The John A. Swanson Science Center

An old Roman Catholic convent has been demolished to make room for the new $33-million John A. Swanson Science Center at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa. The new building's style blends old world architecture with the latest technology, readying this college for the needs of the 21st century.

 
Click here to read a story about this new building in the Observer-Reporter

Old Main is an old friend

The atypical twin towers of Old Main at Washington and Jefferson College represent the merger of two schools from which it takes its name. Scott Beveridge photo

By Barbara S. Miller

WASHINGTON, Pa. – Many a person has probably returned to their old school years later and remarked, “I wouldn’t have recognized the place.”

While this could be said about parts of Washington and East Washington after Washington & Jefferson College’s more recent building booms, it doesn’t apply to the school’s landmark, Old Main.

Every campus has an Old Main, but W&J’s is atypical because of its twin towers, symbolizing the union of Washington College and Jefferson College.

I don’t believe a single semester of my four years passed without schlepping to a class somewhere on one of its four floors.

Driving past the college every workday, I venture inside any building on the campus only occasionally and when reporting news.

I hadn’t been inside W&J’s Old Main for decades. Serving for a few years on a committee awarding the Vira I. Heinz scholarship for study abroad brought me back to its august halls after graduation, but even that was quite a while ago.

I went back inside Old Main at the end of May to show my daughter around before she attended a June math class.

After the end of a semester and commencement, Old Main was deserted, and I couldn’t believe how little the place had changed after all those years.

The long, narrow classrooms still have soaring ceilings, expansive slate chalkboards and antique-looking glass-front wooden bookcases. I swear some of the student desks were the same ones in which I sat for four years worth of history lessons, economics, art history, French and psychology and a single semester of Russian.

In one classroom stood an overhead projector, a long-necked, audio-visual equipment dinosaur in a world where professors and students had packed away their Powerpoint presentations and laptops for the summer.

Twin staircases spiral snail-like on either side of the building, and the gigantic visage of Thomas Jefferson still looks out onto the second floor. The only change I noticed was the addition of a cozy seating area on the third floor with an oriental-looking rug.

The college chapel was locked, so I could merely peer through the skinniest of openings between two doors. It still can’t be redolent of the pipe smoke of Dr. Carl Laun, a regular at the Tuesday night classic film series, can it?

In preparation for writing this column, I checked the W&J Web site for background information on Old Main. Matt McNally, a junior English-psychology major, compiled a definitive Web page on Old Main for a professional writing course. He did a fine job, informing his readers that a single-towered Old Main looking “nothing like it does today” was constructed between 1834 and 1836. “The original Old Main consisted of only the back center part of the current building,” McNally wrote.

It was in 1875, after the merger of the two colleges, that the aforementioned twin towers were added. Rounding out McNally’s piece was an interview with none other than my history adviser, Dr. Robert Dodge. Who better to discuss the topic than a great historian?

As luck would have it, I ran into the professor on our visit and caught up on some recent history.

As it turned out, Old Main’s lack of air conditioning deems it impractical for summer classes.

No matter. I was glad to see the inside of Old Main for an hour – traveling back in time.

A view down one of two spiral stairways inside Old Main. Scott Beveridge photo

(This story originally appeared in Living in Washington County, a publication of the Observer-Reporter. It was reprinted with permission.)

Bill Clinton on Obama in Little Washington

Former President Bill Clinton today made his second stop at Washington and Jefferson College in this election cycle to campaign for the Democratic candidate for the White House. His first visit to the campus in March involved a pitch for his wife, Hillary, who would later bow out of the race. This time around in Washington, Pa, he delivered a rousing preacher-man-style pitch for Barack Obama, and said the following in a 23-minute speech:

“Senator Obama is going to win this election and win it handily … unless people stop thinking about what is happening.”

“I have been there and this is going to be tough,” he said about the challenges facing the next president over the struggling economy, broken health-care system and America’s diminishing image in the world.

“I was for somebody else,” he said, adding that his wife is better suited for the White House.

“This is disgraceful folks,” he said about one in eight cancer patients being unable in the United States to afford medicine.

“You are being ripped off,” he said regarding how much Americans pay for health care when compared to the rest of the world.

“We need to free ourselves from the chains of foreign oil.” That needs no clarification.

“(Obama’s) going to have to take his hand off the Bible, race back down Pennsylvania Avenue, close the Oval Office door and get this country out of the ditch.”

(Photo: Stan Diamond Observer-Reporter)

The presidents dig this campus

WASHINTON, Pa. – Bill Clinton earned the distinction Tuesday of becoming the 13th president to visit Washington and Jefferson College.

Whether or not the unlucky number will have an impact on his wife Hillary’s race for the White House remains unknown. But Mr. Clinton joined an impressive list of U.S. presidents who have rubbed shoulders with students at the storied small campus in Washington, Pa., which became the first in 1781 to form west of the Alleghenies.

The Clinton campaign chose the college as its first of what will surely be many stops in Pennsylvania in advance of the state’s April 22 primary. The Clintons are so determined to beat Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president that political pundits have been joking that Bill and Hillary might go as far as follow people to their cars after a rally to win votes.

Yet it's amazing to think that so many presidents have followed the National Road to what the hicks around here call “Little Wershington.” Especially since the collage has fewer than 1,500 students taking classes this term.

James Monroe was the first to stop there in 1817 while touring the west to promote a nonpartisan federal government, of all things. He was followed by Ulysses S. Grant, who was known to sometimes hide out with relatives in the then-backwoods city in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The other sitting presidents who came knocking were Benjamin Harrison, Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy.

The others who would become president after stopping at the college were John Q. Adams, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, William Howard Taft, Harry Truman and Richard Nixon. A rather impressive list of leaders, indeed.

Maybe they came thinking that their stature would be raised a notch by having their names mentioned in the press beside a college named after two of the nation’s most honored presidents. Of course, many of the visits were initiated by a college that has rightly boasted a collective ego as big as some of the presidents who have accepted its invitations for tea.

(Caption: Bill Clinton prepare stomp for his wife's bid for the White House during a rally at Washington and Jefferson College.)

Partying presidents

These touchy-feeling statues of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington appear ready to head off to a toga party where the beer flows freely while guests lose their inhibitions. The sculpture stands at the entrance to Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., a school that is currently marking Greek Week. I look for these presidents to be wearings all sorts of clothes this term because of the jokes about their embracing that have been circulating the campus. One student, on a Facebook group, is promising to dress one in a wedding gown. Read more.

Washington and Johnson

A new bronze statue of U.S. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson at a college bearing their names has students laughing because, from all angles, it looks as if there is a serious man crush between the country’s founding fathers. Students and alumni at Washington and Jefferson College have been posting comments on an Internet group at Facebook that one of the school’s mascots appears to be involved in some self-gratification, too.
The self-taught sculptor responsible for the design, Alan Cottrill of Zanesville, Ohio, included a rolled up version of the U.S. Constitution in Jefferson’s hand and made the two presidents appear to be strolling arm-in-arm at the corner of Beau and Lincoln streets in Washington, Pa. But many people in the small city have also been sharing in the joke that the placement of the scroll, when seen from points east and west, looks a bit like an giant baby-maker held comfortably in Washington’s hand.
Cottrill said it was not his intention to craft something that would make the esteemed presidents appear as if they were gay. “No, no, no,” he said, adding that anyone who sees something erotic in his work is “stretching it.” It’s not the first time that Cottrill received wide attention over the nature of his figures. About 10 years ago, students were aghast because his rendition of Cro-Magnon man at nearby California University of Pennsylvania had an exposed dart of love, the size of which was grossly exaggerated. Before that work was completed, Cro-Magnon’s private parts were covered with a vine.
What really makes the touchy-feely George and Tom statue odd is the fact that history tells us that the men were not even friends in life to begin with.
Washington and Jefferson College spokesman Bob Reid said he was aware that people were whispering about the 10-foot-tall statue shortly after it was unveiled May 18. The school, however, had not received any complaints about its appearance, he said.

Pause for Virginia Tech

WASHINGTON, Pa. – Washington and Jefferson College students Lauren Parcells, 21, of McClain, Va., left, and Rebecca Lopez, 21, of Washington, lean on each other for support during a moment of silence Friday in memory of the students and professors killed this week in the massacre at Virginia Tech.
Published with permission of the Observer-Reporter