The best thing about Washington and Lee is that you can meet professors during their office hours most of the time and, if not, you can arrange a meeting with them without any hassle.
The school was too small for my personal tastes. I find that bigger and larger communities tend to have higher scales of competition and therefore better quality of people the higher the social stratosphere.
How do people react when I tell them I’m from Washington and Lee? Well… it depends on the place. In Korea, when I tell people I’m from Washington and Lee University, they reply, “Ah, Washington University, that’s in D.C. (or Seattle) right?” I just shake my head and agree. In the Bible belt region (US), educated people recognize the name and associate it with a top tier school, likewise in the Northeast regions, but only in big cities.
On campus I spend most of my time in classrooms or the gym. The rest of my time was spent at home or in my room. College town… well, Lexington had two bars when I went there I think they have three now. Most of the social scene happens in fraternity parties or extracurricular (non-alcoholic) events held by different organizations on campus.
My opinion of the administration is mixed. The administration, as in non academic administrators only (which would exclude most professors), does what is in their best interests as any administration would do. Since everyone smiles a lot there it is hard to distinguish genuinely friendly and honest people and superficially friendly and dishonest people.
The biggest recent controversy… well, one aspect that really appealed to me was that Washington and Lee has a student body hearing for any major judicial matter that might occur so most of it is public some others are private. However there are two catches to this. One is that you have to be socially active, by being in a frat or constantly read every weekly massive spam mails they send. Two, is that not every issue makes it to a student body hearing. From my perspective, a lot of “behind the doors” politics occurs that not everyone is allow to know about.
There is a lot of school pride.
Unusual? I guess it would depend on your perspective on things. I found the popularity of pink cloths amongst the males quite um… unusual. Don’t get me wrong, most girls can wear pink clothes and still be fashionable, and few guys can manage to pull it off every now and then. But I remember staggering home in a drunk one night seeing flocks of guys wearing very similar clothing all in pink. It’s a memory I’ll associate only with W&L parties and gay pride parades. Not that I have anything against either, but I would not go out of my way to join them.
One experience I’ll always remember… ah… there were a few times I lost my wallet on campus. Most of the times the wallet was returned will all the money intact. It is a unique positive aspect of W&L, and maybe it’s a thing only found at W&L.
What do students complain about… I don’t know. I what do students complain about? School work I guess?