ABC News(NEW YORK) — If the only Farmville you’ve ever heard of is the Facebook game, you’re not alone.
Many members of the political masses and traveling press will be looking up directions to Farmville, Virginia, home of Longwood University, the site for this year’s vice presidential debate on Oct. 4.
Longwood University, which was founded in 1839, has never hosted a presidential or vice presidential debate before. The school’s president, W. Taylor Reveley IV, said the decision to apply stemmed from a student’s suggestion in 2014.
The students “got to talking about how the modern presidential debates have a strong connection to Virginia,” said Reveley.
The University of Richmond, located more than 60 miles northeast of Farmville, hosted the first town hall-style presidential debate between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush in 1992.
“As happens sometimes in class, organically, people got to talking about whether it was something we would ever do at Longwood,” he said.
Reveley said the idea “really stuck” and he worked out the necessary logistics for hosting such a prestigious event.
Moreover, “there’s a narrative arch in Farmville and at Longwood that’s especially relevant to the 2016 election,” Reveley said.
“The Civil War functionally drew to a close along the north end of our campus, and then the civil rights movement really took its first powerful strides at the south end of our campus, with a student-led strike at the then-all black high school,” he added.
Longwood is actually about 30 miles from the Appomattox Court House, where one of the final battles of the Civil War was fought before Gen. Lee’s Confederate Army surrendered to the Union Army in the spring of 1865.
The court house is not the only historical monument in town. A sit-in in 1951 at Robert Russa Moton High School led to the legal fight over “separate but equal” facilities in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.
Peter Eyre, a senior adviser with the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), said that the history and appreciation for politics present at Longwood likely played a role in its selection, along with other factors.
“It would be typical for each school to have something that they really feature as a compelling reason to do a debate there besides the facilities,” Eyre told ABC News.
“For each of the sites, we look at a variety of things: the facilities, the supporting cast of characters, local police, law enforcement, hotels, transportation. But there is certainly an element that we look at that is much less tangible,” he said.
Justin Pope, the chief of staff at Longwood University, said that in addition to the formal application filing, the CPD “kicks the tires, they make a number of visits to campus and see if they think you could handle it logistically.”
All told, the process took about two years, “so I do have some empathy with the campaigns,” Reveley said.
The university learned about the decision last September. Reveley said he got a call from Mike McCurry, the press secretary for former President Bill Clinton and current co-chairman of the CPD.
“He has a good sense of humor, so when he got me on the phone without any preamble he said, ‘Are you busy Oct. 4?’ and I said, I sure hope so!'” Reveley said.
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