Peter Van Dyke, a
former senior invest-
ment professional at
T. Rowe Price Associates in Baltimore, joined the College’s Board of Visitors and Governors in March, filling an unexpired term as a Board appointee.
Van Dyke has served on the President’s Advisory Committee since 1996. He recently built a weekend home in Chestertown, and quickly became involved in the life of the College. He met with students interested in investment careers as part of the Power Lunch series, and offered his expertise in investment management and finance to the administration. Last summer, his family foundation pledged $100,000 to the Campaign for Washington’s College.
“My wife and I found Washington College to be a positive influence in the Chestertown area,” notes Van Dyke. “As I got to know more about the school, I was impressed with initiatives such as the Center for the Study of the American Experience, and the leadership of the College. It seems to me that the College is on a positive track in developing the educational experience for its students.”
He left Hopkins in 1985 to join T. Rowe Price Associates, where he was one of 15 managing directors. Van Dyke retired at the end of 1998.
Lax Players “Read Across America”
The Washington College
champion lacrosse
team broke out their scary voices, lion growls and spaceship noises for an afternoon of reading to 300 elementary school students.
The event kicked off Garnett’s “Read Across America” program, in which students “travel” across the country by exchanging hours they’ve read for miles. For the Shoremen, the afternoon marked one of the largest community service projects by an athletic team in Washington College history. It also reflected a trend of WC athletes focusing more attention on helping the community, largely through mentoring children and fellow students.
Department of Political Science
It is easy for the foreigner
visiting South Africa for
the first time to be seduced by the country’s extraordinary natural beauty, exotic wildlife, and rich ethnic heritage. Unless one makes a special effort to see the “real” South Africa, the country’s modern infrastructure of high-rises, highways, communications and shopping malls can effectively mask a land of extensive poverty. Those visitors who travel only the Garden Route from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth would be surprised to learn that about half of South Africa’s people exist on a monthly income of less than U.S. $50.
On a macro level, the central issue in South Africa is population growth. All else flows from it. The ruling African National Congress Party (ANC) cannot—nor could any government or private economy—build schools, provide medical services, and create jobs for a population of 42 million that is growing by 2.0 percent a year. Demographers say the rate of growth is declining, but against a world average of about 1.7 percent, that’s like a doctor
The problems caused by the population growth are multiplied by its migration to the cities. Urban centers such as Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth already are unable to provide essential services. Thousands more arrive in the cities daily, increasing the demand for proper housing, sanitation, water and access to quality education. In 1993 the ANC campaigned on a Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) that promised to “redistribute a substantial amount of land to landless people, build over one million houses, provide clean water and sanitation to all, electrify 2.5 million new homes, and provide access for all to affordable health care and telecommunications.” On the eve of the ANC’s election in 1994, the last apartheid government’s deficit was ballooning at such an alarming rate that already just paying salaries, pensions and the mushrooming interest on debt consumed almost everything, leaving little hope for discretionary spending by the new government.
