<p>Sounds like turmoil, but maybe there’s a story behind the story.</p>
<p>I know that before Rapelye went to Princeton, she first accepted - then rejected - the admissions job at Swarthmore.</p>
<p><a href=“The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881”>The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881;
<p>Byerly:</p>
<p>Sometimes a student newspaper is not the best way to get the full story.</p>
<p>The Dean of Admissions is a fairly young guy, James Bock (Swarthmore Class of '90) who was promoted from Assistant Dean to acting dean and then Dean in 2000 when Robin Mamlet left to become Admissions Dean at Stanford.</p>
<p>By all reports, he is extremely well liked and does an excellent job. Students report being “freaked out” when they show up for first-year orientation and the admissions deans, including Bock, start rattling off details of their ECs and essays in coversation.</p>
<p>The changes described in the article have all involved the clerical staff. Reading between the lines, the two key clues that stand out are the years of service (20 years) and the lack of proficency in Word and Excel. </p>
<p>Obviously, Bock is constrained by common decency in what he is going to say on the record. But, I suspect the real story is that a number of 65 year old ladies in the office were given retirement packages with an eye towards the kind of skill set appropriate to an era where huge file cabinets of application folders are being replaced by computer files, e-mail requests, and on-line tracking of application status. For example, this past year was the first time that applicants were given a password to a website where they could track a checklist of received items and so forth. </p>
<p>It is not difficult to imagine a clerical staff routed in paper tracking struggling to adapt to that kind of fundamental change in the process. Likewise, the bulk of student communication with an admissions office is now handled by e-mail. Given the volume of applications and the rapid change to on-line applications, it is not possible to delay the implementation of technology. Clerical staff who are not proficient even in Word or Excel would be an impediment. The new admissions office was clearly designed for the changeover, judging by the number of workstations in the office layout.</p>
<p>I think the most telling quote in the article was, “I’ve been here long enough to have worked through several administrations and it’s nothing like it was 25 years ago.” </p>
<p>Indeed. Admissions is certainly not like it was 25 years ago, something to which anyone who has wrestled with the online Common Application can attest!</p>
<p>Of course, recent students would be up in arms. After all, we are talking about very friendly little old ladies who had been there forever.</p>
<p>Sounds plausible, but in these contentious times its not as easy to “clean house” and dump the “little old ladies” as it used to be. Federal laws governing age discrimination and all that!</p>
<p>Exactly. Which is, I am sure, part and parcel of why Dean Bock can’t really give the full story to the student newspaper.</p>
<p>It’s kind of like reporters asking Bill Belichick why he cut a player in training camp and Belichick saying that he has nothing but praise for the player, that he worked hard, and did everything asked of him. Huh?</p>
<p>But, really…what’s he going to say?</p>
<p>BTW, I remember reading an article about the Rapelye deal. </p>
<p>Marmet announced that she was leaving for Stanford. Bock, who was just 31 or so at the time and an assistant Dean (after taking a break from admissions to get his MEd at UVa) was named acting Dean during the search process. He threw his hat in the ring, but the two finalists were Rapelye from Wellesley and Nancy Cable from Davidson.</p>
<p>The search took place in the Spring of 2001…right in the midst of protests about the decision to drop football. The Admissions Office was a focal point of the protests, since Marmet’s position that the school could no longer allocate enough slots to stock a football team and meet the other core priorities of the college from an admissions standpoint really forced the Board of Managers to address the issue.</p>
<p>Cable pulled her hat from the ring (and was, I think named a Vice President of both Admissions and Financial Aid at Davidson shortly thereafter). I think the transition from Davidson to Swarthmore would be a difficult one. The admissions priorities are very different.</p>
<p>Rapelye was offered the position but opted to stay at Wellesley. She took the Princeton job two years later (but, it is possible, I suppose, that she may have been quietly tagged as a successor with Hargadon’s retirement on the near horizon). Her husband was also headmaster of a Boston area prep school.</p>
<p>Anyway, Bock was named Dean of Admissions the following week. I think it’s a plus for the school to have an alum in that position. He does a very good job communicating what the school is about.</p>
<p>Byerly,
I have a S who is a senior at Swarthmore. I was very conflicted when I read this story. I have the same “reading” as interesteddad re: computers vs. filing cabinets and the ability/inability of some older members of the staff to adapt. Nonetheless, some of those women in the office, particularly the most prominently named one, are truly the first face and voice of Swarthmore. I always marveled at how cool, calm and collected she was when greeting people, handling phones, answering “stupid” questions repeatedly, etc. On a personal level, I hope these folks who were let go land on their feet.</p>
<p>My initial reaction was that the story got such prominent coverage that we should expect to hear more - that it could hardly end with this cryptic account. But perhaps not.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wouldn’t read too much into that. It was the first edition of the weekly paper, published on the third day of classes. Other than the “orientation week” news, it’s a slow news day, so to speak. Mostly filler stuff and summer news.</p>
<p>My guess is that this article was written over the summer. Probably by a student interning in the admissions office back in June when all of this happened. College students tend a be filled with righteous indignation (which is a good thing, IMO), after all they sign petitions and write news articles on the evils of serving Coca-Cola products in the dining hall (as if PepsiCo is somehow less corporately “evil”). </p>
<p>The article is basically a one-sided presentation of the kind of office uproar that occurs whenever there is a staff shake-up. Unfortunately, it had to be one-sided because the managers responsible for the shake-up couldn’t really speak in detail, both for legal reasons and out of just plain decency to long-term employees who were, presumably, asked to resign with severance/retirement.</p>
<p>The more interesting story on campus is why the new Dean of the College, Jim Larrimore, accepted a lateral move from Dartmouth to Swarthmore. The retiring Dean left very big shoes to fill (talk about someone who was loved on campus!). All reports I’ve heard from students who met with all of the candidates last spring were extremely positive about Larrimore.</p>
<p>Larrimore is, I believe, a Dartmouth grad of Comanche Indian heritage. My guess is that he’s looking to diversify his background (some admin experience at Stanford) in order to angle for a college presidency somewhere.</p>
<p>That was my intitial reaction, too.</p>
<p>It fits with being an assistant to Provost Condi Rice at Stanford, then Dean of the College at Dartmouth, and with finishing up his PhD at Stanford this summer. The problem is that college presidents usually come up through the professorial ranks and provost/finance are usually the stepping stones. For example, Swarthmore’s VP of Administration was just named the President of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.</p>
<p>From things Larrimore told the students who met with him last fall, the Dartmouth position required extensive travel in a fundraising capacity…something that he did not enjoy with young children at home. If he didn’t enjoy that, he’d hate being a college president!</p>
<p>Reading between the lines, the whole fraternity controversy at Dartmouth in which the alumni slapped down the administration for trying to change a campus culture may have been an issue as well.</p>
<p>It could be just a quality of life decision. Swarthmore would be great place to be Dean of Students. Pays well. The school is very student-centered. The students are engaged academcially. By the standards of academic institutions, the admin/faculty/students/alumni are on the same page so the political battles are minor (except for the decision to drop football!). Relatively speaking, there are no financial issues. And, it’s a nice place to live (gorgeous old neighborhood, 20 minutes from downtown, similar to Wellesley in that regard).</p>
<p>Who knows? His candidacy was kept under wraps. He was not one of the four publicly announced finalists who came for campus visits, although he had been visiting privately.</p>
<p>Jim Bock is amazing, and very personable. I’ve only been here for two weeks now, but we heard him speak a couple times and I enjoyed all of his speaches.</p>
<p>Larrimore seemed slightly less relzaxed when he spoke, but his speech was very good. I think he just needs to settle in a bit and he’ll be great - he got on campus not long before the freshman did, so this is all new to him too.</p>
<p>Another unhappy employee? This is an article by Samuel Prouty 00, admissions counselor (2000-2003)</p>
<p><a href=“The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881”>The Phoenix - The Independent Campus Newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881;