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What about the boys?
"Men preferred"
Still a not-so-subtle problem
Nurses left out
Sweet reminder
Get one thing strait
Invisible beauty
Don't worry about us
Golomb responds
Ol' Baltimore
Corrections

What about the boys?

Honestly, when reading "Necessary Steps" [November], I thought I was in a time warp, ca. 1973. The arguments made seemed that obsolescent to me.

What is worrisome to me now is quite different from the hot topics brandished about by the ERA movement in the early 1970s. One example in this article is that mention of the student body now being only 49 percent male, presumably on a continuing downward spiral for males, does not cause any inkling of alarm. Another far more dramatic example being that the percentage of "senior leaders" at the University of Rochester, Yale, and MIT was said to be respectively 75, 61, and 52 percent female. And this was mentioned in the article as a measure of virtue at those institutions. Another example is that enrollment in colleges today, from high school graduates, is also favoring the girls.

I'm astounded that such disparities aren't causing a stir. To my eyes, these facts show that we have new problems to address, and fast. I think President [William R.] Brody is right on target when he says that the math cannot sustain the sort of disparity this article is obsessing over. But that should cause only a temporary sense of relief. The problem is evident in the long-term trends, even if occasionally it doesn't seem apparent in a snapshot of the status today. The long-term trends in the United States are quite worrisome for the young males.
Albert Manfredi, Engr '73 (MS)
Alexandria, Virginia


"Men preferred"

Your excellent article "Necessary Steps" reminded me of my experience as a PhD student in the Experimental Psychology Department between 1955 and 1958. Fortunately, I had not read the catalog before applying to the program. When I discovered about six months after entering the program that the catalog strongly advised "men preferred" (yes, in italics), a faculty member explained that when women do apply they are treated equally in the application process and do as well as men in their graduate studies, but then they go out and have babies, and "we want our graduates to make a name for Hopkins." The advice in the catalog was reinforced by a faculty club that admitted women only at special times and, even then, only if accompanied by a man. On a more positive note, I always felt very much part of the Hopkins community and invariably was treated well and fairly.
Iris C. Rotberg, A&S '58 (PhD)
Research Professor of Education Policy
George Washington University


Still a not-so-subtle problem

I wanted to thank you for your excellent article ["Necessary Steps"]. My husband, a Hopkins graduate, and I read it with great interest and were pleased that the magazine published such a strong critique of an obvious global problem at JHU. We have two sons who are currently Hopkins students and have spent some time since 2002 observing the campus culture. I do believe that a lack of policies for faculty and staff that would allow women to feel respected and recognized prevents them from flourishing at that level on campus; of great concern to me is that the problematic culture you describe filters down to the undergraduates and graduate students in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Both men and women suffer in an environment that does not nourish its women! I hope your article helps to catalyze rapid attention to this issue.
Laura Vogel
Amherst, Massachusetts


Nurses left out

"Necessary Steps" rings all my bells. You may hear the cry from other alumnae of the School of Nursing about the exclusion of the colorful story of Nursing's efforts to get its program into the university. As an alumna during the career of Anna D. Wolf, my whole career as a nurse educator reflects her role in insisting that nursing was appropriate within the university. The alumnae of the school are and were critical of the closing of the diploma program at the hospital. The ill-fated temporary solution using the [School of Professional Studies in Business and Education] did not last long. A feasibility study was finally commissioned and its author became the first dean. This is a story deep in the hearts of Hopkins' Nursing alumnae. Its absence from a chronicle of women at Hopkins is unfortunate.
Cora J. Lawrence, Nurs '50
Seattle, Washington


Sweet reminder

"One Thing in Common" [November] caught my attention yesterday, since it features Thuy Dao, a talented recent graduate of the small college where I teach. I skimmed over the other new students, marveling at their wide interests and academic achievements. My 6-year-old daughter, however, saw the picture of Thuy and burst into tears, crying, "Thuy, when will you come back? I miss you!" Suddenly, I wondered how many parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, teachers, and formerly babysat first-graders were simply missing their loved ones. Thanks for a sweet article.
Ruth Russo, Med '90 (PhD)
Associate Professor, Whitman College Chemistry and General Studies
Walla Walla, Washington


Get one thing strait

The copy editors let you down when you quoted Jim Margraff ["Dr. Football," November] to the effect that he was an "Oxford button-down, straight-laced kid." Those laces — they're not straight as opposed to those other crooked laces. No, they're strait as in tight — like the Straits of Magellan or the Straits of Hormuz. He was a tightly laced-up kid. When people speak of the "strait and narrow," that's what they mean — not "straight and narrow." A straight but narrow path is still relatively easy to walk. But if you describe it as both "strait" and "narrow" you're emphasizing how hard it is to navigate. The phrase is lifted from the Gospel of Matthew in the King James version, where Jesus says, "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide [is] the gate, and broad [is] the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." (Matthew 7:13-14) That type of parallel restatement and expansion is characteristic of Hebrew poetry, so it makes sense when put in Jesus' mouth.
Steve Petrica, SPH '00 (MPH)
Bethesda, Maryland


Invisible beauty

Regrettably, I must reject Mario Livio's answer to the Big Question, "What is the Most Beautiful Thing in the Universe?" [November]. From my viewpoint, the most beautiful thing is a personal realization that our universe clearly displays God's invisible qualities such as His eternal power and divine nature.
Robert A. Herrmann, A&S '63
South Riding, Virginia


Don't worry about us

Christopher Hitchens opines that religion poisons everything. God created us avec a free will. Discernment in pursuit of God affords us a knowledge of Him and a life obliged to Him. It's a faith-choice many make. Hitchens need not concern himself over others' choices.
Carol Ann Breeden, Ed '80 (MS)
Comus, Maryland


Golomb responds

Regarding the letter from Edward J. Levin, "400 years and counting" [November], perhaps my explanation was insufficiently clear — but it really is the case that in the Gregorian calendar, the probability that Christmas occurs on Wednesday is not exactly one-seventh, and that the 13th of the month does not fall with exactly equal frequency on all seven days of the week!

Here is the key reason. In every 400-year period, in the Gregorian calendar, everything repeats exactly, including the days of the week. Just as January 1, 2008, is a Tuesday, so was January 1, 1608, and so will be January 1, 2408. (This is because 400 Gregorian years is exactly 20,871 weeks, and the cycle of leap years is identical in each 400-year Gregorian period.) Since 400 is not a multiple of 7, no date (not December 25, nor any other) can occur on a specific day of the week exactly one-seventh of the time. The slight imbalance is repeated every 400 years, so it does not even out in 2,800 years, or in any longer period.

In the older Julian calendar (still used in many Eastern Orthodox churches), where every fourth year is a leap year, it is true that each date (e.g., December 25) does occur equally often on each day of the week in the long run, and in particular in each 2,800-year cycle; but not in the more accurate (relative to the true astronomical solar year) Gregorian calendar.

Of course, over a much longer period of time, even the Gregorian calendar will accumulate more than a day of error, and it may be proposed (if there are still people, and calendars, around for a few more millennia), to modify the Gregorian calendar, so that years whose numbers are multiples of 4,000 should not be leap years. In that new calendar, which would no longer be the Gregorian calendar, Christmas (as December 25) would fall on Wednesday one-seventh of the time "in the long run," and specifically in every 28,000-year cycle. But in 28,000 years or so, even that new calendar would need further correction; and the very gradual slowing of the Earth's rotation will eventually require adding one second to the length of every day!

So the point of my original problem was merely to highlight the mathematical oddity that in the Gregorian calendar, which we currently use, the day of the week and the day of the month are not truly "statistically independent," so that all combinations are not quite equally likely.
Sol Golomb
Los Angeles, California


Ol' Baltimore

I was delighted by W. Barksdale Maynard's article "More Than a Mere Student" [September]. Particularly compelling for an architect-artist such as myself was Woodrow Wilson's difficulty with the "germanic" pedagogy. Thus I mused over antiquated Baltimorisms such as those endured by my "old man," Morton Wm. Lieberman(n), Engr '22. One example was the opening recitation at the Baltimore public school in which both "Dixie" and "Wacht-Am-Rhein" were mandatorily sung. Kein wunder that H.L. Mencken nested cozily in ol' Baltimore. Who would have guessed that Mencken's tyrannical watch over the Rhein might also have pushed Wilson in the right direction?

One fact that quintessentializes the noble Wilson is his decisive action to prohibit the existence of Greek letter fraternities at Princeton because of their egregious socal specialization and preoccupation. His action was morally proper. However, the outcome was prophetically Wilsonian. The frats went underground, became private societies called "Eating Clubs," sort of like the German glider corps, and were far more snobbish and pretentious. Only the arrival of the post-war GI would break down this crystaline caste system through humor and disregard.
D.J. Liebermann, A&S '52
Berkeley, California


Corrections

B.J. Norris, vice president for communications and public affairs from 1982 until 1989, was the first female vice president at Johns Hopkins, a fact we missed in our timeline of women at Johns Hopkins, part of November's "Necessary Steps."

Also in November, in our Wholly Hopkins story, "All Things Mencken," we misidentified the author's memoir, Happy Days.

Return to February 2008 Table of Contents

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