The New York Times

Another Season, Another Show

By Ruth La Ferla

February 10, 2011

At the close of Joseph Altuzarra's fashion show in Chelsea last September, spectators sprang to their feet, jostling toward the far end of the runway to congratulate the designer, or maybe just to bask in his glow. Within moments, industry power brokers like Linda Fargo, the sleekly imposing fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman; Simon Doonan of Barneys New York, and a visibly captivated Hamish Bowles of Vogue were rushing backstage to throw their arms around Mr. Altuzarra and to pose for the scrum of paparazzi bellowing their names.

...Mr. Altuzarra, 27, is one of the fortunate ones. Since mounting his first show in winter of 2009, he has been lionized, and scrutinized, by a novelty-famished fashion community.

... Last year the brand turned a profit, making a leap from three stores and 80 pieces to about 30 stores and 1,800 pieces and taking in some $4 million in retail sales.

His tony education (he is a graduate of Swarthmore College) has sharpened his analytical skills, to the point, his mother fairly boasted, that he can read a balance sheet as readily as an abstruse text. ''When I tell him we're doing cash-flow projections,'' she said, ''he knows what I'm talking about.''...

Mr. Altuzarra's designs have been compared to those of Tom Ford, one of his idols, and Azzedine Alaia. He has interned with Marc Jacobs and apprenticed with Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy.

...In the weeks since September, he had breathed last-minute life into a collection that had resided for months only as a phantom in his head. He had come full circle.

The Delaware County Daily Times (PA)

Swarthmore Borough moves to help college secure grant

By Susan L. Serbin, Times Correspondent
February 7, 2011

SWARTHMORE - Council recently approved action that will lead to funding for potential development on Swarthmore College property.

The development of "Swarthmore Town Center West" on the college's athletic field by the SEPTA station could be some combination of an inn, restaurant and bookstore.

The concept has been in the works for as much as a decade, but stalled somewhat due to the economic climate.

However, at an April 2010 meeting, Swarthmore College President Rebecca Chopp said the college is committed to moving forward on the project.

The borough is acting as a conduit for a $2 million Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant from the state.

...The grant is to be used specifically for infrastructure work at the site.

The Delaware County Daily Times (PA)

Keeping an eye on Egypt from far away in Delco

By Patti Mengers

February 7, 2011

For 17 summers, Farha Ghannam has lived among the residents in the al-Zawiya al-Hamra neighborhood of Cairo, studying their lives and growing to love them.

"I sleep there. I eat there. It's just as though they're family to me," said the 47-year-old Swarthmore resident.

An associate professor of anthropology at Swarthmore College, Ghannam has spent about a month every summer since the mid-1990s living in the low-income Cairo community of at least 100,000 people, doing research for a book she is writing.

...Every other week, Ghannam talks via telephone with the family she usually resides with in Egypt, which includes a woman with two adult daughters and two grandchildren, but was unable to reach them after the unrest started. The telephone lines had become so overloaded she would get a busy signal, or connected to other people trying to call Egypt.

"I talked to them a couple days before this started. We were joking about things. Nobody expected things to become so incredibly mobilized," said Ghannam.

She finally reached the family in al-Zawiya al-Hamra 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. When Ghannam reached them, the matriarch's two sons had come to stay with her to ensure their mother's and sisters' safety.

"I've been feeling anxious about them just as though I was worried about my family in Jordan," said Ghannam. (more)

Crawdaddy Magazine

Celebrate with us the 45th Anniversary of Crawdaddy

February 7, 2011

Do you know the story of Crawdaddy!? Forty-five years ago, the first US magazine of rock criticism was born. Conceived by a visionary young journalist named Paul Williams from his freshmen dorm room at Swarthmore College, Crawdaddy! Magazine (so named for the club where the Rolling Stones played their first show) set in motion a movement of music writing that has continued to resonate and gain momentum over the past four and a half decades since Williams first put his pen to the page and cranked out a magazine. In those early issues, Williams made a name for himself for frank, intelligent, and earnest commentary on the subject of music-reviewing Simon and Garfunkels' Sounds of Silence (for which he received a phone call from Paul Simon at his dorm room congratulating him for his insights), waxing on the musical identity of San Francisco, taking on folk-rock as it emerged in a dichotomous climate, and going on to become one of the preeminent Dylan experts of the age. ...

The National Post (Canada)

Daniel Pipes: Muslims can embrace democracy, but I'm not optimistic (blog)

February 7, 2011

With anti-regime demonstrations raging in Egypt, and the possibility of a new government led by or involving the Muslim Brotherhood, many are asking whether Islam is compatible with democracy. The answer is yes, it potentially is, but it will take much hard work to make this happen.

Present realities are far from encouraging, for tyranny disproportionately afflicts Muslim-majority countries. Swarthmore College's Frederic L. Pryor concluded in a 2007 analysis in the Middle East Quarterly that, with some exceptions, "Islam is associated with fewer political rights." Saliba Sarsar looked at democratization in 17 Arabic-speaking countries and, writing in the same journal, found that "between 1999 and 2005 ... not only is progress lacking in most countries, but across the Middle East, reform has backslid."

How easy to jump from this dismal pattern and conclude that the religion of Islam itself must be the cause of the problem. In fact, the current predicament of dictatorship, corruption, cruelty and torture results from specific historical developments rather than the Koran and other sacred scriptures. (more)

The Washington Post

3 Books on War

By Dennis Drabelle

February 6, 2011

In his "Devil's Dictionary," Ambrose Bierce memorably defined "peace" as "in international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting." Those periods of fighting are the subject of these new books, which look at the subject both here and now, and from an ageless perspective. ...

In How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War (Little, Brown, $27.99), Dominic Tierney, a political science professor at Swarthmore, ponders the discrepancy between the gung-ho crusading instincts with which Americans launch wars and the reluctance to follow through with nation-building that tends to characterize our behavior once we have toppled a threatening regime. ...

Ground Report (blog)

'Avatar' Star Steven Lang Endorses Indian NGO Video Volunteers

February 4, 2011

You may know Steven Lang as the villainous colonel Quaritch in Avatar, but in reality he believes the camera is a stronger weapon than the gun. He's become a champion of using cinema for the empowerment of the most disadvantaged, and has recently made a video endorsing the global media organization Video Volunteers.

Says Steven Lang,"Video Volunteers is creating a kind of grassroots Reuters. They have created an alternative media in places that don't have cinemas or TV or even regular electricity. As an actor, it is amazing to see people who have so little producing such interesting media."

Stephen Lang is a distinguished actor of stage and screen, "an actor's actor" according to the New York Times A graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds honorary doctorates from Jacksonville University in Theatre and Film, and Swarthmore in Humane Letters. He is on the Board of Director's at The Actors Studio.

Tapped (Blog)

Feminism on Friday Nights

February 4, 2011

Critics love Friday Night Lights, the outgoing NBC series that is based very loosely on Buzz Bissinger's best-selling book, in part because of the marriage between the two main characters, the football coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami. Their partnership has always seemed realistic, even, and loving. That is, until this season.

Pause: Spoilers ahead.
The story lines unfolding in recent episodes follow this path: Eric, who is a successful high school football coach in Texas -- which is, it should be noted, football country -- was offered a job at a college in Florida and turned it down. Somewhat unrealistically, Tami, who is a high school counselor, was randomly contacted by a liberal arts college near Philadelphia, clearly modeled on a school like Swarthmore. During her interview, she had some criticisms for standardized tests and college admissions tests that would seem pretty pedestrian to most progressives, but it nonetheless got her an offer -- not to be assistant dean, which was the job she thought she was going after but to actually be dean of admissions.  ...

The Philadelphia Inquirer

College endowments coming off a good year

By Joseph N. DiStefano

February 4, 2011

The National Association of College and University Business Officers and the Commonfund Institute say the typical college endowment added almost 10 cents for every $1 invested during 2010.

It shows investments growing, schools building less expensively, and alumni and other donors returning to giving.

The biggest U.S. endowment, Harvard's, rose 5 percent to $27.6 billion, Yale's 2 percent to $16.7 billion, and No. 3 Princeton's 14 percent to $14.4 billion. Locally:

Penn, up 10 percent, to $5.67 billion.

Penn State, up 12 percent, to $1.37 billion.

Swarthmore, up 11 percent, to $1.25 billion.

Lehigh, up 6 percent, to $940 million.

Bryn Mawr, up 10 percent, to $574 million.

Drexel, up 5 percent, to $427 million.

Villanova, up 12 percent, to $298 million.

Temple, up 12 percent, to $236 million.

St. Joseph's, up 17 percent, to $145 million.

SPORTS

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Women's College Basketball: Temple women beat Bonnies with tough defense

February 10, 2011

... Swarthmore 62, Washington College 52 -Swarthmore moved into a tie with Franklin and Marshall for the final Centennial Conference playoff spot with the win in Chestertown, Md.

Sophomore Madeline Ross, a Central Bucks East graduate, paced the Garnet (13-9, 9-8 Centennial) with 14 points. Freshman Katie Lytle (12), junior Genny Pezzola (11), and senior Kathryn Stockbower (10) also scored in double figures. Stockbower (Upper Dublin) added a game-high 15 rebounds to record the NCAA Division III-record 81st double-double of her career.

The Garnet buried the Shorewomen (10-11, 8-8) from deep, sinking 11 three-point shots.

NCAA.com

Consistency leads to NCAA mark

Stockbower has posted a double-double in 81 of 96 career games

By Amy Hughes

February 10, 2011

Doubles have become quite routine for Kathryn Stockbower.

The Swarthmore College senior has a double major in biology and German studies, and checks in with a 3.84 cumulative grade-point average.

Through Feb. 9, she had 81 double-doubles in her collegiate career, setting a Division III all-time record. Since her first game at Swarthmore, there have only been 15 games that she did not record a double-double.

"From a coaching perspective, the consistency is amazing," said Swarthmore head coach Renee DeVarney. "Each year, the team as a whole has gotten better. We had to rely on Kathryn for everything her freshman year; now it has spread around a lot more."

Stockbower is nothing if not consistent. She scored 422 points as a freshman, 443 as a sophomore and 442 as a junior. Although her per-game scoring average has dipped from 17.7 in each of her first three years to 15.4 this year, she has helped the Garnet (13-9) take aim at their first postseason appearance since 2008.

Stockbower set the NCAA Division III double-double record on Feb. 5 with an 18-point, 10-rebound performance at Johns Hopkins. She broke the record on the home court of the previous record holder, Hopkins alum Julie Anderson, who held the former record since 1998 with 79 career double-doubles.

"It was really exciting," Stockbower said of setting the double-doubles record. "It's a huge honor to have something go down in the record books. It's not anything that I would have ever expected to accomplish in my college career."(more)

Delaware County Daily Times (PA)

College Hoops

February 10, 2011

Swarthmore 62,

Washington College 52

Madeline Ross scored a team-high 14 points for Swarthmore, which made 11 3-point field goals.

The Garnet's Kathryn Stockbower, the NCAA Division III record holder for most double-doubles in a career, finished with 10 points and 15 rebounds.

Katie Lytle (12) and Genny Pezzola (11) also reached double figures in scoring.

Delaware County Daily Times (PA)

Colleges: Record day for Stockbower

February 5, 2011

Daily Times Staff Reports

It was only fitting that Swarthmore's Kathryn Stockbower set the NCAA Division III record for career double-doubles in a 62-50 loss at Johns Hopkins Saturday.

It's the same arena where Julie Anderson established the standard while playing for the Blue Jays more than a decade ago.

Stockbower scored 18 points and pulled down 10 rebounds for the 80th double-double of her career to break the Division III record set by Anderson at Johns Hopkins from1994-1998.

Genny Pezzola chipped in with 12 points and Madeline Ross 11 for the Garnet (12-9, 8-8).  ...

D3hoops.com

Stockbower Becomes Swarthmore's All-Time Leading Rebounder, Ties NCAA Division III Double-Doubles Mark in 76-63 Loss to Muhlenberg

February 2, 2011

SWARTHMORE, Pa. - Not even a 60-minute delay caused by a power outage could keep Kathryn Stockbower from history.

Thanks to a 14-point, 14-rebound performance, the senior became the all-time leading rebounder in Swarthmore women's basketball history (1,264) and tied the NCAA Division III record for career double-doubles (79). Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to propel the Garnet (12-8, 8-7) to victory, as visiting Muhlenberg (14-5, 10-4) used a 15-0 run during the second-half to defeat Swarthmore 76-63 on Wednesday evening.

Stockbower broke 2002 graduate Heather Kile's previous record of 1,263 rebounds with her board with under four minutes to play. She ties Julie Anderson (1998) of Johns Hopkins for the NCAA Division III record for double-doubles with 79. Stockbower has a chance to break Anderson's record against her alma mater on Saturday, when the Garnet travel to Baltimore to face the Blue Jays.

From there, Swarthmore could only get to within eight points of the lead for the rest of the contest, as Muhlenberg cruised to the 76-63 win.