Swarthmore College

RE: Post Reunion Plan?

2016-06-21T17:04:36-04:00

Marty and Tom,

Thanks. My vote would be for using this class web site as a means for conversations and sharing information, etc. Thanks, Tom, for setting it up and organizing it. I think it's served our purposes and stimulated partcipation.

Alex and Barabara, and maybe Tom, any way to find out how close we are to reaching our goal for endowing the Class of 1966 Summer Internship?

Cheers,

Tom.

RE: Post Reunion Plan?

2016-06-21T12:05:36-04:00

Good questions, Marty. And thanks for getting the ball rolling to talk about how to stay in contact and keep up the momentum generated by the reunion.

The class website is going to remain active for the next four years at least, so it can remain one place for us all to remain in touch. I have been a guest member of the comparable website for the Class of 1964, and they have kept posting discussions and forums there. I get a message about it about once a week. But we should explore other ways of communicating as a group if such serve our purposes better.

Tom

Post Reunion Plan?

2016-06-21T11:11:57-04:00

The reunion was a big experience for all who attended. I was impressed by the level of earnestness still evident in the Class of '66. You just don't walk into a room full of people like us very often in real life!

But now we are all Garnet Sages. How do we keep in touch and keep the ball rolling? We want to fully fund the internship endowment for the Chester Children's Chorus, of course. (Write that check!)

Can we keep the online relationships going? Can we use this web site? Would we do better with a Google or Yahoo discussion group (email distribution) scheme? Wikis? Other fancy things?

Thanks to Tom's great energy, we've made good use of this site -- well beyond what you might have expected from our ancient (pre-Internet) cohort. What is our vision for the next step?

Best wishes to all

Martin Ewing

Gratitude: a Swarthmore Paradox

2016-04-19T09:27:36-04:00

Michael, such a good idea! And Jill, good to add the condition to your donation that it "can be used only for interns unless they divest from fossil fuels."

As for me and climate change, I have "taken the leap" and signed the LEAP Manifesto, Canada's multi-partisan declaration of intent to end fossil fuel use and do everything possible to mitigate climate change, bring justice to First Nations and all of Canada's Indigenous Peoples, and to end rising income inequality. The New Democratic Party, of which I am a member, just passed a resolution at its convention to send the Manifesto to its constiuency organizations for disucssion and debate... and I guess - by implication - adoption if they so see fit. Kinda like what Canadian Yearly Meeting did with gay marriage in 2003, but not as strong as Quakers put it. Our minute stood up for gay marriage and gay and lesbian people as members and for local meetings marrying gay couples and did everything except commit to a Yearly Meeting endorsement.

leapmanifesto.org (It has nearly 39,000 signatures, including David Suzuki, Leonard Cohen, Arcade Fire, Propagandhi, Naomi Klein - one of the organizers, Donald Sutherland, Neil Young, and 36 initiating national organizations ... in the US, such a participation rate would mean about 350,000 signatories )

- Carl Stieren

Heads up about pricing mixup

2016-03-25T12:28:33-04:00

Dear Classmates,

I just registered for our 50th Reunion on line and discovered that the price for dinner on Thursday night is listed as $25 and the price of lunch on Friday is $37. Somehow these two prices were switched from what was intended. At the moment, both the online form for registration and the registration info that will be sent to you by snail mail will show this pricing mixup. Don't be put off by it. I hope that you will register for both meals as each is important in our scheduling. Friday lunch will be when we treat our former professors to lunch and also hear from Valerie Smith. So you won't want to miss that. And Thursday dinner will be our first time all together when we can make announcements and begin what is going to be a full and rewarding reunion.

I am sorry that this mixup occurred.

Tom Webb

Reunion Chair

RE: Gratitude: a Swarthmore Paradox

2016-03-04T17:27:22-04:00

Yes. And I'm reminded to let them know, when I send in my next contribution (already sent $100 for the internships), that it can be used only for the interns unless they have divested from fossil fuels.

Hoping to see you there, as are most people in our class, I suspect.

Jill

RE: Gratitude: a Swarthmore Paradox

2016-03-04T13:03:56-04:00

Nicely argued, Mike! No doubt about it, I would have saved my mom....

Earlier this morning, I was thinking about my 2016 contribution to Swarthmore (and to our 50th reunion fund). And, serindipitously, just now I clicked on the Discussion Forum on the class reunion web site. Like you, I'm not rich (and share what I have thoughtfully); Swarthmore is well endowed; fossil fuel divestment ought to be a no brainer; and small contributions matter and credit the college with a high giving rate (signalling gratitude?). On the other hand, Jill makes a good point about the class gift benefitting the education of students who need the resources and the support.

Still thinking about it. But I am attending the reunion.

Cheers, Tom.

RE: Gratitude: a Swarthmore Paradox

2015-10-26T09:59:49-04:00

Thanks for your note, Jill. I had been in touch with Alex Capron and sent a small donation to the Internship Fund, and now that we have the letter from him and Barbara Dingfield about it, I'll send some more--a good cause.

I think I'm coming to the reunion. Are you?

RE: Gratitude: a Swarthmore Paradox

2015-09-24T18:37:15-04:00

You're so thoughtful. Perhaps if you do donate,you could specify your gift is to be used for the summer intern working with the children of Chester. That might satisfy your impulses, which I share.

Gratitude: a Swarthmore Paradox

2015-09-18T11:43:17-04:00

For a long time I’ve been giving about $100 a year to Swarthmore, and now that our Fiftieth is coming up I’ve been pondering how much more to give. I’m not rich, but I could certainly afford to give a larger gift; on the other hand, I’m wondering if I should. Many of my classmates, I imagine, are debating the same question, on a larger or smaller scale.

Let me call it the Swarthmore Paradox, if that’s not too grandiose. I had a great time there, and learned things more intensely and lastingly than before or since. I’m still arguing in my head, with great affection and respect, with some of my professors; I wish they were still alive so I could sit down with them and go over a few things. For them, for many friends, for the beauty of the campus, for the Quakerly spirit and the air of excitement and commitment over civil rights and stopping the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful. And gratitude, you would think, would lead to some kind of repayment.

But in a Romantics seminar at Swarthmore I also read about William Godwin’s argument that gratitude should not be a factor in our decisions about what is morally the best act. (He caused a lot of outrage when he argued that, if you could rescue from a fire either a great philosopher or your mother but not both, you should leave your mother to burn.) In a seminar in philosophy I read about utilitarianism and the “optimific” act. (Peter Singer, of course, has been pushing the idea of “effective altruism” very cogently for years.) And like all of us I learned about black Americans in the South, beaten, even killed, for trying to vote or get served a hamburger, not to mention the unfairness of the school system in nearby Chester. I learned about the massive slaughter of civilians in Vietnam at the hands of US troops. I owe to Swarthmore, then, at least something of my periodic impulses to do a little good in the world, and to do it, at least with my money, where the world most needs it.

Swarthmore doesn’t need my money. When Eugene Lang gave the College $50 million recently I pretty much decided never to give more than my annual token, if even that much. If I had $50 million to give, even if it had to be for education, I would not give it to Swarthmore, which is ranked number two among liberal arts colleges in endowment size per student. I would give it to a South African college fund I have contributed to in the past, or to the Black or Indian college funds, or even to the University of New Hampshire, where I teach, which gets almost nothing from the state and whose students graduate with the highest debts in the nation. I would do more good to more students in those ways than anything I could do for Swarthmore.

So there it is. Swarthmore encouraged me to think of those who need help the most, and suffer the most, and I am grateful that it did. But should my gratitude be factor in how I spend my money? I would love to hear from my classmates their own thinking about this dilemma.

PS: Needless to say, if I were to give more than usual, I would want it to be withheld from the College until it divests from fossil fuels. The College that taught me to try to make the world a little better is complicit in making it a little worse.

Walt Westman's activism

2015-06-02T12:55:43-04:00

Given all the social and political activism while we were at Swarthmore, I was deeply moved to read Rochelle Diamond's remarks about Walt's activism around homophobia in the workplace and other issues from the early 1980s onwards. She credits him with founding the National Organzation for Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP) "because he spoke out, wrote letters." She also tells how "he organized some of the first occasions . . . at AAAS meetings that gay and lesbian scientists could find each other, talk about mutual interests, and more importantly discuss issues that needed to be addressed."

Walt and I were fellow botany majors at Swarthmore, each with an interest in ecology, which we then pursued in ways that would bring us together at professional meetings over the years. It was only in 1988 that we finally had time after a meeting to spend an afternoon together and reflect on our lives. He told me that he had not known he was gay while at Swarthmore and had only discovered gayness when studying later in Australia. Once he embraced this identity he came out into an at-times hostile professional environment. (I can remember telling a National-Academy-level ecologist in 1976 about being Walt's classmate and being given a look that I only later could properly interpret.) Walt clearly took charge of his situation and worked to open up the workplace and the world to gays and lesbians. He also gave up his tenured position at UCLA to move onto Noe Street, one over from Castro Street in San Francisco, and thereafter to support himself on grants while working at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. So he took risks of several sorts professionally and personally to fully live the life that he embraced.

While at Swarthmore Walt supported all the social and political activism, but I don't remember his being part of any of the protests. What is heartening to me now is to see how alive he became as an activist while a working scientist. Hardly one who was radical in college and conservative professionally. Clearly he carried lessons from the activism at Swarthmore forward into his working life. Who else has stories to tell of odysseys and activism like those for Walt?

General Schedule for Reunion Activitie

2015-05-27T11:23:57-04:00

Below is a possible scenario for our 50th Reunion on campus June 2-5, 2016. Many aspects are subject to change as the reunion committee hears suggestions from each of you. Please feel free to post to this forum or contact Tom Webb.

Our 50th Reunion will be a day longer than previous reunions and will begin Thursday at noon when we can hire a bus to take us to a Philadelphia art museum or we can plan other activities. We will then have dinner together and a chance to gather informally Thursday evening. Maybe some folk singing if our musicians get organized.

Friday is a our big chance to enjoy activities together including a forum with former professors; open mike poetry reading; discussion and sharing about social action, civil rights, and political activities during our time on campus; interactive workshops if we have volunteers to run them, etc. It's our big day together before the campus fills with other classes whom we will join for dinner Friday evening. There will be a music concert for the whole campus after dinner, and we will also gather informally in our lounge just to chat and hangout.

Saturday morning is taken up with the Parade to the Amphitheater and class presentations there. Then a picnic lunch, which will be followed by our class photo and memorial gathering for the 35 classmates who have died. A number of activities will be going on on campus throughout the afternoon including a time for us to view the art exhibition by our classmates in List Gallery. We may well also have a class meeting. Our big dinner is Saturday evening with a chance to sit and visit together afterwards.

On Sunday morning we will have our traditional brunch together as a mellow way of closing out the reunion.