Talk:List of Oberlin College and Conservatory people

Subcategories
The List of Brown University people is organized by category. Is the Oberlin list long enough for that treatment? Sometimes pure alpha is better. Matchups 05:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Separate Page
I would suggest making a separate page for a list of notable alumni. Long lists of notable alumni from Oberlin seems to depreciate the value of the rest of the article. Eliminating this long list (perhaps by putting it on another page) would focus the reader's attention on the article itself, where it should be. -- backburner001 05:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I also think that the long list is diluting attention. There are also very different degrees of notable, from a Nobel laureate to someone who has a single novel forthcoming. I'm sorry, but I feel people are trying to creep onto the notable list. I noticed, for example, some are added anonymously. Can we have a *very* notable list of short length, with more on another page? dfrankow 16:56, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree--the list is over half the entire article (at least based on eyeballing the scroll bar). Here's my draft list. At 18, a little too long, I think. Please comment. If we can get consensus on a dozen, I'll do the split. Matchups 02:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC), edited 21:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Tracy Chevalier 1984, novelist (Girl with a Pearl Earring)
 * Stanley Cohen 1945, Nobel laureate (Physiology and Medicine, 1986)
 * William Goldman 1952, novelist (The Princess Bride) and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
 * Elisha Gray, an inventor of the telephone
 * Jerry Greenfield 1973, co-creator of Ben & Jerry's ice cream
 * Erwin Griswold 1925, lawyer, late Solicitor General of the United States and dean of Harvard Law School
 * Charles Martin Hall 1885, co-discoverer of the electrolytic process of producing aluminium
 * Bill Irwin 1973, clown (Pickle Family Circus), writer/director (Mr. Fox: A Rumination), actor (Northern Exposure)
 * John Kander 1951, of the musical theater team Kander and Ebb (Cabaret and Chicago, among others)
 * H. H. Kung 1906, Chinese banker and Premier of the Republic of China (1938–1939)
 * Rollo May 1930, psychologist, author
 * Robert Millikan 1891, Nobel laureate (Physics, 1923) for measuring the charge of the electron
 * Carl T. Rowan 1947, journalist
 * Roger Wolcott Sperry 1935 and 1937, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate (Medicine, 1981)
 * Lucy Stone 1847, feminist and abolitionist
 * Thornton Wilder, author (The Bridge of San Luis Rey), playwright (Our Town)
 * Harrison "Pete" Williams 1941, senator and congressman from New Jersey
 * Wendell Willkie 1915, Republican nominee for the 1940 presidential election

Agree. That draft list looks pretty good to me, but don't forget the third nobel laureate: Eric&#39;s penguin 01:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Stanley Cohen 1945, Nobel laureate (Physiology and Medicine, 1986)
 * Right, but what should we cut? BTW, thanks for removing some of the excess wikifying. Matchups 21:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, tough. I edited my suggested cuts into the above list.  I also wikified the names for easier reference/comparison. Thirteen isn't so bad, eh? Eric&#39;s penguin 08:19, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd rather keep the names unstruck so we can distinguish different people's opinions. You proposed removing Bill Irwin, Harrison "Pete" Williams, Rollo May, Tracy Chevalier, and Wendell Willkie.
 * Correct; good point, sorry about that. Eric&#39;s penguin 02:10, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I decided to do a web search and nominate for deletion the six folks with the fewest hits. They are, in decreasing order of hits, Robert Millikan, Roger Sperry, Carl Rowan, Harrison "Pete" Williams, Charles Martin Hall, and Erwin Griswold. I know that's a silly way to vote, but it's hard to trim my own list. Matchups 15:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that does seem silly, not that I'm much less biased. Still, I'd argue that notability is unrelated to popularity or visibility (or at least that some people are worth noting precisely because otherwise no one would notice).  The nobel laureates, for instance, are notable for that reason alone; whether or not anyone else remembers them, they're a point of pride for the institution.  :Besides, the idea isn't to delete everyone else from the list, merely to move the rest of the list to its own page, right?  Even 18 is an improvement over that.  Either way, two people's comments don't make for a sense of consensus. Eric&#39;s penguin 02:10, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd vote for keeping Hall; he's the reason Americans spell/say it "aluminum" and responsible for some large fraction of Oberlin's endowment. And there are a bunch of things named after him scattered around Oberlin. I'd rather see Karen O on the final list too; more college kids have heard of her than of any of the Nobel winners. And if we're going to do this according to Google hits, why not just take the top 20 out of the original list? (I don't think it should be done that way totally, but it's a good measure of...something.) &#x2014;alxndr&#x00a0; (t) 17:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I feel like it is very hard to judge notability objectively as age and location of the judge make a large difference. I think that paring it down too much will let more bias in. I think that national level elected office holders, people with college buildings named after them for being awesome instead of just rich and pioneers in the fields of sports, science, and politics are notable.
 * That said, my list would be the nobel laureates and Antoinette Brown, James Burrows, Marc Canter, Tracy Chevalier, William Goldman, Elisha Gray, Jerry Greenfield, Erwin Griswold, Charles Martin Hall, Bill Irwin, John Kander, Daniel Kinsey, H. H. Kung, Rollo May, Eduardo Mondlane, Karen O, Carl T. Rowan, William F. Schultz, Lorenzo Snow, Lucy Stone, Moses Fleetwood Walker, Thorton Wilder, Harrison Williams, and Wendell Wilkie. This is much longer than the previously proposed list, but I think that all of them are worthy enough to be included in the main article. My list is less than 1/3 the current length.&mdash;WAvegetarian&bull; CONTRIBUTIONS TALK &bull; EMAIL &bull; 18:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Regarding Karen O, between the fact that she didn't graduate from Oberlin and her Wikipedia article is a stub, I would not be inclined to include her. Matchups 21:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I hate to say it, but I agree with all that has been said so far. I know, boring.  18 better than now, yep.  Include Hall, check.  Don't include people (e.g., Karen O) who transferred away from Oberlin and graduated somewhere else.  Shorten the d-mn list already!  :)  Seriously, just do it, and then it can be improved (perhaps shorted again?) later.  dfrankow 15:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Y'know, looking at some other schools with longish lists of alumni/faculty/related people (Brown was mentioned above, but also Wesleyan, Tufts, Mt Holyoke, and Amherst), perhaps it would indeed be better to leave individuals off of the main college page altogether. Those articles seem to be a good case for leaving individual people off of the page describing the actual school, in addition to eliminating potential arguments over notability. (A notable exception is Vassar; Barnard and Smith seem to be in our current situation; Sarah Lawrence and Columbia have something similar to what's being proposed here, sort of.) Eric&#39;s penguin 01:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the research cites. I wonder, especially after looking at the Columbia list, if we're going about this the wrong way.  Rather than looking for the "most famous," should we be consider that this is part of the college main article, and we should be trying to pick people who are important to the College, or who help the reader understand the College, as well as a few well known folks selected from various areas.  Taking that approach, I'd go for a list like

and I would present it along the lines of the Sarah Lawrence article. Matchups 03:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Alison Bechdel (representing college's strong GLBT community),
 * William Goldman (commencement speaker one year),
 * Jerry Greenfield ("If it's not fun, why do it?"),
 * Charles Martin Hall (building named for him),
 * Bill Irwin (see Greenfield),
 * John Kander,
 * H. H. Kung,
 * Robert Millikan,
 * Lucy Stone (co-ed tradition),
 * Moses Fleetwood Walker (multi-racial tradition),
 * Thornton Wilder (another building),
 * Wendell Willkie


 * Finally done it! Matchups 17:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Organization by year
I also wonder how useful (or encyclopedic) it would be to have an auxiliary page listing alumni by year. Maybe only fun for other Obies curious to see who made it big from their class. Matchups 05:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

In another issue, I wonder if we can organize by alumni year? That would be cool. dfrankow 16:56, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yvette D. Clarke
Word has come about as a result of some investigation by a NYC reporter, it appears that Yvette Clarke may have not actually completed her coursework at Oberlin College. I've commented out her entry in the Alumni list as a result. -/- Warren 21:34, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I've restored the entry, but removed the year, which is consistent with the treatment of others who attended but did not graduate. Matchups 03:09, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Willkie
commented out: can't find any mention of him attending Oberlin; the only thing I could find connecting him to Oberlin is here:  Mentions that his younger brother was attending, and tried to set up a job for him. --User:Alxndr 29 May 2006 (Note moved from a comment on the article page when note below was written.)


 * I found several web sites which indicate that he attended; indeed, even the site referenced above says so. However, it was brief, and he did not graduate.  The practice for such people has been to list them without a year (of graduation), so I have modified the entry accordingly. Matchups 14:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Aaron Walker
commented out Aaron Walker: linked article is about a blues guitarist; nothing to be found about a naval historian named Walker on Wikipedia yet. --User:Alxndr 29 May 2006

Aaron Walker, to the best of my knowledge, is a current student at Oberlin. You can find him in Oberlin's student directory. Recommend deletion, pending Aaron's potential graduation and rise to eminence. --User:Echuck215 30 May 2006

---Above notes moved to the talk page from comments on article page--Matchups 18:24, 3 September 2006 (UTC) ---

He was added on 21:29, 11 February 2006 by User:132.162.252.6, an address within Talk:Oberlin_College. Matchups 18:24, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

More authors coming
I'm working on adding a whole bunch more authors, based on information at the College's web site. I'm just mentioning it here because it may take a while and I don't want anyone else wasting their time duplicating the effort. See User:Matchups/Sandbox for the work in progress.

Also, once that's done, I'd like to add subheadings by first letter of last name and a compact TOC. Anyone know the template for that? (If not, I'm sure I can track it down.) Matchups 12:36, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Deletions A-F
Jarfingle, thanks for your work on this article. I reviewed the ones you deleted and would like to know the rationale. Here are my comments on the six individuals: Matchups 16:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC) (Oberlin '79)
 * Martha Atkins -- agree; red link, no information
 * Bruce Beasley -- appears to be notable based on web searching. Many libraries have his works, and other indications support keeping him.
 * Kenneth Cole (electrophysiologist) -- referenced at Voltage clamp; that seems like a good enough reason to keep him. Should the link be changed to match the other article, as I've done in this message?
 * Dorothy DeLay has blue link; why was she removed? Her entry confirms her attendance at Oberlin, and the College's web site gives her year of graduation as 1937.
 * Chris Eldridge -- I searched when he was initially added and thought that The Stringdusters seemed notable, but could go either way on this one; I'm not an expert on band notability.
 * John Ferguson (organist) also has a blue link and his article confirms his attendance.

Red links
This edit says that it was deleting somebody because she was redlinked, therefore not notable. Sorry, but this is not a valid conclusion. There are plenty of notable alumni who do not yet have Wikipedia pages, and it is not policy for this page that red links are disallowed (unlike calendar DOB pages, for example). As it happens, this particular alumna probably is NN, based on a web search. Matchups 01:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Thornton Wilder in Pullitzer category
His novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey got the novel Pullitzer in 1928. Is there some reason he's not in the list of Pullitzer laureates? Is it to avoid double-counting? I think he should be mentioned anyway to make the list of Pullitzer winners more exhaustive, and then maybe there can be a note next to his name below saying he's already mentioned above. I'm not doing this change myself because I want to see beforehand if there's a specific reason why it hasn't been done already.

65.94.232.13 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:26, 26 April 2012 (UTC).

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