I’v enjoyed the cafe but I don’t know if it can survive without the rest of the site. Who would be allowed to join? Would it be only about college topics or anything goes like in the current cafe? A huge part of the cafe’s charm is its audience of mostly middle-aged, thoughtful, educated parents.
A while ago I had an idea of starting a moderated forum for civil, reasoned political debate, but I couldn’t find anybody to help, didn’t have much time to spend on it, and it got overrun by spam almost immediately, so I shut it down. It’s still online though, so if you want to look at it for inspiration (the software is free and easy to adapt), I can PM you the URL.