(4 of 4)
Honors for Quakers. Swarthmore's aims under President Aydelotte were the same as those of the other pioneers in liberalized college training—Harvard, Princeton, Reed College, Smith. Swarthmore's method was the Honors Course, which is now used by some 80 institutions. Half the Swarthmore juniors and seniors take honors, devoting their full time to reading in any one of ten fields of correlated subjects. They are free from class attendance and examinations, meeting twice a week in small seminars (with tea). At the end they are graduated with honors, high honors or highest honors. And honors do not imply remoteness from the world of today: they may be taken in chemistry as well as classics, in engineering as well as English. Swarthmore honors examinations are given not by Swarthmore professors but, to insure strictness and impartiality, by visiting professors from places as widely separated as Oxford, Virginia, Wisconsin, Amherst. Last week examinations took place. Orals are public, and Swarthmore students may drop in to examination rooms to see how their friends are doing.
About one-quarter of the Swarthmore students are Quaker. No Quaker himself, President Aydelotte admires Quaker liberalism and forthrightness, seeks to keep its influence alive in his college. Older professors sometimes "thee and thou" their students. Sundays there are "first-day meetings'' in the bare Quaker meeting house. The Swarthmore board of managers opens its sessions silently, does business by taking the ''sense of the meeting." Swarthmore students dress simply, do not gad about Philadelphia as much as students from Haverford and U. of P. The men meet nightly in the ''Cracker Room" in their main dormitory. No beer is sold. This year the Swarthmore girls voted to disband their sororities, to which 75% belonged. Alumnae protested and the matter is still open. Yet Swarthmore is not all innocence. Two years ago Dean Alan C. Valentine, Rhodesman who is now master of Yale's Pierson College, staged a surprise raid, found liquor in the rooms of two dozen students.
Frank Aydelotte still talks Oxford and Rhodes but concentrates on Swarthmore. He met, and silenced. George Bernard Shaw at a British garden party by telling him about his Honors Courses. President Aydelotte got Swarthmore a Rhodes Scholar football coach and numerous professors. Other colleges have taken some of his best men—Dean Valentine, President Raymond Walters of the University of Cincinnati, President Frank Parker Day of Union College, Dean Frances Burlingame of Elmira College. President Aydelotte introduced scholarships of a Rhodes type at Swarthmore, doubled the number for next year hoping to get more and abler students. Among Swarthmore alumni are onetime Governors Sweet of Colorado, Sproul of Pennsylvania, Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party, onetime Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer. Swarthmore has produced no Einstein. That is what Frank Aydelotte wants to do next.