What's signigicant about W&L is that the STUDENTS are conservative and remain so, despite the strong efforsts of (some of) the faculty.
The phenom of "students more conservative than faculty" is not unique to W&L, but our students are generally more conservative and our faculty less UNIFORMLY liberal.
All things considered, its a great school, IMO.
I guess, given the pool the school has to draw on - since the vast majority of universities in the country have been churning out liberal academics for generations - the faculty are bound to be liberal.