983, Bechdel said it was considered quite radical. "Unfortunately, just drawing pictures of lesbians doesn't cut the mustard anymore," she said, provoking the laughter that frequently erupted in the audience.
Unlike editorial cartoonists, Bechdel said her strip is like a soap opera in which politics are integrated as they are in real people's lives. Using slides of her strip, she illustrated how, over the years, her characters have dealt with issues such as AIDS; children; bisexuality; aging; and, most recently, the conservatism of the gay rights movement.
Bechdel also couldn't resist highlighting the timelessness of some of her work. A character in one panel, pictured in bed, says to another, "I'm not getting up until the Electoral College is abolished, and George Bush is impeached." Bechdel got one of her biggest laughs when noting that she wrote that line 12 years ago.
What's next for the diverse group that populates her strip? They will most likely address the issues Bechdel is facing herself. "I play with the concept of assimilation with Mo, Clarice, and Toni," she said. "Universality is tricky. The more support you get, the less marginal you become."
Don't get her wrong. "I don't wish for the old days of being oppressed," she added. "But there is a tension from being an outsider and being a citizen. I want both."
--Alisa Giardinelli
The women's tennis team captured the Centennial Conference (CC) Championship with a perfect 10-0 record. Anjani Reddy '04 led the Garnet with a 19-1 record this spring, was 33-2 overall on the year, and captured the CC Singles Championship. The Garnet ranked as high as 22nd in Division III during the year, and Reddy was ranked third in the Atlantic South Region.
The men's tennis team made the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Tournament for the 23rd consecutive year, with an 8-5 record. Pete Schilla '01 scored 10-3 in Division III, earning All-American honors.
The women's lacrosse team scored 10-5 overall and 5-4 in conference play. Katie Tarr '02, Kristen English '01, and Jenn Hart '03 all earned first-team All-CC honors. Tarr led the Centennial in scoring with 63 goals, and Kristen English '01 made the CC first-team squad for the third season.
Mark Dingfield '01 led the men's lacrosse team in scoring this season with 41 points, bringing his career total to 179 points, including 121 goals and 58 assists. He is third on the Garnet career goal list and fourth in points.
At the CC women's track and field championships, the Garnet placed fourth. Imo Akpan '02 captured gold in the long jump and the 400-meter dash and silver in the 200-meter dash. Joko Agunloye '01 won the 5,000-meter run and placed second in the 3,000-meter run, qualifying for the NCAA Championships.
At the CC men's track-and-field championships, the Garnet placed ninth with 38 points. Marc Jeuland '01 earned gold in the 10,000-meter run and qualified for the NCAA Championships. Catcher Josh Lindsey '01 earned second-team All-CC baseball honors with a career-best .370 on the season and finished his career with 95 hits.
Heather Marandola '01 and Gretchen Heitz '04 earned second team All-CC softball honors.
In club sports, the women's Ultimate Frisbee team defeated Bucknell to win the state championship.
--Mark Duzenski
At
the end of this year's women's basketball season, each player
received a red-covered "season summary"--a booklet containing more
season statistics, awards, and articles than any Garnet women's
basketball team has ever seen.
You can find Heather Marandola on almost every page.
A three-sport athlete, Marandola never missed a game in her Swarthmore career. She has started every soccer and basketball game, and except for one game in Florida in 1999 when she was late returning from the Emergency Room, she has started all of her softball games as well. She has played almost every position in all three sports. In total, Marandola has played 283 games while pursuing an engineering degree.
This year's record-breaking basketball season began four years ago. Marandola was head coach Adrienne Shibles' first recruit in the coach's second season at Swarthmore. The student scored 321 points that season and was well on her way to be a 1,000-point scorer but switched to the back court on Shibles' request. Though the position involved less point-scoring glory, Heather became the backbone of the team. This season, she lead the Garnet to 22 wins, a College record, as well as the team's first Centennial Conference Championship crown, their first trip to the NCAA Division III tournament, and seven other school records.
Shibles credits the program's rise to the pinnacle of the Centennial Conference to Marandola, who currently holds nine career records for Swarthmore, including most career games played (101), second-most career assists (298), and a spot at number six on the career points list (928). Shibles has said repeatedly that if it weren't for the fellow Maine native and defense lover, the record-breaking 2000-01 season wouldn't have happened.
But what the season summary doesn't capture is the spirit of Marandola--her inspirational qualities as a leader in Swarthmore's female athletic community. "She's an incredible leader and has an amazing work ethic," says Shibles. "She's just a well-rounded person who has managed to do it all at Swarthmore. I respect her for that."
Marandola's fellow soccer, basketball, and softball players have recognized her talents as a leader and motivator by electing her captain of all three teams her senior year and of the basketball and softball teams her junior year.
But what matters most to the senior are not the records, the statistics, or the awards--but the game. "Sports are fun!" she says, in her typical tongue-in-cheek manner. On a more serious note, she adds, "I'm one of those people who plays not for the successes but because I love to play."
Like most engineering majors, Marandola "lived" in Hicks Hall. This spring, her final electrical engineering project was a bicycle computer built from scratch. She will be working for an engineering firm in Camden, N.J., and hopes to help Shibles when she can next season.
It was a bittersweet moment for many in the Swarthmore community when Marandola took the field for the last time on April 24 for a double-header against Haverford. Her versatility, dedication, and love of the game will be missed. But most important, Heather Marandola will be missed for being Heather. It's difficult to imagine Swarthmore women's sports without her.
--Kate Nelson-Lee '03
Spring 2001 Intercollegiate Sport Overall Record Centennial Conference Baseball 5-20 4-14 Golf 4-2 7th Men's lacrosse 3-10 0-6 Women's lacrosse 10-5 5-4 Softball 5-20 5-11 Men's track and field 2-1 9th Women's track and field 3-0 4th Men's tennis 8-5 -- Women's tennis 12-3 10-0
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Swarthmore College. Copyright 2001