---------- Page 1 ----------
THE PHOENIX It's time to step out of the theater and into the stores, market, gas station, mega-malls and department stores and demand justice. —J. Carew Kraft and Mark Charette, making a plea for conscious consumerism. Story on page four. October 4,1996 Swarthmore Col lege •Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Volume 118, Number 5 Appointment Procedure Questioned By Corey Datz-Greenberg It's almost a Swarthmore tradition that each year brings new controversy. This year the controversy involves the practices of Student Council's appointments onto some of the most important committees. Student Council recently appointed Douglas Berger '9B to the College Planning Committee (CPC). After his appointment, concerns were raised concerning the process by which he applied. Berger's application was late, in fact Appointments Committee member Giridhar Srinivasan '9B reminded Berger to apply after the applications deadline due on September 12 and after the bulk of the interviews had been held on September 15. Furthermore, Committee Chair Andrew Lund '99 concedes that he never read Berger's application, and that his appointment was based mostly on his interview. A memo released by Lund in response to the allegation stated: "The fact is that Giridhar did approach Doug, but only in response to previously stated interest in CPC on Doug's part. Giridhar was not present during Doug's interview, and as such made no statements for or against his candidacy." In the Student Council charter, the Appointments Committee is allowed to hold a second round of applications. However, suspicions were raised because the apparent second round was not publicized. Lund explained that the second day of interviews was an extension of the first round for people who had not been able to appear on the first scheduled interview day. Berger was appointed to the CPC, to the dismay of other applicantsnot because Berger was unqualified, but because the system seemed to have been abused. Miho Tsujii '9B, an applicant to the CPC, was concerned with the interview process. "I felt like I was being tested, that they were looking to see if they would like my opinions, if I was interested in the same issues," she said. "Student Council needs diverse perspectives, and new ideas on how to change the college." Tsujii also expressed concern about the seeming lack of diversity in this year's appointments. Out of the six available positions, five were filled by men. Lund counters, "We were looking for the best applicants. Because we didn't have the number of applications we wanted, we didn't have the options to ensure diversity." According to him, all three of the applicants to the CEP (Council on Education Policy) and four of the five applicants to the CBC (College Budget Committee) were male. In his memo, Lund stated: "Of the nineteen positions requiring interviews that have been appointed to this date, eleven of the nineteen have been women and eight of the nineteen have been students of color. While we understand that on the surface some of the numbers and some of the process has been questionable, under closer inspection, in light of the facts, we feel confident in saying that appointments committee is proud of our work and extremely pleased with the appointments that have been made." Either way, Berger himself feels that the guidelines governing the appointments onto the most important committees need to be refined. "After going through the appointments process, I would welcome further guidelines about this process," Berger said. Lund disagrees, citing Student Council's difficulties in the past getting enough applications for the committees. "We want to get people to come out as much as possible. This might not be the most ideal application process, but the more applications we have the more credible we are." Construction Making Campus More Accessible By Kate Doty Swarthmore is currently in the process of renovating dorms and buildings in an effort to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The College is also restructuring the drainage systems to ameliorate flooding of the southern parts of campus. Since September 26, Mertz lawn has been the sit of the first of three planned "site access" projects according to Mark Evans, director of planning construction. The aim is to make Mertz accessible to individuals with physical disabilities. Construction crews have been working to improve the grade of the slope. This requires some soil reconfiguration and the rebuilding of the paved paths. Conscious of the possible disruption construction can cause, Evans said there will be no construction work done on Mertz lawn the week before October break. Students will be able to study for and take exams in peace and quiet. The bulk of the work will take place over October break. This is when the most "intense" and "noisy" phases of construction will occur, according to Evans. However, according to Meredith Weems 'OO, who lives in Mertz, "It is the most miserable thing ever. At 8:00 every morning you can hear a lot of banging outside of our window and the loud beeping of the truck reversing." In addition to being able to hear the construction workers' conversations starting at 8 a.m., "there is no way we can possibly study in our rooms because the noise and the hammering is so awful." Contingent on good weather conditions, construction outside of Mertz is scheduled to end on October 25. The current construction work on campus is "an ongoing effort to improve accessibility of our most public facilities," said Evans. Construction crews are working to reno- vate several buildings and areas, from the exterior inwards. Beginning with exterior paths and moving on through entrances, classrooms, and eventually dorms, the college hopes to comply fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed by Congress in 1990. Additional work has been done on the exterior of Sharpies Dining Hall, Lang Music Building, the loading dock, Cornell Science Library, and Martin. Clothier Building will have access doors installed. In Lang, a lift will be installed in order to make the elevators accessible to the disabled. The entrance of Hicks will also be modified to improve the accessibility of the elevators. Construction generally starts at 7:30 a.m. and finishes at 3 p.m. However, in areas deemed "sensitive," said Evans, construction hours are 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.. The Facilities Management Department is also attempting to remedy the drainage problems which have plagued the South Campus. Construction began on September 16. In an all-campus e-mail, Evans described the two phases of the project, the first of which is taking place now. Sharpies Dining Hall and the Pedestrian Tunnel are the two currently affected areas. "We expect this project will prevent the frequent flooding of the Pedestrian Tunnel and Sharpies Dining Hall," wrote Evans. The construction is progressing from the "area nearest the railroad tracks and [will] work its way up the hill over the period of five weeks," stated Evans in the e-mail. An effort is being made to restrict "the active construction areas [to] about 200 feet at a time." The work by Parrish Lawn should be finished by the end of October. The second phase, which involves Magill Walk and Parrish Hall, will not become active until this summer. Photo by Diana Hunt Construction on Mertz Lawn is part of the College's efforts to conform to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Republicans Stymied by Gender Gap By Sylvia Weedman I Election '96\ While Bob Dole was practicing his oneliners at a mock debate at his Washington campaign headquarters on Tuesday, vicepresidential candidate Jack Kemp was wooing a crowd of 200 women at a Jewish community center in Tucson, Arizona. Promoting the Republican plan to reduce Americans' taxes by 15 percent across the board, Kemp predicted that the number of woman-owned businesses would double under a Dole/Kemp administration. In addition, he said, such tax breaks would generate enough family income so that mothers, if they wished, could leave the work force. This election season, Republican appeals to women are nothing new. From Con- gresswoman Susan Molinari's keynote speech at the Republican Convention to Dole's assurances of Republican toleration of a range of opinions on abortion, the candidates have been touting the party's inclusiveness all year. Absent any substantive appeals to them, women in 1992 favored Clinton over Bush by 11 percent, and in the 1994 "Republican Revolution" elections, actually favored Democratic candidates by 15 percent. But this year, Republicans have recognized the power of the female electorate, and the "gender gap" has become a household word. While Dole and Clinton are almost even among male voters according to some polls, they are separated by a 15 percent margin among female voters, according to a Wall Street Journal poll from mid-September. The stakes are high this year, so pundits and political consultants are doing their best to explain the gender discrepancy. They have suggested explanations from the thoughtfully complex to the inane: that women prefer Clinton's views on abortion and social issues; that women don't have a sense of Dole as a family man like they have of Clinton; and that women don't identify with Kemp as a sports hero like men do. But the most unfounded explanation for the gap is that women favor Clinton because they are not concerned with economic issues. In one of the most talked-about opinion pieces in the New York Times this election year, Carol Tavris maintains in her Sep- CEP Reveals Potential Future Academic Plan By Erik Huneke & Mandara Meyers Last spring, the Council on Education Policy (CEP) conducted a series of workshops and panels on the long-term educational goals of the College, specifically to determine which areas of the curriculum should be addressed. As a result of those discussions, the CEP has now released a lengthy draft of a report detailing the direction in which academic life at Swarthmore might go in the coming years. The first draft of the report, which appears in its entirety in this week's special Phoenix supplement, is a joint effort between students, faculty, and administration. The idea behind the report is that planning should be done before the College is actually in need of substantial changes. Associate Provost Barry Schwartz, one of the overseers of the project, said, "It often happens that institutions engage in developing a long-range plan when things are in a state of crisis for one reason or another. This almost always leads to bad decisions. Swarthmore is wisely thinking about the future at a time when nothing is broken. If we make changes, it will not be out of desperation."At this point, CEP and Student Council are looking for feedback on the draft, asking whether these truly are the areas which should be addressed. The report does not "recommend that the size of the College be increased or that distribution requirements be changed. What it does do is recommend that these and other issues be given serious consideration," Schwartz said. While Schwartz noted that "almost all of our recommendations for future planning were significantly affected by the student perspective," Seth Harvey '97, a CEP student representative and Student Council member who was involved with the process last spring, has Curriculum Committee Vacancy Finally Filled By Josh Kramer Rachel Henighan wins bid for CC, despite low voter turnout, computer problems Rachel Henighan '97 won the Student Council election for a position on the Curriculum Committee in a marginal victory, receiving 220 (52%) votes in comparison to Lars Jan 'OO, who received only 173 (41%). In addition, there were 31 (7%) abstentions. When asked to comment, Jan said that "The voting system needs to be overhauled.. .there is something egregiously wrong when only thirty percent of the students vote," while Henighan said that she "would consider paper balloting to see if more people would vote." Henighan attributed her victory to a belief the Swarthmore students are "concerned about having more women on Student Council," though she made it clear that with the erratic Swarthmore voting trends, it is uncertain why students voted the way they did. There were, however, a number of irregularities in this contest. First, the voting system went off at midnight on Tuesday, rather than midnight of Wednesday, due to a miscommunication between Student Council and John Speno, UNIX System Manager. In response, the election was extended until 9:00 a.m. Thursday morning. Secondly, on Wednesday afternoon, a number of paper ballots were distributed at Sharpies. The ballots, numbering exactly 100, were split 44 for Jan and 54 for Henighan, consistent with overall results. The paper ballots were then hand counted in front of an observer and cross-checked against the computer voting by Frank Yue, Network Analyst. No instances of double voting were noted by Yue. Alyssa Rayman-Read '99, Student Council Outreach Co-Chair, said "The voting system could be improved if people were sitting and taking paper ballots more of the time." She went on to say that she personally saw no problem with the paper ballots—the taking of ID's at the balloting sites stopped potential vote fraud in her opinion. New 14-Meal Option Receives Mixed Reviews By Christopher DiLeo This summer, returning students were invited to sign up for a new meal plan of 14 meals a week plus a $lOO declining credit balance to be used at either Tarble, Sharpies, or the Kohlberg coffee bar, instead of the standard 20 meal a week plan previously required of all living on campus. 98 students chose this new option. Before this year, Swarthmore offered only one meal plan, which allowed for 20 meals a week. As a first-year, Joe Goodman '97 felt he was getting shortchanged by the old meal plan. Once elected to Student Council, Goodman worked to change the meal plan. "I first found out what other schools were doing. The council and I then had some ideas and we brought them to Larry Schall and Linda McDougall." The result of these discussions was the new 14-meal plan. The new plan aliows a student to eat any 14 meals over the course of a week. They may also spend their $lOO balance if they exceed the amount of meal credit at Tarble. This credit can also be used at the Kohlberg coffee bar. Credit for any meals left by the end of the week are lost, as are any dollars remaining in the balance at the end of the semester. Students who have chosen the option have had mixed reactions. Casey Smith '99, who chose the 14-meal plan this year, said, "It does kind of stink that I am not getting as much as someone on the 20-meal plan." However, Smith pointed out two of the benefits of the 14-meal plan: "I can go to Kohlberg and I can use my credit any time!" John Rieffel '99, however, saw the option as a rip-off. "I did the math and I decided it was better to stick with the 20-meal plan." The math shows that the new plan leaves students with less for their money than the 20-meal plan. Swarthmore charges $3,344 for board per year. With the new plan, students are allotted 448 meals and can use their credit to get about 40 extra meals over the year. Under the 20-meal plan, students can eat 640 meals in a year, while those under the 14-meal plan they only get 488. Goodman pointed out the cause of this disparity: "Basically, Sharpies has a lot of fixed costs, mainly staffing and building maintenance. In order to insure they covered these costs, we had to design a plan that would not remove funds from Sharpies." When the issue was brought up at the plan {Continued on page 2} {Continued on page 2} {Continued on page 2} Swarthmore's Student Newspaper Since 1881 Inside This Week Responses to last week's athletics editorial... See Opinions, pages 3 & 4 Katie Menzer's guide for freshmen... See Features, page 5 A look at Sharpies food art., See Arts & Leisure, page 6 Homecoming 1996... See Sports, page 8
---------- Page 2 ----------
dicative of the differences in economic status between men and women. Women are much more likely than men to find themselves raising children alone, taking care of elderly parents, or worrying about losing their jobs because of workplace discrimination. They are thus more likely to favor government assistance programs, because these programs are answers to problems that they have. This year, the most important issue of the election for women and men is the economy. For women, the runner-up issues are education and health care. But for men, the budget deficit and tax policy finish second. In this environment, the Dole/Kemp campaign will need to offer more to women voters than their 15 percent tax cut. Kemp's address on Tuesday and other recent efforts to get the Republican message out to women have been targeted at white suburban mothers who voted Republican in the past. Yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, Clinton leads Dole among these women right now 59 percent-31 percent. expressed concern that the report does not sufficiently reflect all issues proposed by students. Harvey notes that this draft of the report represents an improvement over the first. He applauds the focus on interculturalism in the curriculum, taking student interest into account when deciding how to expand the curriculum, reevaluating distribution requirements, and developing community-based learning. Provost Jennie Keith echoed Harvey's enthusiasm about community-based learning, saying "we really need to lmow there are faculty interested in doing this." The approval for such courses, once developed, "is something that could happen quite quickly," Keith said. Yet Harvey noted that "the faculty were generous enough to sanction a study of their own workload and the pressures imposed upon their time," but placed "a section swiping at student workload" in a portion of the report devoted to the teacher-scholar. Harvey believed that "at the very least, this is an awkward position which results from the late addition of this paragraph and lack of a clearly defined agenda in relation to stress and student work load." Harvey also felt that the section dealing with the size of the College dealt with concerns about size of the faculty without considering the effect of increased size on other aspects of the academic program. He said, "Increasing the size of the College also invariably affects the way in which programs are administered to meet students' needs. Departments need to increase not just in numbers of faculty but also in the breadth of offerings to accommodate more diverse intellectual needs that result from more students." Schwartz believed that students' views were taken into account. "Concern about evaluating and perhaps reshaping distribution requirements was in part in response to student concern that the College make clear what it is that we think students are learning. Our concern about improving mechanisms that permit curricular flexibility and innovation was in direct response to student concern about these issues. Our worry about faculty work load was in part a reflection of our desire to increase student opportunities to work closely with faculty. Our discussion of community-based learning was in part a response to student enthusiasm for that aspect of our curriculum. Our discussion of possible procedures for review of faculty was prompted by student concern that current mechanisms for feedback to faculty about their courses are inadequate." Schwartz feels the discrepancy over student involvement arises from the fact that "students who read the report may not always recognize issues they raised as addressed directly, because in the course of our discussion, some of them were transformed a bit, but they are all in here." As everything in the report is still only a recommendation, more serious work lies ahead. The faculty will begin discussing the report at their faculty meeting this Friday in order to determine which issues should become topics for serious planning. Student Council and the student CEP representatives have organized a meeting to this end which will take place on Thursday, October 10 at 4:30 p.m. in Parrish Parlors. -ning meetings, Goodman recalls, it was jokingly stated that without a steady source of income, Sharpies would have to "serve peanut butter and jelly the last few weeks of school." Linda McDougal, director of Dining Services, said, "The plan was designed for people who don't eat breakfast. It was designed to be an option, hot a bargain. I have only heard positive feedback, though, and I think the program will continue." Goodman also feels there will be more changes in the future: "Once this [current meal plan debate] blows over, someone will realize they don't like the meal plans and devise a newer one. I feel that, given the circumstances, we have developed the best program." Sunny Lee '99 also has mixed feelings about the new meal plan, in which she is enrolled. "I' m not sure it really makes a difference," she said. "I thought it'd be more convenient because I'm not near the eating areas," said Lee, who lives in Woolman. Kim Nelson '9B, also on the new plan, has no passionate feelings about it. She signed up for the new plan because "I find it annoying to be in Tarble and be a quarter over and eat less because I had no money on me." She considers herself neither "displeased or greatly thrilled by" the new meal plan, although she is "glad that they have a choice. I am not sure that this is a great one." Those on the 14 meal plan seem undecided as to whether they will continue with the new option. "Next year I'm actually wondering if I am going to do it again because it doesn't seem to make a difference," says Lee. NEWS News Briefs CBC Loosens Confidentiality Standards According to Sean Barney '9B, Student Council's representative to the College Budget Committee, the CBC will soon be loosening its confidentiality standards, partially due to last year's student protests over decreases in financial aid. Barney said that there will be open discussions during two periods—tentatively scheduled for October 31 to November 7, regarding revenue sources and financial aid expenditures, and from January 17 to February 6, regarding the entire tentative budget at that point. Barney is still unsure whether or not exact information will be released to the public, or if only general answers will be allowed under the new rules. Barney said it was decided by the committee that he "[could] go into details with your constituents [during the public periods]," though he was unsure if he would be allowed to release the budget to the student body or give out any numerical figures from the tentative budget. Raptor Fails and Condor Crashes On September 23, Raptor, the College's main World Wide Web server, unexpectedly crashed when its motherboard failed. Since then, the Swarthmore College Computing Society (SCCS) has been working to replace Raptor with a new machine. "[When we] attempted to determine exactly what the problem was," explained SCCS President Ross Dickson '97, "it was determined that Raptor was dead and we started planning." The following Sunday evening, the 29th, SCCS representatives met with Budget Committee and were granted money to buy a Gateway Pentium 200, which will be installed over October break and named after SCCS policy board elections, being held this week, are completed. In the meantime, Web pages have been stored on Condor. Raptor's original crash also caused Condor to crash, though service was restored after about eight hours. Condor has crashed twice since then—once on Sunday morning and once on Sunday evening because of problems accessing files that were formerly on Raptor. Students Lack Interest in Committees By Wendy Kemp Last year, the Student Council petitioned the administration for more student involvement on various college committees, and their efforts were successful. However, it is with great reluctance that the fruits of those labors are tasted, as only a small number of Swarthmore students wish to get involved this year. Many organizations have vacant spots for students this year: the Student Budget Committee allocates the money from the Student Activities Fund among the various groups on campus; the Intercollegiate Exchange is involved in the process of sending Swarthmore students abroad to other colleges, and bringing students here from other colleges. Positions in Computing Services, helping to oversee the computing centers on campus, are also available, as are several other positions on helping to formulate policy concerning alcohol use on campus. For those interested in sports, there are openings in the P. E. and Athletics Committee, evaluating fitness programs, sports programs, and facilities. The Admissions, Library and Equal Opportunity Advisory Committees also have openings. However, a lack of desire to participate became increasingly evident as the Wednesday, October 2 deadline of 12:00 a.m. came and went. Some of this lack of interest can be attributed to the time requirements and the commitment they take, which tends to scare off possible applicants. Another reason is the importance students attach to each of the respective committees. "The reason I think that the Student Budget Committee received so few applications this semester is due in large part to the College Budget Committee positions that were available," said Andrew Lund '99, who is in charge of appointments for Student Council. "Given the choice, more people choose the committee with more perceived importance." Another large factor contributing for the lack of applicants. "People have so much work to do [for classes] that they are very cautious in committing to another...activity," said Lund. One freshman agreed. "When I first came here, I wanted to get involved in so many things," she said. "And a lot of these committees sounded like the perfect thing for me. But once my classes started to pick up, the idea went right out the windowwindow along with most of my free time!" Finally, false perceptions also have a hand in the issue. Students have been disgruntled in the past because of their lack of representation in these groups, and many do not believe that much of a difference can be made. "There is often a perception that many committees are not important," said Lund, "in that they don't have any say in changing things. This 'say', or lack thereof, is attributable to the fact that we've had so few students on these committees in the past." Now that the allocated student positions on these committees have increased, it is hoped that participation, as well as their perceived importance, will increase. But whether or not it occurs, one thing is evident to Lund: "We now have a greater student voice able to be heard." Telephone Policies Change By Jonathan Reed New billing policy enacted, rates lowered in response to survey In response to results obtained from last semester's telecommunications survey, the College has implemented several changes to the telephone calling rates and billing policies. The survey indicated that students wanted lower long distance rates and toll-free calling to the Bryn Mawr and Haverford area, and the College responded. According to Mark Dumic, manager of networking and systems, the time period for the least-expensive long distance rate has been extended to begin at 9 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. and the rate has been dropped from $0.14 to $0.12 per minute. In addition, calls to Bryn Mawr and Haverford are now free. Local calling within the 610 and 215 area codes has also been simplified with the introduction of a standard rate that varies only with time of day rather than both time of day and distance called. Long-distance invoices are now sent via e-mail, with a paper remittance page that follows through campus mail. Said D6sir6e Joseph '99, "I'm very pleased with STC. I've never had a problem with their service."However, some students reported problems with receipt of e-mail invoices and remittance pages. This has made it more difficult for affected students to keep track of their outstanding account balances. STC Services, which provides billing and telecommunications help desk services for the College, is supposed to notify students when their balances reach 75 percent of the credit limit. Credit limits have also been simplified with the introduction of a single $ 100 limit. Students who have a Parents Plus Account, however, should be aware that this $lOO limit applies to the balance of both accounts. Thus, for some students with a Parents Plus Account, the $ 100 limit may in effect be a 44 percent reduction in credit limit. Students may establish a higher balance limit by securing a deposit with STC Services. Similar to last year, students may check their account balances by dialing extension 2035; however, students have noted that the balances reported at this automated number are often far from their true balances. Many students remember the billing crisis that plagued STC Services last year and some even refuse to use the College long distance service at all. Says Jason Linder '97, "I use Sprint to make all my long distance calling. It's cheaper, more convenient, and they fulfill all of their service obligations."The College has also increased the amount of time in which students may pay their telephone bills. Last year, payments were due within 14 days of the invoice date, but this year students have 21 days to pay their bills. In an effort to increase communication, a representative from STC will be on campus in Parrish Parlors once every billing period to help resolve any outstanding billing and customer service concerns. STC will be available for questions and discussion in Parrish Parlors this Friday form 10:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Although it appears STC may be attempting to be more communicative with students, repeated calls to STC for comments on billing problems were not returned in time for inclusion in this article. On another issue of concern last semester, Dumic notes that the College is now in full compliance with the Equal Access Regulation imposed by the FCC. The College now provides access to other long distance carriers through the use of 10-XXX-0 dialing with the use of a calling card. Still, said Jason Albright '99, "S warthmore College is contributing to a communications monopoly, such as it is. I think it is highly unethical and un-American." College Budget Balanced By Savitri Monga The Board of Managers had extra hurdles to overcome this year with the increased size of the first-year class. Every year, the Board meets to discuss the allocation of College finances. This year it faced quite a few complications. The financial aid expenditure increased by $419,000 due to the larger than expected need of the class of 2000. In addition to this, increased demand for foreign study programs initiated a $68,000 hike above the original allocated amount. Despite these challenges, the Board was able to come up with all additional needed funds. Higher interest rates yielded an additional $lOO,OOO to the expected income from the College's endowment. At the same time, the stable medical coverage program employed by the College paid off and there was a drop in fringe costs by $50,000. According to President Al Bloom, the College has $500,000 in a contingency fund, which is built into the budget each year, so there was "sufficient money...to cover this extra cost." 52 percent of the current first-year class is receiving some form of financial aid, as opposed to 47 percent of the class of 1999. The average College scholarship for first-years now is $ 17,061 and the average total package, inclusive of loans and workstudy, is $21,457. This is an increase from last year, when the average Swarthmore scholarship for firstyears was $14,505 and the average total package was $19,359. These figures clearly show that despite the increase in the population of the student body , the College is continuing to financially support students who demonstrated financial need. According to the student observer, Josh Alloy '9B, the board seems to be committed to meeting the financial needs of students and does not want the question of financial aid to interfere with any future expansion plans. The additional revenue from the increase in the first-year class size was also used to fund lounges and dorm room conversions. At the same time, the board reserved funds for when the student enrollment level falls bellow the expected level. The Board also discussed future plans and the role of alumni. Currently, 52 percent of alumni contribute to the College; the Board hopes to raise this percentage to 60 percent. Furthermore, the Board hopes for increased alumni involvement in helping graduates find jobs. A video was shown at the meeting in which President Al Bloom was interviewed on future expansion plans. The President spoke about the "special qualities of a small liberal arts education." When asked, Alloy said that the President's ideas "jive very well with what the students feel. We would prefer to keep Swarthmore small and a close community." Bloom, Lythcott Hear Students By Jessica Harbour On Thursday, members of the student body at large and Student Council met with President Al Bloom and Dean Ngina Lythcott in Parrish Parlors for a question-and-answer session. The ensuing hour and a half featured discussion of financial aid, the College's size, future construction and renovation projects, and changes to the recycling program. Bloom noted that because of the need to provide financial aid, "the likelihood is that... bringing in more students will be a financial disadvantage." He and Lythcott also addressed the current bulge in student body population, attributing it to three factors: the high number of firstyear students who accepted the College's offer of admission, the low number of admitted students who decided not to attend Swarthmore over the summer, and the fact that 25 percent fewer students than usual chose foreign study this semester. "I'm very conflicted...as to the size of the College," said Bloom, "[but] the next plan is to go back to 1325 students." Students came to the meeting wishing to discuss specific issues. Dan Wells '95, on a return visit, was worried about the current pressure on the Biology Department: "Even though they have two more professors than engineering, they have four times the number of students." Bloom responded by explaining that the "in" department changes from time to timesometimes biology, sometimes English or psychology or economics—so no major measures have been taken to add to the Biology Department, though at least one part-time position has been converted to a full-time tenure-track position. Libby Tyndale '97 and Amy Dal ton '9B wanted more priority given to dorm upkeep; they saw a discrepancy between the amount of money and care spent on the building and furnishing of Kohlberg and the attention given dorm renovations. In response, Bloom pointed out that Kohlberg had been paid for by donors' money rather than out of the College's budget, but he and Lythcott also acknowledged the need for renovations in Mary Lyon and Worth especially. At the very end of the meeting, Carl Mas '9B brought up the issue of the new recycling program and a possible composting program. 2 The Phoenix October 4, 1996 CEP Issue Report {Continued from page 1} Election '96: Gender Gap {Continued from page 1} New Meal Plan: Mixed Response {Continued from page 1} LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER! MINORITY CAREER FORUM NEW YORK November 15,1996 The Grand Hyatt Hotel New York, New York EXTENDED REGISTRATION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 11,1996 TO REGISTER and be eligible for interviews, send or fax your one-page resume with 3 industry preferences on the back to: Crimson & Brown Associates 201 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02139 (617)\577-7790 phone (617)577-7799 fax Free transportation & admission for all minority Juniors & Seniors! Partial List of Employers: Abt Associates Inc. American Express IRS Co. Andersen Consulting. Bear. Stearns & Co. The Boston Consulting Group. Ernst & Young LLP. Fidelity Investments. General Mills. Goldman Sachs Equities Division. J.P. Morgan & Co. Leo Burnett. Merrill Lynch, Monitor Company. Oracle Corporation. SBC Warburg. Towers Perrin, Ziff-Davis Publishing plus many more!
---------- Page 3 ----------
OPINIONS CEP report: where to go from here The new draft of the CEP report raises a number of issues that we feel should be addressed further. Many of the changes that the CEP report proposes are more geared toward faculty and adminstration instead of students, but the CEP must recognize that certain of its proposals will have powerful impacts on student life. As long as CEP realizes that these policies should not be implemented without significant student feedback and dialogue, we see no problem with them. They will only become a problem if there is no debate over them and they are merely accepted by CEP as a matter of course. This second draft already shows a clear improvement over the first in terms of acknowledging student priorities. Clearly, the input from student CEP representatives did already make a difference. In order for the report to truly reflect the students of the College, their voices must continue to be heard. And, their voices will be heard more loudly and more clearly if they are affirmed by a larger percentage of the student body. The bottom line is that students need to read and discuss the CEP report. This document gives us an “official” view of what Swarthmore should be. If students don’t like it, here’s a chance to say so. You’re being provided with the means to criticize the way the College is deciding its future. Use it wisely. Why we like Myrt Every year, Myrt Westphal, director of residential life, receives a number of visits, e-mail messages and phone calls. Unfortunately for Myrt, who is one of the most important and least acknowledged people on campus, the majority of the contact she has with students is directly related to problems—complaints about less than ideal living situations (Mary Lyon basement rooms, in particular), issues about lottery numbers and room selection, and tirades about the frustration of living with incompatible roommate(s). Yet Myrt never hears from the rest of us, most of whom have never stepped into her office or even spoken to her. This means that she doesn’t hear about students who opt to stay with their freshman year roommate for one or two more years. Nor does she hear from first-years who find their new best friend in their next door neighbor. She doesn’t hear what an amazing reassurance it is for the majority of first-years to have a normal, friendly roommate with whom they can actually envision sharing their precious personal space. Nor is Myrt ever properly thanked by those people whose room changes she does grant. Myrt turns those dreaded Mary Lyon basement doubles into on-campus singles, converts Willets closet singles into full-size singles, and works magic in converting spaces like the Danawell lounges into luxurious freshmen doubles with a view of the Crum. What Myrt does hear about is those things that are completely out of her control. Dramatic increases in the size of the student body are not her doing, but she is the one who is responsible for taking care of the repercussions. Living situations this year may not be perfect, but Myrt miraculously found housing for everyone. Since Myrt only hears from us when we are disgruntled, upset, and potentially homeless, we would like to thank her at this calmer time of year for all of the neat things she has done. Myrt, we think you’re pretty cool. Thank you. A clarification of our policies In case you haven’t noticed, this semester our editorial board is composed of representatives from the student body as a whole, in addition to members of our staff. Our goal in creating this board is to ensure that the editorials in this column reflect the views not only of Phoenix staff members, but of a broader segment of the community. All of the editorial board’s members take responsibility for the opinions expressed in our unsigned editorials. We’d also like to reiterate our long-standing policies on conflicts of interest, on anonymous sources and unsigned letters to the editor. The writers of news articles are not permitted to have any substantial interest in the story other than the interest any reasonable student would have. This means, for example, that officers and active members of campus groups may not write news stories about those groups; that writers may not profile their roommates; and that individuals who participated in a campus event may not write about that event. This policy applies with varying degrees of strictness to sections other than news. In general, editors of the sports, features, and arts & leisure sections are required to make a good-faith effort to find disinterested writers before allowing individuals with a conflict of interest to write any story. By nature of the section, the opinions section does not have a conflict of interest policy, but conflicts of interest are always clearly disclosed in the writer biographies at the bottom of each article. The Phoenix only uses anonymous sources when the information has been confirmed by at least two sources, the story is of overwhelming public importance, and the sources requesting anonymity can expect severe consequences should their identities become known. The identities of anonymous sources must be known to the reporter and at least one editor. Our policy on unsigned letters to the editor is similar. Ordinarily, letters to the editor must be signed. Where the interest of the community is best served by publication of a letter, but the writer can expect severe consequences should his or her identity become known, we will consider withholding the writer’s name. However, the writer’s identity must in all cases be known to the editors, so we can confirm that anonymity is required and that the letter is not a hoax. The Phoenix is published weekly, except during examination and vacation periods, by the students of Swarthmore College. Community submissions are welcome; please contact the appropriate section editor before submitting anything other than a letter to the editors. The Phoenix reserves the right to edit all material for length and clarity. Letters and opinions articles represent the views of their authors, and not necessarily those of The Phoenix or its staff. Unsigned editorials represent the views of The Phoenix as determined by its editorial board; they do not necessarily represent the views of any individual staff member. Editorial and business offices: Parrish Hall, Room 472. Mailing address: The Phoenix, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081. Telephone: (610) 328-8172. E-mail: phoenix@swarthmore.edu. Online edition: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/phoenix/. Distributed free to the students, faculty and staff of Swarthmore College. Off-campus subscriptions: $22 per semester, $40 per year. Advertising rates available upon request. Printed by Press Publishing Co., Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Letters to the Editor Herbivores Decry the Vilification of Vegetarianism as a Bastion of Elitism To the Editor, We are wondering what provoked Brian Gobin's editorial "Vegetarian Elites?" in last week's issue of The Phoenix. In addition to coming out of nowhere, the editorial was filled with misconceptions and displayed the ignorance on which the author based his opinions. Gobin directs his editorial at "the many Americans who made the choice to stop eating meat in moral protest against the abuses to animals." The image of vegetarians as snobby, cappucino-toting, bleeding-heart moralists seems to be the prime motivation of his tirade against vegetarianism. The main argument seems to be that a) vegetarians are vegetarians only because of moral scruples concerning cows and chickens; b) in place of meat, vegetarians eat only vegetables; c) these vegetables—"just about everything in the produce aisle"—are handpicked, generally by nonwhite, uneducated workers with few opportunities; and d) by eating vegetables, vegetarians are supporting these unfair labor practices. He laments the conditions of a world in which dairy cows live in an "idyllic scene" with plenty of grass and open space and in which the standard of living of U.S. citizens, agricultural workers in particular, seems less important than that of livestock. First of all, should our societyvegetarians and meat-eaters alike— eliminate consumption of vegetables to avoid exploitation of crop pickers? And second of all, what is the source of this information? Most livestock in the U.S. is raised not in idyllic pastures but in large indoor factory farms. Concerning vegetable production, when one considers that the average farm size has increased from family farms to industrial farms and that the rise of technology has resulted in a decrease in human employment in the agriculture industry, it seems odd that migrant workers have a veritable monopoly over all of the produce in the grocery store. Gobin fights not only for the rights of the migrant -worker, but also for vegetables: "Who advocates for the well-being of tomatoes? Vegetables are really marginalized in this society." Attempts at humor in the form of statements like this and the assertion that "only three brain cells and a lot of feathers distinguish a chicken from an unusually large eggplant" mask the reasons underlying many people's choice to become vegetarians. Perhaps it isn't obvious to Gobin that the plant and animal kingdoms differ in more ways than feathers and brain cells, most notably in terms of trophic level and growth. Because of this difference, crop plants yield food more quickly and with less input of resources than your average Elsie, the cow. A vegetarian diet consumes less energy, water, forest land, and topsoil than a meat-eater's diet does, as well as using fewer pesticides. In fact, approximately one third of the total amount of all raw materials used for all purposes in the U.S. goes to the production of meat, dairy products, and eggs. Though Gobin claims that most middle-class American vegetarianism is driven by moral reasons and that "vegetable elites divert attention from genuine social problems to the silly fashions of a group with little else to worry about," consumption of animal products encourages inefficient distribution of food. Approximately one-third of the world's grain production is fed to livestock. It takes about two pounds of grain to produce a pound of chicken, four pounds to produce one pound of pork, and eight pounds to produce one pound of beef. Approximately 90 percent of the protein, 96 percent of the calories, 100 percent of the fiber, and 100 percent of the carbohydrates we invest as feed in our livestock is lost to human consumption. Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council has estimated that if U.S. citizens would reduce their meat consumption by 10 percent, it would free over 12 million tons of grain annually for human consumption. It is ironic that the "silly fashions" of the vegetarian "elites" could help to lessen the barriers between the elite and the hungry. Gobin seems to pit vegetarianism and social conscience against each other. He proposes that raising domesticated animals in agricultural warehouses makes it possible for low income households to consume more animal products, when it is actually tax-funded government subsidization of the agricultural industry which keeps consumer prices low. Furthermore, social injustice is, unfortunately, an aspect of almost any form of consumption, including consumption of meat or of vegetables. If social concerns are on one's list of priorities, the following tidbits may be helpful. First, factory farms of livestock are designed to minimize human labor, resulting in low employment as well as in the energy-intensive processes we already touched on. Second, the use of farm land to grow food for cattle pushes the price and availability of foods formerly grown in a region beyond the reach of many of the local people. Third, some native rainforest tribes are being wiped out completely by destruction of their habitat for grazing land for livestock. Fourth, the turnover rate among slaughterhouse workers is one of the highest among any occupation in the country, yet Gobin does not decry a non vegetarian diet as exploiting unskilled, underprivileged laborers. No, we are not endorsing vegetarianism as a magical cure-all. We are simply saying that vegetarians are not evil and are not all misled. Gobin objects to the phenomenon in which "vegetarians mistakenly (emphasis added) place a lot of moral significance on the lives of really dumb domesticated animals." How can one person justifiably label another person' s morals as mistakes? We are not saying that vegetarians take the high moral road while meat-eaters burn in hell, but we wonder how an editorial writer is authorized to make blanket statements assigning values to others' morals. Gobin's narrow assignment of morals as the force that motivates most vegetarians ignores the other aspects of vegetarianism, which we have briefly laid out in this letter. We hope that the factual and logical errors in "Vegetarian Elites?" were blatant enough that the article was laughed at, but if the article was taken seriously, we hope we have cleared that confusion. —Jessica Alwes Howington '9B David Reese '99 Meredith Hegg 'OO "Diversity" Includes Respect for Athletes To the Editors, This past week, an extremely disturbing article appeared on the pages of The Phoenix's Opinion page. The short sidebar entitled "The true value of intercollegiate sports" is by far one of the most ignorant opinion pieces that I have ever witnessed in this newspaper. I began reading the article with such high hopes. Both the title and the opening paragraph seemed to be an effort to finally give varsity sports the recognition that they so desperately deserve. Unfortunately, from there on out this editorial turned decidedly sour. I sincerely wish that there was one part of the ensuing article that I agreed with or even found to be grounded in some sort of common sense, but sadly there wasn't. The author(s) of this editorial obviously show no respect towards Swarthmore College's student-athletes. It was first stated that while some believe that "our athletes' choice to participate is grounded in free will," others (such as The Phoenix's editorial board) believe that the issue of recruitment proves this statement false. God forbid that any Swarthmore student do an extracurricular activity because we like it. We play these sports for the pure love and enjoyment of the game. Student athletes in no way feel "obligated to play." It is the thrill of competition, the challenge, and yes, even the "cathartic potential" of sport which drives us to play intercollegiate athletics, and not the idea that we must because it is expected of us. Another shocking statement located in the very same paragraph is that during the recruiting period "the student-athlete's perception of campus life and classes is filtered through the coach and the athletes he or she stays with." Is this statement meaning to say that our view of the campus is not a worthy or significant one? Is the non-athletic impression of campus the only one? While our perception of campus life and classes may be different than those Swatties who do not participate in athletics, it is still worthwhile one, and we are students at this school as much as any other. If we were to listen to the Editorial Board's claims, one would think that athletes are a subjugated minority here at Swat whose views simply do not matter. The claim that we skew any prospective student's view of the college is completely foolish. Yet the overall theme of this editorial involves a greater issue. In the editorial board's article, they speak of positive aspects of Swarthmore and in it they mention "top-notch teaching to a diverse student body." The fact of the matter is that if Swarthmore College did not attempt to recruit student-athletes, you would have a campus which would be anything but diverse. Although this statement cannot be left alone, because many S watties tend to have the wrong idea of the word diversity. Where does diversity stop? Di versity' s definition is a simple one: difference, variety. Although here at Swat, you are led to believe that the definition is slightly skewed. For many here, diversity is just a number which tells us how "multicultural" the campus is. The problem with this is that diversity is not just a matter of ethnic variety, but also of things such as ideology or sociology. This is all too often something that is overlooked at Swarthmore. The editorial board's suggestion that recruitment of student-athletes be limited will severely hurt this diversity which so many cry out for daily. Also, if someone should question the "unnecessary expenditures" involved in recruitment, should I not merely retort that the "outreach" programs of various ethnic groups on campus should come into question as well? That, however, would be as ludicrous as the implication made in last week's editorial. In closing, let me address one more issue which came up in last week's article. In it, the author(s) state that because of the recruiting process, athletics is taking precedence over academics. Nothing can be farther from the truth. It has been my sincere pleasure to play sports alongside some of the most "socially conscious and academically talented students" on this campus. However, the editorial board feels that Swarthmore's main priority should be sending "enlightened and talented individuals into the world." The article suggests that athletics is not helping this goal, but hindering it. To that I must reply that it is because of the presence of dedicated studentathletes that Swarthmore College is accomplishing the above goal with ease. To quote directly from last week's editorial: "While it is counterproductive to gloat about our number one ranking, we should remember what the award signifies." With that it seems that the editorial board has summed up my argument precisely. Think about it. In the meantime, I'll be at practice. —Alex Lundry '99 Sports are Part of Our Ranking, and Our Pride To the Editors, Upon reading the editorial in last week's Phoenix entitled, "The True Value of Intercollegiate Sports," we wondered whether the author seriously believed his/her argument or was simply attempting to generate discussion. Supposing the latter, such conversation has indeed been generated among many students. The author stated that "Ideally intercollegiate sports at an academically challenging institution like Swarthmore provide students a healthy outlet from social pressure and the rigors of study." He/she concluded that at Swarthmore, athletics are an added stress because they take up as much time as a class. The argument continued that recruitment is an unnecessary expenditure and that students who are recruited feel obligated to play. The author went on to say that athletics should not dominate over academics and suggested that all sports be intramural in order to prevent this from happening. We are shocked that such a view might be held by anyone on this campus and would like to respond. We believe that intercollegiate athletics at Swarthmore do provide a healthy outlet from academic rigors. Intercollegiate sports can be stressful but it is a different sort of stress, one that we find energizing rather than draining. Not only are sports fun, but they also provide valuable life skills. Athletes learn what it means to be a leader, to set goals and to achieve them, to work in a group towards a common end, and how to lead a balanced life. One team contains a variety of personalities and athletes learn to appreciate and depend on others who are not like themselves. We are not sure what experience the author has had with recruitment or why he/she feels we are spending too much money on recruitment, but clearly Swarthmore is not a big athletic magnet. There is no athlete here who does not have the academic credentials to be a Swarthmore student. Furthermore, if Swarthmore were in financial trouble, there are many other budgetary items that could be cut without the negative effect that cutting recruitment budgets would cause. Recruiting at Swarthmore never results in a scholarship or even a binding agreement. Students play intercollegiate sports because they want to and because they enjoy it, not because they feel forced to' do it. Intramural sports are fun, but for many students they dp not provide as rewarding an experience as varsity and club sports do. Competition is healthy, as is intercollegiate rivalry. Anyone who has been to a Swarthmore-Haverford basketball game can attest to the amount of energy and school spirit in the gym. Intercollegiate sports provide entertainment for athletes and non-athletes alike. Part of the U.S. News and World Report ranking considers student satisfaction and extra-curricular activites. If we had only intramural sports, Swarthmore would not be ranked number one. We would like to take this argument one step further and claim not only that sports are not taken "too seriously" at Swat, but that they are not taken seriously enough. The author contends that athletics shouldn't take precedence over academics. This is clearly not the case at a school where varsity athletes show up late to practices and games because of classes or labs. In fact, sports should be taken more seriously than they currently are. Swarthmore does not stand for mediocrity in any aspect of campus life with the exception of athletics. This is unfair and unjustifiable. We need to field more winning teams and fill the stands with more students and professors. Overall, student-athletes deserve more respect. We work as hard in the classroom as everyone else and then work hard on the field everyday. By writing this editorial, you have offended approximately 33% of the student body. This is just another illustration of the lack of respect studentathletes receive on this campus. —Dana Lehman '9B MichelleWalsh '9B Neite Witgert '97 Varsity Athletics are Not Detrimental to Swat To the Editor, In your disturbing and misinformed September 27 editorial, "The True Value of Intercollegiate Sports," you state two main problems with athletics at Swarthmore. These are undue pressures placed on students through recruitment, and financial strain caused by resources devoted to athletics rather than other areas. First of all, you imply that the pressures placed on students by coaches during recruiting and then as studentathletes to continue playing is overwhelming. This is simply not true. Any athlete can name several players who were highly recruited but decided not to play once they came here. Coaches here understand that academics come first, or they lose their positions and their players. It is condescending and arrogant to assume that we, the athletes, cannot make intelligent and difficult decisions in prioritizing our lives. Should we eliminate The Phoenix because it is stressing out the editorial board? Believe me, we are not concerned with producing "the next Michel Jordan," or with being number one at all costs. Perhaps the editors could spend more time talking with athletes and less time watching shoe commercials when forming a basis for their next article.You imply that Swarthmore is crumbling under the crushing burden of recruitment costs, citing postage, home visits and phone calls. Well, it's an easy accusation for you to make given that The Phoenix neglected to cite a single fact in this article, let alone investigate the athletics budget. I would be shocked if the total expenditure of the Athletic Department on mailings and phone calls was more than a negligible part of the Swarthmore budget. Furthermore, October 4, 1996 The Phoenix 3 Edltors-ln-Chlef Publisher Erik Huneke & Mandara Meyers Sam Schulhofer-Wohl Night Editor News Editors Fred Bush Opinions Editors Tony Sturm & Erica Turner Tobie Barton & Sarah Pheasant Arts & Leisure Editors Features Editors lan Bricke & Aarti Iyer Kirstin Lindermayer & Elizabeth Weber Sports Editor Photo Editors Election '96 Editor Jennifer Chen & Diana Hunt & Susan Hunt Sylvia Weedman Assistant Jane Liu Jessica Harbour, Josh Kramer, David Lischer & Lynda Yankaskas Editorial Board Fred Bush, Mark Charette, Erik Huneke, Amy Mai Hope, Mandara Meyers, Tamala Montgomery & Sam Schulhofer-Wohl Advertising Manager Circulation Manager Leslie Hermsdorf Patrice Harper {Continued on Page 4)
---------- Page 4 ----------
you assume that recruiting athletes is done for the sole purpose of "fielding successful teams," and then imply that this takes precedence over recruiting "socially conscious and academically talented individuals." Again, you are writing about something which you obviously know nothing about. Athletics does not take precedence over, or substitute for academic excellence— the phrase "student-athlete" is not an oxymoron. A campus with no serious athletes is a campus lacking in diversity. We resent the idea that athletics has nothing to offer to Swarthmore, especially given our unusually high participation rate. Division 111 sports offers a less all-sacrificing yet still intense experience for athletes of varying skill levels and backgrounds. Giving that up would mean sacrificing an essential element in the liberal arts education. I will not imply that athletic budgets, or even athletics in general should be exempt from scrutiny. However, the next time The Phoenix wishes to investigate this issue, I beg that it be given some thought, and be backed up with hard evidence rather than speculations and rumors. —Peter Hamilton '97 Ben Henwood '97 Aaron Hultgren '9B Solution to Parking To the Editor, "Solutions to Car Crisis" on the Opinions page (Sept. 20 issue) surprised me greatly in that there was no mention of the environmental impact of the expansion of parking facilities on "our beautiful campus." Nor was there any mention of other possible solutions, such as car pooling and petitioning for improvement of SEPTA service. Surely there must be a more creative and environmentally friendly solution to parking problems than to pour more concrete on campus. How about driving less? -A Swat Parent (Nancy Hilgendorf) Athletics Are Essential To the Editor, I have learned that anyone who begins a discussion of athletics with acknowledgement of the "stress release" provided by participation has no appreciation for the essence of athletics, which is competition. As such the editorial of September 27th was fundamentally flawed, as the writers demonstrated at the outset that they have no knowledge of why Swarthmore athletes play their sports or what they gain from playing. To be fair and accurate, a cost/benefit analysis must be based on an acknowledgement of the benefits. It is instructive to remember that intercollegiate athletics in America are a unique phenomenon. They began in the late 19th Century because students felt that academics, chapel and the other activities available on campus were insufficient. At Swarthmore and other colleges, students desired acompetitive avenue and chafed at the control professors exerted over their life. Beginning with baseball and football they challenged students at other schools to contests in which a score was kept and the object was to win. Had they merely wanted to "relieve stress" they would not have chosen these games. Athletes at S warthmore are like their 19th century counterparts in that they play for the love of the game and the challenge of competition, not for a scholarship or a chance at a professional athletic career; they are true amateurs. The authors criticize the expense and effort of recruiting student-athletes to Swarthmore. Our coaches recruit as a necessary means to the end of providing our players a healthy competitive experience. Simply put, a student who wants to play basketball deserves the chance to play with enough other talented players that she has a chance to win. Going 1-22 is not as healthy and educational an experience as going 13-12 or 22-1. Since all our recruiting is done under the guidelines set by the Administration and within the spirit of a college dedicated to academic excellence it does not nothing to debase the academic or social atmosphere here. Attacking recruiting is a common tactic for a critic who disagrees with the end to which the recruiting aims. Rush Limbaugh and his kin attack colleges for recruiting minorities and utilizing affirmative action because they disagree with the end goal of a diverse campus. In discussing athletics at Swarthmore the focus should be the value of competitive sports to the athlete. Hundreds of current Swarthmore students and thousands of Swarthmore alumni can accurately testify that, while the core of their education occurred in the classroom and the library, they also learned important lessons about themselves and about working in a group environment from the fields and courts of intercollegiate competition. In teaching these lessons, intramural games and fitness workouts are no substitute for the challenge of intercollegiate athletics. -KarlMiran, Head Football Coach This Isn't Dr. Seuss, It's Modern Genocide By J. Carew Kraft & Mark Charette If we don't know the money interests behind the aluminum can we are holding to our lips or the rubber soles beneath our feet, we will always be unconscious oppressors.The scheme sounds like a Theater of the Absurd storyline: a college kid guzzling Pepsi at a Union 76 gas station is the cause behind thousands of deaths in a remote Southeast Asian country. But it isn’t. It’s multi-national mayhem in Myanmar. Say what? Myanmar is the new name for Burma, a country the size of Texas situated between India and Thailand, currently ruled by a brutal military regime. This dictatorship, which seized power in 1988 by violently smashing a pro-democracy movement, is known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or (by its Seussian acronym) SLORC. Human rights groups like Amnesty International have charged this regime with one of the worst human rights records in the world. International awareness has placed substantial pressure upon the SLORC and its supporters, but its rule continues unabated as the regime harbors thousands of political prisoners, executes democratic leaders, implements the use of rape as a military tactic, and forces indigenous Burmese into slave labor. After a pseudodemocratic election in 1990, SLORC quelled the majorityelected National League for Democracy party by imprisoning all of the elected officials and placing the elected president, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest. In need of cash and a respectable image to uphold its totalitarian validity, SLORC solicited multi-national corporations to join business ventures with collaborating Burmese entrepreneurs in the early 90’s. As a result, companies like Reebok, Levi-Strauss, Heineken, PepsiCo and Eddie Bauer flocked to the “underdeveloped” nation to capitalize on low-risk investments secured by forced labor. Oil giants Texaco and Unocal joined with the French oil company Total in a project to construct an oil pipeline across Burma’s remaining rainforest, where thousands of indigenous tribes live. These tribes have been dislocated in the pipeline’s wake and a civil war waged by SLORC has pushed many villagers into slave labor constructing the pipeline. Through monetary and commercial support, multi-nationals are directly financing the unconscionable acts of the SLORC. Without a steady flow of cash from overseas, the dictatorship stands little chance of maintaining the military omnipresence which allows it to suppress dissident speech and democratic elections. Public outcry from the States encouraged Eddie Bauer, Reebok, Levi- Strauss and many others to pull their ventures from Burma. But the particularly obstinate Pepsico and the hyper-exploitative oil companies remain, propelling the SLORC’s reign. From these companies’ perspectives, Myanmar and the SLORC are still sound investments. Their morality has little to do with human consequence. Providing returns to the investor is an ultimatum. Burgeoning markets cannot be passed up in this unpredictable age of breakneck competition.How do we confront this iron-nosed determination? The flurry of peripheral article about corporate greed published i the past year proved that as economi cally advantaged Americans, we ca debate the moral questions posed b the global economy for hours an( barely scrape the roots fastenin multi-nationals to Burmese soil. This penchant to dwell at the pe riphery applies tangentially t academia: entire semesters spen scouring through discourse withou recognizing our role in constructin the multi-national corporate web. Vir tually unmonitored, it has spreac pandemically to the edges of the globe, exploiting indigenous peoples and workers abroad and domestic la bor at home. All of this is propellec by our spending habits. We canno escape the web. You may wax meta physical, but you still have to bu groceries and clothes. No matter how informed our understanding of th psychological causes of oppression if we don't know the money interest behind the aluminum can we are hole ing to our lips or the rubber sole beneath our feet, we as "first world" consumers will always be unconscious oppressors. Just ask seventeenth and eighteenth-century European philosophers (I know it's impossible, but use your imagination they've had a long time to think about it) who, during deep meditations upon Renaissance ideals, forgot to extend their realizations of equality to the enslaved Africans who produced many of the goods they pur chased and the women sleeping in their beds. Cynics wi say this country has gotten over the moral pangs of sla very and now "look at the wonderfu conveniences commodity culture ha brought us." Pull out the compan sons between the living standards o the American child on welfare (code language: Black kid whose great grandma escaped from slavery) and the son of the dignitary of an agrarian society. C'mon, do we really wanna go back to caves and stones? No, but as members of an economy which is predicated upon finding the cheapest sources of labor and land, we should apply our human concerns to our consumer choices. Otherwise, we are deluding ourselves in the Absurdist Theater, abstracting and marveling at the reality of exploitation from a distant plane that has nothing to do with our con sciousness. The single act of pur chasing a can of Pepsi from the loca gas station, an action duplicated b millions everyday, is post modernity' s slavery because we don even realize that it is enslavement. The oppression of Burmese peopl is no Loraxian mythology, it is rea and it is perpetuated by our ignoran consumer fetishism. The axiom her is that we must think before we buy we must consciously consume. We cannot continue to let the mul tinationals dupe us into covert ex ploitation with inane slogans like "Buy Pepsi, Get Stuff," and "Just D It." It's time to step out of the theate and into the stores, markets, gas sta tions, mega-malls and departmen stores and demand justice. Don’t Blame Capitalism, Blame Politics By Vincent Jones And One More Thing... Now, this will probably make me a pariah within liberal/progressive activist circles, but I do not believe that capitalism can be blamed for the majority of society's problems. In fact, I happen to think that maybe the capitalist system largely drives the movements which attempt to address the woes of a great many people. Don't be alarmed, my defense of capitalism does not make me a supporter of laissez-faire or of the free market being unleashed. Instead, I aim to direct attention to the true source of many of our greatest dilemmas—the political system. As a history (and economics) major, I tend to study the past to understand the present and postulate about the future. That oppression, poverty, gluttony, discrimination, sexism, and a litany of other evil phenomena have manifested themselves in various forms since the emergence of humankind cannot be denied. However, modern capitalism developed only recently. After the demise of feudalism in Europe, a new form of economic organization emerged in the form of Mercantilism. As time progressed, this system evolved and grew (largely due to the wealth created by the toiling of enslaved Africans) into modern capitalism. I realize that my summary of the history of capitalism may be a bit short and lacking of several important details. However, I do not intend to discuss the development of capitalism but to illustrate how its existence did little to promote the growth of racism, sexism, classism and every other "-ism." Instead, I would argue that the failure of the established and emerging political systems of the world to protect the interests of those not in the elite created and perpetuated the rigid class structures, racial hierarchy, patriarchal systems, etc. which we must contend with today. By definition, capitalism acts to maximize utility or meet needs, while political systems necessarily limit certain freedoms for some greater good. In the former, the laws of supply and demand promote existence in a state of equilibrium in which resources are not wasted and people's needs and preferences are fulfilled. On the other hand, the latter works primarily to keep, promote and extend the status quo. Moreover, capitalism does not preclude changes within the elite strata (or preferred brands) of a given society. To illustrate this fact, consider automobiles. At the dawn of the automobile era, big American cars ruled the roads. Over time, the U.S. car industry has witnessed a dramatic decline in market share, partly due to the popularity of foreign cars which tend to be more dependable, cost efficient and better designed. In this instance, market forces have allowed for a major realignment of the market. To my knowledge, this type of realignment has happened few times in history. And when these instances do occur, it generally has resulted from or precipitates a collapse of the existing political structures. Furthermore, political systems enact barriers which inhibit the ability of certain groups to effectively shape their nation to better meet their needs. A prime example of my thesis can be found in this great country of ours. The founding fathers intended for this country' s political system to protect the interests of white men of property. The amount of social, economic and political power historically and currently enjoyed by this group demonstrates the success of the framers of the Constitution in establishing a framework to meet their goals. At the same time, the large number of Blacks (designated to constitute the lowest strata of the social hierarchy in the Constitution) who are unemployed, undereducated, under-skilled, and deprived of political and economic power reflect the system's to maintain the status quo. Yet the desire to better one's condition through advertising (if you will) the merits of a movement (such as the civil rights movement) and the inadequacy of the status quo has resulted in greater equality in this country (which still has a long way to go). Most successful movements can be likened to a good marketing strategy. In both cases, an item or an issue is presented to the masses in a manner which will hopefully influence people to buy a product or support a particular cause, either through voting or by cash, check or credit card. So, if you truly want to bring about intrinsic change in the lives of a great number of people in this society, then attack the deficiencies and inequities in the political system. The failure of our leaders to address the true problems or to propose adequate solutions hurts someone more than an abstract concept. To give an analogy, guns don't kill people, people kill people. And on those lines, the laws of supply and demand, marginal utility, etc., do not make people poor— people do. The political system consists of people organized in a government and the true face of capitalism has yet to be identified. Thus far, the experts have only been able to ascertain the existence of "the invisible hand." Arias Sanchez Ignores Complexities of War By Jude Uzonwanne Warfare, and the means to execute it, have been a part of human society as far back as anyone can remember. Over the centuries, its mechanisms and supporting ideological framework have evolved to reflect the exigencies presented by the enemy. From the days of executing wars with crude spears and axes, war has matured to the point when today we can dispatch smart missiles, which it is jokingly remarked can turn corners, wait their turn at traffic lights, walk up to the door, and explode precisely in your solar plexus. Given the feverish pace with which wars emerge around the world, it was refreshing to hear Noble Peace Prize winner, Oscar Arias Sanchez, speak boldly and forthrightly about the need to stop weapons sales and demobilize military forces, essential ingredients for the broth of war. Arias, if I understood him correctly, wants to end the sale of weapons of war to developing countries by industrialized nations. He believes, and I concur, that resources devoted to maintaining militaries could be better spent building hospitals, schools, eradicating diseases, etc. He makes these calls because he fears the re-militarization of Latin America, a soon-to-be-announced policy change in Washington might trigger, would divert scarce resources away from building stable democracies and addressing the complex challenges these nations faces. Perhaps, because I could not raise a certain issue with the gentleman, I feel compelled to write an op-ed, hoping that someone would help me address this question. The question is this: when you get governments to ban arms transfers to developing economies, how then do they address their national security concerns? Pardon me if I have stated the question egregiously, but recent events in Africa and Europe indicate that some folks have found a new and sexier way to address their concerns: the private army and/or the private military consultant. What makes these private warriors different from previous soldiers is that they are organized into profit making corporations, with rules and regulations, a board of directors, and the whole corporate governance package. Two case studies: America's Virginia-based Military Professionals Inc., and South Africa's Executive Outcomes Inc. Executive Outcomes Inc.: Angola has been in a state of war for almost 20 years. Two sides, one backed by the U.S. (Jonas Savimbi), and another (Comrade Dos Santos) backed by Cubans and what used to be the Communist Bloc, have waged this internecine war, forever struggling for power. It looked like Savimbi was winning, until someone had the bright idea of bringing in a group of former South African Special Forces troops. Working with Angolan troops, the troops soon helped turn the tide of the war, triggering a process that eventually led to Savimbi's battlefield defeat. Today, a modicum of peace exists, and the South Africans have left. The South African soldiers, however, learned something mercenaries have known for years— war pays frightfully well for those who understand its seductive nature. They went on and formed a company known as Executive Outcomes (EO). When contracted, EO comes in with its own aircraft, helicopters, troops, weapons, accountants, financial planners and managers, legal advisers, etc. In short, for firms like EO, war is a business, and to run an efficient, profitable corporation, you must seek out new markets, consolidate old and tested ones, forever mindful of changing situations. Military Professional Inc.: Between early Spring and late summer of 1995, the military balance of power changed radically in Croatia, and before you can say, "Jack Robinson" negotiations were underway in Dayton. The sudden success of Croatia's army was attributed to a little known Virginia firm, Military Professionals Inc (MP). MP is made up of retired senior U.S. military officers who, working closely with the United States Government, enter into agreements to train armies that the US., for diplomatic reasons, cannot. This was the case in the Balkans, and MP came to the rescue. The rest, as they say, is history. Fascinating tale, eh? Maybe. The future of warfare? Most probably. War, according to German philosopher Von Clausewitz, is the continuation of policy by other means. As long as nations and governments stick to a policy direction someone else dislikes so much that they are willing to pick up arms to challenge it, war will be with us. Now that the direction of war (especially in developing countries) favors private armies, wars may become even more brutal, as the normal moral leashes are removed, since the killing has now been contracted out and people can kill indiscriminately, saying, "sorry, nothing personal; just business. The damned stockholders have been watching the numbers too closely of late!" The potential for this evolution of warfare becomes even more apparent as we see increasing evidence that in a number of countries, transnational firms like Shell Oil have begun to either build their own armies or contracted private firms to defend oil installations— or in the case of Nigeria, have worked closely with government security forces to mount offensive operations against groups considered dangerous to their financial interests. With these two samples of what may turnout to be the future of war safely tucked away in your minds, please reflect on Oscar Arias's address. Disarmament is ideal, and necessary for global peace, but if it is not done by all at once, forget it, because someone (like the proverbial free rider) will spoil the party. My instincts regarding his radical proposals are these: as long as nations/ peoples/communities continue their vaunted search for modernity, using violent means, peace will never be seen; they will seek out instruments of coercion to force others to see their viewpoint. This naturally then impliesimplies that all searches for modernity must be peaceful (a la Gandhi), a proposal that becomes more difficult to hold onto. As long as enough folks feel slighted, the use of weapons is the sole way they will perceive for righting wrongs. Francis Fukuyama once asserted that the end of the Cold War also meant the end of History. He was roundly criticized as being too myopic. In a sense, he was not really wrong, if one views the search for modernity as a drive to enshrine and enforce the principles of the French Revolution (liberty, equality and fraternity) in each society. Thus, if in the process of seeking to achieve that goal, one runs up against an obstinate enemy, how do you tackle them? Use violence, or non-violence? That will depend on something else: how have people's minds changed? Are their decision-making reference points still the same, or has someone demonstrated to them that other avenues beyond violence exist? That I felt was an issue Oscar Arias did not address; how do you change the public's frame of reference? It is one thing to stop weapons sales, and call for demobilization, but it is another to win the hearts and minds of entire nations, changing their mindset. It is also another thing to go • beyond the mundane, and challenge societies to attack the basic forces that drive mankind to warfare: the lack of participation in the institutions that shape your existence. That in my mind is one area that should not be neglected: the people who ultimately will suffer should be the ones spearheading the work. It's fine to appeal to American students, but shouldn' tan appeal be made to average folks in the streets of Colombo, New Delhi, or Lagos, or Cotonou, or Mogadishu to take whatever steps are necessary to educate themselves to force their governments to stop purchasing weapons? True peace cannot be found until all belligerents, armed and potentially armed, become contractual participants in their community. 4 The Phoenix October 4, 1996 Opinions Letters to the Editor (continued {Continued from page 3} Walllngford Condo, $ll4, 900. Crum Creek Condo. 28r., 2Ba. Penthse. 35ft.bat. Beautiful, sunny, and bright. Formal LR w/Fpl; Din. area w/ mirrored wall. Garage also available. 10 min. from Swarthmore College. (610)876-5520 BE A HAIR MODEL Receive Free Product Aveda Beauty Products is searching for attractive men and women for hair show in Philadelphia on Sunday, November 10,1996. Call (800) 551-8711 for more information. Ask for Jenna. Model Call: Tuesday, October 8,7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, October 15, 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, October 22, 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, October 29, 7 to 9 p.m.
---------- Page 5 ----------
FEATURES Freshmen Who Don't Recognize Their Place Sign up for study breaks on your hall. Sign up for extra study breaks. We 're hungry and you have nothing to do. Katie Menzer excoriates It's tough to be a freshman. 8:30 a.m. classes. Your new roommate snores. You miss your dog. Yeah, it's tough. So I thought that I would dedicate this week's column to the most important problem facing Swarthmore freshmen today: how not to annoy upperclassmen. Let me begin by expounding upon the reasons why you, as a freshman, would not want to annoy upperclassmen. First, chances are, the upperclassmen are much bigger than you. If you annoy us, we will hurt you. But you're probably saying, "I might be smaller, but I'm quicker, and upperclassmen tend to be weighed down by more and heavier books than mine." Yeah, sure, you might be quicker, but you can't hide forever, and you don't know the terrain as well as we do. Eventually, we will find you and that will be that. Second, upperclassmen often have cars. Yes, even you will someday get sick of Pasta Bar. One of these days just the thought of the Warden will reduce you to tears. You will need to climb out of this gastronomic pit called Swarthmore College, and one of these upperclassmen might take you to Nifty Fifties (provided you pay, of course). Third, course selection. It's always a good idea to run your course selection-for next semester by an upperclassman. They might just tell you that not only is Education 14 a three-hour class once a week with substantial amounts of reading, but you also have to spend a large chunk of your free time riding a bike in the rain to nearby elementary schools to watch little brats give each other, and you, noogies. Or maybe they'll tell you about the slimy, bloated sea cucumber lab in Bio 2. Okay, so now since you cute little guys know the why, let me tell you the how. Don't stand outside an upperclassman's room, or anywhere other than the darkest depths of the Crum, at 2:30 in the morning screaming, cackling, or making any sort of audible sound. We're old and we need our beauty sleep. You're young and have so much to live for. Don't provoke us. Don't set fires. Loud music is just as good with your door closed as it is with your door open. We do not think you're cool just because you listen to Coolio. There is a well-documented myth that all Swarthmore women end up with eight inches less hair on their heads by the time they graduate than when they started Swat. For some reason, all that hair ends up on the floor of my shower. Freshmen with long hair should take their hair with them when they leave the shower. Sign up for study breaks on your hall. Sign up for extra study breaks. We're hungry and you have nothing to do. Why don't you spend some of the energy that you had previously been releasing outside upperclassmen' s rooms at 2:30 in the morning and direct it toward the coop? Go explore the Milano cookies (They come in many varieties now! Dark chocolate! Milk Chocolate! Mint or Double Chocolate! Wow!) or the frozen cheesecakes. Hey, you could even bake us something.Don't speak unless spoken to. As with every rule, there is always an exception. Some guy named Joe who lives on Wharton E/F Second told me he wants frosh to talk to him. I am by no means endorsing this, and I suggest talking to him only at your own risk. Lord knows, I want to see happy freshmen. But I don't want to see you in my lounge. All cuddling should take place within the confines of your own room, or in one of those conference rooms in McCabe. The basic rule to remember here is: don't touch me when I'm around, don't touch each other when I'm around. Don't complain about the amount of work you have to do. We don't care if you have three 25-page papers, a lab, an econ problem set, and fourteen journal entries all due on the same day you are going to have your wisdom teeth removed and your appendix taken out; we don't want to hear about it. You're pass/fail and the upperclassmen will never let you forget it. So I hope, my little fledglings, that I have been able to impart to you some of the precious knowledge I have collected over my numerous years here. Remember, all these suggestions, except for the one involving Joe, have been kid-tested and mother-approved. Vincent Jones, Lang Scholar By Jessica Roney Features Profile GAIN provides the students with training and resources, gives them valuable experience and helps them with preparing for college. Vincent Jones '9B leaves campus for Philadelphia every Monday through Thursday from noon until approximately 6:30 p.m to work on his Lang project. As a Lang scholar, he receives money and support from Eugene Lang '3B, to design and implement large-scale service projects. Jones' project, which began at the beginning of this school year, is a mentorship program called GAIN - Growth And Initiative Network. To begin the program, Jones is training twenty high school seniors at Bartram High School Communications Academy to mentor seventh graders in their feeder middle school. The program is designed to give the seniors training, resources and pride in their work, and to provide a useful service to the seventh graders. Jones works with the seniors for the last two periods of their day from Monday to Thursday. Currently, the students are preparing for their work with the middle school students. They are undergoing two weeks of intensive training led by Jones which will be followed by a weekend retreat at Swarthmore. The training they receive covers everything from resource management and conflict resolution to computer skills and first aid. When the training is complete they will begin mentoring twice a week at the middle school. In the few weeks that Jones has worked with the students, he has noticed a change in their attitudes. They have gone from being apathetic to being very excited about the program.Jones thinks it is a matter of being proud and challenged by the work ahead of them. "Now they have responsibility. What they do affects someone else." The program "works better for the mentors than the mentees." GAIN provides the students with training and resources, gives them valuable experience and helps them prepare for college. Above all, it gives the students an "expanding knowledge of career opportunities" and an idea of how to attain them. The idea came to Jones "in stages." The summer after his first year at Swarthmore he spoke with other students about the relationship between Swarthmore and Chester. Jones felt that with many of the Swarthmore-based community service programs, Chester residents became dependent on the students working with them because the students controlled everything. He felt that "for any program to be successful in the long run, it needs to empower the people." That summer, he worked with the California Teen Leadership Program in his hometown of Los Angeles. Jones had participated in the program previously, but was now a leader, working with teens to provide support and to look at issues in the community. As a leader, he found that he got even more out of the program than he had as a participant. He began to formulate his idea as a Lang project during his sophomore year, reading as much as possible on education and inner cities, and getting feedback from professors and fellow students. During this past summer, Jones began the first stage of the process. He set up contacts at the high school and middle school, and designed the training curriculum and an evaluation tool that will determine whether GAIN is working. He is evaluating the program continually so that he will be able to build on the experience and improve the program next year. Jones also hopes that his ongoing evaluation will enable others to follow in his footsteps. For Jones, one of the most important aspects of the program is that it is sustainable. Next year he will train someone to take his place and he will look for additional funding to keep it going, though the school already has some resources. The mentors come from the same area as the mentees, eliminating the need for outside help. Jones says that his work "in many ways keeps my sanity," gives him "a different perspective on the world,...[and] helps me appreciate Swarthmore more." It challenges his paradigms. He feels that more people need to work on community service projects; black students, especially, "should work to help others" instead of letting white students comprise the majority of participants in such programs. In the future, Jones would like to attend law school and eventually work for the government, where he wants to focus on urban education problems. "Students are not being prepared [for the future]" he said. Students are given uninteresting "busy work" that does them no practical good and turns them away from school. GAIN hopes to give them interest in their school, challenge them, and give them pride and interest in their community.How Swatties Built a Community By Dave Mimno Swarthmore History The year was 1977, and the fervent activism of the '6os had, to a large extent, died down. Many students felt that the College had become apathetic. Bart Laws '77 commented in a letter to the editor of The Phoenix on April 7,1977 that "I have seen the student body grow increasingly concerned with its own comfort and financial future, increasingly conventional, ever more steadfast in its refusal to face the necessity to seek new ways of living, to think speculatively, to reach out into the world emotionally to empathize with the organism Earth which gives us life." It was in response to these sentiments that the Community Housing Project (CHP) was founded. Community Housing, as it was originally known, began as a directed reading led by Bruce Cummings, a professor of political science. The topics for discussion were "socialist control of production, environmentally sane planning, psychologically healthy living spaces, depoliticization of control, nonviolence in associative interaction, new motivational systems, resymbol-ization vs. innate tendencies in Man, manageable sizes for self-governing units, specialization without dehumanization, appropriate technology vs. profitable technology, privacy without atomization, community without domination of the individual, etc." The stated goal of these discussions was to see how these concepts could be actualized. The primary difficulty in starting the CHP was finding space for it. The students completed a survey of all available housing options. The ideal location would be off campus, would have some community space and kitchen facilities, and would have a variety of interconnecting rooms. Given these criteria, the members of the CHP identified Woolman, Ashton House, and the third floor of Mary Lyon as their best options. The CHP was initially granted Woolman, but they were ultimately given Ashton because many women complained about the reduction in all-female housing (It is interesting to note that/at that point/Dana was all women and Hallowell all men). Ashton House, which is located several blocks away from campus in the direction of the Springfield Mall, is currently the College's guest house. This location was originally rejected because it was "too small," and the CHP had to reduce its estimate for the size of the group from 20 to 16. The CHP began its operation the following year. The Ashtonites cooked meals for each other, organized political action groups, held several all-campus parties, built a sauna in the basement, and started a small library. To boost their environmental consciousness, they spent a day without electricity. The group held weekly meetings during which they discussed readings and topics such as the ideal structure of families and the raising of children, the necessity of monogamy and the institution of marriage, and autonomy and the relations of community to the outside world. They shared their dreams. At one meeting, they held a sensitivity exercise in which they paired off and explained their visions of Utopia to each other. Each meeting included singing and, at the end, a listing of the positive and negative aspects of the meeting. Approximately every month they issued a statement explaining their accomplishments and goals. According to the statement of Projects and Goals for 1977-78, "Through all of these things our main goal has been enhancing individual responsibilities, taking care of the house, and sharing leadership in the house and in duties."During the CHP's second year, the Ashtonites continued their experiment in communal living. All rooms in the house were communalized, including most possessions such as bicycles, typewriters (yes, typewriters), and stereos. Some rooms were designated for sleeping and others for studying. Several private sleeping rooms were also designated to make sure that residents had some personal space if they so desired. Unfortunately, CHP was not without its problems. Some conflicts resulted from the simple frictions of daily life, such as unwashed dishes and residents not giving money for the detergent fund. Others were more serious, such as the perception of heightened sexual tension within the CHP community. Furthermore, after several years it seemed to some that the CHP was really nothing more than a coed frat. Questions arose as well as to whether residents of Ashton House should stay for more than one year. Some argued that the students who had lived there previously would give the community a sense of continuity, but others claimed that "If you have lived in the house and given to it and received from it, your next responsibility is to move on and give someone else a chance." Ultimately, Ashton House died of apathy. The CHP was not renewed for the 1982-83 school year. Although, according to an article in The Phoenix from April 1982, "Response to the most recent housing survey showed that 76 percent of the students supported the general concept of the CHP...only one new student signed up as desiring to live in Ashton [in' 82-83]." The project had been founded as a community of activist students who, by living together, would be much more able to "form a base from which they could participate in local community projects and also educate the College community on many humanitarian issues." However, the CHP seemed to have become more focused on simply living together, without paying much attention to the activist component of the communal experience. The CHP was set to be reevaluated in a year. The final entry in the last Ashton House log documents its death by apathy. "This house died a death of many blows. Each blast, failure to communicate or participate let a little life out of the house. In this last month, I think that we had given up...1 hope that CHP starts up again, but considering the conservative turn the College has taken, an activist dorm may be a thing of the past." Now the college guest house, Ashton House served from 1977 to 1982 as the home of the Community Housing Project, a student experiment in communal living. October 4, 1996 The Phoenix 5 Presentation Career opportunities at J. P. Morgan J.P. Morgan provides sophisticated financial services to corporations, governments, financial institutions, private firms, nonprofit institutions, and wealthy individuals around the world. Please plan to attend our information presentation for Swarthmore students interested in Investment Banking Management Services Tuesday, October 22 5:00-6:30pm Bond All majors welcome JPMorgan Internet http://www.jpmorgan.com J.P. Morgan is an equal opportunity employer
---------- Page 6 ----------
ARTS & LEISURE Playing with Her Food: Cherie Breischaft and Sharples' Art By Gabriel Gumming & Rachel Mcknight Visitors to Sharpies dining hall and most of us are frequent visitors— are confronted with a difficult decision. First, everyone runs the gauntlet of the tray-and-silverware line. There, perhaps, the Warden is fishing in the tray racks with a magnet, looking for lost spoons. After regarding this strange spectacle, the visitor is presented with the choice: which line to join in pursuit of nourishment. Two lines, those leading to Very Vegetarian and Garnet Gourmet, are often the longest. They are well worth the wait, however. Whether the dishes themselves are actually worth the wait is safely beyond the scope of the article. The reward at the end of these lines is the sight of food art: food, usually fruits and vegetables, delicately carved and arranged to create appealing abstract patterns or semi-realistic models. The intricacy of design is amazing: an apple hollowed and shaped with pinpoint incisions, for example.A remarkable recent display featured sharks (cucumbers with hollowed, ser- rated ends for mouths, embedded flecks of apple peel for eyes, and slices of cucumber rind inserted perpendicularly into slots for fins) swimming and leaping in a tropical sea (a large bowl of blue Jello) above seaweed forests (greens embedded in the Jello). The sculptures are typically placed on a mirror, doubling the visual impact of the art. What's more, light from the bulb above bar is reflected in the mirror, projecting a silhouette of the carvings on the ceiling! Thus-, for a brief and sublime moment one enters an artistic realm, an interactive gallery of sorts. By waving or undulating hands above the sculpture, one can enter into the shadow design on the ceiling. The hapless lunch-goermay pause, entranced, arms weaving through the air, exploring the dialectic between counter and ceiling, the aesthetic implications of the use of space...until the next person in line jabs them with his tray and says to hurry up, because he only got in the line to get the tortellini anyway, and he's got a lab in fifteen minutes. We set out to answer the burning question: who creates this marvelous food art? The answer was before our eyes: the artist, Cherie Breischaft, is a "food runner," which means she's the person behind the bar refilling the trays when they get low. The first thing Breischaft told us when we spoke with her was that the correct name for what we had crudely termed "food art" was actually "garnishing." "Garnishing" was part of the job description when Breischaft, who has worked here for three years, transferred to food running from the salad department. When she took the job, Breischaft remembers, she "had no idea how to sculpt." They gave her a "book and a video, that was it." After learning the technique, she says, "I just took off." She decided it must just be "one of my hidden talents." Each day after lunch, from approximately 2:30 to 3:45 p.m., she allots time for the creation of the next day's masterpiece. It's her favorite part of her full-time jobalong with "talking to the students."We wondered where Cherie gets her ideas. It's "all my imagination," she responds, "each day I pick whatever [l] want" to sculpt. What sculptures has she been most proud of? The shark design is "one of my favorites," she concedes, and "everybody seems to like the penguins," but the "best one I've made" was a carousel, in which the roof and base were pita bread and the revolving animals were animal crackers.When two students got married last year, Breischaft constructed a "cucumber bride and groom," and the bride even had a lace dress made from doilies. "It was beautiful," she recalls, her eyes aglow with the memory. There are more treats in store. "Right now I'm trying to make a Merry-Go-Round," she says, so expect that sometime soon. Also, mark Halloween on your garnishing calendars: "I go crazy then," she says. "Some people.. .want to take [sculptures] to their room." That's allowed; if you show up after supper, Cherie may give you one her works. In fact, she's willing to school those interested in the garnishing business. However, she warns that you've "got to have the right tools." There are four that are required: a v-cutter, a spiral cutter, a good imagination, and a lot of patience. Talent. Productivity. The teaching instinct. What's next for Cherie Breischaft? Well, last year she took pictures of all her creations. How about a show at the List Gallery? We shall have to wait and see. In the meantime, the new work of this Swarthmore artist is on display on a daily basis, but to see it, you are going to have to wait in line. Too good to eat: one of Breischaft's creations. Photo bV Diana Hunt Mighty Aphrodite a Witty Triumph; Travolta Cannot Save Broken Arrow By Emily Shartin & Andy Murray On-Campus Movies Neurosis is Woody Allen's raison d'etre. And as irritating as many of us may find that, it is difficult to ignore that his movies still somehow have managed to be consistently engrossing, not to mention hilarious, for about three decades. (Okay, so maybe Shadows and Fog left more than a bit to be desired, but you get the point.) Mighty Aphrodite is his latest feature, and it definitely lives up to the Allen standard. Lenny (Allen) is a regular uptown Manhattanite married to Amanda (A Room With a View's Helena Bonham-Carter, boasting a not-too-bad American accent; it is especially good to see her in something other than a Merchant-Ivory period piece for a change). They want to have a baby, but with her art career really taking off, Amanda is not quite ready to dedicate a year of her life to being pregnant. So they adopt a bouncing wee lad, and after much hassle, name him Max. But Lenny and Amanda's relationship soon starts to turn sour, as does just about every marriage in any Woody Allen film. Amanda starts sleeping with one of her co-workers at her TrißeCa gallery, and it is at about this time that Lenny, in the typically Allenesque fashion of paranoia and fetishism, becomes obsessed with finding Max's birth mother. Enter Mira Sorvino (Quiz Show, Barcelona) as Linda Ash, a dopey call girl with a heart o' gold. Lenny illegally discovers that Linda is in fact Max's mother, tracks her down, and befriends her without explaining who he is. Theirs becomes the relationship that charac- terizes this farcical film, as it rightly should. One can't help thinking that Linda would in many ways make a better mama to Max than Amanda, even when she blatantly offers Lenny pro-bono services after he takes her out to dinner. Sorvino is absolutely hysterical in this role, and many will agree that she deserved the Oscar she won earlier this year for this performance.Of course everything is satisfactorily reconciled in the end, but the real delight is watching the various interactions along the way. Allen uniquely employs a Greek chorus led by F. Murray Abraham to interject and narrate the story at various points, offering some side laughs. But Sorvino of course is the trip, the ultimate reason to watch the film, a mighty force in Woody Allen's most recent triumph. Mighty Aphrodite plays Friday in Du Pont at 7:30 and 10 p.m. Somewhere in the middle of John Woo's Broken Arrow, someone gasps, "The nukes are gone!" The statement won't be half as surprising to anyone stuck watching the movie up until this point and the picture really has little else to add in terms of plot. The Hong Kong director's recipe for making an American action film seems largely to have been (1) get big name actors, and, (2) go crazy with special effects. Yes, it is a dish you have definitely tasted before. The film's opening moments find the camera swirling down on Major Vic Deakins (John Travolta) beating the tar out of his copilot, Captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater). Officially, it's boxing so there is no reason to call the MP's. Nevertheless there's something not quite right about that John Travolta character. Satisfied that they have sufficiently scrambled their brains, the aviators depart for a secret test flight of an expensive B-2 bomber. The B-2 is equipped with all the options: cruise control, AM/FM radio, auto-door locks and two nuclear warheads. To absolutely no one's surprise, Major Deakins attacks Captain Hale again, crashes the bomber and steals the two missiles. Obviously, the film winds up being nothing more than another opportunity for the reborn Travolta to strut. Major Vic Deakins dons khakis and a black turtlenecks that make enough of an impression on his fellow outlaws for them to gush,"Deke, you da Man!" And, clearly, he is. Travolta's grin is all that Broken Arrow has going for it. Painfully clumsy scenes of Pentagon and Army officials trying to respond to the crisis are enough to make it seem like things would be safer if the bad guys held onto the nukes for a while. Captain Hale enlists the help of a dimwitted, gun-toting, park ranger (Samantha Mathis), but she does little to better the image of government employees. When her rigorous psycho-analysis of Major Deakins leads her to conclude, "He's insane," audiences may well defect to the side of the psychos in hopes that Deke will drop one of the nukes on her. As all this happens, Woo takes little notice. The director seems more interested in crashing helicopters and hurtling bodies across wide, open spaces. So many people fly out of planes, trains and Humvees in this movie that one begins to expect that Woo needs little excuse to send bodies shooting like bottlerockets.One might argue that at least the only lazy arcs in the film are being traced by stunt men and not by missiles, but neither this argument nor John Travolta can save Broken Arrow from being a big—well, why say it? Broken Arrow plays Saturday in Du Pont at 7:30 and 10 p.m. Clinton. Dole. Debate. Party. Hosted by College Democrats Sunday, 9p.m. in the IC A Violinist and Her Harp Allaßrukman interviewed Eva Allan 'OO, a harpist and violinist in the Swarthmore Orchestra, for The Phoenix. Phoenix: When did you start playing the violin and the harp? Eva Allan: I started when I was three, but I've only taken lessons for ten years. My mother made me start the piano before I began studying the harp when I was twelve. P: What made you decide to play the harp? EA: Before I can remember, my mother played flute and harp duets with an amazing jazz harpist named Liza Rey. She told my mother that the piano is very similar to the harp in that both instruments read the same clefs, and that until I became big enough to play the harp, I should take piano lessons. Therefore, I grudgingly practiced scales on the piano until I got my first harp six years ago. I met Liza Rey this summer at the World Harp Congress. P: What is the hardest thing about playing the harp? Which is more difficult, the violin or the harp? EA: The violin is more difficult to keep at a high level—if I don't practice the harp, I only lose technical skill while if I neglected the violin, I would lose technical skill, tone, and everything else. Probably the hardest thing about the harp is having to concentrate on the music, the conductor, my fingers, and my feet at the same time. The pedals operate rods inside the harp which turn pegs that shorten or lengthen each string to create accidentals (sharps and flats). To change key, a harpist uses her feet—which is why harpists don't like accidentals in the middle of a piece. P: Which instrument do you play in the Swarthmore Orchestra? EA: Both the violin and the harp. I have the most fun of all the musicians in the orchestr—whenever a piece doesn't need a harp, I escape to the anonymity of the first violin section. With a piece such as Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," I have a wonderful time playing very prominent glissandos, but so many symphonies don't require a harp and there is always room for more violins. P: What are other pieces will the Orchestra perform at the end of the semester? EA: It will be an exciting progamme— Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italienne," Dvorak's "Carnival Overture," and Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony." It is a unique programme for me, because I will play harp in three and violin in only one (the Schubert). That is very unusual. P: Have you played in other orchestras before? EA: Orchestra has always been my favorite musical venue. For the past three years I've played both violin and harp in the Portland Youth Philharmonic, which is the oldest youth orchestra in America. We played the same world-class repertoire that the Swarthmore College Orchestra plays. During concerts, it was always fun to run back and forth from the violin section to my harp. My harp would often be placed on a square platform so that the audience could hear the harp better. Once, during the "Blue Danube," I had just run from the violin section to my elevated harp, and after playing my little harp entrance, I leaned comfortably back in my chair, only to topple noisily off the platform! Some people may think that harpists are more graceful than other performers... P: Has the Orchestra had a harpist before? EA: Not for a while, I gather. The College itself doesn't own a harp. I had to ship mine from my home in Oregon. P: Has playing the harp influenced your personality? EA: Oh, yes, definitely. I am turning into the stereotypical harpist—long hair, delicate manners, formal tastes, I love to wear skirts, I'm romantic...l love the classics and the traditions of the past. Harp has traditionally been a parlor instrument for the upper classes. Marie Antoinette played the harp, and it is historically the one musical instrument which has been played primarily by women. Mostly, this is because women have smaller hands and fingers than men. Earlier this century, Carlos Salzedo designed a harp with wider spacing between the strings which is popular with male harpists. P: Do you hope to play professionally? EA: I hope to play in a symphony orchestra for my entire life; I don't know if I want to choose between violin and harp, which I would have to do if I wanted to join the greatest orchestras. At Swarthmore I hope to double major in music and either English literature or art history, and I would love to get a Ph.D. and teach college someday, too. j It's First Friday! j : Free admission to more than 20 \ : galleries in Olde City tonight : : from 6to 8 p.m., including the : : Pentimenti Gallery, the F.A.N. : : Gallery, Clay Studio, and more. : l Take the R3 into Philly to Market East, and walk • • down Market Street to 4th Street. All the fun is on • I Ist through 4th streets, between Vine and Chestnut \ Gibson Gets Gritty in Mad Max, Road Warrior By Fred Bush SWIL's upcoming movie double feature, Mad Max and The Road Warrior, showcases the two films that made Mel Gibson a star. Post-holocaust action films, they take the themes from old samurai and Western films and infuse them with some Aussie weirdness. Gibson's character in these films is similar to the "Man With No Name" so effectively portrayed by Clint Eastwood in a number of spaghetti westerns. A cop with a loving wife in Mad Max, he is eventually dehumanized and defeated, degenerating into an uncommunicative, violent loner in The Road Warrior. His psychological collapse parallels his increasing level of violence used in dealing with the demonic punks that populate postholocaust Australia. The world in which these movies are set is eerie, alien, yet disturbingly close to our own. It's this bleak, Wild-West setting with weird technological innovations that gives Mad Max and The Road Warrior their narrative power. Our real life is always two weeks from falling apart: that's when stored supplies of food will run out in cities. Here, we are presented with a culture which has died, where people must survive on the scraps that remain of the previous high technology. It's a world where law and order have fallen apart, where gas is hard to find, and human life is cheap. It's a world where the shotgun is a law of its own, and where driving under gunfire is a necessary skill. It's a world often ripped off; most recently, in No Escape and Waterworld. The demonic punk culture that fills the margins of Mad Max and The Road Warrior is another disturbing element that is often cannibalized for other films. These nightmare creatures have no redeeming virtues: they're crude, warlike, and given to psychotic violent rages. They rape, pillage and kill, and wear bizarre clothing. They're not even smart; just the dregs of human society that deserve to be wasted. The violence is the beauty of Mad Max and The Road Warrior. Much of the death and chaos in the movies revolves around neat toys: bladed boomerangs, double-barreled sawed-off shotguns, or the übiquitous car chases. Max drives the last of the V-10 Interceptors: armored police cars, sleek and fast, ready for battle. There are endless car chases: adrenaline-pumping, car-ramming, slickmaneuvering duels of artistic destruction. The final pitched battle in The Road Warrior, with dozens of cars, outlaw and friendly, engaged in vehicular manslaughter on a wide scale, is intense and very exciting. These are brutal films. People get killed; there is rape, torture and gratuitous violence. Even animals suffer. These films are not for the weak of heart. However, for those others who watch Westerns and cheer on the heroes, for those who want to see Gibson's earlier oeuvre, here's your chance. The bad guys truly deserve their deaths; no moral ambiguity here. The car chases are stupendous, and Gibson makes a great psycho loner. Mad Max and The Road Warrior will be showing in Kirby on Monday, October 7, at 10 p.m. Admission is free, and all are invited. 6 The Phoenix October 4, 1996
---------- Page 7 ----------
SPORTS Evil Buzzards Are Hurting By Jerome Bushnell & Ashwin Rao This past weekend, on a dismally gray Saturday, without a mascot buzzard in sight in the overcast sky, the Evil Buzzards lost their first home match of the season against York by a score of 23-12. For the past few weeks, the Buzzards have been plagued by the loss of many of the more experienced ruggers on account of various injuries. Despite fielding a team which was much less cohesive than usual, the Swarthmore ruggers still managed to hold their own and play a very competitive game. Early in the first half, neither team had gained much of an advantage over the other until York quickly seized the initiative by attempting a kick on a penalty called against Swarthmore on the forty meter line. The kick was completed to give the York squad the lead 3-0. Soon after, they followed this up with a legitimate try, and failed to convert on the kick, leaving them ahead by eight points. The Buzzards weren't satisfied and increased their efforts to get on top. Wanting to keep the fans coming back for more provided enough incentive for the Buzzards to increase their momentum. The first score of the game by Swarthmore came in the middle of the first half when Adam Blescia '97 punted the ball far down the field, beat all of the apparently confused Yorkers to it, and downed it in the try zone for five points. Tony Sturm '99 added two points to this by converting the kick, leaving Swat only one point down. Sturm ended the scoring in the first half by brushing off the protesting York defenders and out-racing them for a good fifty meters before finally laying down what ended up being the Buzzards' last score of the game. At half-time the Buzzards trailed 12-8. After this spectacular comeback in the first half, Swarthmore had trouble maintaining its intense level of play and couldn't get up the drive to score again. York took advantage early in the second half, rucked the Buzzards downfield, and added a try and conversion to their score. York kicked the ball straight through the goalposts on another penalty to increase their lead to 18-12. York capped the scoring with a try to seal a 23-12 victory. The Buzzards lost even more players to injury in the York game, and the team that they will field this weekend against the University of Pennsylvania will have an even more Herculean task than the teams in the past three weeks. Swarthmore hopes to prove once and for all that the top liberal arts school in the country is, at least on the rugby pitch, better than any Ivy Leaguers. Warmothers a Fluid Unit, Ready for Sectionals By Jill Eaton The Swarthmore women's ultimate team made their presence known from the start of Saturday's tournament with amazing flow and effective zone defense. In their first game against Virginia Tech, the Warmothers dominated and led after the first half 6-0. In the second half, the Warmothers managed to give up only one score in completing an 11 -1 romp. Lena Loewenthal' 97 led scorers with three catches and Claire Arbour 'OO added two. Cathy Wirth '99, captain Mandy Hourihan '9B, and Jill Eaton '99 each recorded two assists each. The Warmothers employed a zone defense, featuring Courtney Harter '97, Arbour, and Annie Bacon '99 with Loewenthal directing from the long-long position. As the day progressed, it became evident that the zone was instrumental to the Warmothers' success. "[Arbour] and [Bacon] played in the cup all four games. I don't know how they did it but they did. Throwing zone helped us a lot. Our opponents weren't ready for it," said Wirth. In the second game, the Warmothers shut out Rochester 11-0. All ten members of the team played an important part, registering an assist, score, or both. The Warmothers were playing as such a fluid unit, that at half-time, Hourihan admitted, "I don't know what to tell you to work on." Harter, who dished out two assists and caught five in the end zone, played magnificently in this game. The third game of the day posed more of a challenge to the Warmothers who faced longtime rivals Haverford. The game appeared fairly evenly matched. Then at the suggestion of Loewenthal, the Warmothers adjusted their zone so that Wirth played man-to-man on Haverford's captain. By blanketing her effectively, the Warmothers were able to extend a nice lead and won the game, 11-4. Loewenthal, as expected, made five defense blocks in the game while Arbour made two. Bacon, Arbour, and Amy Rhodes 'OO all had multiple scores in the end zone. Loewenthal and Sarah Wise '96 made several assists. The Warmothers ended their day by defeating their hosts, the University of Maryland. Although fatigue had set in, the Warmothers won 7-3. Wirth and Harter had multiple assists while Bacon and Eaton each scored twice. By winning all four games and the tournament, Swarthmore is sending out a message to their opponents. The Warmothers are hoping to capture a berth for Regionals this weekend when they travel to Lehigh for Sectionals. "This coming weekend could be very exciting. We have the chance to make our best showing at Sectionals ever," said Harter. Wombats and Lovers at Play By Cheri Goetcheus & Annie Bacon Excitement was constant throughout the weekend on Cunningham Fields as Intramural Soccer picked up right where the Seven Sisters Field Hockey Tournament left off. In the early games, the Willets Basement Wombats were awarded a forfeit win over the Lambnuts. The Wombats played an ice hockey game, nonetheless, on fields that were recovering from Saturday night's downpour. The International squad put together another win with a very physical 3-1 victory over the Burlap Barbarians. In the nightcaps, the Latin Lovers officially welcomed the Cygnet Shoppers to the league with a 31-1 thumping. Once the Cygnet Shoppers, who have already changed their name twice, find that team cohesion they should be a force to reckon with. On the upper field the Fabulous Faculty/ Stupendous Staff squad pulled out an overtimeovertime win over the Psycho Squirrels. In another physical match the game was tied 1-1 at the end of regulation. The prettiest goal ended up being the winner as David Wexler converted a cross with a diving header that tickled the twine for the victory. This Sunday's schedule is as follows: 1:00 p.m. on Field 1: Wombats vs. Parrish Rocks 1:00 p.m. on Field 2:1-20 vs. Latin Lovers 2:30 p.m. on Field 1: Cygnet Shoppers vs. Lambnuts 2:30 p.m. on Field 2: Psycho Squirrels vs. Burlap Barbarians The FF/SS has a bye Signups for the all-campus triathlon start at 8 a.m. in the pool area. The swimming event will start at 9:00 a.m. with biking and running to follow. Remember you can compete as an individual or as a team. Earthworms Win Twice, Remain Undefeated By Dave Lewis Everyone contributed, which is a great sign for the rest of the year. Swarthmore took two teams to the Shroomfest at Bucknell University last Saturday. Earthworms' B squad lost two tough, close games and the A squad remain undefeated at 10-0. Due to scheduling miscommunications, the B team was forced to watch the first round. They watched the A team control an experienced set of Bucknell alums in a very quick game. The windy weather allowed Swat A to try their zone defense early, a key to victories earlier in the season. Again it would spell trouble for the opposing offense: Swarthmore took the half 7-0. The Elder Sharks were able to find the endzone only once and were summarily routed 13-1. Swarthmore B, anxious after watching for the first round, were ready to play in their first match against Bucknell Wedge. However, several key drops on offense led to a 7-0 deficit after the first half. Although they played even with Wedge the rest of the game, the first half deficit was too much to overcome. After watching the B squad play a great second half, Swarthmore A was ready to take on Wedge, who had the misfortune of drawing the two Swarthmore teams in successive rounds. They were unable to fare any better than their alumni against the oppressive Swarthmore zone. The Earthworms dominated 13-1. Captain Dave Sacker '97 made several impressive throws to the endzone to spark the Swarthmore offense, but again it was the defense providing great field position that was the biggest offensive contributor. While A was facing down Wedge, Swat B tackled Penn State. Perhaps invigorated by their second half versus Bucknell, the B of- fense was clicking as their short game propelled them to an 8-7 lead, with the game hard-capped at nine. Said co-captain Noam Unger '99, "I really wish I could list everybody on the team, especially the frosh, because everybody really stepped up their level of play. — Once we got the jitters out in the Bucknell first half, we were in every game. Everyone contributed, which is a great sign for the rest of the year." Unfortunately, Penn State was able to pull out a 9-8 victory. Just like Bucknell before them, Penn State was scheduled to play Swat A after the B team. Penn State came out fired up and hungry for victory over the undefeated Earthworms. Although Swat took the half at 7-2, Penn State just missed several opportunities in the endzone. In the second half it was Robin Mandel's '97 tenacious defense, including a bid from prone on the ground after he and his man had already laid out for the disc, that helped keep the momentum in Swarthmore's advantage. The Earthworms prevailed 13-7. The A team had one more game against the U. S. Naval Academy. The weather began pouring its aggravations players below. Navy was unable to advance the disc through the Swarthmore zone defense and gave many discs over to the wet and wind. The final score was 13-2. Those B players remaining on the sidelines were surprised with playing time for their diligence, giving some A players a breather and themselves valuable experience. Nate Schaffran 'OO, Vincent Pallaver 'OO, and Matt Coddington '99 each made contributions, including one offense possession that ended with a pass from Pallaver to Schaffran for the score. This weekend, the teams travel to Sectionals, the first stage in Nationals Series. Women's Soccer Team Winless in Three Tries By Laura Michele Starita and Laird Hedlund The Swarthmore women's soccer team faced a grueling schedule this past week with games on Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On Saturday the Swarthmore women hosted Western Maryland. The first half was evenly matched as the Swarthmore women held Western Maryland to only two goals with a tough defensive game. However, in the second half, Western Maryland scored four goals while the Garnet only scored one. The lone Swarthmore goal came from Sarah Jaquette '9B in the latter part of the half to prevent the shutout, 6-1. Swarthmore traveled to Cabrini on Tuesday for an afternoon match that ended in a 2- 1 loss. The unusually small size of the Cabrini soccer field and the fact that many members of Swarthmore's starting lineup were late due to class conflicts contributed to the "lack of cohesiveness" that captain Claire Baxter '9B felt hurt Swarthmore in the game. Baxter and Kirstin Knox '99, key players in the Swarthmore midfield arrived at half time, after which the team was able to bond together to create a more effective attack and defense. Jaquette scored the goal off of a beautiful assist by rookie Catherine Laine '9B. Wednesday afternoon the Garnet suffered a long, rainy ride to face Gettysburg. The three hour bus ride took its toll on the squad as they walked on the field sleepy from the ride and stiff from their Tuesday match. A prolonged warm up prepared the women well as they took the field to challenge a powerful Gettysburg team, currently undefeated |n the conference. From the first whistle, it became very clear that the skill and speed of Gettysburg's women far surpassed thatof Swarthmore's finest. After ten minutes of regulation play, the scoreboard read 2-0 as the Garnet could generate no offense. Gettysburg's quick, overlapping style of play coupled with their strategy of involving their defensive line in the offensive attack kept the ball in their offensive third for the entire half and kept the Garnet short sided on nearly every play of the game. The S warthmore women maintained a fighting spirit for the full forty-five minutes and continued to aggressively take advantage of the few offensive strikes they had. The work paid off with eight minutes left in the first half as Laine collected a through ball from her midfield position and managed to slip it past Gettysburg's overly aggressive keeper. The second half was a replay of the first as Gettysburg tallied two quick goals, followed by thirty minutes of evenly matched soccer. The Garnet managed to create even more offensive strikes for themselves while defensively preventing Gettysburg's women from shooting within the eighteen yard line. Despite the 4-1 final score, Swarthmore played tough against the team that Baxter classifies as "the best team in the conference." "We played really well at Gettysburg, and they were a really good team. However, we kept our defense strong and our confidence up, and, I think, overall, we proved to ourselves that we are a good team that can handle serious competition. It was a great inspiration for this weekend's game against Dickinson," said Betsy Rosenbaum '9B. With this new confidence and "cohesiveness," the Swarthmore women ought to give Dickinson a tough time on Saturday at Homecoming. Photo By Fang Cai Janice Gallagher '99 chases after the soccer ball. October 4, 1996 The Phoenix 7 Goldman, Sachs & Co. invites Swarthmore College undergraduates to explore the many opportunities for professional growth within the firm. Wednesday, October 9, 1996 Opportunities in the Equities Division (VX/itli Global Investment Research) 6:30 p.m., The Bryn Mawr College Campus Center, Room 105 Casual Attire Thursday, November 7, 1996 Opportunities in the Investment Banking Division 8:30 p.m., Swarthmore College, Sharpies 111 Casual Attire Goldman Sachs, an equal opportunity employer, docs not discriminate in employment on any basis that is prohibited by federal, state or local law. oltfman
---------- Page 8 ----------
Swarthmore Prepares for Homecoming 1996? By Rachel Gutman As part of a drive for increased school spirit and loyalty to our sports teams, the Social Affairs Committee will be hosting a Swarthmore Homecoming celebration this weekend. The plan is that this weekend's program will increase fan support at athletic contests and build a more fervent attitude in the student body. As Tanisha Little '97, co-director of SAC, says, "When U.S. News & World Report ranked Swat # 1, people were excited; they were doing dances on Parrish beach. We hope to use Homecoming weekend as a way to continue that spirit and enthusiasm." While this is not the first year there has been a Homecoming event, this is the first time in many years that so many activities have been planned and so much funding has been allocated to this festival. In fact, Swarthmore used to have quite extensive homecoming events, but this tradition died out several decades ago. In past years there have been Homecoming weekends, but there haven't been campus wide spirit-raising activities. Instead, Homecoming has been coupled with Parents' Weekend in past years, and the only real distinguishing feature was that many of our teams played at home. This year, Little and the entire SAC board felt it was "time to do something a little different." This program, almost solely sponsored by the Social Affairs Committee, is part of a push towards promoting school spirit and loyalty. Little and Aisha Moss-Koonce '9B ran last year for co-directors of SAC on a platform to support different types of activities, including Homecoming. Thus, this weekend is a realization of one of their dreams for Swarthmore. As Little says, "Aisha and I had the idea to have a weekend celebration and our committee just kept coming up with ideas about how to do it; it has really been a group effort." The Homecoming festival will begin on Friday afternoon and last through Saturday. In Sharpies on Friday, at 6:15 p.m., there will be a pep rally and free pom-poms will be given out, courtesy of Tarble. According to Sharpies representatives, there will be a festive meal complete with decorations to create "the right kind of atmosphere" for this event. SAC is in the process of applying for a fireworks license. Assuming this is granted, there will be a lights display at 7:00 p.m. on Friday evening, following the Pep Rally. According to Activities Committee members, it looks likely that this will be approved. The Homecoming party will take place on Friday night in Tarble from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Little reports there will be "great food and an offcampus, professional DJ." Preceding the athletic events, there will be a tailgate party next to the Field House, also sponsored by the Social Affairs Committee. The scheduled athletic events are: the 1996 Men's Eastern Rolex Small College Tennis Tournament, women's field hockey vs. Dickinson, women's volleyball vs. Moravian, women's soccer vs. Dickinson, and men's football vs. Ursinus. All games begin at 1:00 p.m., except football, which is at 1:30 p.m. There is also an alumni flag football game between S wat and Ursinus. The first half will take place on the football practice field prior to the football game, and the second half will be played at half-time. While student response to Homecoming seems generally supportive, there are those who feel this is not the right way to spend money and that such a program is not needed or appropriate at Swarthmore. Dan Sachar '97, expressed his feelings by saying, "It reminds me of high school. I was under the impression I had graduated from high school." Post Game Report Learning the Hard Lessons of Life on the Playing Field By Jean Quinn / would rather emphasize is how proud I am of the way the team played, as well as the way they handled themselves on and off the field. Borbee As hosts of the Seven Sisters Tournament, the Swarthmore field hockey team (7-4 overall) had an exciting weekend. Three high energy performances by the Garnet resulted in a return trip to the finals and a secondplace finish overall. Two Swarthmore players were named to the All-Tournament Team, and on a different note, two were sidelined with injuries. Yesterday's conference win against Muhlenberg marked the much anticipated return of Lia Ernst '97. Seeded first in the tournament as two-time defending champs, Swarthmore faced Vassar in their first-round contest, whom they easily dispatched, 4-0. In the first half, the Garnet got off to a big start. Danielle Duffy '9B scored on a penalty stroke which she placed into the lower left cornerof the goal. Samantha Peltz '97, assisted by Holly Baker '99, recorded the first of her many goals this tournament with ten minutes left in the half. The half was marred only by an injury to the right knee of defenseman Lynne Steuerle '99. Sujin Seo '97 played in Steurele's stead and played well for the rest of the tournament. Peltz scored again in the opening minutes of tfte second half on an assist by Donna Griffin '99. Peltz got the rebound off Michelle Walsh's '9B shot from a corner to get her second goal of the game. Lurah Hess '99 scored unassisted with twenty minutes left in the game off a baseline corner play. Swat took 32 shots in the game, compared to Vassar's four. Coach Karen Borbee was "very pleased" with the game and noted that it was "definitely a team effort. It's the kind of game you love to see," she said. ■Swarthmore's second round game was against fourth-ranked Smith. The Garnet dominated and outshot their opponent 36-11 but were unable to put one past the goalie in regulation. The first sudden-death overtime period, in which each team is limited to six players and the goalie, presented each team with opportunities to claim victory. Kelly Wilcox '97, who had a fabulous tournament and added two more shut-outs to her seasonseason total, made an amazing split save to keep the Garnet alive. Centerback Walsh proceeded to clear the ball out of the danger zone. Later Kristen Osborne '97 passed the ball to Duffy creating a breakaway. Duffy was clearly tripped up by a Smith player trying to keep her from taking a shot and was awarded a penalty stroke. Duffy's shot was wide, however, and the game went into a second OT. Griffin played very well in this period, inspiring others with her aggression and spirit, but again, neither team was capable of scoring. Swarthmore finally sealed a victory when sweeper Jen Hagan *99 hit the ball up the sideline towards the goal. The crowd and the Smith players questioned the high pass and waited for a whistle. However, none came and Duffy, who received Hagan's pass, crossed it in front of the goal to Peltz, who only had to knock it in for the win. "Somehow I found myself unmarked and right in front of the goal cage. Danielle gave me a great pass. All I had to do was tap the ball in the cage," recalled Peltz. "Smith was a good team but we were a much better team. It was very exciting and was the first OT game for both the team and the coaches this season. We won the game because we had more overall skill, team depth, and heart," said Coach Borbee. This victory set up a repeat of last year's championship game with Swarthmore facing Wellesley. Seeded second in the Northeast region, Wellesley, who made it to the Final Four of last year's NCAA Tournament, was a tough foe. The Garnet were prepared and scored first. Walsh stopped the ball and pushed it in to Peltz who scored her fourth goal of the tournament. Unfortunately, this was the only goal the Garnet would get and their lead lasted only three minutes, at which time Wellesley tied it up off a comer play. Goalie Wilcox made the initial save but was not in position to stop the follow-up shot. Wellesley scored again off a well-designed corner play which had a long, hard shot being taken from a player farther back than is usual. The Garnet lost Hess in the first half when her fingertip broke and split open, upon being pinned by the ball. In the second half, Walsh received a card for talking to the officials and a Wellesley player was awarded a penalty stroke following the defensive play of Walsh. Wilcox stopped the penalty shot with her foot and the sequence did not alter the score. Surprisingly, the officials awarded Wellesley another penalty stroke on the heels of a defensive effort by Hagan to block a shot. Trying to do the impossible by stopping another stroke, Wilcox was able to get a piece of the ball, but it rolled into the cage anyway. The game ended 3-1, a Wellesley win. When asked to comment on the game's officiating, of which both fans and players complained, Coach Borbee said, "I do feel it was unfortunate that an official affected the game, but I'd rather not dwell on this aspect of the game. What I would rather emphasize is how proud I am of the way the team played, as well as the way they handled themselves on and off the field." Peltz and Duffy were named to the All Tournament Team for their excellent play. In yesterday's match against Muhlenberg, the Garnet routed the opposition 3-1. Hagan, Danielle Thomas '99, and Ernst each scored for Swarthmore. Ernst's goal came in the final 30 seconds of the first half. Baker, Duffy, and Ernst recorded as sists. Although she is still a littl hesitant about her knee, Ernst took the field for the first time this season and blasted the ball past the goalie in a penalty corner. The Garnet take or conference foe Dickinson tomorrow Cross- Country By Nevin Katz and Sarah McClure Saturday the Swarthmore cross country team returned to Lebanon Valley State Park to compete against Lebanon Valley, Muhlenberg, and long time rival Allentown. The companions were able to channel their knowledge of the course into a tidal wave of aggression. The race marked a definite turning point in the season. The strategy departed from elaborate race plans and controlled pace. From here on out, the approach is to be as gutsy and as aggressive as possible. Swarthmore's top five men broke into the overall top six, placing first in the meet. Phil Jones '99 captured first place with a time of 27:16. Wyn Strodtbeck '9B flew into third at 27:44, Jeremy Weinstein '97 fourth at 28:03, Graham Lucks '9B fifth at 28:11, and finally Kerry Boeye '97 sixth at 28:15. Cameron Warner'97 finished at 28:32 and Gordon Roble '99 at 28:43. Team spirit played an important role in the success of the women's race because it was the first time where almost all the members of the women's team competed. Co-captain Danielle Wall '97 encouraged the women to help one another out along the course, while Coach Erica Chiavetta prepared the team for the race: "Just keep looking at the person in front of you. Focus on their shoulders and let them do the work. Before you know it you'll be passing them." Throughout the race, coaches Ted Dixon and Chiavetta, as well as the men's team, followed the women along the course cheering them on. Although the women were defeated by Allentown, they finished strong led by Becky Riskey '9B crossing the finish line with a time of 20:39 in second place, and right behind her Danielle Wall '97 at 20:46 in third. Amalia Jerison 'OO finished sixth at 21:01. Amy Klosterman ' 97 came in seventh with a time of 21:51. Then came Alison Schirmer '97 in 14th at 22:24, Debra Junnila '97 in 19th at 23:11, and Karen Lloyd 'OO in 20th with a time of 23:29 all contributing to the team score. "Tie Garnet has next week off. Athletes of the Week Erin Rather '97 Field Hockey Photo courtesy of Lia Ernst Erin "Schlumpy" Flather is one of the most consistent field hockey players in Swarthmore Athletics. Leading the defense and controlling the flow of the Garnet's play, the two-year captain contributed greatly to the Garnet's second place finish in the Seven Sisters Tournament. Her silent leadership on the field during both games and practices inspires her teammates. Both fellow players and assistant coaches Christine Fillipo and Julie Mazer complimented Erin on her great stick skills and her solid, "wall-like" defense. Head Coach Karen Borbee said, "You don't need stats to know that Erin is doing a great job. She possesses just the right combination of aggression and calmness on the field." Eddie Shin '97 Football Photo courtesy of Yonsei University Eddie Shin, returning from a year's hiatus from football, was named to the Centennial Conference Honor Roll this week for his superb performance this past Saturday against the Bullets of Gettysburg College. Eddie, a running back, rushed 125 yards on 17 carries in the game, while averaging 7.4 yards per carry. Fellow teammate, Alex Lundry' 99 credited Eddie's "awesome" running in sparking the Garnet's offensive flow in the first-half. Lundry said, "His running made us look good." Co-captain Kurk Selverian '97 said, "Eddie has really stepped up this year. After not playing last year, he has adopted the starting role and has had tremendous impact on the offense." Rising Tides By Alex Lundry The Swarthmore football team took the field at Gettysburg College last Saturday with high hopes to upset the Bullets in their rainy Homecoming day game. The Garnet Tide carried a lead going into halftime, but the Bullets pounded the Tide on both sides of the ball in the second half. The scoreboard at the end of the game read 35-15 in favor of the Bullets, but the real story cannot be told through these numbers. The opening kickoff was inauspicious for the Tide, who opened up the drive on their own one yard line. The offense, led by Patrick Straub '97, worked its way into shallow Gettysburg territory before they were forced to punt. After the defense forced a three and out against the Wing-T offense of the Bullets, the Tide offense drove to the Gettysburg one yard. There the Tide failed to punch the ball in on their first two attempts before a Bullet defender intercepted one of Straub's passes. For the rest of the first quarter the crowd was treated to quality, but scoreless, football by both teams. In the second quarter both teams came out firing. Only minutes into the new quarter Straub threaded the needle between two defenders to find Mason Tootell '99 in the end zone for the first points of the game. Gettysburg retaliated soon thereafter to tie the score up 7-7. Then with little time remaining in the first half, the Tide put together a stupendous drive led by receiver Lou Basenese 'OO and running back Eddie Shin' 97. With no time remaining in the half and the ball inside the Bullet' s twentyyard line, the Tide faked a field goal and Straub hooked up with a wide open Tom Forstik 'OO for a touchdown. To add insult to injury, the Tide faked their point after attempt, and Straub ran the ball in for the twopoint conversion. At half-time, Swarthmore went into the locker extremely pumped up with a 15-7 lead over Gettysburg. Most of the third quarter was fairly uneventful. But with about three minutes remaining, the Bullets pounded through the Tide's defense into the endzone. After a successful two-point conversion, the score was all tied up going into the final quarter 15-15. In the fourth quarter all aspects of the Tide's game collapsed. Battling a fired up Gettysburg unit and some extremely questionable calls, the Tide began to come apart at the seams under the pressure. Before the Tide could figure out what had happened, the Bullets had scored three more touchdowns though they were stuffed on two out of the three conversions. Although the Tide garnered another loss, there are a number of positives to use as a stepping stone into this week's game. Straub and Basenese connected a total of seven times for a total of 127 yards. Eddie Shin averaged 7.4 yards per carry on 17 carries for a total of 125 yards. The offense seemed to click this past week in a way they had in no other game this season. If the Tide can combine their focused offense of the Gettysburg game with the defense's steady play thus far, the Ursinus Golden Bears need fear their trip to Swarthmore. The Bears are undefeated going into this week's contest, and the Tide are hoping to exploit weaknesses that the coaches have noticed in the Bear's game. The potent passing attack of the Bears may be stunted since their star quarterback is questionable due to an injury. Either way, the Tide are well prepared to show this week's Homecoming crowd what they are really about. upcoming games Field Hockey 1:00 p.m. vs. Dickinson Football 1:30 p.m. vs. Ursinus Men's Soccer 1:00 p.m. vs. Dickinson Women's Soccer 1:00 p.m. vs. Dickinson Men's Rugby 1:00 p.m. @ UPenn Women's Rugby 11:00 a.m. @ U of Delaware Men's Tennis Rolex Tournament Men's 8 Women's Ultimate PA/DE Sectionals @ Lehigh Volleyball 1:00 p.m. vs. Moravian Men's & Women's Ultimate PA/DE Sectionals @ Lehigh Women's Soccer 4:00 p.m. vs. Eastern Volleyball 6:00 p.m. vs. Wilmington Field Hockey 4:00 p.m. vs. Washington Men's Soccer 4:00 p.m. @ Eastern Women's Soccer 4:oo p.m. vs. Drew HHHHH Soccer Update By Shulamit Shapiro Men's Soccer finally samples the sweet taste of success after two straight victories (1-0, 1-0) with one coming from overtime. After beginning this season with several disappointing losses, the Swarthmore men's soccer team can finally swim in the pool of victory, sail in the ocean of triumph and sunbathe on the beach of success. The team won both games it played this week by a score of 1-0 , with one in overtime. On Saturday, the team faced Western Maryland in a Centennial Conference game. The overtime goal electrified the home crowd. Joel Yurdin '99 scored the goal with five minutes left in the overtime period after cocaptain Dave "In the Fast" Lane '97 flicked Yurdin an Amber Thompson '97 pass. "There was nothing pretty about it it was an ugly goal, but, at the same time, it was beautiful because it allowed us to win the game," said Lane. For Yurdin the goal was particularly meaningful. "It was Joel's first game winner goal. He was extremely excited and so were we all," said Lane. On Wednesday, the team played Wesley on an unkempt football field with more dirt than grass. Aside from just being aesthetically displeasing, a dirty field causes other problems. "On a field like this, the ball bounces really high. We have a lot of trouble controlling the ball on foot. That caused a lot of unfinished opportunities," said Lane. The only goal of this game was scored by a combined effort between Lane and Kyle "House of Style" Barnett '97, another co-captain. The two co-captains were able to perform a textbook version of a move known as 'threading the needle.' Their skill ensured the team' s victory and a beautiful finish to the game. Lane finds that the players have now been working together long enough to feel like a team, which can only be a sign of future success. The Garnet are on the road for their next two contests. Saturday the Garnet travels to Dickinson, and Wednesday I they are at Eastern. 8 The Phoenix October 4, 19% SPORTS
---------- Page 9 ----------
THE PHOENIX A Special Supplement . . . nQ*j Swarthmore Col lege •Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Volume 118, Number 5A The following is a preliminary 3 report issued by the Council on Educational Policy on the basis of last spring's panel discussions. The report is not final and changes may still be made; contact your represen- A tative to CEP if you have com- * ments, questions or sugges- ( tions. There will be a meeting . for this purpose on Thursday, October 10 at 4:30 p.m. in { Parrish Parlors. ] Introduction J In the belief that planning is done t best when an institution is strong t and not facing crisis, the Board of i Managers and President Al Bloom < have initiated a long-range plan- < ning effort to sustain into the fu- : rare the excellence of the educa- i tion we offer Swarthmore students. < Because the academic program is i central to our mission as a College l the President asked CEP in the < winter of 1996 to begin identifying i topics that should be central to i planning for Swarthmore. i We saw three fundamental guides for planning: first, the broad < and long-standing goals of Swarthmore's educational program, second and third, the current external circumstances and internal concerns to which our educational program must respond in order to maintain our ability to achieve those goals. The broad goals of a Swarthmore education have consistently been identified as intellectual excellence, especially cultivation of the intellectual ability to analyze and respond creatively to complexity; and social responsibility in the application of that intellectual excellence. The external circumstances most persuasively invoked in the preliminary discussions are 1) the internationalization of almost every arena of activity in which students might eventually participate and the increasing social and cultural diversity within most nations; 2) the very rapid development of technology, especially for the management of information; and 3) the current questioning of the value of liberal arts education. The internal concerns we heard most frequently evoked 1) the effects of increasing pressure on the role of teacherscholar, 2) the need for mechanisms of innovation in the curriculum, without threat to depth, and 3) the necessity of adequate linkage between Swarthmore and the world, including preparation of students for a wide range of future career paths. This report proposes six major topics that we believe require the long-range perspective and the focused effort of planning. These areas were sifted from those raised in the panel discussions on the future of the College held last spring and in recent reports by several major Committees and Task Forces. We gave priority to topics clearly derived from the fundamental issues described above. Several are connected to more than one. The topics we propose for planning are briefly outlined below. Fuller presentation of our rationale for these choices and our suggestions for planning strategies constitutes the remainder of this document. In bringing this proposal to the Faculty now we seek confirmation and endorsement of the agenda we present. Does it address those issues Faculty see as having the significance, scope and potential for future guidance to justify our engagement in long-range planning? I. Outline of Topics for Long-Range Planning 1. Distribution Requirements: 2. Innovation in the Curriculum —lnterdisciplinary Units —Gaps to be Filled in the Curriculum and Allocation of Positions—Community-Based Learning —Technology 3. Support for the Teacher-Scholar —Leaves —Review and Planning with Senior Faculty —Committee Burden —Credit for Teaching Outside Scheduled Classes 4. Honors 5. Diversity 6. Size of the College 1. Distribution Requirements, including PDC's, have been in place in their current structure for 10 years. We heard substantial Faculty and student questioning about whether these requirements are still effective for achieving our educational goals in current circumstances. There are specific criticisms of PDC's, as well as broader concerns about the overall organization of our requirements. Increasing diversity of approaches within disciplines and departments, as well as the increasing importance of interdisciplinary approaches that cross-cut departmental and even divisional lines, raise questions about the reasonableness of basing the rationale for our requirements primarily in the departmental and divisional structure. If changes in the world students will enter after graduation demand different preparation, then our requirements should reflect those differences. We suggest that the Faculty give serious consideration to shifting to an approach to requirements based on the ideaof "competencies", such as written expression, quantitative analysis, textual analysis, experimental methods, visual analysis, analysis of the creative arts, foreign language, historical analysis, inter-cultural perspectives. This approach would identify competencies all students should acquire and then identify courses, in various departments and often more than one division, that promote those competencies. We propose that Faculty consideration of acompetency approach to requirements be undertaken through creation of a plan that includes definition of a specific set of competencies, identification of costs (including administrative costs) of implementing this approach, and implications for student demand in various departments.2. Mechanisms for Innovation in the Curriculum are necessary to be sure the College can be responsive to changes that occur, with increasing rapidity, in the intellectual world as well as many other spheres of human experience, and consequently exert influence on the needs and the interests of both students and Faculty. However, such mechanisms must operate without threatening continued excellence in existing programs. It is also important to scrutinize innovations to determine whether they will in the longer run impede future flexibility and to what extent they exacerbate the burdens on Faculty as teacher-scholars. Concentrations, for example, although they are a very effective means of bringing new areas into the curriculum, have raised concerns among some Faculty because their administrative demands and teaching commitments may actually impede further innovation and increase the stress on Faculty. Planning should attempt to define mechanisms that offer opportunities for flexibility and innovation in the curriculum without impeding future flexibility and without exacerbating administrative burdens on Faculty. —lnterdisciplinary elements in the Curriculum were the focus of a CEP report and proposal last year that emphasized issues of timing and of budgetary resources. Faculty approval of the CEP proposal determined that Concentrations now are approved for five years, after which they must seek renewal. There is also now an ongoing budget to support course replacement, clerical support and operating budgets for Concentrations. However, as certain Concentrations now work with very large numbers of students and have corresponding intellectual structures, such as doctoral programs, outside the College, it is necessary to include in our planning the possibility of Faculty appointments, either full or joint, into Concentrations, with the concomitant shift of certain programs to continuing status. Visiting Committees in Black Studies, Public Policy and Women's Studies have all recommended such appointments in the last three years. —Gaps in the Curriculum need to be identified and given priorities. An important aspect of this planning will be assessment of existing Faculty interest and abilities in proposed areas. A more effective procedure for allocation of new positions also needs to be designed. —Community-Based Learning was the subject of an extensive report three years ago. The Report recommended that communitybased teaching strategies already used at Swarthmore should be viewed as analogous to laboratories and supported adequately. CEP believes that our current planning efforts should specify what support for current programs will be required in future and also assess Faculty interest in making additional use of community-based learning if support is provided. We see a rationale for encouraging additional opportunities for community-based learning both in the broad goals of the College and in current concerns about improved linkage between Swarthmore and the world. However additional use should be planned for only if Faculty interest is strong, because it is essential to the quality of this form of learning that it be closely integrated into the curriculum. —Technology in support of the curriculum we recommend as one aspect of more comprehensive planning about technological innovation on campus. Planning needs to include decisions not only about specific technology to be added, and supported, in the near future, but also about processes of decision-making to be used about technology on an ongoing basis. Means for Faculty to learn enough about the instructional technology available to make informed decisions must also be provided. The plan should use as a foundation Tom Stephenson's report of spring 1996. 3. Support for the Teacher- Scholar needs to be increased and in some ways reformulated. [We note that our use of the word scholar is intended to include professional activities of Faculty members in the arts.] Changes in the specialization of scholarship, in family organization, in the diversity of the student body and in the internal governance of the College have all added to the difficulty of maintaining excellence in teaching and in scholarship, and especially to the difficulty of encouraging their mutual reinforcement. Planning to provide support for the Faculty as teacher-scholars in the amount and the form needed should include: funding, timing and eligible uses of leaves; reduction of Faculty time spent on committee work; improved orientation for teaching a diverse student body; teaching credit for supervision of student work outside the classroom, in particular work done as part of an Honors program. We also believe that it will be beneficial to individual Faculty and to the College to create a process for regular review and planning with senior Faculty, to take place perhaps every Bth year following promotion to Professor. 4. Honors planning will be carried out by Craig Williamson, as Honors Coordinator, and the Curriculum Committee in consultation with departments and programs about what their experience in these first years predicts about staffing and budget needs for the future. 5. Diversity in the Faculty we believe is necessary for achievement of our broad educational goals, especially in the context of the increasing diversity among our students, as well as the social and cultural complexity they will encounter after Swarthmore, both internationally and in their home societies. Because issues related to diversity span the domains of the College, we recommend that planning for recruitment and retention of a diverse Faculty be included in College-wide planning about diversity, guided by the recent recommendations of the Task Force on Diversity. For the academic area, we especially encourage plans for greater support of the Minority Scholar in Residence program that has helped us attract several very strong minority members of the Swarthmore Faculty. 6. Size of the College needs to be one of the topics for long-range planning, and it should be addressed as early as possible. The decision about whether or not to increase the size of the student body will influence the way planning progresses about many other core topics. Even our preliminary reflection about needs in the academic area suggests that without additions to the Faculty, it is unlikely we could carry out plans needed to maintain excellence in existing programs and at the same time introduce the new fields without which our overall educational program will no longer be excellent. Given a student-faculty ratio that has varied over the last 10 years between 8.5 to 1, and 9.5 to 1, it does not appear reasonable to add Faculty without adding students. A possible increase in the number of students at Swarthmore has been the subject of at least three reports, each with a different focal point, in the last 10 years. These documents answer some basic questions about the facilities and support staff needed if we add students, and about the ability of our current land to accommodate up to 600 more students without encroachment on "sacred" spaces such as the Amphitheatre, the Crum or Magill Walk or loss of green ambiance. Although we expect full use to be made of the information in these previous reports, they do not by themselves provide a basis for weighing the benefits of proposed plans for the curriculum against the costs and possible negative effects of an increased student body. This is the step that we believe our next planning effort needs to take. Along with the plans proposed for the curriculum, we need a detailed proposal for increasing student body size by 200-800 so that benefits and trade-offs can be clearly identified before final decisions are made. 11. Background As we worked to select specific topics for planning, we were guided first by their relationship to the fundamental issues described in the Introduction—intellectual excellence with social responsibility, external circumstances, internal concerns. In addition we were influenced by our evaluation of the need for long-range planning (vs the possibility of action based on information we have in hand) and by the likelihood that planning about a particular topic would result in guidelines for a broader range of future decisions as well. We note that certain topics of obvious importance to planning, such as the future of financial aid or the increasing cost of a Swarthmore education are not discussed below, because our mandate was to focus on the academic program. However, we anticipate and strongly endorse a central role for Faculty in planning about such aspects of our future as a College. CEP began its work by asking all Faculty, as well as Student Council, to suggest topics that should be the focus of long-range planning. The responses were used to design six panel discussions open to the entire College community, five led by Faculty and one by students, on the topics of: The Teacher-Scholar of the Future; The Future of Interdisciplinary Elements in the Curriculum; Social Responsibility for the Future; Educational for an Intercultural World; Academic Excellence for the Future; Student Visions of the Academic Program of the Future. These discussions, combined with recent reports from major committees and task-forces, provided background material for two weeks of intensive work by members of the 1995-96 and 1996- 97 CEP during the summer. This proposal is the result of that work. It presents the topics that CEP recommends as the major foci of longrange planning for the academic area, with suggestions about what groups might take responsibility for planning about each topic, and how these academic topics might be linked to planning in other areas of the College. When the proposal for the academic area is in final form, it will be coordinated by the College Planning Committee with topics identified in other areas of the College into an overall planning process and schedule. CEP sees as one of our important responsibilities oversight of ways Faculty are asked to participate in planning, so that precious time and energy are used as efficiently and effectively as possible. 111. Discussion of Planning Topics In all of its discussions, CEP tried to take a very direct approach. With regard to each issue, it asked first, "What is the goal? " It asked second, "Does what we currently do serve the goal, or are there features of what we currently do which fail to promote our purpose, or • even impede it? Does what we currently do need more support in order to continue promoting our goal?" And it asked finally, "Is there some more effective way we can plan to achieve the goal?" Though the specific issues differ from one another, there are a number of common questions that planning in any specific area will be expected to address: 1. What are the implications of the plan, and potential consequences for the plan, of possible increases in the size of the student body? 2. What are the associated financial, space, and technology needs? 3. How might the plan affect, and be affected by summer use of the campus? 4. Is there a role for Tri- College collaboration? 1. Distribution Requirements. Are the current requirements effective for achieving our educational goals in current circumstances? Do the current requirements provide training in all the skills we think are essential to a quality education? There is a growing consensus that our distribution requirements need to be reexamined. Primary Distribution Courses are uneven in the way they meet the three goals that were identified for them at their inception (writing intensive, methodologically selfconscious, appropriate for nonmajors as well as majors). Student perception appears to be that PDC' s are just for teaching writing, and that they do the job admirably in some disciplines but not in others. Among the problems they pose for students is that in some departments, virtually all elementary courses are PDC s, so that students have a tough time avoiding overloads of writing-intensive courses. In the course of CEP's discussion of the first two years, the focus shifted from courses per se to the idea of competencies. That is, maybe what we should think about first are competencies that all students should have, and then identify courses that serve those competencies. Distribution requirements, then, would be organized around competencies rather than disciplines. This approach encourages a kind of "zero-based" look at the first two years—indeed, at the whole four years. If we were to rethink our curriculum with competencies in mind, one list (for purposes of illustration only) might include the following: 1. Written expression 2. Quantitative analysis 3. Textual analysis 4. Experimental methods 5. Visual analysis 6. Analysis of the creative arts 7. Foreign language 8. Historical analysis 9. Inter-cultural perspectives 10. Understanding of some discipline or interdisciplinary area in depth In this competency-based view of things, students would be required to demonstrate competency in domains such as these. Each domain would have its own requirements. Courses in a variety of departments, sometimes across divisional lines, would be identified as serving each of these competencies. To maintain standards, the Curriculum Committee would monitor the relation between various classes and the competencies they are meant to support. Most of these competency requirements would be expected to be completed by students in their first two years. Breadth of exposure would be assured even though no breadth is explicitly required. This approach abandons the idea that introductory instruction in all disciplines can be shaped to serve the same set of goals (as the current PDC requirement does). It acknowledges diversity of content within divisions and even departments, and recognizes the fluidity of curricular organization represented by concentrations and other special programs. CEP recommends that it give this new approach to distribution requirements serious study. Can a coherent set of competencies be defined? What would be the costs of implementing this new form of distribution requirement? What would be the administrative burdens? Would some departments be adversely affected (by creating either too much demand or too little demand by a structure of this type? Depth, as represented by the ma jor, has not been identified as a topic for specific planning, because this was discussed quite extensively during consideration of the new Honors program. However concern was raised in some pane discussions that the pursuit of mul tiple "things" (concentrations double majors) by students wa resulting in somewhat less depth of understanding in the major than may once have been the case. 1 this is true, several possible rea sons for it can be identified: 1. Students actually take fewe courses in the major than they one did, with more of them meetin only the minimal major require ments. 2. Courses within departments form a less cohesive package than they once did, owing to diversification of what counts as part of a discipline. As a result, while each of our students may have expertise in one or another area , there may still be sizeable gaps in their education.3. Students may be less likely than they once were to study in departments that are closely related to the department of their major and thus are less likely to learn things relevant to their major discipline "in passing" as they study something else. 4. Students may be more scattered in the various activities they pursue than they once were, with the result that they do less "informal" learning about the discipline from peers and faculty. Given the centrality of the depth experience to the College's mission, the perception that this aspect of our education may be less robust than it might be appears to warrant review, and we recommend that CEP give it attention as they plan for the curriculum. Swarthmore's Student Newspaper Since 1881 ****
---------- Page 10 ----------
"Swarthmore experiences" emerged from our discussion of requirements as another related, but distinct category for planning. We see these as a kind of experience available at Swarthmore which, while not required, is sufficiently valuable and distinctive that opportunities for students to participate should be maximized. Such "Swarthmore experiences" as close relations between students and Faculty in joint research, guided encounters through which principles learned in the classroom are tested in the world beyond campus, participation as partners with fellow students and teachers in seminars, and participation in the Honors program itself should have enough support that in future we can in good conscience encourage students to engage in them. Planning should specify the support needed. 2. Innovation In the Curriculum. While the College must be sure to continue doing well what it has always done well, it must also be sure that it can be responsive to changes that occur, with increasing rapidity, in the intellectual world and in the external world. Planning for change or flexibility is inherently difficult, because serious planning requires some kind of structure, and structure is often the enemy of flexibility. Efforts to meet the need for innovation may also have results that complicate efforts to relieve the pressure on Faculty as teacher-scholars. What the College can do is to examine existing curricular structures to see whether they impede or enhance innovation and to consider new mechanisms that might be effective in ensuring adequate flexibility at minimal cost in administrative burden. —lnterdisciplinary programs. Concentrations were created in part to facilitate the introduction of new areas and approaches into the curriculum, because these so often cross disciplinary and departmental boundaries. The recent revision of Concentration status to require periodic renewal was intended to encourage the Faculty to consider, among other queries, whether the once innovative subject of the Concentration might have become so fully incorporated into other parts of the curriculum that the program' s task was complete and the Concentration might consequently be laid down. International Relations is a recent case in point. This new procedure was intended to reduce the likelihood that persistence of too many Concentrations would exacerbate burdens on Faculty and impede further flexibility. Some Faculty have expressed concern that these risks are still great. Planning should include exploration of ways to reduce administrative burden of Concentrations as well as means of innovation other than Concentrations. For example, during the preliminary discussions the following were suggested as ways to achieve this: defining one course out of the five-course teaching load as a "flex" course for Faculty to teach a subject of their choice; an "incubator" category in the curriculum for experimental courses; a rubric for new courses that do not fit into a department or program. [We note that the Study Group format proposed by CEP last year also offered a less burdensome way for Faculty and students to share interdisciplinary interests.] Certain Concentrations, on the other hand, pose questions about transformation in the opposite direction, that is toward ongoing status, which would in turn permit Faculty appointments. Visiting Committees for Black Studies, Public Policy and Women's Studies have recommended that at least joint appointments be made into the programs sponsoring these Concentrations. Part of our planning agenda must be to propose specific responses to these recommendations, which will require careful examination of the issues surrounding hiring and evaluation of Faculty who would most probably share appointments between a Program and a Department. —Curricular gaps and allocation of new positions are additional issues to examine in connection with curricular innovation and flexibility. Certainly a major task for planning is to identify which new areas have priority for addition to the curriculum. Although we believe that some new areas can be added using mainly Faculty resources already available at Swarthmore and in the Tri- College community, some would require new Faculty positions. As was pointed out in the report from the Task Force on Faculty Composition and Work Load, current procedures for allocation of new positions are cumbersome and sluggish, and are entirely reactive. That is, there is no institutional mechanism for asking what new areas (either within or between departments) should be represented. Instead, the Provost and CEP await proposals from departments and evaluate them, on what is inevitably a somewhat piecemeal basis. This enables one to ask, "Is this a worthwhile proposal," and even "Is this proposal more worthwhile than that proposal?" But it does not allow one to ask, "Is this the most important thing to support at this time?" CEP thinks it is important to find a way to ask that question regularly and systematically. A plan that will allow us to achieve reflective innovation is needed, and the Task Force proposal for a new committee on allocation is an excellent place to start. —Community-Based Learning A final potential source of curricular innovation is in the area of community-based learning. The report to the faculty by Barry Schwartz a few years ago summarized community-based programs that already exist at the College, and argued that they receive inadequate support. His suggestion was that community placements be treated as analogous to laboratories in the natural sciences, and supported accordingly. That report also suggested a variety of possible extensions of community-based initiatives to other areas of the curriculum. One outcome of this longrange planning process should be a decision about whether or not Swarthmore wants to encourage the expansion of community-based learning opportunities or simply support what it is doing now. Arriving at this decision requires that we assess faculty interest in making additional use of communitybased learning in the curriculum if adequate support is made available, and then (assuming for the sake of argument that such interest exists) assessing the financial and human costs associated with doing community-based learning right. CEP believes that encouraging additional opportunities for community-based learning is consistent both with the broadest College goals and with current external circumstances. It can be argued that for teaching in many fields, community-based learning offers an excellent strategy, perhaps the ideal strategy, for training students to analyze and respond to complexity. Community-based learning also offers many opportunities for teaching about issues of social responsibility in the application of intellectual skills. However, we also believe that we should plan for its additional use only if strong faculty interest is expressed, because it is essential to the quality of possible community-based learning opportunities that they be closely integrated into the curriculum by an enthusiastic faculty. It should be noted that a large-scale integration of community-based learning into the curriculum would distinguish Swarthmore from virtually all other elite institutions and thus perhaps set a useful example for other educational institutions.—Technology: In 1995-96 Tom Stephenson was asked by the President to prepare a report to the College Planning Committee on information technology at Swarthmore. In his report of February 8,1996, Tom recommended that a new administrative position be created to supervise the operations of the Library, computing Center, Media Services, Language Learning Center and the technical support of the Lang Performing Arts Center. He outlined arguments for placing this position at either the Vice Presidential or Associate Provost level, but did not advocate one over the other. The second recommendation in the report was for creation of a new committee on Information Services to replace both the Library and Computing Services Committees. The third and final recommendation was that concrete means be identified for improving the integration of the activities of the Library, Computing Center and Media Services—possiblyServices—possibly by bringing them together in the same space. The report on technology identifies key issues for planning, but is not in itself a plan for future action. The long-range planning we are about to begin should start with the Stephenson report and proceed to choices among the recommendations and definition of specific next steps and associated costs. 3. Support for the Teacher- Scholar. The guiding question for our thinking about planning related to Faculty is: how can we best support teaching and scholarship, and most important, their mutual reinforcement? Improved support for teaching needs to be provided in response to several current challenges. Rapidly changing information technology, an increasingly diverse student body and the greater difficulty of linking research and teaching all pose challenges for Swarthmore Faculty who wish to be excellent teachers. It is of course necessary for Faculty to be well trained in the use of new technologies added to our classrooms and labs. More fundamentally, it is also imperative that Faculty have the time, the guidance and the access to equipment necessary to explore what instructional technologies are available and potentially beneficial for Swarthmore classes. They need to understand the options so that they can make informed choices about technology to enhance their teaching. Diversity of our student body is an institutional goal that has important implications for the ways we teach and the support needed to ensure excellence in teaching. In recent years both students and Faculty have pointed to tensions that arise out of social and cultural differences among the participants in classes and seminars. Faculty need access to resources that enable them to recognize such tensions, to understand their sources and to develop successful strategies for defusing their negative effect on an atmosphere of learning. For two years a grant from the Hewlett Foundation funded a half-time person in the Provost's Office to work with Faculty on this area. Planning for the future needs to include ways to follow-up on this initiative. Attention to the specific challenges created by growing diversity in the student body raised our awareness of a general need for better communication between Faculty and students regarding the quality of instruction and the magnitude of demands made in the classroom. In preliminary discussions, students voiced the concern that the quantity of work demanded may threaten care and quality of thought and writing. Some Faculty believe that the perceived stress results, at least in part, from increased participation in extracurricular activities. Various sources and remedies for stress are likely to be an important focus of planning in the Student Life area, coordinated by the Dean. However, we recommend that our academic planning include an assessment of how much work Faculty actually ask of students, and if necessary, development of guidelines about appropriate workloads. We also believe that creation of mechanism for regular feedback from students to Faculty about instruction should be given serious consideration. Such mechanisms have the potential to ease classroom burdens for students and Faculty alike. Better distribution of students across departments would produce a better balance in Faculty workload. In the preliminary discussions and in CEP's own deliberations, several pathways were suggested that appear well worth exploration. Changes in the current system for assigning Faculty advisors could introduce students earlier to fields they do not encounter in secondary school. Current ways of responding to overly enrolled courses also exacerbate the discrepancies in distribution of students. It might be possible to moderate slightly our pattern of adding class sections in response to demand in order to encourage students toward exploration of less familiar areas, certainly a strategy consistent with the goals of liberal arts education. The greater difficulty of connecting teaching to research should be addressed in part by planning for changes in the leave system (discussed below). It should also be included in consideration of teaching load and of the need for mechanisms for innovation and flexibility in the curriculum. The possibility of bringing research interests and teaching responsibilities into closer alignment would be much greater, for example, if a Faculty member were able to count on having one course out of five on a topic of her or his own choosing. During the planning discussions, students voiced the wish for more opportunities for interaction with Faculty outside the classroom. We see joint student-faculty research as the ideal vehicle for this in the academic domain. Planning should specify ways to support student- Faculty research, with particular attention to the needs of the new Honors program, and to the Division of Humanities where funds to support such research are not now available. —Leaves have long been viewed by Faculty as the most important support for their scholarship, and, indirectly, as very significant support for their ability to remain vital and effective teachers. We propose that leaves be a topic for planning, with the following questions as a starting point. What additional funds are needed to provide adequate leave support in a context of decreased availability of external funds? Should leaves become a more direct form of support for teaching, for example through expansion of the number of funded leaves available for curricular projects? Would a more flexible structure for leaves provide better support for scholarship and teaching? For example, for some members of the Faculty an ongoing reduced load might be more useful than a one semester leave every four years and others might benefit more from guaranteed two semester funding for leaves that occur less frequently than every fourth year. Would the transition into the role of teacher-scholar be better supported by a guaranteed two-semester "junior leave" in the fourth year for all tenure-track Faculty? Would chairing a department seem less threatening to scholarship if chairs were guaranteed a funded second semester after five years of chairing? Other questions about leaves derive from the broad concern about curricular flexibility. For some departments, leave replacement has been a useful way to bring new perspectives into their offerings. In others, however, leave replacements normally teach in the same areas as the Faculty they replace. Given the difficulties posed for students by the constant cycling in and out of leave replacements, and the burdens imposed on departments by, in some cases, almost continuous searches, it will also be important to assess the potential impact on innovation and flexibility in the curriculum of staffing more departments for leave. Also, if other ways are found to ensure the innovation and flexibility viewed as optimal, then the role of leave replacement might be correspondingly diminished. —Senior Faculty. The foreshortened focus of institutional attention on Faculty during the first 14 years of their careers at Swarthmore was pointed out frequently in the discussions about teaching and scholarship. Once a Faculty member is promoted to Professor, there is no further formal mechanism for review of that person's satisfaction or effectiveness. A format for review and planning meetings with senior Faculty, perhaps timed to coincide with every other leave and therefore occurring every 8 years, would offer an occasion to discuss possible interest in "re-tooling" for a shift of research and/or teaching areas, and ways institutional support might be provided; any need to address problems in teaching and strategies for doing that; and, eventually, plans for retirement, in some cases including a transitional stage of teaching part-time. The CEP believes that such reviews should, and could be designed to have great value to both the individual and the College. For the individual Faculty member they should provide opportunities to obtain institutional support for changing interests in teaching and research and to explore possible new roles in the College via committees or special assignments. Such reviews should also help Faculty members to make thoughtful plans about retirement well in advance of the time they choose to retire. For the College, such review and planning with senior Faculty should bring benefits reciprocal to those for individuals. Teaching effectiveness and general Faculty satisfaction should be enhanced and thoughtful long-term planning about eventual replacement of retired Faculty would become possible. Even less institutional attention has been directed to the question of how best to define the relationship between Swarthmore and our emeriti professors. Planning should include attention to what resources should be available to emeriti and to ways those who wish it can be more closely integrated into the College community. Should more office space by available? Should retiring Faculty be offered the option of buying the computer on their desk and a service contract to maintain it? Some retired Faculty teach on a course by course basis and some do special advising work with students interested in a particular area such as law. Should we explore additional opportunities for this kind of engagement of emeriti with students? Planning should take a longer, and fuller, view of the career of a Faculty member at the College, including the role of professor emeritus. —Committee work is described as a major obstacle to effective performance of the role of teacher-scholar. Beginning with the reforms proposed in the "Red Book" in the late 1960'5, Faculty have taken on an increasing administrative responsibility through the committee system. CEP recommends that Faculty participation in committees be reviewed with the goal of reducing demands on Faculty while preserving an adequate Faculty voice in the governance of the College. We believe that the COFP, in cooperation with staff and students, should conduct a "zero-based" review of committee structure to identify areas in which faculty participation is essential and to determine the minimum number of faculty needed, with appropriate adjustments to staff and student participation as well. —Supervision of student work outside of scheduled classes is another significant source of pressure on Faculty. In all cases except that of the one Department with a required thesis, Faculty responsibility for directed readings, attachments, theses and independent research is not counted as part of the teaching load. The recent revisions of the Honors program highlighted the value that both students and Faculty place on independent student work and in our own discussions we identified this as a "Swarthmore experience" we want to encourage. Especially because of the role of independent work in many Honors programs, we recommend that a more accurate and equitable system be created to account for supervision of student work outside of scheduled classes. 4. Honors. The Curriculum Committee is continuing its work with departments on the implementation of the new program. Craig Williamson will coordinate the efforts not only to put in place the new procedures needed for current classes, but also to create a plan for bringing the costs of the new program, now funded by grants and donors, into the ongoing College budget. 5. Diversity: Diversity has been identified by the College Planning Committee for several years as a major topic for planning. In the fall of 1994 the CPC created a Task Force on Diversity, which made six major recommendations in May, 1995. Four of these directly concern the academic area: implement training and aid for Faculty re classroom diversity issues; reinvigorate efforts to hire more culturally diverse Faculty; support the Tri-College Faculty group ALAN A; and improve academic support for differently-prepared students. The current long-range planning effort should move forward to define specific steps, and their associated costs, for carrying out these recommendations. 6. Size of the College: Size of the College was the focus of reports produced at the request of President David Fraser by the Strategic Planning Committee created in 1990. The sub-group of this Committee chaired by Rob Hollister explored the gains and losses which might result from an increase of 15 to 20% in the size of the student body. This group concluded that an increase of 200 students would be financially feasible, taking into account the additional expenditures that would be needed to provide the academic program and other services needed by a larger student body and assuming a slight increase in student-Faculty ratio. [Note: this has varied between 9.5:1 and 8.5:1 over the last ten years.] At that time, the Admissions Office also carried out a study which suggested that the quality of the student body could be maintained with a larger number of students. The Hollister report made clear that its goal was to lay out parameters for a discussion of enlarging the student body, and to indicate that the sub-committee believed that "future Strategic Planning efforts should give further consideration to this possibility", but not to provide a detailed plan for doing so. It emphasized that very careful planning would be necessary in particular in the area of allocation of additional Faculty positions to balance the requirements of current programs that would be faced with additional students with the benefits of innovation in other areas of the curriculum.In 1994-95 the Board of Managers asked a small group to investigate the possible need for the College to acquire additional land in order to retain the possibility that at some point in the future an increase in student body size might be desired. This group, which included Board members, Faculty and staff, concluded that the land now owned by the College could accommodate a student body of up to 2000 without compromising especially significant spaces such as the Amphitheatre or losing the green atmosphere of the campus. These previous efforts support the feasibility of increasing the student body from financial and physical points of view. Neither offers a detailed plan, including transition costs and specific proposals for addition of curricular programs and Faculty, which would permit reasoned decisions about the ultimate positives and negatives of bringing a larger number students to Swarthmore. We believe that the current longrange planning requires evaluation of such a carefully developed proposal for increasing the student body. The curricular improvements likely to be proposed elsewhere in the plan are highly unlikely to be possible without a larger number of students, and information needs to be available to make possible an evaluation of proposed improvements to our educational program in the context of the costs and benefits of a larger number of students.IV. Organization of Planning We see CEP as the Faculty group appropriately responsible for much of the planning proposed, specifically the topics that are directly related to the Curriculum. The topics that concern Faculty workload and leaves we suggest should be addressed by the Division Chairs. Development of a new procedure for allocation of Faculty positions falls in the province of the COFP, and we believe that a group of senior Faculty who have previously served on the CPT should take the lead in creating a format for review and planning with Faculty in the years after promotion to Professor. Planning about the overarching topics of diversity, technology and the size of the College should proceed through Faculty participation in College-wide planning groups defined by College Planning Committee. Part of the responsibility of the CEP should be careful coordination of work on all topics in the academic area so that the extensive consultation with Faculty required can be done as efficiently as possible. We also emphasize the importance of regular communication with members of the Faculty, through channels such as Faculty lunches and Faculty meetings, as plans develop. 2 The Phoenix October 4, 1996
