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Honors students are oblivious to time when they’re in the classroom. Three-hour evening seminars extend into discussions lasting until after midnight. When a professor stands to announce the end of class, students cluster like bees around a honey pot, protesting and pleading: “But we’re not done yet!” “Just one more question?” Professors leave only when each student is satisfied.

Two members of the College faculty have experienced honors as both students and teachers. 

Richard Valelly ’75, Claude C. Smith ’14 Professor of Political Science, says, “The idea that intellectual life is not only intense but also pleasurable was the principle I took away from honors. ...

When you meet Vishwanath “Vishu” Lingappa ’75, one of the first things you notice is his voice. In a blog for National Geographic, Carl Zimmer calls it a “radio-talk-show-host” voice. Other descriptions could equally well apply. It is a CEO’s voice and an orator’s voice. A simple interview with Lingappa has more dramatic pianissimos and booming crescendos than a Beethoven symphony.

Most of all, though, it is a big brother’s voice, loud and encouraging and demanding at the same time.

In a literal way, Vishu has always been there for Jairam and his sister Jaisri ’79. 

More than a century ago, 70 years before Title IX, Swarthmore women were eager to play sports. In the early 1900s, while male students played football and lacrosse against Penn, Temple and other schools, the women created their own athletics organization, initially named the Girls’ Athletic Club, later the Swarthmore Women’s Athletic Association (SWAA), then the Women’s Athletic Association (WAA). All female students were encouraged to play.

Social entrepreneurship could be defined as “doing good by doing well,” says Joy Charlton, executive director of the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. Swarthmore students are intensifying their exploration of this business model, in which the social rather than the financial value is the primary driver.

On a summer day in London during this centenary of the Great War, sadness salts the air where I stand. A remembrance garden of red poppies adorns the grounds of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, a symbol seen all over a country that lost a generation of young men from every walk of life.

Also worth remembering is Quaker nonviolence during wartime and revolution. The College—and its people—played an important role in the violent drama of World War I a century ago.

The face is a familiar one—the crown of white hair, wire-rim glasses, a touch of chin hair—a hirsute style he’s recently returned to after a few decades. Last time he sported that look, his hair was black.

Maurice Eldridge ’61 cuts a tall, straight-backed, dignified figure. As vice president for College and community relations and executive assistant to the president, he’s a staple at events on and off campus. He’s that friendly smile, calm voice during tense negotiations, whether between Swarthmore borough residents displeased with College upgrades to roads or with Mountain Justice students urging the College to divest its endowment from fossil fuel funds.

Tyler Lyson uncovered his first mystery of paleontology as a 6-year-old boy in remote southwestern North Dakota. He was hunting rabbits with his brother “because that’s what kids do out there,” he says, when they came across a dinosaur jawbone half-buried in the earth. “My brother gave it a kick or two and took off after the rabbit. I stayed back with a stick and slowly carved out the jawbone. I kept it and still have it.” 

Rebecca Chopp’s presidential mettle encountered its first major test shortly after her arrival in 2009. It came courtesy of what would one day be known as the Great Recession. Chopp’s resolve to put people first drove her response to the financial crisis facing the nation. The College made changes, as did all institutions. But at Swarthmore, no employee was furloughed. Nor did the College diminish its financial aid commitments to students.

Chopp, who left in mid-July to become chancellor at the University of Denver, had a far-reaching impact as Swarthmore’s 14th president and the first female leader ...

Toronto is a tall-shouldered city. I.M. Pei–designed towers soar above the financial district at King and Bay with windows that face the CN Tower and the lakeshore. But beyond this financial hub of Canada, pockets of culture beckon, from boutiques and music clubs on Queen Street West to the spicy scent of idli sambar wafting from the doorways of Little India eateries. Deeply entrenched in this stewy mix of on-fire industry and global culture are two compatriots, Rob Prichard ’71, H’07, and Marianne McKenna ’72, who got together one recent morning to talk about their shared past and present.

Files stolen from the FBI’s Office in Media, Pa., by burglars calling themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI revealed that the agency had been spying on Swarthmore students and faculty members with the help of College employees as well as the Swarthmore’s borough’s chief of police, postmaster, and letter carriers.  

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