Following primary and secondary school, undergraduate education, graduate study, and more than 20 years as a university faculty member, you might think I could provide a simple answer to the question “What makes a good teacher?” A sequence of physics courses during my sophomore year at Swarthmore illustrates the problem. By the end of that [...]
The Bulletin’s coverage of Swarthmore’s adoption of the Phoenix as the College mascot (“Swarthmore Hatches a Big Red Bird,” July 2008) was enjoyable to read, yet one important fact was missing: Kyle White ’07, mentioned briefly in the article as an emcee of the competition to pick a person to wear the costume, was the [...]
When he writes of Ted Nelson’s [’59] singing on the porch of Parrish Hall as an act of daring (“Our Own Mario Savio, ” Letters, July Bulletin), I think that my friend Peter Gessner ’61 is misrepresenting the culture of the College in the late 1950s. Yes, “The Rules” seemed onerous to us and were [...]
A letter from Jim Weber ’84 in the July Bulletin expressed his opinion about President Alfred H. Bloom’s role in the elimination of the football program. I have a somewhat different perspective.
From 1982 to 1989, I was a member of the Board of Managers, serving as chair of the audit committee, vice chair of finance, [...]
The Bulletin welcomes letters to the editor addressing topics covered in the magazine or issues relating to the College. There is no guarantee that all letters received will be published. Some letters may be published on only the Bulletin Web site, especially if there are numerous letters addressing a single topic. The suggested maximum length [...]
Regarding the cover story on President Alfred H. Bloom’s tenure (“A Transformative Presidency,” April Bulletin), author Lawrence Schall’s [’75] hagiography attempts to enshrine the outgoing president among the pantheon of past Swarthmore leaders, comparing Bloom’s vision and accomplishments with those of his storied predecessors. The author pauses to give passing notice to the seminal moment [...]
The April Bulletin article “A Transformative Presidency” by Lawrence Schall ’75 states that “the number of African-American and Latino students in the entering Class of 2000 jumped from 26 to 94—an astonishing 400 percent increase.”
While the proportion of the numbers approaches 4 to 1, the increase (68 more than 26) is about 260 [...]
Contrary to popular belief (and what was reported in the July 2008 Bulletin), Swarthmore has not been continuously without a mascot until the recent selection of the Phoenix. In 1968, a time of sweeping social change by any measure, a movement of another type also arose—principally among winter off-season jocks—to provide greater support to those [...]
We admit that we have not read the bill passed by the Philadelphia City Council concerning the licensing of tour guides in the city’s historic district. As Professor Timothy Burke notes in “License to Imagine” (April Bulletin), the “legislation created a requirement for guides to be periodically tested on their historical knowledge.” He further voices [...]
I enjoyed reading in the April Bulletin (“Letters”) the observations of my old friend Leo Braudy ’63 regarding the difference between the relatively harsh justice handed out to miscreant male students by Dean of Men William C.H. Prentice ’37 and the genteel admonishments Dean of Women Susan Cobbs gave to wayward women. In the late [...]