In this 2003 conversation, founder Don Swatman recounts how the paper began as a modest, typewritten project in the Dental School and slowly expanded into a campus-wide forum. Interviewed by Mark Graham, then a first-year dental student and Synapse writer, Swatman reflects on how precarious the paper’s early survival was — sustained not by inevitability, but by persistence, improvisation, and a willingness to take on unpaid, uncertain work and keep going anyway.
Synapse: How did you start Synapse?
Dr. Swatman: Well, in 1956 as a freshman, I was waxing teeth in the dental anatomy lab, it was about 100 degrees with all the Bunsen burners going, when student body president Mel Frank came to me and said, “I’d like you to start a student newspaper,” and I said, “Why me?” I had been working parttime at Safeway and living off campus. I was doing all I could do to keep my head above water, so I had to reject him.
I guess he figured I would be a good editor because of my major at Berkeley, environmental public health, which had a fair amount of communications in its curriculum. He came to the freshman lab several times over the next few weeks and each time I begged off accepting his offer.
Then one day Dean Fleming of the dental school called me to his office and said, “I don’t think you understand. I want you to start a student newspaper. We’ll be building the student union soon and we need to communicate better.” He then requested that I create a paper that would not fail like the previous ones had. If the Dean asks you to do something, you do it.
So, I started with a simple 8.5” X 11” typewritten communication just within the Dental School but gradually extended my contacts to the other schools and asked those people to help me with articles. Eventually, I got a little office in the old office building that was partly closed down when the new life science building was completed. I had to beg for an old wooderv desk and file cabinet and punch out the articles on an ancient Royal mechanical typewriter.
I recruited people to write for me, and they would slip their articles under the door but nobody gave me anything in finished form, so I had to rewrite and edit everything completely. So, it was a bit time consuming.
Anyway, I decided we had to produce something in published form in order to accomplish a better end-product, so I needed a budget from ads. I sold advertising all over the area and managed to get national ads from Coca-Cola and one or two cigarette companies. That was still OK way back then. I also got some local stores to advertise. I spent a lot of time out beating the bushes trying to get enough money to pay for the publishing. The dean’s offices from Dentistry and Pharmacy gave me a little bit of money for me to work with but it was a big order with a small budget. I was able to budget for four pages altogether but before we actually started printing.
I figured we needed a name for the paper. I had been searching and thinking of a name when one night, while I was sitting at the old Zip fraternity house, which is now the dental alumni house. I figured I needed a name that makes sense to a medical center. I finally came up with the name “Synapse,” and it stuck. This was early in 1956.
Then I felt we needed newspaper racks, so I designed a rack and the carpenters in the maintenance facility behind the school built several for me. I think there’s still one or two still in use around the campus. They are the old wooden ones with the inverted V shape. Then we had the infrastructure to begin publishing a real newspaper.
In my second year I tried to get someone else from the Dental School to help me, but that person ran into some difficulties, so I was back for another year by myself. I was happy to do it, but I was one busy person.
Then in my third year the same thing happened, and I was even busier then with patients to be seen and my class schedule did not let up. Gradually, more material rolled in to my office to be edited, rewritten or eliminated, and I needed to force others to take a bigger role in the continuation of the paper so I ran for student body president feeling I would be there to encourage new people but would not have to carry the full load again. Well, I won the election and then realized it was also my duty to be VP of the medical center student body as well. Also, because the Millberry Union opened, I was automatically appointed to the Board of Governors of the Union.
Then during my fourth year, Dean Fleming called me into his office and said, “We’re having a problem with student diarrhea caused by stress and tension between students and faculty.” So, he made me chair of a newly formed student-liaison committee. Many of the faculty thought it was my idea to start the Synapse so they already considered me a bit of an activist as the voice of the students. But the liaison committee ended up to be very effective at relaying the causes of distress of the students and was able to work out a lot of issues to make school a better experience for the students and less stressful to the staff as well. Fortunately, most diarrhea can be cured with less than a nine-member committee.
Synapse: It sounds like you have done a lot for the school and stayed busy throughout. Were you able to do anything else while going to dental school?
Dr. Swatman: I met my wife here at UCSF in the elevator when she was a first-year dental hygiene student. I got to talking with her and we eventually got married in my third year. She had just graduated and was able to help out with the finances. Both with her help and my work at Safeway and each summer working 15 weeks at Lucky Lager Brewery on the midnight shift, I was able to put myself through school and graduate in 1959 with a debt of only $500! Times have really changed!
Synapse: Did you go straight into a private practice after graduating?
Dr. Swatman: No, I was accepted for a residency program (internship) available in the United States Public Health Service, so I moved to Baltimore and spent my first year in the USPHS hospital there. I was transferred to the hospital in Savannah, Georgia, my second year and then was sent to the clinic in San Pedro, California, to restructure a clinic. It was in my residency where I realized how superior my education that I received at UCSF was compared to other schools across the country. I was happy to have come from such a fine institution. After getting out of the Public Health Service in ‘62 I decided I didn’t want to get my doctorate in public health as the Service had offered me but instead, I chose to begin practice as a general dentist. I worked as an associate in an office for a year and then I bought a small practice. After seven years I got together with 18 other dental and medical professionals, and we built our own office complex. Today this six-acre complex has won several national, state, and local awards. I’ve managed its executive committee for about 35 years. On the 30th anniversary of my graduation from UCSF in 1989 I became alumni president in the same year my son Matt graduated from UCSF in Dentistry.
Synapse: Are you still practicing today?
Dr. Swatman: No, I sold my practice last year and now I am busier than ever. I have done some consulting for fellow dentists and have orchestrated the sale and transition for another. I continue to create and sometimes patent new ideas for dentistry and market them through Caleda Inc., which I started in 1974. I have been involved with land use issues for many years and enjoy playing with the politics surrounding Modesto’s growth. If I were closer, I would be more interested in giving a hand in the school but with traffic the way it is now it would make it quite a commitment. I also like to garden and travel. My wife and I spend time in Barbados and Maui part of each winter and enjoy our houseboat here on Don Pedro each summer. I have been happily married for 45 years, and I have twin daughters, one an RN in school nursing and the other a former UCSF dental hygienist who is now a residential developer in Menlo Park. I also have one son who was our county dental director in Stanislaus County for eight years before he went back to UOP for his masters in orthodontics. He now practices in Modesto. We have three grandchildren.
Synapse: What advice would you give to the students of UCSF today?
Dr. Swatman: Participate in life around you. Try to make a difference. Find a need and dream up ways to improve or correct the problems that confront you. Don’t accept the status quo and grumble — do something positive to help yourself and others. Create a legacy rather than just being a number. Show respect, be humble but focused to achieve change. Become a can-do person but seek advice and then weigh it carefully — it may not be right. Miracles happen every day at UCSF that people with lesser skills felt were hopeless situations. Never condemn a patient to the hopeless category until your creativity, imagination, and peer advice has fully kicked in to try to find a remedy. Join your professional organizations and participate. Strive to lead rather than follow — you will be enriched far beyond your effort. Attempt to find a solution to a problem before you complain to others and then share your ideas — even the crazy ideas are sometimes the seeds for a successful solution. One person can make a difference. Maybe that person is you.
Synapse: The student-liaison committee in the dental school still solves issues today, Synapse is stronger and larger than ever, the Millberry Student Union has become the life of the Parnassus campus and we have Dr. Don Swatman, along with many others who have gone before us and those who are making a difference today, to thank for making our time at UCSF a more enjoyable experience.
