Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

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This year Swarthmore is taking a long and searching look at its responsibilities — its responsibilities to educate (and to use the educational resource, its library, imaginatively and effectively), and responsibilities it may have, beyond providing the academic opportunity itself, to give favorable chances for young people to develop not only as students but also as total persons. All of our responsibilties as a college matter, and some of them are pleasantly definite and clear — for example, to keep orderly records, or to pay out salaries that have been earned or scholarships that have been promised. For these there is not much d oubt about when we have done what needs doing. But other responsibilities, indeed the central ones such as our responsibilities toward ' our students as learners and as persons, are exasperatingly indefinite and open-ended. Can we ever feel that we have done well enough by these? Probably never; and surely never but at times when we are also aware of needing and wishing to do more. I suppose when we are being frank, many of us will confess we think Swarthmore can and does educate well, but we would have lost our touch if ever this belief should omit an implied query, How can Swarthmore educate better? And though we thankfully have a college community that exemplifies interpersonal respect and enjoyment, it is also one which, like any human community, has its dissatisfactions and troubled concerns. Questions about these open-ended responsibilities to educate, and to provide opportunities for personal growth, our three special committees are, therefore, tackling in an especially concentrated and intensive way all year (longer if necessary) in this your graduation year. So if Swarthmore of the future seems to you not quite like the good old days, it will be because of a basic likeness in all our days that are good ones: they are inquiring and self-assessing, and they are ready for whatever it is that truly supports excellence in knowledge and values. Courtney Smith President 23

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THE YEAR OF THE COMMISSIONS 22

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WILD MAN VELIKOVSKY WE LISTEN TO FAST-ACCENTED ISAIAH BERLIN GLIB JEAN SHEPHERD 24