Letters - Swarthmore College Bulletin

RIGOR AND CIVILITY

In the July 30 Wall Street Journal, two of Swarthmore’s most distinguished alumni squared off against each other on the vexing issue of government funding of embryonic stem cell research. David Baltimore ’60, president of the California Institute of Technology and a Nobel laureate, argued that the research holds extraordinary promise for the treatment of devastating diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Stem cells have what he described as the “miraculous” capacity for transformation into many different types of bodily tissue. Thus, they may be used to generate replacements for diseased organs.

Robert George ’77, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, criticized the destruction of embryos to harvest their stem cells. He argued that human embryos are human beings possessing an inherent dignity that is incompatible with dismembering them for the benefit of others.

The moral status of the embryo is at the core of the debate. “To me,” Baltimore said, “a tiny mass of cells that has never been in a uterus is hardly a human being.” In reply, George stated that the human embryo possesses the epigenetic primordia for internally directed growth and maturation as a distinct, complete, self-integrating, human organism. It is, therefore, already--and not merely potentially--a living member of the human species and a possessor of the right to life. “The being that is now you or me,” he said, “is the same being that was once an adolescent, and before that a toddler, and before that an infant, and before that a fetus, and before that an embryo. To have destroyed the being that is you or me at any of these stages would have been to destroy you or me.”

All agree that the issue of embryonic stem cell research raises questions of profound moral import demanding careful and informed discussion. Despite their differences of opinion, Baltimore and George have set an example for the nation of how such questions can be debated with rigor and civility. Considering that such debate has long been prized at Swarthmore, it is hardly surprising that both of these influential scholars spent their formative undergraduate years at the College.

DAVID KUHNSMAN ’82
McLean, Va.

THE MOSQUITO TEST

I read “A Walk in the Woods” by Susan Milius ’75 (March Bulletin) with great interest and pleasure at learning that Crum Woods continue to be valued by faculty, students, and administration.

I still have very fond memories of the Crum Woods from the early 1940s: a College picnic in the meadow; our attempts to grow cabbages on a dry slope as a Victory Garden; swimming in the pool below the Victoria Plush Mill on a hot summer day (Swarthmore ran year-round during World War II); thinking over problems while seated on Alligator Rock; and, above all, walking in the woods--and stopping there--with my boyfriend. One test of true love was whether I wanted so much to be with him that I could endure the mosquitoes! I did, and we have now been married for 55 years.

One aspect of the Crum that wasn’t mentioned in the article was the vivid colors that trailed behind the dye cans dumped into the creek by the Plush Mill. I suppose production has shifted to some low-wage country where foreign girls are swimming in dye-streaked water.

ELIZABETH HOISINGTON STEWART ’45
Rochester, N.Y.

UNWELCOME CORRESPONDENCE

I was a recipient of the rather unorthodox mailing that Neil Austrian [’61] and James Noyes sent to the College community in the spring, as I can only assume were other Swarthmore alumni. It was an unwelcome correspondence. I willingly provide Swarthmore College with my contact information for its purposes in conducting the business of the institution. I have never given my consent for that information to be used by any other source or for any other purpose, related or unrelated to the College. I hope that the College and members of the Swarthmore community take appropriate measures to respect and protect the use of personal contact information that has been provided to the College.

SUSAN B. LEVINE ’78
Washington, D.C.

Lisa Lee ’81, director of alumni relations, replies: “Names and addresses for the mailing you received were not provided by the College. Swarthmore values the privacy of the information given to it by alumni. The Alumni Relations Office provides contact information for alumni through the printed alumni directory (most recently issued in 1999) and the College’s on-line community, both of which have explicit policies stating that this information is to be used only for individual contact of a personal nature. With appropriate security measures, the College also provides information to help individual alumni find each other or for specific purposes such as career networking. The College does not release mailing lists to organizations that wish to send mass mailings.”

FOOTBALL ISN’T THE REAL ISSUE

When I entered Swarthmore in 1940, the total fee for tuition, room, and board was $800. I don’t know how the College afforded to attract outstanding faculty then, but we had some superb teachers, and the student body was highly focused on intellectual pursuit--including the football players. There were a large number of really smart people, and many went on to serve humanity in many ways. In early 1940, Time magazine wrote a piece on Swarthmore extolling it as the outstanding small, co-ed college in the country, and the College took pride in the large number of students who participated in intercollegiate sports.

After the war, I ended up in the home of another small Quaker college, Earlham. It has continued to rise in national esteem for its teaching quality, intellectualism, and student activism--while maintaining its commitment to Quaker values and spiritual emphasis. Last year, it completed a marvelous athletics/wellness center and is now building a center for social sciences and interdisciplinary studies. Earlham has done all that and more with a fraction of Swarthmore’s endowment--and it has maintained a football team composed of student athletes, playing teams from colleges of like size and similar academic integrity.

One is left with the feeling that football is not the real issue at Swarthmore. It’s more like a shift in what is important in education--more than just a desire to attract more scholars but rather a hankering by the self-proclaimed intellectuals on the faculty to get rid of this alien distraction of students who like football. Perhaps it’s a craving to turn Swarthmore into even more of a super brain factory. I don’t think it’s a matter of money. Swarthmore could maintain its traditional excellence and integrity--and a football team--it if wanted to.

VICTOR JOSE ’44
Richmond, Ind.

NO MORE GLUM FACES

Wow! Kudos to Karen Borbee for her article, “Sports for All the Right Reasons” (June Bulletin). We’ve read it at least a dozen times and will probably keep reading it. Never saw anything that explains the real reasons for Swarthmore sports better than this. Too bad it wasn’t published before Alumni Weekend--it might have removed the glum looks on a lot of faces.

J.C. “BOOTS” BENNETT ’45
Morris Plains, N.J.

PREFERRED NOTIONS OF DIVERSITY

I have been enjoying all the material from the College regarding increased emphasis on sports at Swarthmore. Can this really be more than damage control, destined to fade once attention moves away from the football story? Unfortunately, the record shows that this administration will disregard commitments to current students and coaches if they conflict with a preferred notion of future diversity. The tactics employed to eliminate football have been brilliantly effective--if unnecessarily ruthless--and they encourage caution regarding the durability of the well-advertised new support for diversity in sports.

I wish the College had been as forthright as Pamela Kyle Crossley ’77 (“Letters,” June Bulletin), who wrote that “Big Football” is good for only big men, little men who would like to be big men, etc. I disagree with most of what she said but applaud her honesty. She described football as “toxic” on most campuses, and the current leaders of Swarthmore obviously, but less openly, concluded theirs was one such campus, whatever the facts. I hope that a similar prejudice will not lead them to conclude that some other activity in Swarthmore’s rich complexity is as impolitic as they deemed football (e.g., “Big Orchestra is for only those individuals whom genetics has disposed to musical talent or work ethic or others who have neither but like to listen. This results in the unacceptable exclusion of those whose interests lead them elsewhere, and we are, therefore, eliminating Big Orchestra. However, we are pleased to announce the appointment of an additional associate director of student life”). I will hope, but the recent record is discouraging.

STEVE PENROSE ’66
Dallas

JOIN THE CLUB

I am writing to expand on the short note about the women’s Ultimate Frisbee team (“Collection,” June Bulletin). Swarthmore’s Warmothers defeated the Bucknell University team in the regional finals, which qualified them to attend the national college championships for the third straight year. They finished their season as the No. 12 women’s team in the national rankings. In another remarkable accomplishment, Warmothers’ co-captain Lindsay Goldsmith ’01 won the Callahan Award as the finest women’s Ultimate player in the country. The men’s team also had a very strong season, falling just one win short of attending nationals themselves.

In the midst of debates about the place for athletics at Swarthmore, the ignorance of club sports in the College community is deeply disappointing. With no coaching support and minimal financial assistance, these teams compete in demanding and challenging sports. Aside from occasional Phoenix articles, they enjoy almost no coverage from any of the College’s general or athletic publications. I hope their future successes will not occur so quietly.

MATT LAWLOR ’95
St. Louis

Editor’s Note: The national Ultimate tournament occurred after the June Bulletin deadline. But yes, we could do better in covering successful club sport seasons such as that of the Warmothers.

JACK GORRY

In June 1999, the Bulletin published a letter from my cousin, Jack Gorry, who was looking for his birth parents, thought to be one-time Swarthmore College students. Jack died suddenly in May 2000 of drowning, so he never got a chance to reconnect with his birth family. If any of them wants to know more about the life of this wonderful man, who was born Nov. 21, 1961, at Taylor Hospital, please contact me for stories, photos, and a CD. Jack bore a strong resemblance to the actor Stanley Tucci.

PHYLLIS HASBROUCK ’78
Madison, Wis.

MEMORABILIA WANTED

The Friends Historical Library, which houses the College archives, is searching for Swarthmore student handbooks from the 1930s through the 1960s. Please help the library preserve College history through donations of handbooks or other memorabilia. Contact Christopher Densmore, curator, at (610) 328-8497 or cdensmo1@swarthmore.edu for further information.

CORRECTION

Readers who wished to visit William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emerita of Art History Kaori Kitao’s Web site (“Collection,” June Bulletin) were inadvertently directed to a College page about her, not to Professor Kitao’s personal home page, which can be found at www.swarthmore.edu/humanities/tkitao1.