Hangin' with the guys at Hampden-Sydney

So tonight I had dinner with our ISI Group at Hampden-Sydney College. The school has about 1100 students - all male. It's only one of two all-male colleges in the country (that I know of - the other is Wabash in Indiana). They seem to be very well educated and they brought their faculty advisor along.

It was a good, fun group and they seem really excited about ISI and the intellectual side of conservatism. Their school is almost all conservative, they say, "except the faculty." Go figure. We had dinner at a local place called Charlie's on the Waterfront in Farmville, VA (about 5 miles from their campus). I never actually did get to see the campus. And come to think of it, I don't thing Charlie's was actually on any waterfront.

They just hosted a speaker last month, Anthony Esolen, who spoke on Manliness, but I think the group, which has been around for less than a year, is really just beginning to take its own form. Almost all the guys that showed up were sophomores, the other was a freshman, so they have a lot of time to grow the group and develop it into what they want it to become. You'd think they have a big challenge with a campus that is almost not in need of more conservativism, but in a way, it is. They have the real opportunity to challenge the faculty and show the rest of the campus what it means to be not just a conservative, but an intellectual one. They're off to a great start and are very motivated. I look forward to seeing some of them at the ISI conference in Charlottesville this Saturday.