Return to Swarthmore in the News 2003


Clippings collected December 11, 2003


Published by the Office of News and Information

 

Women’s Wear Daily

HEADLINE: TO CHOOSE OR NOT TO CHOOSE; Barry Schwartz on decision making 

November 26, 2003

SECTION: Pg. 13; ISSN: 0149-5380

LENGTH: 898 words

BYLINE: Seckler, Valerie

BODY:

    NEW YORK -- Fashion marketers beware. If author-psychologist Barry Schwartz has his way, people will strip down their decision making and start choosing what to buy from a significantly smaller range of options, including the fashions they currently consider. And that, in turn, would send marketers in search of a Holy Grail beyond the 20th century strategies of brand segmentation and product extensions, ploys whose appeal would be neutralized.

    Although the scenario seems a nightmare in the making for marketers of most any stripe, it's a dream scene for Schwartz, author of "The Paradox of Choice" (Harper Collins), who contends that, when it comes to most decisions, "people want virtually no choice." In his book, slated to be published in January, Schwartz, a professor of social theory and social action at Swarthmore College, makes the case for why the expanding number of choices in all parts of Americans' lives is a burden that constricts the personal freedom facilitated by a more moderate array of options.

    …

    Schwartz began forming that principle while observing his highly intelligent and talented students at Swarthmore, many of whom, he said, "wind up serving coffee at Starbucks as they torture themselves trying to decide what to do." Such people are members of a group the author calls "maximizers," or people who expect to attain the best of everything. That trait makes it difficult for them to pull the trigger on various decisions and, subsequently, causes them to question the choices they do make. …




Library Journal Reviews

HEADLINE: The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less 

December 15, 2003 Monday

SECTION: BOOK REVIEWS; Social Sciences; Pg. 148

LENGTH: 238 words

BYLINE: Mark Bay

BODY:

   The freedom to make choices is perhaps the fundamental right of free persons. The entire social system of the United States and much of the Western world hinges on one's ability to choose for oneself. However, in this fascinating book, Schwartz (psychology, Swarthmore Coll.; The Costs of Living) looks at the downside of all these choices. "The fact that some choice is good doesn't necessarily mean more choice is better. . . . Clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction - and even clinical depression." …

 

 

Philadelphia Business Journal

Headline: Mather to chair Swarthmore College board

December 10, 2003

BODY:

    Barbara W. Mather, the head of the litigation department at Pepper Hamilton LLP of Philadelphia, was named chairwoman of the Swarthmore College Board of Managers.
    Mather graduated from Swarthmore in 1965. She is the first woman to lead the college's board. She succeeds
J. Lawrence Shane, who has chaired the board since 1997.
    Mather was the executive partner at Pepper Hamilton from 1992 to 1994. She was previously city solicitor for Philadelphia and taught antitrust law at the University of Pennsylvania





PR Newswire

Headline: Smart Dating Site Launches Serving Alumni, Students From Top North American and European Schools

12/10/2003 7:07:50 AM

BODY:

NEW YORK, Dec 10, 2003 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- TheSquare.com, the online networking community for alumni and students of the world's top schools, today unveiled SquareDating.com. Unlike other Internet dating services, SquareDating's membership criteria serves as a de facto pre-screener and therefore provides its members with a smaller, more eligible pool of singles.
...
TheSquare.com and SquareDating is open to students and alumni of the following top schools: Amherst, Berkeley, Brown … Stanford, Swarthmore, Tufts …



 

Chronicle of Higher Education

Headline: Voting-Machine Producer Retreats on Threats to Colleges and Students

December 12, 2003

By ANDREA L. FOSTER

BODY:

    A company that makes electronic-voting machines has backed down from its threats to take legal action over internal company memorandums that students at several colleges have posted on college Web servers. The students and other critics of the company say the documents reveal security weaknesses in the company's voting system.
    …
    Despite Diebold's latest statement, two Swarthmore College students and the Online Policy Group, a nonprofit policy-research group in San Francisco, are asking a federal district court to rule that publicizing the memorandums is covered by the fair-use provision of the digital-copyright law. In addition, the students and the policy group are asking the court to order Diebold to pay them damages for "copyright misuse," among other issues. The students, Nelson Pavlovsky and Luke Smith, and the policy group laid out their grievances in a complaint filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Jose.

    …

    After Diebold's announcement, Swarthmore announced that Mr. Pavlovsky and Mr. Smith had reposted Diebold's memorandums on the college Web server, with the college's permission.



 

Financial Times
(London,England)

HEADLINE: Counting the cost of sharing - PEER-TO-PEER COMPUTING

December 10, 2003, Wednesday Surveys ITV1

SECTION: FT REPORT - FT-IT; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 916 words

BYLINE: By PAUL TALACKO

BODY:

   Companies that allow their employees to use peer-to-peer file sharing applications can be in for an expensive shock. Last year, Integrated Information Systems, an Arizona-based IT company, paid Dollars 1m in a settlement to the Recording Industry Association of America, a music industry trade association, for allowing its employees to share copyrighted music files through a network.

    …

    Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania found that as P2P applications became more popular the use of bandwidth increased five-fold. A handful of students were responsible for 50 per cent of the traffic. The solution was to use Allot's technology to "throttle" the bandwidth available to each student so that one person could not monopolise the network through their file sharing activities. Bandwidth usage plummeted. …

 


The Washington Post

HEADLINE: Voting-Machine Makers To Fight Security Criticism

December 09, 2003, Tuesday, Final Edition

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A02

LENGTH: 604 words

BYLINE: Jonathan Krim, Washington Post Staff Writer

 

BODY:

   Electronic-voting-machine companies announced yesterday that they are banding together to counter mounting concerns about whether their machines are secure enough to withstand tampering by hackers. Although less than 20 percent of the nation's counties use electronic voting  machines, their use is growing in the wake of the problems with punch-card ballots in Florida that threw the 2000 presidential election into turmoil. Last year Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which provides funds for states and localities to modernize their election systems.

    But several academic and cyber-security experts argue that the new machines, which let voters make their choices on video screens, have disturbing security flaws.

    …

   The company also has angered critics by suing two Swarthmore College students who posted on the Internet internal Diebold memos indicating the company's awareness of security flaws. …

 



Newsbytes

HEADLINE: Voting-Machine Makers To Fight Security Criticism

December 9, 2003, Tuesday

LENGTH: 614 words

BYLINE: Jonathan Krim; Washington Post Staff Writer

DATELINE: United States

BODY:

   Electronic-voting-machine companies announced yesterday that they are banding together to counter mounting concerns about whether their machines are secure enough to withstand tampering by hackers. … But several academic and cyber-security experts argue that the new machines, which let voters make their choices on video screens, have disturbing security flaws.

    …

   The company also has angered critics by suing two Swarthmore College students who posted on the Internet internal Diebold memos indicating the company's awareness of security flaws. …

 

 

Global News Wire

HEADLINE: VOTING-MACHINE MAKERS TO FIGHT SECURITY CRITICISM 

December 9, 2003

LENGTH: 608 words

BYLINE: Jonathan Krim

BODY:

    …

   The company also has angered critics by suing two Swarthmore College students who posted on the Internet internal Diebold memos indicating the company's awareness of security flaws. …





Associated Press 

HEADLINE: Pitcairns' former home is a treasure trove of religious art

December 8, 2003, Monday, BC cycle

SECTION: Entertainment News

LENGTH: 753 words

BYLINE: By JOANN LOVIGLIO, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: BRYN ATHYN, Pa.

BODY:

   Known to generations of Philadelphia schoolchildren only as "the castle," Glencairn mansion was the subject of stories more outlandish than the worst low-budget horror flicks. The tall tales of monsters and madmen lurching through the halls of the grand suburban home of industrialist Raymond Pitcairn, however, are far less interesting than what really exists behind the walls of the soaring Romanesque structure: one of the most prized private collections of medieval art in the world.

   "This is a significant and spectacular collection that people who live right in the area are essentially unaware of," said Michael Cothren, an art history professor at Swarthmore College. "The strength of Glencairn's collection is the architectural arts from the 12th and 13th centuries, and it has some of the greatest works produced in that time." …

 

 

The Baltimore Sun

HEADLINE: Honoring a man steeped in the city's past

December 8, 2003 Monday FINAL Edition

SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 3B

LENGTH: 652 words

BYLINE: Jamie Stiehm

SOURCE: SUN STAFF

BODY:

   Descended from Maryland Quakers and Massachusetts Puritans, Samuel Hopkins grew up on a Howard County farm in the Roaring '20s, walked to a one-room schoolhouse and rode a buggy to Ellicott City. The Baltimorean says his devotion to history and civic service stems from something simple he loved as a child: "Listening to the older people talk." … But yesterday Hopkins listened to younger people talk --including Mayor Martin O'Malley -- at his 90th birthday party, held at the Maryland Historical Society.

    …

   Martha Ellicott Tyson, his great-great-grandmother, was a founder of Swarthmore College and the biographer of Benjamin Banneker, the African-American astronomer close to the Ellicott family. Maj. Andrew Ellicott surveyed the District of Columbia land, with Banneker as an aide, at the behest of Thomas Jefferson. And Elisha Tyson (Martha's father-in-law) was widely seen as Baltimore's fiercest foe of slavery. When he died in 1824, his funeral procession, joined by black and white people, was the largest Baltimore had yet seen. …

 

 

Chicago Sun-Times

HEADLINE: MISCELLANEOUS

December 7, 2003 Sunday

SECTION: SHOW; SUNDAY; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 850 words

BYLINE: Jeff Wisser

BODY:

    …

   VARIOUS ARTISTS, "IT'S ABOUT CHRISTMAS" (IT'SABOUTMUSIC.COM)

   "Go Tell It" by the Swarthmore College Alumni Gospel Choir is not an auspicious beginning, but this varied compilation steadies itself quickly with such pleasures as Kyf Brewer's "Christmas in New York," the Contes' cover of "Father Christmas and Huffamoose's silly "Hanukkah and Christmas Hand in Hand." There's even a cover of "The Chipmunk Song," so what could go wrong?

 



The Patriot Ledger
(Quincy, MA) 

HEADLINE: Chomsky to speak at Milton peace forum

November 29, 2003 Saturday City Edition

SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 22

LENGTH: 228 words

BYLINE: Jessica Van Sack

BODY:

   MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky will close out a series of Milton for Peace forums at 7 p.m. Dec. 7 at the Ruth King Theatre in the Kellner Arts Performance Center at Milton Academy, on Centre Street in Milton.

    …

   He has received honorary degrees from the University of London, University of Chicago, Loyola University of Chicago and Swarthmore College. …





Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
(Ontario, CA)

HEADLINE: @36Times: Brighter future for low-income scholars

November 20, 2003 Thursday

SECTION: POMONA/LA VERNE/SAN DIMAS

LENGTH: 1272 words

BODY:

    …

   Along with Godinez, the other 2003 Bright Prospect scholars, their high schools and new colleges are: Ricardo Acosta, Ganesha, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania; Miriam Aguirre, Chaffey, Pomona College in Claremont; Sandra Cun, Montclair, Skidmore College in New York; Faith Dang, Montclair, Harvey Mudd College in Claremont; Mauricio Fuentes, Montclair, Wesleyan University in Connecticut; Criselda Haro, Ganesha, Swarthmore  College in Pennsylvania …


 

ALUMNI

 

Philadelphia Magazine

HEADLINE: People to Watch - The It List

November, 2003

LENGTH: 8964 words

BYLINE: Caroline Tiger

BODY:

   Who will be Philly's next Georges Perrier? Who has the refined Main Line taste to be the next Barbara Eberlein? Who will take over where Paul Vallas leaves off? We wanted to know who would make up our next power generation, who would shape the future of our city. So we asked the people who already have. We mailed more than 700 surveys to the players on our power Rolodex, asking them to name the rising stars in their industries. There was no age limit--the 22 who made the final list range from age 24 to 47--and just one guiding principle: that in the next decade, these people will become household names.

    …

    THE PUBLISHER

    Mattathias Schwartz, 24,    EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT

   Ah, young love. In a move that seems positively Peanuts-esque, Matt Schwartz started a newspaper to impress a girl. Was the girl impressed? Sadly, no. The day Schwartz delivered the first issue to the store where she worked, she glanced at the front page, at a picture of a heart superimposed over a map of Center City. The caption beneath the illustration, from a letter Schwartz had written her, spoke of "interstates and waterways, arterials and capillaries pumping..." Glancing at it, she observed, "Huh, you're really into this artery stuff, aren't you?" and returned to what she had been doing. The girl is long gone, but Schwartz still toils away at the office of the Independent on the third floor of a Chinatown building.  … Of course, the official mission of the 2001 Swarthmore grad for the Independent makes no mention of the girl. His editor's note in the inaugural issue spoke of creating a paper to meet the needs and tell the stories of "a second Philadelphia," one whose streets are "filled with secret artists, poets and scholars." …

 



The New Yorker

HEADLINE: THE OFF-SEASON

December 8, 2003

SECTION: THE TALK OF THE TOWN; Wellfleet Postcard; Pg. 48

LENGTH: 644 words

BYLINE: Philip Hamburger

BODY:

   Ever wonder what goes on up on the Cape when all the summer people are long gone, settled for the winter back in their metropolis? Nothing world-shaking, but the world is shaking enough, wouldn't you say?

    …

   And then there are the artists-painters and sculptors, the most prominent being Penelope Jencks, who sculpted the peaceful, beautiful eight-foot-high statue of Eleanor Roosevelt that stands in Riverside Park at Seventy-second Street. Well, Jencks is working on a statue of Robert Frost, commissioned by the Amherst College Class of 1957. He will be seated, on some rocks (Jencks's people sit on rocks), holding a book in his hand and facing the Frost Library. Jencks is a perfectionist-a month on a thigh or an ankle. She plans for the statue to be in granite. "He has a granite face," she says. "At first when I was asked to do this I said no-I was all burned out from Eleanor. I preferred Eliot to Frost when I was at Swarthmore-Eliot was my boy. But I finally said I would do it. I won't do the carving myself-that will be done by wizard artisans from my model. People tell me he had a mean streak. I don't give a damn about that. I'm interested in the face and the thoughts behind it." …

 



The Guardian
(U.K.)

HEADLINE: Obituary: Clark Kerr: American university reformer sacked by Reagan at the height of the 1960s student protests

December 8, 2003

SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 21

LENGTH: 885 words

BYLINE: Christopher Reed

BODY:

    As the most distinguished American academic administrator of his day, and the man who introduced free university tuition in California, Clark Kerr, who has died aged 92, was known as the Henry Ford of higher education. His nine-year tenure as president of the University of California in the 1960s, and his earlier chancellorship of its Berkeley campus (1952-58), set the standard for American universities. But it took just one meeting of the board of regents in 1967 for the new state governor Ronald Reagan to get him sacked on the spot.

    …

   Kerr was born in Pennsylvania, the son of an apple farmer and a milliner, who imbued their son with a deep respect for education. His father was the first member of his family to go to university and spoke four languages; his mother had left school at 12 but postponed getting married until she had saved enough money to fund a college education for her future children. Kerr graduated from Swarthmore College, where he was president of the student union. He also became a Quaker. …

 

  

Chronicle of Higher Education

Headline: Clark Kerr, 'One of the Giants,' Dies

December 12, 2003

By JEFFREY SELINGO

BODY:

    Clark Kerr, who helped create the model of the modern American higher-education system as president of the University of California in the 1960s, and continued to play an influential role in national policy for decades after he was fired by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan for refusing to quiet student protesters, died last week following complications from a fall. He was 92.
    …

    After his dismissal, Mr. Kerr turned down job offers from Harvard and Stanford Universities, as well as his alma mater, Swarthmore College, in order to become chairman of the Carnegie Commission. For most of the 1970s, the commission produced a plethora of reports and studies on all aspects of higher education, including international education, the faculty, and law schools -- a collection that is often referred to today by scholars as the "five-foot shelf" of the commission's works.

    …
    THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CLARK KERR
    …

    1932: Graduates from Swarthmore College and spends the summer touring California on a "peace caravan."

 




Ottawa Citizen

HEADLINE: Love, lust and Lolita - Sex in literature

December 10, 2003 Wednesday Final Edition

SECTION: News; Pg. A6

LENGTH: 2136 words

SERIES: Sex at 50

SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen

BYLINE: Jenny Jackson

BODY:

    In 1953, Playboy hit the stands with shocking news: Sex could be fun! A few years and several court battles later, we discovered sex could also be creepy (Lolita, 1958), frolicsome (Lady Chatterley's Lover, 1959), copious (Tropic of Cancer, 1961), and very painful (Story of O, 1965).

    …

   When Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset went to court to defend it, literary critic Malcolm Cowley testified that its view of sex wasn't that far away from that of Ladies' Home Journal. The judge agreed, and the appeals court upheld the decision. Rosset is 81, and working on his autobiography in his home in New York City.

    "I published Lady Chatterley's Lover because it was a good book and I thought it would lead me to publishing Tropic of Cancer, which indeed it did," he told the Citizen. "I believe in free speech, that's why I published them. I had to do it.

   "I first read Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in 1940 when I was a freshman at Swarthmore College. (It had been published in France but was illegal in the United States.) I was principally interested in it as a complaint against the lifestyle here in America. People were living barren, fruitless lives." …

 

 

LANCASTER NEW ERA
(LANCASTER, PA.)

HEADLINE: Chicago City Limits - Improv actors perform with wits, without nets 

December 4, 2003, Thursday

SECTION: THIS WEEKEND, Pg. 12

LENGTH: 686 words

BYLINE: Jane Holahan

BODY:

   BACK WHEN MORGAN Phillips was in high school and college shows, his favorite thing was when someone -- more often than not himself -- forgot his lines. No, he wasn't a cruel kid. He was an improv actor in the making. "That intense, focused moment, when you had to be completely in your character to fill in the lines, to fix the problem without seeming like you were struggling -- that was exciting," remembers Phillips.

    These days, as a member of Chicago City Limits, the famed improv group that's coming to Franklin & Marshall College's Roschel Performing Arts Center Friday and Saturday, Phillips doesn't have any lines to forget. Instead, he's got to make them up on the spot.

   …

    Phillips, who got a theater degree at Swarthmore College, tried out three times before being accepted to Chicago City Limits two years ago. …

 

 

Journal of Management

HEADLINE: Reflections on the Looking Glass: A Review of Research on Feedback-Seeking Behavior in Organizations

December, 2003

SECTION: Vol. 29, No. 6

LENGTH: 12301 words

BYLINE: Susan J. Ashford; Ruth Blatt and Don VandeWalle

    …

    2. Ruth Blatt is a Ph.D. student in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management at the University of Michigan Business School. Her research interests are in how individuals proactively create conditions for excellence in their work lives, particularly when they have weak contractual, physical, or psychological attachments to organizations. She has a B.A. in psychology from Swarthmore College and an M.Sc. in Organizational Behavior from Tel Aviv University.

    …

    HIGHLIGHT: This paper presents and organizes the results of two decades of research on feedback-seeking behavior according to three motives: the instrumental motive to achieve a goal, the ego-based motive to protect one's ego, and the image-based motive to enhance and protect one's image in an organization. …




SPORTS


Philadelphia Inquirer

Headline: Chestnut Hill men making mark on court

11 December 2003

SPORTS - D07

BODY:

    …

    Player honorees. University of the Sciences' Pete Adams, a Camden Catholic graduate; Holy Family's Ryan Haigh (Father Judge); Haverford's Jeremy Bass; and Swarthmore's Jacob Letendre received awards as the small-college coaches' players of the week. …

 



The Philadelphia Inquirer

Headline: Terrapins upset top-ranked Gators on Garrison jumper

11 December 2003

SPORTS - D03

By the Associated Press

BODY:

    …

    Johns Hopkins 68, Swarthmore 62 - Matthew Gustafson scored 26 points, but the Garnet (2-5, 0-2) lost the Centennial Conference game to the Blue Jays (4-2, 1-0) in Baltimore.

 



The Associated Press 

HEADLINE: Johns Hopkins 68, Swarthmore 62

December 10, 2003, Wednesday, BC cycle

SECTION: Sports News

LENGTH: 66 words

DATELINE: BALTIMORE

BODY:

   Danny Nawrocki scored 24 points and grabbed game-high 13 rebounds to lead Johns Hopkins to a 68-62 victory over Swarthmore Wednesday night.

    …

   Matthew Gustafson scored a game-high 26 points and grabbed a team-high rebounds for Swarthmore (2-5). …

 



The Baltimore Sun

HEADLINE: Miami's 13-2 run pushes back UMBC

December 10, 2003 Wednesday FINAL Edition

SECTION: SPORTS, Pg. 6C

LENGTH: 303 words

SOURCE: FROM STAFF REPORTS

BODY:

    …

   Johns Hopkins 67,  Swarthmore  47: Sophomore Amanda Leese scored a career-high 19 points and added six rebounds as the host Blue Jays (7-0, 3-0 Centennial Conference) defeated the Garnet Tide (5-3, 1-2). …

 



Hartford Courant

HEADLINE: COLEMAN SETS EASTERN SCORING MARK IN LOSS

December 7, 2003 Sunday, 1N/5/6/7 SPORTS FINAL

SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. E2

LENGTH: 357 words

BYLINE: Staff And Wire Reports

BODY:

    …

    Swarthmore 44, St. Joseph 38: Katie Robinson had 20 points, 12 rebounds and four steals to lead Swarthmore (5-1) past St. Joseph (4-2) in a Seven Sisters tournament semifinal in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. …

 



Morning Call
(Allentown, PA)

HEADLINE: The Morning Call 2003 All-Area Soccer Team

December 5, 2003 Friday EIGHTH EDITION

SECTION: ACTION! LOCAL SPORTS, Pg. C11

LENGTH: 1125 words

BYLINE: The Morning Call

BODY:

    …

   MATT REICHL

   Central Catholic, Senior

   Midfielder

   Senior year, stats: 10 goals, nine assists; Lehigh Valley Conference, All-star team; LVC, Lehigh Divsion All-Star Career, stats: 16 goals, 15 assists 3.0 GPA member of Triboro Hurricanes club soccer team Ski club plays volleyball Plans on majoring in astronomy, and attending West Chester, Swarthmore or Delaware.