Friday, April 11, 2003

by Evelyn Khoo
Living and Arts Editor

Worthstock is going to be bigger and better this year! It is also going to
be much more expensive. Ben Galynker ’03, the organizer of this year’s
Worthstock, has managed to get about $7,000 for this year’s event, as
compared to the usual $2,000 – $3,000 budgets of past Worthstocks.

The money is coming from a variety of different sources–about $100 from
the Intercultural Center, $75 from the Black Cultural Center, $300 from
WSRN, $2,500 from SAC and about $4,000 from the President’s Office.

Galynker is confident that the quality of this year’s Worthstock will be
worth the price. “Usually we have around two bands performing at
Worthstock,” he said, “but I was hoping this year we could have more
variety so I got four bands, to make it a true music festival.”

Galynker explained that the sharp increase in price was also due to the
higher profile of this year’s performers. These include Gary Lucas, Corey
Harris, Frank Bambara y Sus Salseros and King Django Roots and Culture
Band. The musicians are from a wide range of musical types, from acoustic
jazz blues to afro-Cuban salsa to ska/reggae/klezmer fusion.

Said Galynker about his choices: “I wanted to bring some really interesting
and different types of music to Swat.”

Another new aspect for this year’s Worthstock is a workshop with guitarist
Gary Lucas, one of the lead performers. He will be hosting a workshop
discussing his influences on Friday, May 2, a day before the official
Worthstock event.

One key reason for the expansion of Worthstock this year was the
cancellation of DJ Shadow’s performance. “Since the large scale event (DJ
Shadow) wasn’t happening,” Galynker said, “there was no big musical event,
so I thought we should try and make Worthstock bigger and better.”

However, Galynker also noted that one big obstacle was the fact that there
was no committee for Worthstock. “It’s like a full-time extracurricular
activity. I was spending a lot of time getting artists and trying to get
funding at the same time– I wasn’t sure how long I was going to last.”

But thankfully, a student petition of 515 signatures that Galynker obtained
through tabling at Sharples, is a sign that with enough student support for
Worthstock, it can become an even larger and more important musical event
in the Swarthmore calendar.

Says Galynker: “It just has to do with Worthstock mattering. We want to
dedicate a lot of money to it because then students will get more out of
it. That’s why I’m doing it.”

by Jeremy Schifeling
Co-Managing Editor

When the deadline for applications for the College’s two new theme housing
options came and went at noon yesterday, neither the multicultural hall nor
substance-free housing had garnered enough interest to make them viable
options for next year.

According to Dean of Housing Myrt Westphal, substance-free housing, slated
to be implemented in Woolman next year, received less than half of the
necessary applications. Meanwhile, the multicultural education hall, which
was to take place on Mertz 3rd North, failed to get even 25% of the
required interest.

“It is clear that neither the sub-free nor multicultural educational halls
will occur,” said Westphal.

The Gazette will provide more information on this breaking story as it
becomes available.

by Pei Pei Liu
Co-Managing Editor

Seniors Mary Campbell and Erica Cartmill have received Fulbright
Scholarships to study in Poland next year.

The Fulbright program, created by the U.S. government in 1946, seeks to
strengthen international interactions and relations by facilitating
educational and cultural exchanges. Approximately 1,000 scholarships are
allotted to U.S. students every year, in conjunction with over 140 host
countries worldwide. The grant covers a minimum of nine months of
international travel and study on individually-planned programs, with
options to apply for an extension of funding as necessary.

Cartmill explained, “It’s a chance to do something beneficial for the host
country, for the U.S., and for international relations-in that way, it’s
not as individually centered a program as the Watson.” She added that while
Poland has announced its scholarship recipients, other countries have
different deadlines, and many students are still waiting to hear from their
programs.

Though Campbell and Cartmill are both traveling to Poland, their areas of
study will differ greatly. Campbell is planning to study the representation
of female bodies in Polish women’s magazines from 1946 to the present. She
said she hopes to examine “how these representations intersect with changes
in political and social ideologies. How do the rise, development, ultimate
demise of communism affect these representations? How is all of this
affected by the particular politics of choice that developed as a result of
communism? And finally, how do the changes in the representations of
women’s bodies in these magazine relate to women’s experiences and their
changing sense of identity in communist and post-communist Poland?”

Campbell is being sponsored by Professor Renata Siemienska at the
University of Warsaw, and will also study the same issue in old East German
magazines as a point of comparison.

“More than anything,” Campbell said, “I am looking forward to spending a
year not only working my Polish language skills and learning about
contemporary polish history and culture, but also steeping myself in
theoretical texts I either didn’t get a chance to read well at Swarthmore
or haven’t yet been exposed to.”

Cartmill’s research is a continuation of work she began during her semester
abroad in Poland last year. “I’ll be researching a form of dance
theatre–it’s part modern dance, part avant-garde physical theatre, but I’m
interested in it as an independent art, a newly emerging national political
art form, a unique representation of Poland’s culture at the moment.”

Cartmill will be traveling the country to attend dance festivals,
conferences, and performances to talk to the artists and try to create a
cohesive picture of the evolving art form. In Poland, she explained, there
are no dance academics at a university level to research dance formally, so
she hopes her work will jumpstart and facilitate the study of Polish dance
theatre.

“I’ll be writing an article for a Polish dance journal, and possibly some
international magazines,” she explained. “There are no big arts libraries
in Poland like there are here, so I’ll also be going around and archiving
things and compiling information from individual dance companies to try to
consolidate them into a single source.” Because her project is largely
independent and she is unclear what kind of access she will have to this
information, Cartmill said she may apply for a second year of funding once
she has a better idea of how big the project is.

“This is just a great opportunity,” Cartmill said. “The Fulbright program
in general is great. I mean, I’m probably going to get my Ph.D. in zoology,
so this is not something I want to do for the rest of my life, but it’s
just an opportunity to go and complete an independent project that’s
interesting to me. It’s also a great personal process, to be able to share
resources with others and do something useful for the host country.”

“I am super super thrilled to have received the Fulbright,” Campbell added.
“I can’t wait to go to Poland. I was a little shocked to have received it,
as there were something like a million Swatties applying to go to Poland.
It was probably pretty stiff competition, and I am glad that Erica and I
were selected.”

by Charlie Buffie
Gazette Reporter

Last Friday afternoon, a group of Swarthmore students and professors
gathered in a concerted effort to clean up trash littering the Crum Woods
and creek. The effort, aptly dubbed the Crum Cleanup Project, was a joint
effort of Earthlust, Biology professor Julie Hagelin, and Jen Johnson ’05.

Working from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m., the group of roughly fifteen Swarthmore
professors and students worked hand-in-hand, collecting trash along the
Crum Meadow, Crumhenge, and even in the creek itself by using a canoe to
extract garbage caught in logjams midstream.

At the end of the day, the group had removed an impressive volume of tires,
glass bottles, plastic balls, and styrofoam from the Crum.

While a specific measure of amount of trash removed was unavailable,
organizer Jen Johnson ’05 recalled, “We stuffed the back of a pickup truck
to the gills [with collected litter].”

While there are currently no plans for any follow-up cleanup projects, the
success of Friday’s outing may inspire future efforts. Remarked Johnson,
“If there is interest among the student body in continuing to clean up the
woods, I would be delighted to coordinate another stewardship effort this
Spring.”

by Greg Leiserson
Gazette Reporter

John Brady Kiesling, a member of the Swarthmore class of 1979, resigned
from his post in the US embassy in Athens early last month in protest of
the administration’s handling of the situation with Iraq. Since then he has
been profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, has been
interviewed on NPR, and has spoken at Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.
His letter of resignation was reprinted in the Washington Post and the New
York Review of Books.

Kiesling was serving as the US embassy’s political counselor in Athens and
was to transfer in about a year to a new post as the top political and
economic officer in Kabul. He felt the need to resign from his post when he
no longer believed he knew the reasons that the US was going to war and saw
that the administration would not be deterred.

However, many people find the way in which Kiesling is now speaking out
about the issue inappropriate. William Harrop, a former State Department
inspector general and retired ambassador commented to the Wall Street
Journal, “I certainly don’t take exception to his resignation, but I would
draw the line at promoting public opinion against the government or the
war. I believe it’s a seriously wrong decision to invade Iraq, but it isn’t
appropriate to agitate as a former government official.”

Speaking at Harvard, Kiesling explained the reasoning behind his decision
to resign, “I was floundering. My work suffered. I was miserable. I will
believe until I die that Americans want to do good in the world. Now I am
convinced the president lied to the US Congress. He never had any intention
of stopping short of war. And now he’s cashing the blank check Congress
wrote for him.”

Speaking with Melissa Block on NPR’s “All Things Considered”, Kiesling
quoted the playwright Aeschylus, saying “‘Let them hate so long as they
fear,’ the idea being that the United States, because we are so powerful,
because the world knows that they cannot let us go totally off the
reservation, will follow along and do what we demand, because they’re
afraid of us….A lot of people are afraid of us now, and I don’t know if
Americans understand that, but it’s pretty appalling.”

*****

by Megan Mills
Gazette Reporter

Even in its original Spanish, acclaimed playwright Federico Garcia Lorca’s
“Yerma” is not just a play. As a reserved-students email pointed out, this
drama is considered “a poem in 3 acts and 6 scenes” and director Jessica
Nakamura ’03 strove to preserve the beauty of the language in this English
adaptation.

“At times, during rehearsal, even though we’re doing the play in English
[as translated by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata], we’ve had to translate
lines into ones we would understand so the actors could play them even more
true to the language,” said Nakamura. “I feel that an injustice to Lorca’s
text would be for the actors to say the language as if it were pretty
instead of understanding it. We’ve tried to best understand the lyrical yet
difficult language.”

The production consists entirely of current and former Swatties, including
Maria Alvarez ’04, Rachel Best ’04, Liza Clark ’03, Emine Fisek ’03, Marty
Griffith ’05, Chris Keary ’03, Amy Robinson ’04, and professional actress
Corinna Burns ’96 in the title role. Burns has performed in Philadelphia in
“Brinkmanship!” and in another Garcia Lorca work, “The House of Bernarda
Alba”. Nakamura noted that Burns was “great to work with. We were able to
throw back ideas and try a lot of things in rehearsal.”

“Yerma”, which in Spanish means “uninhabited” or “barren,” is a woman who
struggles with her grief over her lack of children and the conflicting
pressures from society, her husband, and her own desires. The play is set
in Garcia Lorca’s native rural Spain at the beginning of the 20th century.

One of the most well known Spanish authors, Garcia Lorca is known for his
rural trilogy, which includes Blood Wedding, The House of Bernarda Alba,
and Yerma, and also for his volumes of poetry, such as “Poeta en Nueva
York” and “Gypsy Ballad.” He is also famous for his close friendship with
Salvador Dali and filmmaker Luis Bunuel.

Though Nakamura admits that “the project was very challenging to work on,”
this production, combining a wonderfully written play and hometown Swattie
talent, should be amazing.

Friday and Saturday night showings of Yerma are currently sold out, but
seats may open up close to showtime. Sunday night still has reserved seats
available.

*****

by Evelyn Khoo
Living and Arts Editor

Family Weekend is here! If your loving folks are coming all the way down to
campus, show them a helluva good time, Swat-style. here are some highlights
of the family weekend program to which you might want to bring your family.

Friday

While giving your parents the requisite college tour, don’t forget to
stroll down to the List Gallery between 1-5pm for the Student Art
Exhibit.while they’re oohing and aahing over the creative talents of your
fellow students, they might forget all about the disaster that is your room.

After a yummy dinner in Philly (this is your chance to hit them up for a
good free meal!) try to get back to campus by 8pm, for the college’s Wind
Ensemble performance in Lang Music Hall. If you know there’s a closet
thespian lurking in one of your family members, you might want to check out
Jessica Nakamura ’03’s production of ‘Yerma’, at 8pm in LPAC.

Saturday

After a leisurely breakfast (and after your mother has swept through your
room in a cleaning frenzy) you might want to show them the athletic side of
Swat by heading over to the tennis courts to watch the men’s tennis team
play Mary Washington at 1:30pm.

Ease all the tension and excitement of your sports-filled afternoon by
listening to the soothing voices of the Swarthmore Chorus which will be
performing Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms at 8pm in Lang Concert Hall.

Sunday

How could you possibly miss the much-anticipated, highly amusing Swat
tradition of the Crum Regatta? Make it a family bonding experience and head
down to the Crum Meadows at 10:30am to watch the ‘boats’ sail, or at least
attempt to, down Crum Creek.

When you’re done having fun down by the river, head back up towards campus
and steer your parents over to the amphitheater, where there will be a
Gamelan concert at 3pm. Balinese drumbeats, the wind in their hair and
their loving offspring sitting next to them– it’s definitely the best time
to whisper a request for a little money to keep you afloat for the rest of
the semester!

*****

by Evelyn Khoo
Living and Arts Editor

It’s Family Weekend, and your family members are nowhere in sight. If
you’re feeling mopey and lonely, as you watch your friends drift off with
their ‘rents in tow, never fear! There are a ton of activities that you and
the rest of the parent-less can enjoy. This might also be the perfect
opportunity to get off-campus for some quality time of your own. The Daily
Gazette compiles a list guaranteed to make you glad that your parents
weren’t here!

On Friday, hit Paces at 10pm and have a ball of a time at SAO’s ‘Sanrio,
Helloooooo, Kitty’ Party — comes with Asian candy! Always wanted to check
out a Bryn Mawr party but your friends were never keen? Now’s your chance
to jump on the shuttle and head off to BMC’s Campus Center for the ‘Strike
a Pose, Madonna Wannabee’ Party at 10pm. If you’re feeling those Swat
bubble blues and Bryn Mawr simply isn’t far enough, grab the Philly shuttle
and catch Busta Rhymes, the Donnas and the Jurassic 5 at Franklin Field at
33rd and Spruce.

On Saturday, indulge in some movie vintage and watch Charlton Heston nab
the bad guys in ‘Touch of Evil’ at 7:30 or at 10pm in Kirby. If last
weekend’s Sager put you in the mood for nakedness and you haven’t got
enough of it yet, head over to Enlace’s ‘Piel a Piel’ party in Paces at
10pm. Expect lots of good gyrations, Latin music and tropical drinks!

By Sunday, as you watch your roommate wave goodbye and haul the last loads
of her finally-washed laundry back to your room, you can sigh a sigh of
satisfaction with a weekend well-spent: you got to party and your room is
now clean!

*****

*On Thursday, US and Kurd troops joined together to successfully take the
oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Despite yesterday’s jubilant
celebrations, fighting still persisted in Baghdad, with four marines having
been wounded in an apparent suicide bombing. US officials now point to
Hussein’s birthplace, the city of Tikrit, as the most likely place for the
final stand-off between Iraqi and coalition troops.

*A reconciliation meeting to plan a post-Hussein Iraq went awry on
Thursday. Two Shiite clerics were knifed and shot to death when a crowd at
the meeting erupted into a riot. The meetings and deaths took place at the
shrine of Imam Ali, who Shiites consider to be the direct successor of
Mohammed. The deaths do not bode well for the possibilities of
reconciliation between the opposition movements in Iraq, especially since
one of the killed clerics was a supporter of the US who had just returned
from exile in London to take part in the rebuilding of his country.

*Congress passed a bill that is aimed at child safety. Targeting child
pornographers, molesters, and kidnappers the bill includes a national
“Amber Alert” Network, named after Amber Hagerman a nine year old from
Texas who had been kidnapped and then murdered. After passing the Senate
98-0, and the House 400-25, the bill will now go to President Bush to be
signed.

*****

Friday:

Parent’s Weekend Presentation by Lang Center staff
Scheuer Room – Kohlberg Hall, 10:00 a.m.

Peace Sing
Sponsored by SPAC
Parrish Steps, 12:00 p.m.

McCabe Library Spring Book Sale
McCabe Lobby, 1:00 p.m.

Student Art Exhibit
List Gallery – LPAC, 1:00 p.m.

Parent’s Weekend Provost’s Reception
Cosby Courtyard, 4:30 p.m.

Physics candidate research talk by Jo Bellanca, Department of Physics, UC
San Diego “Quantum Mechanical Wizardry: the Uncanny Effects of Dark States”
Dupont 133, 4:30 p.m.

Shabbat Services and Dinner
Sponsored by Ruach
Memorial Hall – Bond, 5:30 p.m.

Scottish Ceilidh Dance
Sponsored by the Folk Dance Club
Upper Tarble, 7:00 p.m.

Movie: “Touch of Evil”
Kirby, 7:30 & 10:00 p.m.

Swarthmore College Wind Ensemble
Lang Concert Hall, 8:00 p.m.

Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca, directed by Jessica Nakamura ’03
Frear Ensemble Theatre – LPAC, 8:00 p.m.

Sanrio, Helloooooo Kitty Party
Sponsored by SAO
Paces, 10:00 p.m.

Saturday:

Parent’s Weekend Lecture by Scott Gilbert “How Did the Turtle Get His Shell”
LPAC Cinema, 9:15 a.m.

Parent’s Weekend Forum for Parents and Friends with Bob Gross and Connie
Hungerford
Lang Music Building, 10:30 a.m.

“Sexual Secrets in Girls’ Lives  Living with Contradiction, Delight and Guilt”
A lecture by Dr. Sharon Lamb, Professor of Psychology, Saint Michael’s College
Women’s Resource Center, 12:00 p.m.

McCabe Library Spring Book Sale
McCabe Lobby, 1:00 p.m.

Parent’s Weekend Panel Discussion
Scheuer Room – Kohlberg, 1:00 p.m.

Parent’s Weekend Beit Midrash Open House
Lodge 5, 2:00 p.m.

Parent’s Weekend Faculty/Student Collaborative Research Presentations
Scheuer Room – Kohlberg, 3:00 p.m.

Movie: “Touch of Evil”
Kirby, 7:30 & 10:00 p.m.

Swarthmore College Chorus
Lang Concert Hall, 8:00 p.m.

Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca, directed by Jessica Nakamura ’03
Frear Ensemble Theatre – LPAC, 8:00 p.m.

Bryn Mawr’s Alternative Concert Series presents Damien Jurado with Adam
Voith and Dave Fischoff
Goodhart Hall Common Room, Bryn Mawr, 10:00 p.m.

Piel a Piel Party
Sponsored by Enlace
Paces, 10:00 p.m.

Sunday:

Parent’s Weekend Family Fun Run
Lamb-Miller Field House Lobby, 9:00 a.m.

Crum Regatta
Crum Meadows, 10:30 a.m.

Sunday Mass
Memorial Hall – Bond, 11:00 a.m.

McCabe Library Spring Book Sale
McCabe Lobby, 1:00 p.m.

Music in Bond
Memorial Hall – Bond, 2:00 p.m.

Spring Gamelan Concert
Lang Concert Hall, 3:00 p.m.

Young Friends Meeting for Worship
Bond Common Worship Room, 5:00 p.m.

APA Month Film Screening: “Home”
Scheuer Room – Kohlberg, 7:00 p.m.

Ask a SAM Advising
Parrish Parlor West, 7:00 p.m.

Study with a SAM
Trotter 201 and 303, 7:00 p.m.

Swarthmore College Chorus
Lang Concert Hall, 7:30 p.m.

Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca, directed by Jessica Nakamura ’03
Frear Ensemble Theatre – LPAC, 8:00 p.m.
———-
Haverford Speakers Committee presents noted cartoonist Art Spiegelman. His
lecture is entitled “Comix 101” and he will discuss comic book history with
reference to today’s current events, as well as his inspirations and
personal history with the art of comics. Mr. Spiegelman is best known for
his graphic novels Maus and Maus II, which portray his father’s experience
in the Holocaust. He is also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and
created the now-famous cover for that magazine that ran immediately after
September 11. The talk be in the Marshall Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. and will
last for about 70 minutes with time for Q&A afterwards. A reception with
Mr. Spiegelman will follow in Lunt Café.

*****

SPORTS UPDATE

The Garnet improved their record to 7-0 in the Centennial Conference (10-3
overall) with a sweep of Bryn Mawr at the Mullan Center Thursday. Anjani
Reddy, Kristina Pao, Caroline Celano, and Sonia Vallabh all blanked their
opponents. Emily Townsend and Sarah Fritsch also won singles matches.

*****

Jackie Kahn scored four goals and contributed two assists as the Garnet
beat Bryn Mawr 8-4, improving the team’s record to 5-6 overall (1-4 in the
Centennial Conference). Swat jumped out to an early lead, reaching 5-0 at
the half and leading 7-0 42 minutes into the game. Bryn Mawr made a
comeback attempt late in the game, but the Swat team was able to hold on to
the lead until the end. Sam Uslan made five saves for the Garnet and Claire
Goldsmith made 16 for the Owls.

*****

The Softball team’s doubleheader scheduled for today against Baptist Bible
has been cancelled. The Baseball team’s game against Ursinus has been
postponed for a second time and has not yet been rescheduled.

*****

Today:
Golf at Holy Family Quad, 1:00 p.m.
Baseball at Ursinus, 3:30 p.m.

Saturday:
Women’s Rugby at West Chester Tournament, 9:00 a.m.
Women’s Lacrosse at Muhlenberg, 12:00 p.m.
Men’s Rugby hosts George Washington, 1:00 p.m.
Softball at Gettysburg, 1:00 p.m. (DH)
Baseball hosts McDaniel, 1:00 p.m. (DH)
Men’s Lacrosse hosts F&M, 1:30 p.m.
Men’s Tennis hosts Mary Washington, 1:30 p.m.

Sunday:
Track at Ursinus Invite, 9:00 a.m.
Women’s Rugby at West Chester Tournament, 9:00 a.m.
Men’s Tennis hosts Rochester, 11:00 a.m.
Women’s Tennis hosts Johns Hopkins, 11:00 a.m.
Baseball at Gettysburg, 1:00 p.m. (DH)
Women’s Lacrosse at Steven’s Tech, 1:00 p.m.
Softball hosts Muhlenberg, 1:00 p.m. (DH)

*****

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.”
–Oscar Wilde

*****
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