LETTERS, SPRING 2015 (continued from page 3) to aesthetics can produce uninteresting and ugly buildings. Somehow, as Professor Spear carefully points out, the people who select the architects are, so often, visually illiterate. In my some 40 years of teaching at institu- tions with excellent art departments and museums, I have witnessed this very same problem that Professor Spear discusses. Why does this have to continue? I thank Professor Spear for his most appropriate and astute comments. I hope that at least Oberlin will pay some attention to his letter. J. Richard Judson ’48 Hanover, N.H. (The writer taught art history at Smith College for nearly 20 years and is a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.) THE SEEGER EXPERIENCE Thanks to Joe Hickerson and the article on Pete Seeger and Oberlin College (Summer 2014). It triggered my own memories of Seeger’s first visit to Oberlin in 1954. That semester I was taking a course called Philosophy of Religion, led by Professor Paul Schmidt. In his class, during the week of Seeger’s visit, we were discussing the nature of “religious experience.” The morning after Seeger’s concert in the Allen Art Museum, with about 200 in attendance, Professor Schmidt asked us, “How many of you went to the Seeger concert last night?” A few of us raised our hands. He went on: “I wouldn’t have gone, but someone gave me tickets. Now that was a religious experience!” Those of us who had been there felt the truth of his excited response. Clark Olsen ’54 Asheville, N.C. The magazine might be interested to know that Pete Seeger was at Oberlin well before the first concert referred to in the article. In October 1948, a group of us, more radical than most, were trying to organize support for the candidacy of Henry A. Wallace. By some means we got Pete, who was already campaigning for Wallace, to come to Oberlin to help us get started, and he spent an evening with us in the back of the Mens Building trying to help us organize. At the end, he led us in a few songs, like The Union Maid. It was a pleasant evening, although the political product was ever so small. Stephen Wise Tulin ’49 North Ferrisburgh, Vt. TAPPAN THE NETWORK The Alumni Association’s announcement of the “TAPPAN Network”—the new name for ObieWeb—caught me as funny today, but not “ha-ha” funny, just timely/interesting and, maybe because we are Obies, a little sadly grim. The irony of the “TAPPAN Network” is in the name and in the network. I’m sure it’s a decent system for the online Obie directory, but we should all (if we are Obies to the core) be aware that Lewis Tappan started the “database” that became Dun & Bradstreet. Dun & Bradstreet is credited as the parent of the surveillance industry (think profiling, rendition, black site, “GITMO, drone, etc.). Lewis Tappan reportedly became wealthy as a result of, essentially, surveillance reporting. You can understand why “TAPPAN Network” sounds a little sinister to my ears (much as I am fond of Tappan Square!). So, with Tappan’s belief in certain freedoms, freedom also had a price. I find this all interesting because these facts presented themselves to me while I was writing my book, American Drone. Perhaps we celebrate other things when we say TAPPAN Network, but I hope we acknowledge this. We allow ourselves the privilege of a fine line. Peter Money ’86 Brownsville, Vt. SHEET CHEAT Ijust read Leslie Lawrence’s essay and am probably not the only graduate to clarify that only the men got linen service (Fall 2014, “Property”). When did the college figure out that the men were as capable as the women to operate a washing machine? Elizabeth ‘Biz’ Schoonmaker Auld ’65 New Haven, Conn. Oberlin Alumni Magazine welcomes comments from readers. Please address your letters to Oberlin Alumni Magazine, 247 W. Lorain St., Suite C, Oberlin, OH 44074-1089; or e-mail: alum.mag@oberlin.edu. Letters may be edited for clarity and space. Additional letters may appear on OAM’s website at www.oberlin.edu/oam. FUTURE BEGINS With dynamic summer programs for high school students, exploring the future of Food, Business, or Essential Resources. WITH Three, two-week sessions focused on developing: • Sustainability Knowledge • Leadership Capacity • College Readiness Foresight Prep @ OBERLIN June 21-August 1, 2015 Some of the 2014 cohort enjoying the view YOU! ForesightPrep.org Another Project in partnership with Oberlin College OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2015 / SPRING 41 THE