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The Mary Lyon Buildings |
From: David Bing Date: Monday, October 01, 2001 1:14 AM To: Deirdre Conner; phoenix@swarthmore.edu; ssias1@swarthmore.edu Subject: Re: Phoenix article on "The diabolical origins of ML" Hi, Dee, You said that the article was written both with information from my webpage, a "history of Mary Lyon herself and the book "An Informal History of Swarthmore."' What is the 'history of Mary Lyon herself', exactly? Also, Walton's Informal History of Swarthmore only contains one reference to ML on page 55, where it only says that Swat was able to purchase ML from the Navy in 1946 - how else was this book used in the writing of the article? As for my webpage, please compare the text of the Phoenix article with what I wrote and put online last December. Every sentence of the Phoenix article is prefaced with a dash; whenever there is a remarkably similar sentence found on my webpage, I've recopied it right below it and prefaced it with a colon. ------------------------------ - The building we all know as Mary Lyon is actually Mary Lyon 4, and since its construction in 1918, it has been a girls' boarding school, a naval hospital, faculty housing and a dormitory. - In 1892 the Swarthmore Grammar School was founded in the buildings that now comprise PPR. : When Swat was first founded it included a college prep section; after this was discontinued in 1892 the Swarthmore Grammar School (the Prep School, what would later become PPR) was founded. - When the school went from coed to all-boys, due to a perceived lack of interest from girls, in 1913, Hadly Miller Crist and his wife, Frances Leavitt Crist, founded the Mary Lyon School. : In 1913, when the Preps went from co-ed to all-boys because of a perceived inability to attract female students, two of the teachers working there - Hadly Miller Crist and his wife Frances Leavitt Crist - left and founded the Mary Lyon School. - Mary Lyon, the school's namesake, was a prominent nineteenth century educator who founded Mount Holyoke College in 1837. : The boarding school took its name, Mary Lyon, from a prominent 19th century female educator who founded Mount Holyoke College in 1837. - In 1943 Frances Miller Crist leased the school to the Navy, which used the space as a hospital. : In January 1943 Frances Miller Crist leased the school's buildings to the Navy so they could be used as a rehabilitation center;... - The school finished that academic year in New York, and then closed permanently. : ...the school's staff and students moved to New York to finish the spring semester, then closed at the end of the academic year. - During the three years that Mary Lyon was a hospital, the Navy made alterations to the buildings and treated over 3,000 patients. : During the 38 months that the Navy ran the hospital, 3000 patients were treated and "extensive alterations to the original school buildings were made" to accommodate the Navy. - After the war, the Navy returned Mary Lyon to the Crist family. : After World War II the property was returned to the Crists,... - But without a school to run, they decided to sell the property to Swarthmore College in 1946. : ...but as they no longer had any school to run, they sold the land and buildings to Swarthmore College in July 1946. - Due to the huge numbers of veterans returning to college after World War II, the college immediately needed to use Mary Lyon as a dorm. : The college immediately converted it, Roberts Hall, and Hall Gymnasium into dorm space for the flood of veterans returning from service. - Current students may be interested to know that the breakfast room opened to Swarthmore students for the first time on Oct. 16, 1946. : The dining hall in Mary Lyon 4 was renovated to seat 150, and breakfast was first served there on Wednesday, October 16, 1946. - As the flood of veterans dissipated, the dorm became both faculty housing and a dormitory, but eventually became student-housing only. : The college first used the buildings for the overflow of veterans returning from the war, but by 1952 ML 4 had been converted to half-student, half-faculty housing. - Mary Lyon was the first dorm on campus to become completely coed by room. : In September 1970 ML 4 became the first Swat dorm to be completely coed by room. -------------------------- You've probably noticed that the Phoenix article not only has a great deal of the same information that I wrote on my website, but in many sentences it actually mirrors the wording and sentence structures I used. I would be more than happy to show you all the handwritten notes I've obtained from hours of research at the Phoenix archives in McCabe, or show you the notes and photocopies I have of articles from the ML folders in the Friends' Historical Library if you'd like to see my sources. I'd be happy to show you the email correspondence I had with Elizabeth Weber that formed the first rough draft of the ML article I would eventually post on my webpage. I'd just like to know what the exact sources were that went into last week's Phoenix article, and if any of them were copied almost straight from my page. I'd like you to deny, in good conscience and if you can, that this is an instance of plagiarism by a writer for the Phoenix. Thanks, David
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