Story of a Friendship
Elisa Asensio and Violet Brown’s weekly lunches are
testament to their long-standing relationship.
by Madelyn Gutwirth

Shifting Gears After Graduation
Rachel Rubenstein ’05 hits the road for the Habitat for Humanity Bicycle Challenge, and discovers another direction.
by Shawn Hart

Fates: Collage as Post-Expressionism
Artist Linnea Paskow ’98 gives solidity to dream images.
by Linnea Paskow ’98

Looking Back at President White
Two perspectives on Gilbert White: one faculty, one student.
by Marcel Gutwirth and Scott Kimmich ’54, introduction by John Lombardi

Resolution in Honor of Thomas R. Tritton

Gathered in the historic Founders Hall of Haverford College for the 50th Anniversary of the Class of 1956, we are happy to celebrate not only our own years at the College, but also the outstanding leadership and accomplishments of Thomas Richard Tritton, who became Haverford’s 12th president in 1997, and has announced his retirement from that position at the end of the 2006-2007
academic year.

Given our perspective of 50 years, we take enormous pleasure in Tom Tritton’s unique contributions to Haverford and, beyond that, to the academic and cultural-social worlds of the present day.

In an historical sense, you, Tom Tritton, have served in the vanguard of this country’s gradually emerging, though painfully slow world-consciousness, at a time which, we like to believe, shows certain faint signs of change.

Born in Lakewood, Ohio and a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan in 1969, you were

nurtured in the heartland of America’s dynamic surge to carry America’s ideals from the East to the Territories. Following your doctoral work at Boston University—a center of progressive thought in the heyday of liberalism on this continent—you served 12 years each on the faculties of Yale University and the University of Vermont. You brought this experience and background to Haverford College where you struck just the right chord at the right time at the College, in the country, and in the world at large.

In a very real sense you were dealing with the idea of “balance”—the on-going struggles in America to balance the imbalances between black and white, rich and poor, men and women. Your own professional discipline of biology (within which the term “ecology” originated) prepared you to speak with a learned voice about the need for “balance” in the world. It is noteworthy that you brought your ecological concerns to practical reality by enacting a new building policy mandating that all new construction be “green,” or environmentally friendly.

You, Tom, addressed imbalances not yet understood in earlier times. You recognized the vast imbalance of attention to the Northern and Western worlds at the expense of attention to the Southern and Eastern worlds. In so doing, you responded to the need to know more about, and gain a speaking knowledge of, the Islamic world. In our days at Haverford, we thought the “Enlightenment” was limited to, and defined by, Western civilization. Your support for the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship gives practical meaning to this unfulfilled dream. At this Center students are involved in experiential learning, service, diversity, peace making, social change and international education. We were pleased today to talk with students active in this Center.

You also recognized, and did something about, the imbalance of attention to math and the physical and social sciences, and the disciplines of literature, history and philosophy, at the expense of a commitment to the arts. When we were undergraduates, the arts were something of an afterthought in this community.

And, even more, you sensed, and did something about, the imbalance of exercising absolute, unquestioned loyalty to the classic academic disciplines while ignoring the modern world’s crying, indeed desperate pleading for an interdisciplinary approach to the burning issues of our day. As undergraduates at Haverford, there were few opportunities to respond to that plea. We note with pleasure the establishment of two other academic centers under your leadership specifically to address some of these concerns and lead toward interdisciplinary learning.

The Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center enables so many scientific disciplines to be housed in the same space and to promote a unique integrated research and educational experience for students. The third center, the John B. Hurford ‘60 Humanities Center, also enhances the intentionally collaborative and community-minded approach to learning that reflects your educational philosophy.

In short, you have been willing to stretch the mind and awaken the imagination in unheard-of ways.