By Hunt Jones ’70

I “transferred” from Syracuse under a black cloud in the fall of 1966, where I had wrestled and played tennis. Don Clarke, a close friend since the late ’40s, had already completed his freshman year at Drew and arranged an interview with Mac Hubbard, the assistant directorof admissions. Hubbard was also the tennis coach. We struck a deal: I could be a non-matriculated student if I would play tennis for him. Upon arrival, Clarke suggested I join the rugby team. I did. That decision would be prophetic.

Pita J. Ala’ilima, who would later become the economic minister of Western Samoa, had begun Drew rugby a couple of years earlier. By the time I joined the club, the player-coach was John Hinchcliff, a graduate student from New Zealand. Using films and his own experience, Hinchcliff taught us the fundamentals of the game and gave us on-field instructions during each match. That fall of ’66, Mike Lescault, a freshman from Connecticut, and I became the only two players with no prior rugby experience to break into Drew’s A side. The fall schedule was shorter than in the spring—maybe six games plus a Sevens-a-Side Tournament at Randall’s Island—and Drew’s sides were fewer, usually just and “A” and “B” as several spring ruggers played soccer in the fall. Spring rugby permitted the roster to swell with excellent athletes from fall soccer, and we often fielded a C team. The weather was nicer in the spring, but we played in any conditions—rain, snow, sleet, whatever. There were no cancellations.

That first season, I had found a home on the team as a Tighthead Prop, a front-row position in a set scrum (“sets,” called by the referee after a minor penalty, consist of the eight forwards, all bent over and interlocked, pushing against the other team’s eight forwards as the ball is rolled into the tunnel between the opposing front rows). Lescault played on the front row—all manner of nefarious engagement with one’s opponent occurs here, often away from the eyes of the referees—with Steve Carnahan, Drew’s future coach.

Captured in pencil by Carnahan, Princeton fell hard in 1969 to Drew, 10–0, in a game that Hunt Jones ’70 remembers as “extremely intense, bloody and exhausting.”

The game was exhilarating. It had the ferocity of football but without all the play stoppages, set plays and bulky equipment. It was bloody, too. During our second or third game, after a set scrum was breaking, Lescault looked at my left shoulder and arm covered with blood. “You’re bleeding,” he said. I looked at my jersey and felt around and under it. “Not me,” I replied. Then, looking at his head, I remarked, “Your ear is falling off.”

Lescault’s ear, in fact, was flapping on his neck, an opposing player having nearly bitten it off. An injury timeout was called. Lescault ran to the sideline so a student medic could tape his ear back to his head within the allotted two minutes.

Our playing was so intense that few of us felt injuries or, if possible, we played through them. It was not unusual to see teammates on the sidelines with appendages in casts, yet still eager to get back on the pitch.

The Drew teams I played for and captained during the fall ’69 and ’70 seasons were extremely successful for a few reasons. First, aside from the established East Coast clubs, rugby was relatively new at the college level. Hinchcliff’s experience in the game and his ability to teach us its finer points gave us an advantage against collegiate competition.

Second, Drew’s size meant a dearth of athletic choices—mainly soccer, basketball, baseball and tennis. Athletes from high school, prep school, and college transfers who had played contact sports embraced rugby and its bad-boy image. If you were free-spirited, and not afraid to hit or be hit, the game was easy enough to pick up.

Third, rugby provided a social club for Drew’s redheaded stepchild. Post-game parties with opponents were a requirement, all off campus, of course.

Rugby at Drew was a club function, and not endorsed by Alton Sawin Jr., the dean of men (and later dean of student services), or George Davis, the athletic director. We did have some champions, however, among them President Robert Oxnam, who bought our first real rugby jerseys, professor Robert “Chappie” Chapman, who rarely missed a game, and professor John von der Heide, so we felt somewhat safe.

Despite broken noses, cracked ribs, casts and missing teeth, Drew ruggers continued their success against larger and more established universities. Our competition usually included Rutgers, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Cornell Medical School, Fordham, Fairfield, Villanova, and clubs such as Old Blue, Winged Foot and Old Maroon. We also traveled to weekend tournaments at Penn State and the University ofRichmond,always dressed in our Drew Rugby blazers and ties.

The level of athleticism was kept high, often through transfers. It seemed every season we had a ringer or two. Dwight Davies, a former all-state quarterback from Westfield, came in from Annapolis the year before I did, but there were others who stayed perhaps for just a season or a year from West Point, the Air Force Academy, and midwestern colleges. Others came from the graduate school or theological school. We took a great amount of pride playing for Drew, a university few had heard about, and winning brought respect.

The pinnacle during my four-year experience was the ’69 spring match against Princeton for the vaunted Schaefer Cup, a game we had never won. For that game, we fielded a healthy A side of perhaps the best athletes Drew had ever assembled on a pitch. The game was extremely intense, bloody and exhausting. Near the end, Drew was ahead 3-0. We had a set scrum on Princeton’s 25-meter line near the sideline, which we won. Upon its breaking I turned to follow the ball. Eddie Corcoran, our big center, who had played five or six years already, received a pass and tucked away the ball, a sure sign he was not going to pass it. Corcoran began to run harder, knees high and open arm outstretched to stiff-arm any Tiger in his way. Eddie ran over three of them to score and seal our victory at 10-0.

Equally unforgettable was the Princeton squad’s refusal to turn over the cup. Apparently convinced that they would never need to relinquish the cup, Princeton never brought it to the match. On that Princeton team was a prep school classmate of mine. I don’t recall speaking to him again.

After graduation, I continued to play the game, eventually totaling 25 years on various pitches around the world. My last team, Mystic River, was a special touring side for national and international events where we went undefeated for two years. It was a great way to leave the game.

Drew Rugby was my most memorable experience, though. In corresponding with Harry Litwack and Steve Carnahan this past winter, there was a special spirit and bond between all Drew ruggers, even with those who only played a season.

Steve recognized this after coaching 25 years of three entirely different sports. We werecompetitive, never backed down from a fight—most of the Rutgers games ended early due to melees—and with a constant sprinkling of natural athletes with few outlets, managed to win a great share of our matches. We didn’t see ourselves as anything more than what we were, a group of guys who loved the game and played to win. If this period has become known as Drew’s Golden Age of Rugby, so be it. We’re in our golden years now anyway.

Photo by Peter Murphy

I’ve been here almost 30 years. I’m like the trees. People know me.

I don’t look for rewards. Our students here in the Theo School, they have jobs, churches, families. Anything you can do to make their lives a little easier—whether it’s a “Hello,” or “I’ll take care of that for you”—makes it better for them. The Employee of the Year award in 2006 was a total shock. I was so overwhelmed.

Morris Davis is a great guy to work for. I used to work with Barent Johnson. He was the first registrar that I had here. He’s top of the line. But Morrey is right up there. I had a lot of great bosses. The best way to get to a person is make sure they’re happy, keep them laughing. I let my personality shine and that tends to be infectious. I think I have a lot to do with turning them into great bosses.

I came up one summer from Mississippi to visit for a couple of weeks with my aunt who lived in Brooklyn. I went to work with a cousin on Wall Street, just to spend the day. A lot of people were out, and the phones were ringing off the hook. The phone started getting on my nerves, so I started answering. It was a pension trust department. Mostly it was common-sense questions. When I left there, I had a job. I was 19.

I commute two hours each way. There are days when the police are getting coffee, and I can get here in an hour-and-a-half.

I live in Brooklyn. Even though we didn’t lose power after Sandy, we lost cell phone service and the ability to go through the tunnel. When I finally made it over to Drew, I left my house at 6 a.m. I got here at 2 p.m. They opened the third floor of Welch Hall for faculty and staff commuters displaced by the storm. The first night I was a little antsy. I don’t like to stay away from home. I forgot that kids start partying at midnight. I yelled out the window, “OK, already. This is not Brooklyn. Go to sleep!”

Everybody knows when I hit the lottery, I’m going to donate a big wad of money to Drew, and then I’m out.

Morristown Medical Center physicians “talked to me a lot,” says Mourad. “It was very interactive.” Photo by Bill Cramer

Yasmine Mourad ’13 is determined to become an emergency room physician after having spent a semester observing at Morristown Medical Center. Here is her story.

By Yasmine Mourad ’13

“Doctor, doctor, the phone! It’s ringing!” The attending physician answered the phone in triage. His face turned intense. “Uh, huh … yes … wow… completely nonresponsive? … When did you say this all happened? … OK, see you in a few minutes … We are already preparing for her arrival.”

It had been an ordinary Thursday in the emergency room at Morristown Medical Center, just a few miles from Drew. I came to the hospital after my physics lab, put on my white coat and nametag and grabbed my notebook. I joined the physicians in triage and waited for one of them to whisk me away to see a patient. Throughout the evening I visited a number of patients, and now, in the last hour of my four-hour shift, the phone rang.

After the doctor snapped the phone down onto the receiver, he grabbed doctors and nurses and began preparing for the incoming patient. I didn’t want to get in the way, so I stood on the side and listened to the group of white coats in urgent discussion. I waited for what seemed like 10 minutes, but was probably just 30 seconds until finally a resident poked his face out of the crowd and told me they received a call saying that an unresponsive, possibly brain-dead, 40-year-old woman was being flown by helicopter to the hospital.

I was shocked; I immediately thought of my 46-year-old mother. About 20 minutes later, I watched medical technicians wheel the woman into the room the emergency room staff had prepared.

The woman didn’t have any family members with her. She looked young, and it was strange how she lay so limp, so still on the stretcher.

I am a neuroscience major at Drew and perform research in the field, so this woman’s medical case greatly intrigued me. There was the potential that she’d had a stroke, a medical problem I know about and can relate to, since my grandmother had suffered one. Immediately I felt for this lady. I thought, Does she have a family? Kids? Does anyone know that she is sick right now? Is she feeling pain or fear, even though she is just lying there motionless, with her head slightly cocked to the side? She looks … lifeless. She looks … dead. I wanted to tell her, “Please don’t be scared. These doctors will help you.”

Ever since I was a young girl, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. When I was 6 years old, I even practiced on my dolls. “Q-tips … check. Cream … check. OK, Yashu, don’t cry, I won’t hurt you,” I softly mumbled as I prepared my doll for dental work and minor surgery on his arm. The surrounding pink walls were my operating room, the rough sofa was my operating table and my grandfather was the nurse. I went to work with great concentration, while reassuring Yashu I would not hurt him, he would be OK, I would be done soon. I wanted to calm Yashu’s fear, make him comfortable and make sure that he liked me, even though I was performing surgery on him without anesthetics.

Now, years later, I again had the chance to practice my bedside manner when I was selected for the Morristown Medical Center Mentorship Program, a semester-long opportunity at Drew that allows students to shadow emergency room physicians. For students planning to become physicians, this is a remarkable opportunity to get a taste of what it’s really like to be a doctor.

Participants get to see everything, and I mean everything. I followed doctors into patients’ rooms, and what I witnessed behind the curtains was always a surprise. Some cases were gruesome. Others were just plain weird. I saw a man who had dropped a chain saw on his leg, the cut penetrating his skin and muscle, exposing the bone, yet he told the doctors that he didn’t need any pain medication. He just wanted it cleaned up.

But of all of the patients I saw, none stick out in my mind more than the 40-year-old woman who, the doctors confirmed, had suffered a stroke. As she lay in her hospital bed, doctors and nurses tended to her while other doctors calmly discussed her condition and still others talked on the phone. It was like a scene out of a movie, and I was the invisible bystander watching everything happen.

Finally, one of the physicians had some free time, and he asked me if I knew what brain region might have been damaged, based on the symptoms the patient was exhibiting. I thought back to Professor Christina McKittrick’s systems neurobiology course, and remembered how the symptoms the patient exhibits after a hemorrhagic stroke are indicative of where the bleed in the brain may be. Since this woman was not responsive to any stimuli and had to be given multiple shots of epinephrine to keep her heart beating, I guessed the stroke was near the brain stem, the most critical part of the brain. The doctor nodded his head “yes” quickly, and went back to the patient. We knew that she had gone out for a walk and had collapsed, and had been in this condition since then. The intensity of her case was only heightened once her family—two daughters, ages 12 and 22—arrived at the hospital. I thought, What if their mother dies?

We learned that the daughters no longer had contact with their father and had no family members in the area. I put my­self in their place, and tears came to my eyes. I realized that while physicians have to worry about helping the patient, they often need to tend to the patient’s family as well.

Photo by Bill Cramer

After an hour of watching the doctors analyze the tests they had ordered for the woman, my shift was over. But I needed to stay. I needed to know what would happen.

I ended up staying past midnight, watching a neurosurgeon drain the woman’s brain of blood in an effort to save her life. Blood was flowing out of a vessel in her brain and had started leaking into the hollow spaces, quickly building up pressure within her skull. Physicians were prepared. They knew the chances she would survive were slim, but they performed the procedure anyway. I had to go home. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.

During my next shift that weekend, I found out that the woman had passed away the morning after she arrived. Thoughts rushed through my head. I wished I’d had the opportunity to talk to her and her daughters. I had watched how the medical staff interacted with them, seeing the girls hug each other and then hug the nurses tending to them. I could feel the girls’ fear and the medical staff’s tension and intensity; I wanted to step into the situation and do something, but I could not. I was nothing but a bystander, watching the chaos unfold in front of me.

Yet that tragic mother’s situation taught me a lot, and confirmed that not only do I want to become a doctor, I want to become an emergency room physician. I’m determined more than ever to complete my medical studies, and care for those who need it most.

Illustration by Danny Schwartz

During Ireland’s Great Famine, donations poured in from tens of thousands of thoughtful souls around the world. Christine Kinealy, an Irish scholar and Drew professor of arts and letters, recently unearthed a notable name in a list of relief fund contributors: a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln. His gift? $10 (about $500 in today’s dollars).

Drew ruggers, circa 2012.

Ruggers, what gives?

Do you play for the mayhem? The third-half libations? Or for the bonds that last a lifetime? However you define its appeal, rugby at Drew has had a glorious 50-year run.

And it’s far from over.

By Christopher Hann

Photography by Bill Cardoni

This spring marks 50 years since Drew students first convened a team of young men to compete against squads from other colleges, many of them institutions much larger than Drew, in the mostly untried and only vaguely familiar game of rugby. And over the ensuing half-century Drew rugby players of both genders—a women’s team was founded in 1992—have forged a communal bond that extends far beyond the broken noses and bloodied scalps received on the rugby pitch. “The closest and dearest friends in my life are my DRFC teammates,” Tony Buttacavoli ’82 wrote in this magazine three years ago, referring to the Drew Rugby Football Club. “We have stood up for each other at our weddings and are godfathers to each other’s children. We are family.”

At Drew, rugby operates as a club rather than a varsity sport, and thus the teams are neither governed nor financed by the university. Given the heightened sense of irreverence and individuality that seems particular to practitioners of the sport, this is no mere incidental distinction. In rugby, a game with ancient roots, participants spend 80 minutes trying to inflict all manner of bodily hurt upon their opponents in an attempt to prevent them from scoring a three-point try—the rough approximation of a touchdown in American-style football. At game’s end, members of both sides shake hands and proceed to what is known as “the third half,” the ritual post-game display of solidarity expressed by the collective singing of song and quaffing of beer. Generations of Drew ruggers have honored this ritual with religious devotion.

Close to Heart

Chris Deraney ’13 keeps alive the memory of two fellow ruggers lost too soon.

The tattoo of a pouncing wolf emblazoned across the left side of Chris Deraney’s rib cage serves as a daily reminder of the bonds he’s forged as a Drew rugger. Alongside the wolf are the names of two rugby teammates, Bryan Case ’10 and Larry Pierre, who died within a four-month span in 2011.

Pierre held on for five days after being shot. Photo courtesy Chris Deraney

Case told The Acorn that rugby “came to define the time that I spent at Drew.” Photo courtesy Chris Deraney

Case, a member of the Army Reserves, was deployed following his sophomore year, spending a year in Iraq as a psychological operations specialist. Upon returning to Drew, Deraney says, Case suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and passed away in April 2011. Pierre was killed by stray gunfire in his hometown of Elizabeth, N.J., in July 2011. “It was my memorial to them,” Deraney says of his tattoo, “the way I accepted they were gone.”

As you might expect, nothing about the tattoo’s image is accidental, not even its geography. According to Deraney, the rib cage is the most painful part of the body on which to receive a tattoo. “I wanted to go through that for them, to offer up that pain for them,” Deraney says, “to make it more memorable and more important to me.”

The wolf was chosen, he says, because it’s his “spirit animal.” “It’s a pack animal,” Deraney says. “It’s stronger in a pack.”

The names of Case, a former roommate, and Pierre were inscribed (in Deraney’s handwriting) in Arabic, because Deraney is of Lebanese descent. “I didn’t want it to be an obvious memorial tattoo,” he says. “I wanted it to mean more to me than anyone else.”

Like so many who came before him, Deraney, an English major and music minor, had never played rugby before enrolling at Drew. But he took to the sport immediately, drawn in large part, as the tattoo attests, by the singular intensity of the team’s fellowship.

“The team,” Deraney says, “has really been one of the most important parts of my Drew career.

Ruggers Forever

Rugby IQ Answers

1. Pita J. Ala’ilima ’64.
Ala’ilima was the founder and first captain of the Drew men’s rugby team. A native of Western Samoa, he was one of the few members of that maiden squad who had actually played the game before coming to Drew.

2. Robert Oxnam.
For its first three years the team played in hand-me-down soccer jerseys. “They were made out of some plastic material,” says Hunt Jones ’70. “When you sweated, all the water stayed inside the shirt. You just got hotter and hotter.” In 1966 Oxnam stepped in, buying 30 authentic rugby jerseys from an Australian manufacturer.

3. Don Clarke ’72.
Clarke’s 45-yard conversion kick, following a try by Mike Lescault ’71, gave Drew a 5–3 victory in a fiercely contested game at West Point, with plenty of Army brass in attendance for Homecoming. The Drew squads of the 1960s often surprised more established rugby clubs such as Rutgers, Columbia and Princeton. “They probably put us on the schedule for Homecoming weekend as a sacrifice,” Clarke says of the Army game. “It obviously didn’t work out the way they had hoped.”

4. The pig.
After each season the team would bid farewell to the mascot, then savor it during a team pig roast.

5.The men’s rugby team members typically carpooled to away games. But during one stretch in the 1970s and ’80s, the team splurged on a charter bus (yes, it was blue) and a driver. The trip took its name from a lyric in a song by The Doors, “The End.” (“C’mon baby, take a chance with us / And meet me at the back of the blue bus.”) The Blue Bus Trip inspired many memorable stories. Here’s just one. In the early 1980s the team was headed to New York City, its post-game keg of beer stored securely in the luggage hold below the bus. Or maybe not so securely. As the bus approached a tunnel, the keg crashed through the hold’s door and went bounding through traffic. The ruggers gave chase, corralled the keg and restored it to the hold, this time securely.

6. Bill Bernhard ’82.
In a 1987 game against Tunisia in Pebble Beach, Calif., Bernhard scored 14 points in a 47–13 blowout.

7. Malachy McCourt.
“He looked like an Irish flag,” recalls former player-coach Steve Carnahan ’67. “Orange socks, white shorts, emerald green rugby jersey, brilliant red beard.”

8. Emily (Riggs) Fennessey ’96.
After forming in the spring of 1992, the club endured an inauspicious launch, with an uneven turnout of players and a regular turnover of coaches. Riggs scored her try for the Brewsers during a scrimmage in the spring of her senior year. Today, the team’s affiliation with the Morris Rugby Club, which has provided coaches the past three years, has given the team some much-needed stability.

9. In the 1960s and ’70s, the Schaefer Cup was awarded to the winner of the annual match between Drew and Princeton.
The Tigers were a perennial rugby power, but in the spring of 1969 Drew prevailed, 10–0. Alas, in the aftermath, the Schaefer Cup never materialized, and the Princeton team, defying rugby tradition, did not stick around. As Hunt Jones ’70 recalls, it was the first time the Drew ruggers conducted their post-game party on campus. “We were so elated and so noisy,” Jones says. “There were multiple reports of too much merriment.”

10. Former Drew rugby coach Alex Boraine G’69, a native of South Africa, was appointed by Nelson Mandela to be deputy chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was created in 1995. He wrote about the experience in A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Oxford, 2001).

11. John Hinchcliff G’69 and Roger Martin ’65.
Hinchcliff, from New Zealand, was a standout player-coach from 1965 to 1968. Later he became president of Auckland University of Technology. Martin, who played with Pita Ala’ilima and was coached by Alex Boraine, later ascended to the presidency of both Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., and Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.

12. A 50-second YouTube clip starring women’s rugger Judea Hill ’13.
In the video, taken during a 2010 game at Columbia, Hill catches a pass and rumbles toward the try line. En route, she encounters a would-be Columbia tackler. Upon impact, the Columbia player is tossed backward, ragdoll-like, about the length of a New York City block. “I didn’t even know what happened to her,” Hill says of her unfortunate opponent. See for yourself at drew.edu/judeahillrugger.

13. Nalani Tarrant ’10, Kate Etcheverry ’10, Ralph Scoville ’80 and Chris Walsh ’80.

Andy Borowitz brings his satiric, post-election shtick to the Forest.

By Mary Jo Patterson

In a sold-out November performance The Acorn billed as “quite unconventional” for the Drew Forum, jeans-clad satirist Andy Borowitz skewered anyone and everything from the presidential election to the MSNBC slogan (“Yeah, ‘Lean Forward,’ it’s like a rectal exam”) to the Drew Forum itself. Best known for “The Borowitz Report,” a New Yorker blog of preposterous fake-news stories, and as co-creator of the 1990s TV sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Borowitz, 54, sat down for a Q&A with Drew Magazine shortly before his appearance.

DM: When did you realize you could make others laugh?
AB: From early on, I was a clown. I’m told when I was 3 I would get up in the middle of big family gatherings and start dancing. I was the youngest of three children, and felt very much like an afterthought. I’ve found a lot of comedians are the youngest child in their family. The youngest child is always looking for ways to get attention.

When did your talent for satire show up?
When I was 13 I made Super 8 movies, trying to imitate Woody Allen movies. Everything I did was parody and satire. I would do fake newspapers. I wrote three detective novels that were parodies of detective novels. But it wasn’t until college—I was president of the [Harvard] Lampoon—that I found other adults who shared my interest.

You were hired as a film writer straight out of college?
Yes. It was a lucky break. It’s a story annoyingly devoid of struggle. I was in the right place at the right time. My story does not follow the usual arc of unhappiness and disappointment.

Why did you desert a successful Hollywood career?
I moved to New York as Fresh Prince was winding down [in the mid 1990s]. It felt very repetitious to me. I grew up on sitcoms. I loved sitcoms. I just felt burned out. I wasn’t really doing something I enjoyed. I could have easily stayed in Hollywood for another 20 years and phoned it in. But it was time to do something new. I had no idea what—I didn’t have any kind of master plan.

What happened next?
I would say the ’90s were a very dark decade. The first half was spent realizing, “You’re a hit, but it’s not making you happy.” Figuring out how to fill your days [after leaving Hollywood] wasn’t fun either. But it was necessary.

Do you work less these days?
Way less. My most important job now is as a father of three kids and a husband. My writing takes very little time. I can write a column in 15 minutes.

Do you ever hear back from people you’ve offended?
Not really. I remember a while ago, maybe eight years ago, Hillary’s book came out. I did a really dumb, silly column about how the audiobook could be read by Monica Lewinsky. We got a message from Monica Lewinsky’s publicist. She really objected to our harkening back to the Clinton sex scandal when Monica had become better known as a handbag designer.

Thousands follow you on Twitter and Facebook. Do you read the comments on your Facebook page?
No. I stopped doing that years ago. The internet is such a cesspool of hating. I consider myself a writer, not a public figure. I am now living in a silo, without any feedback. The only thing I do pay attention to is web traffic.

Do you have a sense of who your fans are?
Absolutely not.

You called the 2012 presidential election correctly. Would you care to make a prediction about President Obama’s second term?
I think it will be extremely sexy.

What about 2016?
Who do you think is going to run? Mitt Romney. Other than him, I don’t know.

More at drew.edu/borowitzlivetweet

Illustration by Joe Ciardiello

A pair of grad students recently discovered a cache of papers from the famous Drew colloquium that revealed a sinister chapter in the life of the iconic German philosopher.

It was, it seems fair to say, an assignment that might best be characterized as grad student grunt work.

Illustration by Danny Schwartz

On an October day in 2011, Drew doctoral candidates Jaclyn Harte (literature) and Peter Mabli (history and culture) found themselves in the dusty basement of S.W. Bowne Hall—also known as the morgue—charged with picking through boxes of papers and piles of abandoned books and assorted pieces of obsolete office equipment and tossing out anything that wasn’t needed, which looked to be pretty much everything.

But then they came across a plain cardboard box on which was written the word “ancient.” They opened the box and looked inside, and the first item to catch their eye was a 1964 letter written in German on onionskin paper and signed “Martin Heidegger.” Neither Mabli nor Harte knew a lot about Heidegger, but each recognized the name of one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. Their intellectual curiosities piqued, they kept digging. The box revealed more letters, dozens of letters, in fact, from academicians across the country, all inquiring about a gathering of distinguished scholars at Drew in April 1964, a conference that neither Harte nor Mabli knew anything about. They kept digging. They found that the three-day conference was the first such assembly ever convened in North America for the purpose of discussing and dissecting the work of Heidegger.

They kept digging. They learned that the attending scholars included some of the day’s most eminent theologians and philosophers from Europe and America, including Fritz Buri and Heinrich Ott from the University of Basel in Switzerland, John Cobb from Southern California School of Theology and Schubert Ogden from the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. In time, Harte and Mabli would discover that the papers they unearthed from the basement of Bowne Hall pertained to one of the most important colloquia of its time.

Officially titled “A Second Consultation on Herme­neutics: Theological Discourse and the Proclamation of the Gospel,” it was organized by Stanley Romaine Hopper, dean of the Drew Graduate School, who invited participants to explore the relevance of Heidegger’s philosophy to Protestant theology. Heidegger was best known for his seminal 1927 book, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), which changed the course of 20th-century philosophy. While the Second Consultation was heralded for its collection of scholars and their dynamic exchange of ideas, its lasting legacy would rest in the dramatic presentation delivered by a former student of Heidegger’s, who stunned the audience by revealing a shadowy chapter in his mentor’s past.

“That’s when we found out that we had stumbled upon something pretty significant for Drew’s history,” Mabli says.

“Dear Professor Heidegger:

I am writing to you as Professor of Philosophy and Letters of Drew University and as Dean of its Graduate School. I expect to be in Europe during the first part of September, attending the Eranos Conference at Ascona, Switzerland. Following the Conference (which adjourns September 5th) I should like to talk with you briefly, if at all possible …”

So began a letter from Dean Hopper to Martin Heidegger on Aug. 9, 1963. The letter, which Hopper wrote at his summer home in Lakeport, N.H., represented the first step in Hopper’s determined effort to recruit Heidegger to travel to Drew from his home in Germany to attend the conference Hopper was planning.

“I do not know quite how to express this next point. But there is a time when conditions are right for the word to be spoken. The time is right now for your coming. Drew University is the prepared place, by reason of its theological and philosophical interests; also closer study has been given to your works here than elsewhere in this country, so far as I know.”

The 1964 consultation would be the second of three such gatherings organized at Drew, the others occurring in 1962 and 1966. “They were the theological events in America at the time,” says Charles Courtney, a retired philosophy of religion professor who taught at Drew for four decades and who attended the ’64 conference. All three focused on the subject of hermeneutics, traditionally defined as the theory of Biblical interpretation. “Hermeneutics seemed aptly designed to represent the core values and scholarship that Drew’s Graduate School (less than a decade old at this time) wished to espouse,” Harte and Mabli wrote in a 2,400-word report on their findings from the morgue. “The study of herme­neutics was most famously arti­culated in the works of scholar Martin Heidegger. If Drew’s Graduate School was to convene a conference on hermeneutics, it was only proper, there­fore, to contact and invite the man who introduced its study to the world.”

Martin Heidegger

For at least a decade before the Second Consultation, Drew had gained a reputation as a hotbed of new philosophical and theological thought. In 1956 Charles Scribner’s Sons published Christianity and the New Existentialists, a compilation of public lectures delivered at Craig Chapel during the 1953–54 academic year, part of a series of lectures on Christian biography arranged through a foundation created by the late Drew President Ezra Squier Tipple.

Courtney recalls first learning about Drew’s reputation when he was a doctoral student at Harvard Divinity School. “Drew was a major site for the discussion and introduction of French and German Euro­pean thought to the United States,” Courtney says. “I had never heard of Drew, but one day several carloads of people from Harvard drove to Drew because Rudolf Bultmann, one of the great New Testament scholars, was lecturing there.”

Drew scholars such as Robert Funk, Carl Michalson, Ray Hart and Hopper himself had begun to expand the definition of hermeneutics to encompass, according to a New York Times account of the Second Consultation, “the entire task of interpreting and presenting the Christian message to the ordinary man.” The newspaper described Drew, with its young, “avant-garde” theology faculty, as “one of the centers of the New Hermeneutics move­ment.” In his August 1963 letter to Heidegger, Dean Hopper emphasized the influence Heidegger wielded in this field of thought. “Your presence and participation could make all the difference,” Hopper wrote, “in the unfolding of theological thinking in this country over the next years.”

Heidegger contended that although the objectifying thinking of science and technology is dominant in our time, it is not the only legitimate way. Critical think­ing distinguishes be­tween what is justified by proof (objectifying) and what requires simple perceiving and receiving for its confirmation (non-objectifying). Heidegger believed that poetry, which responds to what shows it­self in experience, is non-objectifying. Hopper wanted to explore with Heidegger whether theology might be another example.

Heidegger consented to Hopper’s request for an audience, and on Sept. 11, 1963, Hopper and Drew theology professor Karlfried Froehlich, a native German, arrived at Heidegger’s cabin in the Black Forest mountains of southern Germany. Alas, four months later, Hopper would learn that his quest to bring to Drew the world’s foremost authority on hermeneutics would not be successful. In a letter, Heidegger, who was 74, wrote that his doctor had advised against making the transatlantic trip.

Though Hopper must have been disappointed, he was not deterred. He moved forward with plans for the Second Consulta­tion. In lieu of Heidegger, Hopper invited Hans Jonas, a professor at the New School for Social Research who had earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1928 at the University of Marburg, where he studied under Heidegger. Jonas’ invitation to Drew, Harte and Mabli wrote, “ensured that the conference would stay grounded in Heideggerian philosophy.” By 1933, with Hitler in power, Jonas, a Jew, had left Germany, settling first in Palestine, then in London. He served in the British military for five years, returning to Germany at the end of the war, part of the victorious army, only to learn that his mother had been killed at Auschwitz.

The Second Consultation began at 9 o’clock in the morning on Thursday, April 9, 1964, inside S.W. Bowne’s Great Hall, whose architectural grandeur was modeled after the hall of Christ Church at Oxford Uni­versity. The subject of the conference was “The Problem of Non-objectifying Thinking and Speak­ing in Contemporary Theology.” Heidegger had written a 13-page paper that was read, in absentia, as the first order of business. Jonas then stepped to the lectern to deliver a lecture he had titled simply “Heidegger and Theology.”

It was expected that Jonas would offer praise for the philosophical canon advanced by his revered mentor. He did not. “Few were prepared for the unyielding, yet sober, polemic that Jonas delivered from the podium,” wrote CUNY philosophy professor Richard Wolin in Heidegger’s Children (Princeton, 2003). Over the course of some 8,000 words, Jonas invoked Heidegger’s participation in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party before and during World War II. Historians believe that Heidegger’s support of the National Socialist German Workers Party enabled him to be appointed rector of Freiburg University in 1933, where he took steps to remove Jewish professors and students from the university.

Jonas told the scholars assembled in Great Hall that Heidegger’s actions during Hitler’s rise could be directly attributed to the “fate-laden” philosophy he championed in Being and Time. Jonas warned the theologians that an uncritical posture of receiving what is experienced could lead to disastrous decisions, such as Heidegger’s. “Neither then nor now did Heid­eg­ger’s thought provide a norm by which to decide how to answer such calls,” Jonas said. “Heidegger’s own answer is on record. Here it is, spoken to the university students of Germany: ‘Not theorems and “ideas” be the rules of your being. The Führer himself and alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn ever deeper to know: that from now on each and every thing demands decision, and every action responsibility. Heil Hitler!’”

Surely those who witnessed Jonas’ takedown of Heidegger—and, by extension, of the great philosopher’s thought—must have been taken aback. “With Jonas’ paper,” Robert Funk would write later that year in The Christian Century, “fires were lit on a hundred hills.” Courtney, then a young scholar, attended the conference because he had come to Drew to interview for the professorship for which he would be hired. “I don’t have any sense that the audience was angry or was ready to hiss Jonas,” he says. “I think we all just realized that something of gravity happened here today.” In fact, on April 11, The New York Times reported, “Dr. Jonas received a standing ovation in the Great Hall of the School of Theology after his talk.”

Doctoral student Jaclyn Harte holds a letter on onionskin paper from Heidegger to Drew.

It is not clear just how much was known, in 1964, of Heidegger’s wartime affiliations, yet even those who deplored Heidegger’s Nazi sympathies did not discount the importance of his work. “It doesn’t make me less interested in how Heidegger reshaped philosophy in the 20th century,” says David Miller, a former chair of the religion department at Drew who attended the ’64 conference. “Anybody who uses that as an excuse not to read Heidegger is sticking his head in the sand.”

It is undeniable that Jonas’ revelations inside Great Hall ignited a cottage industry surrounding Heidegger’s conduct that thrives to this day. The 2009 documentary Only a God Can Save Us takes its title from a dispiriting answer Heidegger provided in a 1966 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published, at his request, after his death in 1976. In Heidegger’s Children, Wolin refers to the Second Consultation at Drew as “an intellectual event of international magnitude.”

Having immersed themselves in the history of the conference, which the plain cardboard box they found in the basement of Bowne Hall had only hinted at, Jaclyn Harte and Peter Mabli came away from their experience wanting to resurrect the sort of interdisciplinary colloquium that Stanley Hopper had orchestrated nearly a half-century earlier. This spring Drew will do just that. Inspired by Harte and Mabli’s find, the Graduate Program in History and Culture will sponsor “Thinking Publicly,” a conference on public intellectuals, on June 7–8. “Through this conference we hope to provide a space for emerging scholars to voice their perspectives on public intellectualism,” read an email publicizing the event and calling for proposals.

“Just the idea of working together and having an interdisciplinary community among the graduate students would be really great,” says Harte. Especially, she adds, if “that’s something that comes from finding a box of files in the basement.”

Emma Campbell. Photo by Eva Alvarez.

Women’s Soccer

First-year Emma Campbell is the first player in Landmark Conference history to win both Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year in the same season. The Cresskill, N.J., native scored a league-high 16 goals, second only to Meredith Doll ’96 for goals in a season by a first-year student athlete.

Brooke Gagliano.
Photo by Chris Pedota

Men’s Soccer

The Rangers qualified for the Landmark Conference playoffs for the sixth-straight season as the fourth seed, but were ousted in the first round by eventual champion Susquehanna. Five members of the squad were Second Team All-Conference selections as the team finished with an overall record of 11–6–2.

Field Hockey

For the second-straight season the Drew field hockey team made it to the Landmark Conference Championship, but eventually fell to top-seeded Catholic in a tightly contested battle, 3–2. Brooke Gagliano ’14 was named Landmark Conference Offensive Player of the Year, highlighting a new school record of four First Team All-Conference selections.

A political science major, Van Wingerden says running now “defines” her life. Photo by Bill Cardoni

The senior trailblazer on her late embrace of cross country, her record-breaking season and the New York City Marathon.

You didn’t join Drew’s cross country team until your junior year. Were you surprised by your success? I didn’t expect to do as well as I’ve done. I wish I’d picked it up in high school. I might have gotten a scholarship for it.

Your coach describes you as mentally tough. Would you agree? I’m very disciplined. I barely ever really make excuses. It’s not like I wake up and say, “I’m really tired. I’m not going to train.” No matter what, I’ll still go do it.

Do you enjoy competition? I do for the most part. Running is like a mental game. It’s very exhausting.

Mentally exhausting? It’s like fighting yourself when you’re running. Your mind gives up before your body does. A lot of me says, “You don’t have to finish this race.” But, no matter what, I finish the race.

So what’s the appeal of running? To be honest, it’s fitness to me. It’s about being in shape. I want to work in the field of fitness or nutrition, so it all comes into play.

This year you became the first Drew runner, male or female, to win the Landmark Conference Championship and the ECAC Championship, and compete in the NCAA Championship, coming in 100th out of a field of 243. Not a bad season. I feel accomplished. It’s how I was training all summer. I would wake up every day at 5:45 a.m., go to the gym, work, then train. I feel my hard work has paid off.

What are your plans for the off-season? I’m sore. I’m in pain. My body needs a rest. I would like to do a triathlon. Eventually I want to do a half-marathon and marathons. My ideal goal would be to run the New York City Marathon.

Illustration by Danny Schwartz

Winston Churchill had it wrong, says history wunderkind James Fargher ’13. As a young writer, he says, Churchill dismissed late 19th-century British efforts to topple a tribal leader in Sudan’s port of Suakin as a waste of time, not seeing that they “ultimately caused Britain to entrench itself in northeast Africa.” Armed with a Leavell-Oberg Fellowship in History, Fargher combed through Britain’s National Archives last summer to gird his argument for the pivotal effect the British occupation of the Red Sea region had on the Scramble for Africa. His subsequent paper drew immediate praise: the nation’s top undergraduate prize from history honor society Phi Alpha Theta.—Kathryn McMillan ’13

Quick: Think of a van Gogh depicting the son of God. Stumped? Cliff Edwards ’54 can explain.

By Mary Jo Patterson

In the summer of 1888 Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh was living and furiously painting in the south of France. In one of many letters to his brother, Theo, that summer he reported that he had painted, and then destroyed, an image of Christ. Two months later van Gogh told his brother he’d done it again.

“For the second time I’ve scraped off a study of Christ with the angel in the Garden of Olives,” he wrote. “I can’t, or rather, I don’t wish to paint it without models. But I have it in my mind with color—the starry night, the figure of Christ blue, the strongest blues, and the angel broken lemon yellow.”

Photo by Scott Elmquist

The $500,000 Etching

Cliff Edwards was waiting to meet with the president of Virginia Commonwealth University about 10 years ago when he spotted a “strange dark little frame with someone in it” in a dim corner of the room. Sensing something familiar, he walked toward it. Immediately he recognized the melancholy face of Paul Gachet, Vincent van Gogh’s physician. One of van Gogh’s last works was an etching of his doctor. Many of the impressions had disappeared, but others hung in museums around the world. “I pointed it out to people in the building and said, ‘Please take care of this,’” Edwards recalls. VCU sent it to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which authenticated it. The etching had been donated to the university decades earlier by a former president. “My guess is that it simply fell through the cracks,” says Edwards. “Ever since, it’s been in a safe and only comes out for occasional viewings. It’s worth a half million or more.”–MJP

The paintings, obviously, don’t exist. And their subject matter was not characteristic of van Gogh, who is known for his landscapes, portraits and sunflowers. Yet the phantom canvases are the subject of a new manuscript by Cliff Edwards ’54, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has published three books examining van Gogh’s spirituality. He calls the works van Gogh’s “ghost paintings.”

Edwards believes the artist’s decision to scrap them was a turning point in his career. “Never before, and never after, did he choose a subject from the life of Jesus, and he then destroyed it. The mystery is, why?” Edwards asked in an interview.

“My view is that, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Vincent was trying to make a decision about what to do with the rest of his life. There was a real interest in religious art at the time—it was something that could sell. He was trying to decide, do I do religious art? He made a decision that he would not. Van Gogh believed that spirituality is in everything, and that painting what’s here and now is what’s important.”

Before becoming an artist, van Gogh, a pastor’s son, had attempted to become a minister but failed. After taking up art he sold only one painting, and committed suicide in 1890, at age 37. But his letters to Theo, who supported him financially, created a “unique record of a creative person,” according to Edwards. “He’s the only artist in history who has written every day about what he was doing, and what he was painting, and what it meant to him.”

Edwards’ interest in van Gogh was kindled 40 years ago while he was living and teaching at a Buddhist monastery in Japan. At the time, van Gogh’s art was popular in Japan. “When I was in Japan, I got very interested in their arts. I asked my Zen master to show me a very famous Zen work of art at the monastery. He said, ‘I’ll show it to you, if you answer this question: You’re interested in Oriental art. Why are all the Japanese interested in van Gogh’s sunflowers?’”

Seeking an answer, Edwards traveled to Amsterdam to view van Gogh’s paintings. He also immersed himself in his letters and learned that van Gogh had been interested in Japanese art and Buddhism. Edwards’ lifework had begun. “It just sort of took over,” says the Southampton, N.Y., native, a history major at Drew who later studied all over the world. “It was everything I love—seeing art, analyzing texts and bringing together East and West.”

Olivia Rutler ’16 helps clean out a home in Toms River, N.J.
Photo by Jennifer Hsieh

In the wake of October’s massive storm, Circle K, a volunteer student disaster relief group, headed to Toms River, N.J., and Staten Island, N.Y., to offer storm victims assistance. Armed with hard hats, gloves and face masks, students, including Circle K president Victoria Dayton ’13 and Drew Disaster Relief Project head Nick Klein ’13, cleaned up homes damaged from the hurricane. “We just randomly walked into peoples’ homes and asked if they needed help,” says Dayton. On campus, the group held a variety of fundraisers for victims, including “Dance the Damage Away” and a penny jar race between residence halls. The efforts, say students, will continue. “I can do something,” says Dayton. “I have power. I have gas.”—Kathryn McMillan ’13

After a yearlong, $12 million renovation of the former University Center, Drew now has a vibrant living room that makes the collegiate experience oh-so-much better.

“There’s a lot more natural light, it’s more spacious and the new eating area is beautiful.” —Janelle Hoffman ’13

By Mary Jo Patterson

Photography by Don Hamerman

With its raised roofline, expansive windows, fireplaces, two-story rotunda and dining hall with barrel-vaulted ceiling, the Ehinger Center is a jaw-dropper.

The new center, named in honor of university trustee and donor Tony Ehinger ’80 and his wife, Marianne Hyzak Ehinger ’80, “will definitely make a positive difference in student life at Drew,” says Student Government President Janelle Hoffman’13. “Everything has been updated to reflect the needs of today.”

Two years ago Ehinger raised $500,000 from members of his graduating class to renovate the center’s pub, now known as the C’80 Pub. Then he and his wife committed $3 million of their own toward the rest of the project. Other key donors include John H. Crawford III T’65, chairman of the university board of trustees, and his wife, Cathie ’64, who gave $1 million to create a new lecture hall that doubles as event space, and trustee Gates Hawn and his wife, Mary Ellen, who donated $300,000 for a commuter lounge.

Ehinger, a retired investment banker who met early on with architect Victoria Pivovarnick of KSS Associates in Princeton, N.J., dropped by the site regularly during construction. “It’s gorgeous—awesome,” Ehinger says. “But what’s going to be even cooler is seeing kids enjoying the space.”

One Size Does Fit All

A stunning social hub made for launching a million college memories and an irresistible magnet for the next generation of Drewids, the EC offers something for everyone.

By Renée Olson   Plan by Thirst

Castro scored winning goals last year against Goucher and Scranton. Photo by Bill Cardoni

The junior soccer star from Mexico on coming to Drew, his impressions of New York City and the team’s prospects this fall.

By Christopher Hann

You grew up in Mexico and attended one year of junior college in San Diego. How did you end up at Drew?
When I went to San Diego, I told [my guidance counselor] I wanted to go to the East Coast. Since my high school was really small—300 students—she told me that maybe Drew would be a nice option for me.

You were the Landmark Conference Rookie of the Year and made second-team All-Conference. How did you adapt to this level of competition?
I wasn’t used to practice. In Mexico they just play games. When I came here, it was a little different because I had to train every day and play two games a week. I got weaker as the season went on.

You have two more seasons of eligibility. How’s the team look for 2012?
Our team looks really strong. We just lost one starter, a senior, from last year. Our team’s really young, so we’re going to do a good job.

What were your first impressions of New York City?
It’s a really nice city. I was really impressed. Mexico City has way more people with cars. In New York, a lot of people don’t drive.

What were your favorite courses your first year at Drew?
Macroeconomics and French. I’m trying to learn French.

How’s that going?
It’s really hard, but I’m getting there.

How do you stay in touch with your parents in Mexico?
I send them messages or emails when I can. I talk to them on the phone or on Skype, like, three times a month. They are proud of me because I’m really far away from home.

Athletic Shorts

Christos resigned to spend more time with her four children. Photo by Jordan Maslin

Women’s Lacrosse

One of the top coaches in Division III Women’s Lacrosse, Kim Christos stepped down over the summer. Christos spent 12 seasons at the helm of the Drew program, racking up 148 wins. She won three conference championships and took the Rangers to the NCAA Tournament five times. Her replacement is Julia Steier, who comes to Drew from Division I Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

McGowan was named Landmark Player of the Year. Photo by Chris Pedota

Men’s Lacrosse

The team enjoyed one of its most successful years on record under the direction of Head Coach Tom Leanos. The Rangers set a new school mark with 13 wins, marching all the way to the Landmark Conference Championship game and sweeping the League’s postseason awards with Leanos honored as Coach of the Year, Sean McGowan ’12 as Landmark Player of the Year and Patrick Lamon ’15 as Rookie of the Year.

Find out what to listen to this fall, courtesy of the campus alt-music cognoscenti, aka the WMNJ Executive Board and chair Shara Katz ’13.

“We’re Gonna Be Friends”
The White Stripes
A quintessential “back to school” song that’s perfect for the fall.

“Campus”
Vampire Weekend
This indie rock band provides insight into college life in this track from their 2008 self-titled debut album.

“Fall of ’82 “
The Shins
On their most recent album, Port of Morrow, “Fall of ’82” reminisces about fall staples, like the chilly weather and Halloween. Lead singer James Mercer sings of times long gone, but never forgotten.

“Moondance”
Van Morrison
The title track speaks of dancing “’neath the cover of October skies and all the leaves on the trees are falling.”

“Autumn Sweater “
Yo La Tengo
This song off the album, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, is perfect as the days get colder.

“It’s Time”
Imagine Dragons
The band owes their recent popularity to the trailer for the film Perks of Being a Wallflower, which features “It’s Time,” a song made for inspiring our seniors to carpe diem.

“Sweater Weather”
The Neighbourhood
The buzz band of 2012 interlaces thick, brooding instrumental work with witty and poignant lyrics about love and loss.

“Northern Sky”
Nick Drake
One of England’s doomed romantic songwriters, Nick Drake embodies the nature of autumn. Originally released in 1970 to little acclaim, “Northern Sky” is now being hailed as “the greatest English love song of modern times” by New Musical Express.

“Old Friend”
Sea Wolf
In this beautiful track, Sea Wolf sings about getting older, just as we students do each year.

“Red-Eyed and Blue”
Wilco
This track off their 1996 sophomore album, Being There, helped give the Chicago band Wilco its huge following.