We interrupt your regularly scheduled program of Swarthmore content to extoll the virtues of other colleges instead. LOL kidding, kidding – I still think Swarthmore was definitely the right choice for me, but truly, I wish I had taken advantage of the Tri-Co system sooner, as it’s a great way to make our small liberal arts college feel larger.

Taking a step back: what is the Tri-Co? It’s short for the Tri-College Consortium, which includes Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr colleges. Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College (BMC) are two other small liberal arts colleges in the greater Philadelphia region. Swarthmore students can:

• Register for classes at these two schools
• Borrow books from their libraries
• Eat in their dining halls
• Join Tri-Co clubs like the First Page (creative writing group) and Rhythm and Motion (Swat/BMC dance team focusing on Black diaspora dance styles)
• And more!

A free Tri-Co shuttle network connects Swat to the other two campuses. It takes about 20-30 minutes (depending on the ferocity of the shuttle driver) to travel from Swat to the other two colleges.

The Tri-Co van, pulling in at Parrish circle!

(A few notes: Haverford and Bryn Mawr are, as a collective, known as the “Bi-Co;” they tend to interact with each other very fluidly. In addition to taking classes at Bryn Mawr and Haverford, Swat students can also register for classes at UPenn, but to my knowledge that’s a more finicky process.)

I first started interacting with the Tri-Co during the spring of my sophomore year, because I had a time conflict with a Swarthmore German literature course and so registered for a Haverford one instead. Since then, I’ve come to view Swat’s Tri-Co partnerships as a wonderful way to enrich Swatties’ academic, social, and gastronomic lives (What can I say? I’m a very food-motivated person!).

Now that my sophomore spring is ending, here are some thoughts on a semester’s worth of Tri-Co interactions!

Access to even more academic diversity!

Swarthmore already has an exciting variety of fascinating, rigorous classes (on my wishlist: Our Food, an environmental studies class where you tend your own garden plot, and Intro to Classical Chinese, a linguistics/Chinese cross-listed course). But as a small liberal arts college, Swat doesn’t always have the same breadth that a university with tens of thousands of students might have. The Tri-Co system (as well as UPenn cross-registration) is designed to alleviate this!

Thanks to Swat’s partnerships with other colleges, I can take classes not only at Swat, but also at three other campuses. For my German major, that means I have the option of taking Swat classes on canonical 18th- and 19th-century literature, stories of the Rhine river (with a free trip to Germany included as part of the course!), multilingualism and immigrant diasporas in Germany, etc., but when schedules don’t line up, or if I see a topical course I’m more interested in, I can also hop onto a Tri-Co shuttle and get the chance to work with new voices and peers at a different campus.

My current Haverford German course, which is on ghost stories in literature/cinema from the 18th to 20th century, is definitely one of the highlights of my semester – I’ve been able to make friends with more German students, which is so wonderful as there aren’t many fellow German majors at Swat. This course has also meant that I have access to the Bi-Co German department’s events, such as Stammtisch lunches and movie screenings and a Holocaust survivor speaker event. I’ve also been promised an invite to the next Bi-Co German Halloween party!

Some of my Swat friends also have benefited from Tri-Co course offerings. One male friend, for example, is taking an upper-division math course at Bryn Mawr (although BMC is a women’s college, men from Haverford and Swat can take classes at Bryn Mawr through the consortium). My friend is excited to learn in a majority-female math environment, as many rigorous math spaces can, unfortunately, prioritize male voices. It’s also pushed him to reconsider the unthinking assurance with which he (as a man) can move through STEM academia, which has helped him grow a lot both as a collaborator and as a mathematician. Hearing what he’s shared, I’m excited to try out a BMC math course at some point, if my schedule allows for it!

One day, I walked into the Swarthmore Makerspace and saw this easy-to-solve math problem LOL

Libraries!

I spend a lot of time in and around Lutnick Library on Haverford’s campus after my German class. It’s a gorgeous building, with well-lit central spaces for quiet work. My favorite room in Lutnick is the art journal room, with turquoise and gold details and sunny little nooks, perfect for napping and reading. (Actually, I’m editing this very blog post while in the art journal room!)

While I do enjoy library-hopping, Swatties don’t have to physically go to the other campuses in order to check out materials from their libraries. Through the Tri-Co library service, I’ve requested books from the other campuses and picked them up at Swat. For example, I study German art songs through my private voice lessons, and I recently sang a setting of a Heinrich Heine poem. I then decided I wanted to read some more of his poetry, so I put in an online request for a copy of Die Harzreise, which is stored in Lutnick Library at Haverford. In just two days, the book arrived at McCabe Library, and I’ve been slowly working my way through the book since then.

In one of my favorite snarky Heine poems, he describes a young girl who sighs, deeply touched by the sunset. He then basically writes, “Girl, cheer up! The sun sets every single day; this is nothing special!”

This copy of Die Harzreise was published in 1853 and printed in Fraktur script. See if you can decipher it!

Food. Need I say more?

I’d heard rumors of the glories of Bryn Mawr desserts for months, but I approached my first bite of BMC chocolate cake with a healthy dose of skepticism. I’m not much of a frosting fan, nor am I a huge chocolate person, but after I tried some with a few fellow Swatties, we gawped at each other and all murmured, “It’s… not too sweet?” Truly, one of the highest forms of praise we have for desserts.

Some friends and I, roaming Bryn Mawr’s campus after our chocolate cake taste-testing. Sadly, there are no chocolate cake photos – it disappeared too fast! (I’m the one in the red coat.)

To eat at Haverford or Bryn Mawr’s dining halls, Swatties simply need to bring a Tri-Co meal exchange pass, which can be obtained at Narples, the affectionate name for our new dining hall. Tip: at the end of the semester, if you have a lot of leftover meal swipes, convert them all into Tri-Co meal passes, as those never expire! I try to always have a couple of these passes on hand, in case I get hungry right after my Haverford German class, or if I just want to go to Bryn Mawr on a whim – Bryn Mawr is generally regarded to have the best food of the Tri-Co schools.

Concluding thoughts

Two years ago, I committed to Swat because I wanted the very specific perks of small school culture (intimate relationships with professors, a close-knit student body, a high interaction ratio with acquaintances/strangers). Yet, I also initially worried that Swat’s small size might become limiting. This was one of my major concerns as I tried to choose between Swat and a much larger research university.

In Swat’s partnerships with other colleges, I’ve found the solution to my commitment-season worries. The Tri-Co system is not without its drawbacks: shuttle coverage can be spotty, registration at Bi-Co campuses does require jumping through a few extra hoops, and my Swat OneCard can’t access Bi-Co buildings, so I have to ask passersby to help let me in, but I love that I have the option to expand the boundaries of my college journey – to experience all the small-school advantages that Swat offers, and to also leave the borders of campus and mingle with new students, new professors, new spaces, new experiences.