Word: hampden
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...homecoming day at Virginia's Hampden-Sydney College, and the playing field, ironically called Death Valley, is alive with the old-fashioned spirit of amateur competition. No TV cameras or pro scouts here. Sprawling on the sidelines, students and alumni sip beer, bloodies and bourbon as the home-town Tigers are tamed 7-6 by the Generals from Washington and Lee. It seems a perfect postcard of an all-American scene. But look a little closer. A few details are amiss. The pep band in the stands has only male members. There is not a curvy cheerleader in sight...
Welcome to a world where only men are usually welcomed. Hampden-Sydney (enrollment: 770) and Washington and Lee (1,332) are among the nation's oldest colleges. The first was established six months before the Declaration of Independence; among its founding fathers: James Madison and Patrick Henry. The second, dating from 1749, was endowed by George Washington himself and later headed by Confederate General Robert...
...alter a thing." Academically that is true. What most of the five schools did do, however, was to sell prospective students and parents harder on the traditional virtues of the small, all-male college. Among them: a teacher-student ratio of 12 to 1 or better, a conservative curriculum (Hampden-Sydney was the last U.S. college to drop its classical language requirement) and sport programs in which, as W. & L. Admissions Director Bill Hartog puts it, "you don't have to weigh 250 pounds and run a four-second 40-yard dash to play football...
...source of entertainment and pleasure, something one consumes as one consumes sports cars." Hodges also believes that women make a positive contribution in the classroom, both because they add to the diversity of viewpoints and, he says, because they tend to take their schoolwork more seriously than men. Hampden-Sydney Junior Tom Robinson agrees: "All-male schools breed bigots and chauvinists...
...Viet Nam, and as a major taught at West Point. He left the Army with feelings of sympathetic frustration over watching good men fight a useless war in the wrong way. He became president of Briarcliff College, wrote another novel (The Advent of Frederick Giles), and moved to Hampden-Sydney in 1977. His time is spent now with his students, and with Brahms, Carlyle, and a strong spirit still to be savored among those Virginia hills, Stonewall Jackson...