Swarthmore College student Trinity Townsend’s Instagram project documents the lives of her fellow students during Covid.
All in Swarthmore College
The Tree of Us in a March Chinook: Stitching a Scattered Community Into a Quilt
A Swarthmore College senior dreams up a community quilting project to hold onto a sense of community during Covid-19. Free to read and share
Swarthmore Reopens Borough Hall and Approves Hybrid Police Car
Swarthmore’s borough council voted to reopen borough hall and the Central Park amphitheater, and approved a three-year lease-purchase of a 2021 hybrid Ford Explorer for the police department. Free to read and share
Life on the Page: Poetry by Swarthmore College Students
Swarthmorean intern Madelon Basil introduces a trio of poems by Swarthmore College students.
Things Left Behind: Swarthmore Students Reunited With Their Belongings
A Swarthmore College student reflects on the things students left behind last year when the college closed — initially just for spring break — and what it was like to be reunited with them. Free to read and share
2020 in Review: Before and (Mostly) After
Rereading articles from this past January and February is like peering through the wrong end of a telescope into a lost world. Here’s a review of what we were doing and thinking about in 2020, as it showed up in the pages (and website) of this newspaper — both BC (Before COVID) and AD (After Distancing). Free to read and share
Empathy and Exploration: A Journey to the Holy Land Offers Immersive Lessons in Understanding Conflict (Part Two)
This is the second part of a two-part article about the immersive 10-day Swarthmore College study trip that concludes a course on Israeli-Palestinian conflict taught by Assistant Professor Sa’ed Atshan. An alumnus of the college, Atshan lives in Swarthmore.
Empathy and Exploration: A Journey to the Holy Land Offers Immersive Lessons in Understanding Conflict
Hebrew University of Jerusalem anthropologist Guy Shalev encourages the 36 Swarthmore College students visiting the region with their eight faculty and staff chaperones not only to ask questions, but to ask “the right questions.” A 20-plus-year member of the college’s communications office, I audited the class and joined the trip as a chaperone with the intention of writing about it for the community.
Swarthmore Professors Adapt to Online Learning
The Swarthmore College website proclaims that its community “thrives on open dialogue, shoulder-to-shoulder discovery, face-to-face exploration.” This approach, as well as the 8-to-1 student to faculty ratio, has helped the college garner a reputation as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. But its hands-on, intimate learning had to be modified once the college transitioned to remote learning.
On Board Games and Community
Read about board games and the community in Swarthmore in an essay by our Swarthmore College intern, Elisabeth Miller. Free to read and share
The Physics of Everyday Things: Two Swarthmore College Scientists Awarded NSF Grant
Granular materials — like sand, rice, or powdered pharmaceuticals — are everywhere, yet their behavior is poorly understood. In some ways behaving like liquids, in other ways behaving like solids, such materials have unique properties and pose unique questions to answer. Swarthmore College physics professors Cacey Bester and Amy Graves received an NSF grant to study granular materials.
Free to read and share
What Do You Think of Singer Hall?
The aesthetics of Swarthmore College’s Singer Hall — which will eventually be the home of the psychology, biology, and engineering departments — have been controversial since ground was broken in 2018. Some people think the building’s great, while others have declared it a monstrosity, or worse. Surprisingly few are lukewarm. What do you think?
College’s Newest Building Phases Into Use
The new building, a 158,000-square-foot home for Swarthmore’s biology, engineering, and psychology departments, was first conceived in 2011 as part of an institutional strategic plan. In December 2012, the college announced a $50 million gift to be used toward the project. This, the largest gift in the school’s history, came from alumnus and philanthropist Eugene Lang ‘38, who died in 2017.