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Nickolas Pompana is a 22-year-old university student who paid good money to hear a fatherly university professor admonish him on the moral dangers of casual sex.

“It really resonated with me,” he said. “When you treat somebody that way, as a hookup, what are they? Simply a tool for your pleasure.”

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It wasn’t the first time the young man defied stereotypes on Tuesday evening, as he stood outside the Conexus Arts Centre after a speaking event with Jordan Peterson. Pompana grew up on a First Nations reserve, but he expressed delight in the controversial University of Toronto professor’s call to show “gratitude” for historical figures like Sir. John A. Macdonald.

“The statue obviously stands for something. It stands for tradition,” Pompana said of an effigy to the prime minister that was recently removed in Victoria, B.C. “It stands for values, it stands for gratitude, which is exactly what Professor Peterson said.”

After the event, Pompana reflected on what he sees in Peterson. He said it feels good to be reaffirmed in his convictions, which sometimes feel out of place at the University of Regina.

“It helps me feel like I’m not crazy,” he said.

But most of all, Pompana — who came dressed in a button-up vest and shiny brown shoes — said he appreciates the professor’s focus on personal responsibility. Peterson ran through 10 of his 12 Rules for Life in a speech promoting his book of the same name. He told a near-capacity audience that “life is rife with suffering,” and urged them to do the hard work to claw their way out of it.

“Instead of blaming the structure of the world for the seeming inadequacies of being… take stock of your own inadequacies,” said Peterson.

It’s a message that proved popular with the crowd, which gave Peterson two standing ovations. But the audience — which spanned from teenagers to seniors and skewed only slightly male — reserved its sharpest applause for Peterson’s forays into politics.