Tag Archives: Bryn Mawr College

Main Line Rebel Without a Cause

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Mark Dewitt’s skewed world view

By Virginia Rubey

Mark Dewitt has the look of any big-city bum: unkempt beard, long graying hair, missing teeth, wrinkles. He wears dirty Levis and a secondhand Stanford University sweatshirt.
Men who look like Mark fit right into the urban landscape, their presence as expected as the streetlights, the potholes in the sidewalk, the lack of available parking spaces.
But Mark, 51, never much liked urban landscapes. He lives on the Main Line, among upscale fur and jewelry shops where his presence is as welcome as a stock market crash. He says he has been a rebel his whole life.
“My dear, sweet mother said I was a rebel, a troublemaker, and a hoodlum.” He counts the charges off on his finger. “She was wrong. I’m no hoodlum!” He laughs and points to a tattoo on his right forearm that reads Fight Authority. “But she nailed me on the first two! Yeah!” he roars with a grin. “Hi!” he shouts to a man passing by on the street. The man walks faster.

#%$! Main Liners
“People are too damn snotty out here. Where I’m from, you didn’t stick your nose in the air just ‘cause you had something. F—k the Main Line!” he shouts.
Mark is originally from Montgomery County. He ran away from home when he was 16 to avoid beatings, groundings, and rules. He’s lived on the Main Line since 1998.
“I’m a noted character around the neighborhood,” he says. “They give me s–t here ‘cause I don’t look all hot s–t and whatnot. They say they’ll call the cops? S–t, I know the cops better than they do! I practically lived with ‘em!” he laughs. “But I don’t want to go back there.” Mark says he prefers his subsidized studio apartment near the Ardmore post office to his former prison cell. Continue reading →

Kate Allen’s Secret Garden

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See how Kate Allen’s garden grows

By Laura Boyle

Kate Allen likes getting dirty.
That’s how the petite, soft-spoken student at Bryn Mawr College sums up her motivations for starting a vegetable garden on campus.
She digs her pale fingers into the soil, plucks a leaf away from the delicate green shoot that she hopes will one day become a hearty head of mustard greens. She gestures while she speaks, pushing her floppy bangs out of her eyes, and it’s not surprising that at the end of the interview, a smear of fresh, black dirt marks her forehead.
You could meet the student-turned-gardener yourself, but that’s assuming you could find the garden. A broken patch of ground would seem hard to miss on this pristine, suburban campus, where barely a leaf disgraces the cultivated grass.
Kate’s garden, however, lies tucked in a far corner, hidden by trees, concealed behind a falling-down stone shed. The shed slumps adjacent to the home of the English department, the English House, across the street from the main campus.

A Makeshift Gate
If you duck under the low-hanging branches and walk over a bed of neglected, rotting leaves, you’ll come to a green wire fence, latched with a fraying bungee cord. Walk through the makeshift gate and down a step and you’ll be standing in the middle of a concrete rectangle that’s been covered by about an inch of soil. On the side closest to the shed, encased by cinderblocks, raised off the concrete by newly placed soil and fertilizer, is Kate’s garden. Continue reading →

Haverford’s Mr. President

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By Robert Breckinridge

The dorky looking kid with glasses who is already balding at age 20 is the last person you might expect to be one of Haverford College’s Student Council (SC) co-presidents. But that is exactly who Will Harrison, class of 2010, is. And he pulls it all off pretty darned well.
Harrison is surely one of Haverford’s quintessential students; intelligent, driven, well rounded, and pretty nerdy. He has flourished at Haverford in spite of the fact that he said, “in high school I wasn’t particularly popular. I never would have been elected to this sort of thing [Student Council]. I guess college is different.”
Indeed, college has been different because he has been involved in almost every facet of student life at Haverford. Some organizations he’s been a part of include the housing committee, the council of 12, the Bi-college chamber singers, the Bi-College news paper, the cricket team, and an upper class advisor to freshman.
He is the only returning member to Student Council so students are lucky to have him as one of the SC presidents. Here is a guy who knows how to balance what ever is on his plate. And the SC co-presidents have more on their plate than almost any one of Haverford’s 1,200 students.
And for the sake of the students, Harrison has made his Student Council plate even bigger. Some of his causes include construction of a new dorm to free up what little living space students have, building a new theater, and syncing the major requirements at both Bryn Mawr and Haverford so students have more options for classes in their major.
Oh yeah, and helping to raise $300 million dollars to get all that done. Continue reading →

The Church Lady Steps Out

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By Emily Olsen

While many members of the Bryn Mawr campus are still sleeping off Saturday night, Mariah Pepper is out of bed and walking toward the train station. She hopes to reach Old First Reformed Church in time for their 11 a.m. service. Last week she attended the service Bryn Mawr Presbyterian, a five-minute walk from her dorm.
“That’s where I go when I want to sleep in” said Pepper.
Pepper, 21, a senior a Bryn Mawr College, has visited many of the churches in the Bryn Mawr area as well as churches in Philadelphia. Her trips have included United Church of Christ, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic, and Episcopal Churches and even Quaker meetings.

The reasons for Pepper’s wandering worship are many. Above all, she says she is curious about other denominations and religions. She also likes the different tastes in music she sees in each church she visits. These include the enthusiastic, but off-key, UCC choirs and the semi-professional Presbyterian Hand bell performances. In addition, Pepper is charmed by church communities.
“The regular church goers are all slightly odd in a way that’s really friendly,” she said. “I’m comfortable in any church I go to and enjoy having an affinity with the worshippers.”
On the train, Pepper eats apples and peanut butter from a Tupperware container. The dining halls don’t open until after her train leaves and she usually doesn’t get back to campus until 2 p.m.
Pepper thinks Old First, a UCC church, is worth the trip though. She especially enjoys the church community there.
Not all of Pepper’s visits have been so positive. Once when she was attending a service for the first time at Lower Merion Baptist Church, a member accosted her with the church directory. Continue reading →