Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

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Clair Wilcox has been a member of the Swarthmore faculty since 1927, and for many years the Joseph Wharton Professor of Political Economy and Chairman of the Department of Economics. It would be hard to overstate the importance and pervasiveness of his contribution to the College His world, wider than Swarthmore alone, has added to our outreach and scope. He has somehow managed to be scholar, teacher, and shaper of public affairs all at the same time. An advisor to our state and federal governments, to foreign governments, and to international conferences of governments, he sees his handiwork in policies that have helped meet and solve economic problems in our own country and all over the world. He is author of five books, including a definitive and widely used text on Public Policies Toward Business, and over a hundred articles. And for many of us at Swarthmore, both in and out of the classroom, his lucid ability to growl out the plain truth in a way that informs and delights is something of an archetype of how communicating communication at its best can be. His wit communicates too, shattering for all of us any temptation to gray overseriousness, and putting life back into proportion. Swarthmore knows Professor Wilcox, too, for long and significant interest in the studio arts. His insight helped us to see the importance of these activities for campus life, and his generosity provided opportunities that constantly make life at Swarthmore, for students and faculty alike, livelier and richer. So, however inadequately, one hopes in this and in other ways to say to Clair Wilcox for Swarthmore. Many thanks, indeed. Swarthmore has grown through your scope, learned through your teaching, and become more human through your humanity. — Courtney Smith

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ome things never change. Magill Walk will always lead from the railroad tracks to Parrish Hall, you ' ll always need a key to climb Clothier tower on bright spring days, the Crum will always be beautiful in the winter, more beautiful in the spring and mosquito-infested in September. The food in the dining hall will never really be good enough, Swarthmore students will always play stretch in the spring. The basketball team will always lose. Some things change. Somerville is gone, and with it Somerville John. In its place, a luxurious student union. There is a new library, two new dorms, and a new admissions office. Ashton House is now a women ' s dormitory. It ' s getting harder to tell a jock from a bode. This was to be the year of Significant Change. In the spring of 1966, President Courtney Smith called for three Commissions to take a long, introspective look at the Swarthmore College community, and the Year of the Commissions was born. A year later they published their findings in Critique of a College and the Year of Change was at hand. Student Council expanded the Student Affairs Committee, and the departments elected representatives to meet with the faculty in Danforth Groups to discuss educational policy. Everyone seemed interested. When we first got here four years ago, they told us about a college that was friendly and hostile, big and small, kind but cruel. They told us that we were among the best. We were called Hoy ' s Revenge, the New Breed of Hoy ' s Wonders; wonderful enough to amaze the world with our peculiarities, smart enough to adapt to the work load, and naturally diverse and flexible enough to keep up with the change that was to come. in four years here, we watched the transition from Crum parties and lodge parties to Social Committee parties in the dining hall and off-campus beer blasts and private parties. We saw the polarization between jock and bode break down until there were no more bodes left. We saw the frats pledge better than fifty percent of the classes that were to come after us. We saw Swarthmore College trying to change its ragged, off-beat veneer and began to wonder what was becoming of those Swedish peasant girls Gunnar Myrdal wrote about. e a