Don’t overlook Andrea Hammer’s “Families Strong as Oaks” thinking that it isn’t about your experience of Swarthmore. Although few can claim three generations at the College, you will find that this article is about more than legacies and memories—it’s about the complicated familial relationship that all alumni have with the College.

One aspect of that relationship is how you feel about change. Through family lore, students whose forebears went to Swarthmore may be more aware of how things were in “the old days,” but everyone who passes through this place views change from the dual distances of time and geography with understandable skepticism. The college experience is a snapshot in time, and any rearrangement of the intellectual or emotional furniture can be jarring.

Change can be gradual, as in the evolution of curricula and social customs, or abrupt, like the decision to end the football program. Although many alumni have supported the flowering of the arts at the College over the past three decades, others have expressed concern over the evolution of the Honors program into a culminating academic experience that some see as less academically rigorous than “their” Honors program. A contrasting concern expressed by others is that Swarthmore has become “too academic” at the expense of the “whole college experience.” Although no one expects a great college to remain trapped in the amber of their era, there will always be such debates about change.

Change is particularly difficult to manage at Swarthmore because of the extraordinary sense of institutional ownership felt by alumni. This feeling is a great advantage to the College: More than half of all alumni contribute money each year, and hundreds are involved in other ways—as class secretaries and agents; as admissions interviewers; as Connection chairs, externship sponsors, and campus speakers; and as members of the Alumni Council or the Board of Managers. Yet it also presents a constant challenge to those who are charged with guiding Swarthmore into the future. Swarthmore alumni have been taught to think critically and to communicate their ideas and opinions. Because they care so deeply about this institution, they are not reticent about doing so.

“Families Strong as Oaks” contains a powerful metaphor—that the many branches of Swarthmore families have deep commingled roots. At the risk of stretching both simile and sentiment, I think it’s possible to extend that metaphor to all whose lives have been touched by Swarthmore. The College is like a family—we have our quarrels. It’s in the nature of the place.

—Jeffrey Lott