The student population at SVU is much like that of Ricks (pardon, BYU-Idaho) about 30 years ago – their attitudes are a mixture of rural,religious in-your-face and urban let-live and let-me-do-my-thing. Faculty and administrators and campus life are, in many ways, more conservative than you’d find at the BYU campuses. SVU seems to take pride in that – much like Ricks administrators did back in the 1970s.

The real “conflict” is not between Buena Vista people and the SVU crowd – they get along surprisingly well. That’s largely because of a mixture of economic self-interest and the demographics of evangelical values and behavior in the area.

Instead, the conflict is between SVU students and Washington & Lee students. Attitudes among both groups have led to minor incidents in various places in Lexington where both come together. You might expect that, since SVU students hold themselves out as models of a conservative and somewhat “mysterious” religious faith, whereas W&L students regard themselves as a more exclusive and progressivist UVA – similar attitudes prevail toward Liberty University students an hour or so southeast.

So it’s “gown & gown” stuff, not “town & gown” – a different dynamic. Frankly, I think any comparisons to historical attitudes in Missouri or Illinois are superficial, misleading, and not really useful. There are more interesting issues to pose here.

http://www.southernvirginia.edu/academics/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=166

I’m glad to see them doing well.

I remain interested in a scholarly treatment of this phenomenon. I suspect there is much to learn.

The barns and stables have been converted into an activity center, a basketball arena, a locker room, and exercise room (along with some offices).

Does anyone know if they still have the horses and the horse barns, etc.? My eight year old wants to know … though I’ve warned her that things could well change by the time she is fourteen and we let her start college.

We visited SVU for my little sister (they keep calling, BTW, and if you have good grades and are transferring in from another college, I promise you they want you. A lot. Thousands of dollars worth of scholarshippy love.) It was a VERY small town — smaller than the one we lived in when I was “the” Laurel in our branch. The size of the meeting house completely unnerved all of us Ohio Mormon types, but the SLC-born tour guide thought we were crazy for thinking it was big. It was, at least, smaller than the University of Utah institute building (but then, what isn’t.)

The town didn’t seem to be openly hostile. I really think that already having two very large colleges nearby, and having a school up on that hill for a century, really mitigate against tensions. I didn’t notice any creepy anti-Mormon stuff on billboards or church signs. People were friendly at stores and restaurants, and I’m sure it was obvious what we were up to. There might be something lurking under the surface (ooh, scary) but honestly, I doubt it.

Oh, and there were a bunch of people I recognize from General Conference on their “board of directors” wall of glory. It was almost as strange as the giant Armor of God statue out front and the random Mormon art in the hallways. It was like the results of a thought exercise: “what if our institute had hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare and wanted more than anything else to get Mormons to enroll at the University?”

BTW, if enough people are interested, they just make up new majors and (from what I understand) eventually whole new departments. I decided not to apply, way back in 1997, because they didn’t offer any majors I wanted: my recommendation is now to not worry about it so much. Their cafeteria food could use a little adjusting (and they’ve adopted the silly “decaffeinated sodas only” thing,) but other than that, it’s pretty awesome. I say this as a graduate of one of the largest undergraduate institutions in the country, though. I bet there are more political science majors at OSU than there are students at SVU.

Paradox: this is the beauty of satellite radio. And a cool little FM transmitter that will let you play your MP3s on the car stereo. We only had to drive from Columbus to Lexington the one time, and we all swear by that device now.