A
crowd estimated at between 300 and 400 gathered at the Parrish Hall
steps on Nov. 12 to protest an apparent defilement of the
College’s Intercultural Center (IC). Late on Nov. 7, a student
had discovered piles of what first appeared to be feces, vomit, and
candy sprinkles around the main room of the IC.
When a large group of students gathered Nov. 8 to organize a protest, campus public safety officers were still investigating whether the incident represented a hate crime or merely a drunken splurge. The apparent “feces” later turned out to be cake, but Janine Gent ’99, the student who discovered the mess, said that the placement of the piles looked intentional, and a flyer distributed at the rally related the incident to “other events … this semester contributing to a feeling of lack of safety among students.”
Faculty, staff, and students came to the rally to express support for IC, which provides office and meeting space in the Clothier Hall Cloisters for groups representing Hispanic, Asian, and queer students. The apparent vandalism occurred in the former Board of Managers room, which serves as a common space for the groups.
Students carried signs and chanted the slogan: “Respect, Safety, Unity.” Leaders of the Intercultural Center, including its director, Assistant Dean Anna Maria Cobo, were joined on the podium by students representing the Black Cultural Center, which has separate quarters in Robinson House.
“It doesn’t end with a rally like this,” Maurice Eldridge ’61, vice president for college and community relations and executive assistant to President Alfred H. Bloom, told the crowd. “If I know anything about my life--and I have been black all of it--it’s that it’s a struggle that goes on and on.” After the rally, he added: “What I admire most about Swarthmore is that it’s one of the few places I know of where we can work on those issues because we genuinely want to--and believe we can--make it a better place.”
Just weeks before, many of the students at the rally had attended a much quieter protest against intolerance--a candlelight vigil held on Oct. 20, following the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman.
The earlier gathering was more like a Quaker meeting than a call to action. Organizer Tim Stewart-Winter ’01 spoke briefly about Shepard and gay youth, followed by a long, silent meditation. Gay students read poems, shared their fears, and told personal stories of social persecution. The vigil ended with several verses of “We are a Gentle Angry People” and “We Shall Overcome.” Afterward, several students lingered under the tower and quietly hugged.
“It was probably the most intense public mourning I’ve ever experienced,” said Talia Young ’01. “I still feel a little physically ill thinking about it.”
No such thing at Swarthmore.
That claim is becoming a rare distinction; few colleges can make it any more. Grade inflation is climbing steadily at other top-ranked schools, according to a recent article in the U.S. News & World Report, which placed the College No. 2 among liberal arts colleges in the country. Swarthmore was identified as one of the few schools that still make students work hard for A’s and B’s.
Swarthmore grads had a collective grade-point average (GPA) of 3.24 last year. “A B-plus is pretty good at Swarthmore,” the article reported, “but still a notch or two below the average at many other elite schools.”
By contrast, GPAs at other schools--including Ivy League schools such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Penn--have increased significantly, said U.S. News. In a 1993 survey of 150 colleges, 26 percent of students’ grades were A-minus or higher compared with 19 percent in 1976. At Princeton, a two-year study released last February found that the median GPA of its graduating class had increased from 3.08 in 1973 to 3.42 last year.
“Faculty, especially teaching assistants and younger professors, are caving in” to complaints from students about “marks they consider too low,” said U.S. News. “At Princeton, the number of grades that have been ‘readjusted’ has increased every year during the 1990s.”
Other schools that have avoided grade inflation include Johns Hopkins University, Reed College, St. John’s College, and the University of the South.
When applying to graduate schools, students from these colleges need not fear losing out to students with higher GPAs, however. Graduate and professional programs are aware of the inflation trend, said U.S. News, and have begun to focus less on GPAs than on standardized tests, essays, interviews, and recommendations. MIT, for example, does not use GPAs as part of its graduate admissions process but seeks self-starters who show research and problem-solving abilities.
Class of 2002 ... Women outnumber men by 21 in Swarthmore's new 369-member first-year class. More freshmen are from New York (57) than any other state, including Pennsylvania, which follows at 42. Twenty-eight class members are from other countries.
Of 4,585 original applicants for the Class of 2002, only 19 percent were offered admission. The median combined SAT-I score for the class is 1,440--an increase of 10 points over last year. Seventy members scored a perfect 800 on the verbal portion, 33 on the mathematics. Engineering was the most popular choice among the 35 percent who chose majors, followed by biology and political science.
Great debate ... In its first annual Novice Invitational Tournament, Oct. 2 and 3, the College's Amos J. Peaslee Debate Society hosted 30 debate teams from eight colleges. The Swarthmore team of John Dolan '01 and Karla Gilbride '02 placed second behind the winning Princeton University team. Dolan and Gilbride also placed second and seventh, respectively, in individual competition.
On the following day, the Swarthmore College Bowl team hosted 16 teams of first- and second-year students at a quiz bowl tournament. Swarthmore took second place behind the University of South Carolina. Peter Austin '02 and Rhett Buttermore '01 were fourth and fifth highest-scoring individuals out of about 60 contestants.
Lauded professors ... Co-author Aimee S.A. Johnson, assistant professor of mathematics, was awarded the Mathematical Association of America's George Pólya Award for "Putting the Pieces Together: Understanding Robinson's Nonperiodic Tilings," an article published earlier this year in the College Mathematic Journal.
This month, Jean Ashmead Perkins '49, Susan W. Lippincott Professor Emerita of French, will receive the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession. Perkins received an M.A. and a Ph.D. at Columbia University, and then returned to Swarthmore to teach French classes from 1957 to 1995.
Shooting star ... Rush Holt, a former Swarthmore physics professor and erstwhile Honors examiner, won a congressional seat in New Jersey's 12th District last month. Holt's victory may have been helped along by a ditty sung on the floor of the House of Representatives by Michael Pappas, the district's conservative Republican incumbent.
In an advertisement broadcast repeatedly in the final weeks of a close campaign, Democrat candidate Holt used a recording of Pappas singing the praises of Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Against an anti-Starr voice-over, Pappas was shown on the floor of the House singing:
Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr,
Now we see how brave you are.
We could not see which way to go
If you did not lead us so.
The ads proved effective as the Monica Lewinsky affair dragged on and public opinion of Starr soured. Holt, whose last job was assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, has never held elected office.
Nobody gets over seeing Birth of a Nation for the first time," visiting film scholar Quinn Eli told black studies students who had just seen the 1915 silent film in November. Hollywood's first blockbuster, the three-hour Birth of a Nation, made director D.W. Griffith a legend and set the standard for cinematography for a generation to come. But the film also glorified the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)--and, some say, led to the KKK's resurgence in the 1920s--and introduced negative black stereotypes that persist in filmmaking today.
Several of the students, all African American, confessed to laughing through much of Birth of a Nation. The film shows black men leering at white women and baring their feet in a Reconstruction-era state legislature, before a dignified and--according to film captions--"helpless white minority."
"It was so outrageous, it was funny," one student said. Many of the film's "Negroes" were obviously white actors in blackface. "It's just disturbing," said another, "to think it was a regular movie, like Superman."
"It was not a 'regular movie' then," Eli countered, "but it defined what regular movies would become." At a time when most movies were 5-cent one-reelers, the epic 12-reel Birth of a Nation wowed audiences and launched the "plantation melodrama" as one of film's most popular genres--and, Eli would add, myths. Some 75 movies set in the Old South followed, littered with mammies and Uncle Toms, and "nearly all were huge successes," Eli said. "Birth of a Nation didn't invent black stereotypes, but it brought them to a much broader, more absorbent audience." Eli is an assistant professor of English at Community College of Philadelphia and a doctoral candidate at Temple University.
Among the stereotypes established in the film, he said, were "coons, toms, bucks, mulattoes, and mammies." Asked to define these terms, students responded knowingly. Coons are "bumbling and idiotic," toms are "sellouts"--the rewarded, faithful companions to white masters, and bucks are dark-skinned, hulking sexual predators. "The buck was created whole cloth out of Birth of a Nation," Eli said. "The KKK was invented to protect white womanhood from the buck."
Students were warned to be wary of the subtle perpetuation of these roles in current cinema--even in crowd pleasers such as The Color Purple and Lethal Weapon, in which Danny Glover plays a classic tom, Eli said. After a scathing analysis of Gone With the Wind--another blockbuster whose charming Old-South appeal revolved around stereotypes established in Birth of a Nation--his claim that Ghost was essentially "the same movie" (with Whoopi Goldberg presumably a female tom) met with laughter and good-natured protests.
"Oh, I'll never be able watch a movie the same way," one student groaned.
"That's the point," Eli replied.
Sap rising--
Can't you feel it, Anna?
Even now, in the autumn dusk--
Even now, with the wild leaves flying....
Thus goes the libretto of The Black Swan, a collaboration between Nathalie Anderson, professor of English literature, and Thomas Whitman, assistant professor of music. Their opera so interested Sarah Caldwell, artistic director of the Boston Opera Company and legend of the music world, that she agreed to direct the premiere at the Lang Performing Arts Center in September.
Based on Thomas Mann's 1953 novella Die Betrogene, the opera tells the story of a widow who falls in love with her son's tutor and believes that love has made her young again. Whitman composed the opera, working closely with Anderson, who wrote the libretto. Baritone David Kravitz '86 played the male lead.
Anderson, a poet, was just beginning her year's leave as a Pew Fellow in the Arts when Orchestra 2001 Artistic Director James Freeman introduced her to Whitman five years ago.
"Mann's story seemed to me to offer an intriguing opportunity to explore a woman's rediscovery and reaffirmation of her own self-love, as she allows herself to sidestep societal assumptions, expectations, and proprieties and open herself to love for a younger man," says Anderson.
True to its faintly medieval architecture, Swarthmore may be considered a kind of monastic cloister where students, faculty, and administration are very disciplined--or at least place a high value on the appearance of hard work. Many of us don't get out much into the so-called real world. Although we don't have a written list of monastic rules, some are nonetheless communicated and followed. For example, unless you work in the higher reaches of the administration, being well dressed is frowned upon. It's fascinating to observe how first-year students and new faculty gradually assume uniform habits of moderate grunginess.
Over the nine years that I've been teaching here, I've seen a subtle but similar hardening of avowed ideas at Swarthmore, especially, I think, since the College was designated No. 1 a couple of years in a row by U.S. News & World Report. One aspect of that hardening can be seen in campus attitudes toward religious faith. I wonder why, considering academia's current climate of respect for cultural diversity, it is still considered acceptable to scoff at religious faith and its practitioners. Why is it that Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims are so often assumed to be unintelligent or psychologically unstable? From what I've observed in faculty and classroom discussions, and from students' written work, this widespread attitude results from ignorance, intellectual laziness, or outright prejudice.
At a faculty lunch last year, the College's Roman-Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant religious advisers gave an eye-opening report on religious life on campus. It turns out that about half our students make use of the Office of Religious Advisers on campus, usually in their first or second year. It's also not commonly known that a significant number of tenured Swarthmore professors are deeply committed Jewish or Christian believers.
It is not unusual in academic work to see scholars and students struggling to explain such things as the revolution in 18th-century France or the predominantly liturgical creative output of J.S. Bach. Historians often assume that people must have socioeconomic motivations for their behavior, but is it so difficult to imagine that intelligent, psychologically stable people might actually do things that are against their social or economic interests? That in some instances their behavior might be inspired by genuine religious beliefs? You don't have to agree with the religious beliefs to appreciate their potential explanatory power in historical research.
Swarthmore may well be among the top two or three liberal arts colleges, but if so, I don't believe it's because of the reasons indicated in U.S. News ratings. True, we have many quantifiable resources, including an incredibly low student&endash;faculty ratio. These are the sorts of things a college can purchase, however, if it is fortunate enough to have sufficient funds. What really sets Swarthmore apart is its institutional seriousness of purpose, what President Alfred Bloom often refers to as a commitment to "ethical intelligence."
A commitment to ethical intelligence inevitably leads to a sense of discomfort. By asking hard questions and then using our academic and intellectual skills to search for answers, we risk upsetting our belief systems. We also open opportunities to dispel erroneous stereotypes we may have taken for granted.
Comfort has to do with the known, and it easily leads to stasis and hardening. Ethical intelligence, on the other hand, accepts continual forays into the unknown. A liberal arts education ought to liberate, not ossify. It ought to make students uncomfortable.
The notion of a liberal arts education originated in the ancient world where there were seven "liberal arts"--the verbal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the mathematical arts of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The liberal arts (from liber, meaning "free") were carried on by free citizens, as opposed to the mechanical arts, such as carpentry, which were rendered by slaves.
That solidification and maintenance of class distinctions doesn't apply at Swarthmore because we're able to afford a financial-aid policy that allows students to be admitted regardless of social class. Yet are our students truly free?
When I say that I hope students will be uncomfortable at Swarthmore, I mean that I hope they will not expect their education simply to affirm their existing identities and commitments. This sort of individual or group egoism, in my view, is neither ethical nor intelligent. I also hope that Swarthmore will do more than inspire questions about individuals' identities and commitments. If a liberal arts education can affirm one's gender, race, color, age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, there is no reason why it should work against one's faith.
In studying the sciences and "humanities" at Swarthmore (I prefer the corresponding German notion of Geisteswissenschaften--literally, "spiritual/intellectual knowledges"), I hope students will feel challenged and compelled to examine many things beyond what is comfortable and the immediately perceivable. I expect this will help in best realizing the College's stated purpose: "to make its students more valuable human beings and more useful members of society."
This essay was adapted from Professor Marissen's talk at First Collection, welcoming the Class of 2002 to Swarthmore.
Michael Marissen is associate professor of music. His book Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion was published this year, along with An Introduction to Bach Studies, which he co-wrote with Daniel R. Melamed of Yale University, and an edited volume of essays, Creative Reponses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith.
As electronic media slowly take over paper, the fascination with hand-crafted books grows. Nowhere is this dichotomy more obvious than at Swarthmore.
The McCabe Library, for example, is becoming increasingly computer dependent even as its historic special collections continue to expand. Book art has dominated both McCabe's lobby and the College's List Gallery this semester, and an art books program is being launched in the Art Department.
The program reflects a major trend in the art world. Though many artists are exploring computer-generated art, others are delving into the ancient bookmaking traditions of papermaking and printmaking, binding, illustration, and calligraphy. Swarthmore has been treated to a rich sampling of art books this fall. The library kicked off the semester with "Art of Visualizing Poetry," an exhibit of the work of nine book artists, followed by an October show of books by Shirley Jones, a Welsh artist and poet.
In October, the List Gallery opened "Challenging Forms: Books, Poetry, and the Visual Arts," with a lecture by David Bunn, a conceptual artist who makes art and poetry from the card catalogs that many libraries are discarding these days. Bunn's Los Angeles studio is crammed with more than 500 boxes of musty card catalogs, which he sees as "a present-day ruin."
Bunn's were the only unillustrated books in the exhibit. Other examples were elegant, sometimes cerebral celebrations of paper and ink by a variety of artists, including painters, printmakers, photographers, and poets. Books ranged from minimalist silk prints to large rice paper accordions with transparent windows. Some books were collaborations between artists and poets; others were artists' interpretations of the classics. Painter Sean Scully brooded on James Joyce, and Lesley Dill created mixed-media interpretations of Emily Dickinson's poetry with photo collage and stitched figures.
"This show is not meant to be a comprehensive survey but a provocative sampling of creative strategies, influences, and themes," says List Gallery Director Andrea Packard '85. "In concert with the library, we want to provide an opportunity for campus dialogue."
Randall Exon, chair of the Art Department, hopes that dialogue will lead to a major interdisciplinary book arts program. This semester, students from the department's Advanced Works on Paper class collaborated with the English Department's Advanced Poetry Workshop to create their own illustrated books. The results were shown at McCabe Library at the end of November.
Exon hopes to see art students collaborating with philosophy and even math classes in the future. "We're one of the few liberal arts colleges making a serious attempt to establish a book arts program," he says. "One thing that unites everyone on campus is an interest in books. So this project brings everyone together. It's a perfect fit."
John Morrison Moore, professor emeritus of philosophy and religion and longtime registrar of the College, died on Sept. 26 at age 94. Moore received a bachelor of divinity from the Union Theological Seminary, a master's degree from Harvard, and a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia.
After teaching at Hamilton College for 10 years, Moore came to Swarthmore in 1943 as associate professor of philosophy. He served as associate dean of men from 1945 to 1950, as registrar from 1948 to 1971, and as acting director of the Friends Historical Library from 1971 to 1973. He was an active member of the Swarthmore Monthly Meeting, served on the boards of Pendle Hill and the Friends Historical Association and as executive director of the Society for Values in Higher Education.
Professor Moore wrote the influential book Theories of Religious Experience and a book on the history of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. He was also an editor of the Journal of Quaker History. Moore is survived by his wife of 68 years, Margaret Whiteside Moore, two daughters, five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
The women's field hockey team appeared in the postseason for the third consecutive season, as they reached the semifinals of the ECAC Mid-Atlantic Championship. The Garnet finished the 1998 campaign with a 13-7 mark and second place in the Centennial Conference, where they posted a 7-2 record.
Holly Baker '99 and Donna Griffin '99 paced the squad on offense. Baker scored a conference-best 17 goals and seven assists for 41 points, while Griffin led the Centennial with 11 assists. Both athletes were named First Team All-Centennial Conference and First-Team Regional All-American and were selected to play in the National Field Hockey Coaches Association Division III North/South Senior All-Star Game.
Defensive leader Jen Hagan '99 scored four goals and two assists and was named Second Team All-Centennial and Second Team Regional All-American. The Garnet was ranked 12th nationally and fifth in the South Atlantic region.
Under the direction of first-year head coach Luci Rosalia, the women's cross country team placed third at the Centennial Conference championships and seventh at the NCAA Division III Mid-East Regional.
Jokotade Agunloye '01 placed fourth in both races, earning All-Centennial Conference and All-Mideast Regional honors and qualifying for the NCAA championships. Agunloye is the third Garnet harrier to reach the championships in as many years.
At the regionals, captain Karen Lloyd '00 ran a personal-best time of 20:28.9 to place 43rd, while Amalia Jerison '00 finished 69th. The Garnet posted a 3-1 record in dual meets this season.
The men's cross country squad earned sixth place at the Centennial championships and ninth at the Mideast Regionals. Marc Jeuland '01 placed 24th at the Regionals and was named to the All-Mideast Regional team. Captain Gordon Roble '99 placed 51st--second for the Garnet--while Sam Evans '01 finished 53rd. At the Centennial championships, Jeuland finished in 10th place to earn Second Team All-Centennial honors.
New enthusiasm infused the football team this season with the hiring of first-year head coach Pete Alvanos. Unfortunately, the results were the same. The Garnet Tide finished its third consecutive winless season with an 0-8 record. Despite the dismal record, several individuals had outstanding seasons. Co-captain Brian Bell '99 led the team in receiving with 33 catches for 481 yards. Bell finished second in the Centennial in catches per game (4.13), third in receiving yards per game (60.1), fifth in kickoff return average (19.6), and sixth in all-purpose yards average (86.3).
On defense the Tide was led by a freshman trio of linebackers dubbed "the smurfs" because all are under six feet tall. Joe Corso made 69 tackles and led the squad with seven tackles for loss. Jon Bartner recorded 66 tackles and a team-high of three forced fumbles, and Axel Neff made 57 tackles. Defensive lineman Tony Skiadas '99 recorded 40 tackles--6.5 for loss, forced three fumbles, and received a Centennial honorable mention.
The men's soccer team struggled to a 3-17 overall mark and posted an 0-7 conference record. Scott Samels '99 led the Garnet offensive attack with a career-high five goals and one assist. Midfielder Mike Schall '99 scored one goal on the season and was named Second Team All-Centennial.
The women's soccer team recorded a 6-12 mark overall and went 2-7 in conference action. Forward Sarah Nusser '02 led the offense with eight goals and received a Centennial Conference honorable mention. The team defense improved under first-year head coach Shawn Ferris, as the Garnet allowed just 24 goals compared to 54 in 1997. Goalkeeper Sari Altschuler '01 recorded five shutouts and 1.97 goals against average.
The men's tennis team sent two members to the National Rolex Championships for the second consecutive season. Greg Emkey '99 captured the singles portion of the ITA Division III East Championships to advance to the National Finals, then teamed with Peter Schilla '01 to capture the doubles title. At the Nationals, Emkey finished seventh in singles and, with Schilla, placed seventh in doubles.
The women's tennis team posted a 1-3 fall season mark but closed on a high note as they swept all six singles brackets to capture the Capital Classic at Catholic University. No. 1 singles player Jen Pao '01 led the Garnet with an 8-1 mark on the season.
With just two seniors on the squad, the young Garnet volleyball team struggled, posting an 0-16 mark. First-year Elisa Matula led the squad in kills, while sophomore Bonnie French led in assists.
Haverford leads the battle for the Hood Trophy after the fall season, 5-1. The lone Garnet victory came in field hockey as Swarthmore blanked the Fords 4-0. In their final home contest, seniors Donna Griffin, Holly Baker, and Lurah Hess scored goals to top Haverford, and Julie Finnegan '00 also scored.
--Mark Duzenski
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