Explore Stories

Religious adviser Joyce Tompkins advises just about everyone on just about anything.

The Internet is unique among human creations in many ways. There’s only one of it. It had many inventors, rather than just one. We perceive it more as a community than as a thing. But unlike most communities, it charges no admission fee, collects no taxes, imposes no rules, and has no visible authority. You can use it to learn, to laugh, to chat, to buy; or you can use it to spam, to flame, to steal, to spy. 

Shortly after Parrish Hall opened its doors on rolling farmland in 1869, nearby Philadelphia was busy enhancing its fledgling Fairmount Park with statuary.

Nearly a century later, Swarthmore began acquiring its own outdoor sculptures, coinciding with a resurgence of interest in the subject in Philadelphia. As the city passed a landmark law requiring a percentage of building budgets to support public art, large-scale, abstract sculptures proliferated.

Susan Preston Martin ’63 lay on a thin jail cot mattress and ran her hands across her belly and understood for the first time how noticeable her pregnancy had become. She was 21 and had graduated just a month earlier. Save for the rare moments when it was quiet enough to tap on a pipe in her cell and whisper to the women caged adjacent to her in the colored cell, she was alone. Arrested together, they were jailed separately after the white men in an integrated group decided to “liberate” the colored bathrooms and drinking fountains during a ferry ride from Plaquemine, La.—where they were registering black voters—to New Orleans. 

Before Valerie Smith entered the presidential search, she thought she should see Swarthmore’s campus. She drove to the College on a Saturday in early November—Garnet Weekend, it happened to be—to take a tour and sit in on an admissions information session incognito. When she arrived, she asked a passing student to show her the way to Parrish Hall. It was a gray, rainy day, but her first sight of Parrish Beach from above stunned her still.

Dan Perelstein ’10 translates visual to aural in city theaters.

Jo Lynne Johnson ’72 wields needle and thread for skaters.

The transformation of town and gown is moving apace.

The College community was shocked and saddened by the July 14 death of Alan Berkowitz.

Cycling fever began for Robin Carpenter ’14 at age 10, riding Philadelphia’s West River Drive.