From vpoythress@crosswinds.net Tue Dec 19 21:58:46 2000
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 100 10:48:37 -0500
From: Vern Poythress <vpoythress@crosswinds.net>
To: reuben@ugcs.caltech.edu
Subject: Caltech dorm life

    [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ]
    [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set.  ]
    [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]


Dec. 19, 2000

Mr. Walt Ogburn IV
Stanford University

Dear Mr. Ogburn:

I looked at your website.  Yes, the tungsten photodetector sounds cool.

I'll get right down to business.  I'm writing to ask about your student life
when you were at Caltech.  I'm a Caltech alumnus (1966), with a son who is contemplating
applying to Caltech for undergraduate admission, 2002.  My family and I are
committed Christians (I like you was a part of CCF).

The issue is the dorm situation.  We visited the Caltech campus in the summer
of 2000, and found that not only were the dorms coed, but in the south houses
the bathrooms were coed.  You lived in Blacker.  How did you find the situation?
 Were there moral problems?  Was female flesh inappropriately displayed?  My
wife remembers when, 25 years ago, she visited a student living in a coed dorm,
and saw, as she passed by, one dorm room with the door wide open and a female
student in black lace underwear lying on her bed in full view--one supposes
in order deliberately to try to seduce men.  I suspect that the women students
at Caltech are too serious and too tech-oriented to move in that direction,
but what is your experience?

I'm not naive.  Sexual liaisons went on in my time, but they went on behind
closed doors, and there were no women undergrads.  The question is, does the
change in the structure of the living situation create difficulties for Christians
who want not a whiff of impropriety?

Yours in Christ,

Vern S. Poythress, Ph.D., Th.D.
Professor of New Testament Interpretation
Westminster Theological Seminary
vpoythress@crosswinds.net