Entry tags:
Exploring Hypotheticals
I happen to be rather fond of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aldersprig's web serial, Addergoole. It's a sort of... well, it's a dark fantasy set in a semi-dystopian mini-society in the context of a specialized boarding school for teenagers who don't know they're not human.
Anyway! A lot of bad things happen there, partly because Year 1 was full of shitheads, partly because of the way the school is designed. The latter leads to a lot of anti-administration feelings on both the parts of the students and the fans of the story.
Now the thing is, I think the entire project is fascinating. In fact, I wrote up a whole post/thread thing on it on the Addergoole forums (you need to have an account to view that thread, though) and my take on and understanding of Regine's ultimate plans and design goals when putting together Addergoole. At the bottom of my first post, I said: " Looking at it with those goals in mind, Addergoole is actually pretty well-designed."
Now, the key to this post there is pretty well-designed. Not well-designed. I personally think it could have been better if done somewhat differently. Possibly because I am less naive than Regine. Possibly just because I am a different person! But. Anyway.
That's the intro. Now I shall move on to the fun part: if I were designing Addergoole, the school, what would I have done? To that end, I've divided up the post into four sections: one for each of what I judge to be the three main goals of the institution (which I think are, for the most part, laudable goals), and one for general rules/structure.
There are two sides to the matter of breeding. One: the Ellehemaei's population has been dwindling in number and power, becoming increasingly dilute in humanity. Especially in the Shenera Endraae, who are less resistant to interbreeding with humans than the Nedetakaei. Since we are for all intents and purposes supporters of the former - who are in conflict with the latter - we would definitely want to maintain a numerical advantage. (There is also evidence Regine suspects a greater conflict to come; let us assume for the time being that I would as well.)
And two: science. How can you get purebloods from halfbreeds? Which bloodlines are the strongest? Which halfbreed characteristics breed true? Which sorts of crosses can provide what kinds of advantages in power or focus? And, of course, the simple fact of understanding how the genetics of halfbreeds work.
The one thing that both of these points share is a need for numbers. The second also benefits from a variety of combinations. What this means is that the school needs to encourage students to procreate, and to do so with as many different partners as possible. To that end, Regine's plan of school design, the birth control, encouraging promiscuity etc. are quite reasonable. The requirement of two children per student is also reasonable, as it means the girls won't be pregnant the entire time and will be able to continue their studies, while also having a reasonable minimum output equaling input.
I have toyed with requiring that each of a student's two required children have a different other-parent, but while that is reasonable on the surface in terms of wanting variety, seeing how different two children with identical parentage may end up being in terms of powers and Changes is highly valuable information as well. As such, I would leave that as-is.
Now, obviously, I would have little control over the output from the initial breeding program which was to provide the student body in terms of things such as gender and personality. However! I would also attempt to make the gender distribution per cohort as even as possible. More females is, for obvious reasons, better than more males. However, uneven male/female distribution between cohorts could lead to some years leaving the school sparse in females. This is not only unfortunate for the females, being in higher demand, but reduces the procreative potential substantially. There can only be as many children born each year as there are female students (with the unlikely but possible exceptions of twins+) and the setup requires an average of one cohort's worth of babies being born every year. e.g. there are as many newborns as new students.
Continuing on the subject of females-to-offspring ratio, this leads to what I consider a highly important point. Specifically, the time of pregnancy. This brings up a bit of a dilemma. I want to make sure there are plenty of babies born. However, I also want to provide the students with a high-quality education: intellectual, physical, and magical. I want them to be able to focus on their education and training.
The state of pregnancy is not conducive to this.
The obvious (to me) solution to this is simply for the conceptions to occur in the winter. The spring semester would be during the early stages of pregnancy, which are arguably less physically (although probably not emotionally) demanding. Ideally the third trimester would occur in the summer, with the birth occurring before the next year begins. Students would be encouraged to stay in the school or the Village for this period of time so they can receive the excellent medical support that the administration is able to provide.
The most obvious step to improve those statistics, in my opinion, is through the provided birth control. At the beginning of the year, provide the female students with actual birth control pills. Then around December or January, either stop providing them or switch them out for the ones that are actually used at AG. The difficulty with the latter is that students would probably know, as by that point most secrets would be out. That could be one of the geasa given to the upperclassmen, however.
However, while obvious, it is not very effective. It wouldn't work for any of the upperclassmen, for example, and it wouldn't work for any Kept who are not allowed to obtain birth control or who are too ashamed to see the doctor anyway. I have not yet thought of any truly effective solutions for this problem, other than possibly offering some sort of academic (or related) incentive. So while I think this issue is important, there is regrettably little that can be done about it.
(On a related note, I am still unsure as to the actual benefits of keeping the new students in the dark about the required two children. It seems as though informing the students that they are required to have children as soon as they are thoroughly settled and liable to get pregnant is a good way to make it happen; especially if you neglect to tell them how many, so they don't just wait as long as possible.)
There are, much like with breeding, two main points for this. One, providing the students with a thorough and practical understanding of how the Laws work. And two, educating the students on the dangers of abusing (and abusers of) the Law.
This is one area in which my methods would differ significantly. There are three ways of learning things: explanation, demonstration, and experience. I gave them in that order for a reason; I think those are the order in which they should be attempted. First you explain. If an explanation is not sufficient, you demonstrate. If a demonstration is not possible or is insufficient, they make a mistake and learn from experience. e.g. In order to teach a child that the stove is hot, you tell them that it is hot and will burn, and then possibly mimic being burned. If they still don't learn, one day the child will touch the stove and be burned and thus learn that stoves are hot. Taking it the other direction means you just leave the stove on and let the child reach out and put their hand on it without trying to stop them, so they learn from the experience.
This strikes me as silly, and a rather lazy approach to education. I am not really much of a fan of hands-off education, myself, which may simply be a difference in ideology between myself and the AG administration, but it is a rather significant one.
Now then. Letting the students get settled for a couple of weeks before starting to fling things at them like "oh by the way we're all magical faerie people and so are you"? This is a good idea. Introducing the information to them relatively gradually is a good idea. However, this does have the obvious flaw of leaving all the new students prone to leaning on a hot stove without even the courtesy of a warning that it might burn them. However! There is a very simple solution to that, which is quite simply to add a clause to the upperclassmen's end-of-year oaths which prevent them from Owning any new students before the Reveal. Things such as promises, oaths etc. would still be doable, so it isn't a complete safety blanket, but that's fine.
After the Reveal, roughly contemporaneous to beginning magic classes (or possibly in the first magic class, that depends on specific class structures etc.) there would be a short lecture/overview of the Law and the binding nature of oaths and promises. There would not, per se, be a warning about Keeping. The goal there is to make the students aware that they should watch what they say, and an opening of the door to let them see there is a whole world of possibilities and dangers that they are just dipping into. Using the stove analogy again, it is saying "be careful, the stove can be dangerous". You don't know how or why or what you need to do exactly to not be hurt (or to be hurt), but you know that there is Something Going On.
That largely handles the first stage education. The other two, demonstration and experience, require the other students. This is where the benefit of having students playing the roles of "good guys" and "bad guys" comes into play. I would want to have "bad guy" students; there needs to be some sort of a threat, a mistake with actual consequences for students to learn from. The stove, so to speak, needs to be turned on. The school rules would therefore allow, as Regine currently has them set up, a certain amount of... well, mistreatment of other students. (There are other reasons for this, too, which are covered in the next section.)
Doing this now, from the PoV of an outsider who has read (most of) what's been written in Addergoole but writing as if I didn't puts me in a difficult position. I know, now, having seen it, just how bad things can get. But, if I hadn't seen all of these things and the outcomes, how far would I expect students to go? How many safeties would I feel necessary to put in?
The solution to that dilemma is to just look at a typical highschool. People are bullied, beaten, driven to suicide in regular highschools. It would be safe to assume that the same sort of things would happen. And the point of this school is that, while they can make mistakes that have real consequences, they aren't that serious. At least they aren't supposed to be. They're supposed to be recoverable and act as more of a "look at what kind of shit can happen if you're not careful". So how to find that balance?
There is the monitoring, of course, but that has limits due to Sanctity. It's still a very good idea. But that leaves us, again, with needing to rely on the students. If they notice something seems to be wrong with someone else, or with a friend, they need to somehow be convinced that if they tell a teacher or their Mentor, it will be effective.
Sadly, there is no reliable way to build that into the system. Not unless I worked it into the mind control wards, and that doesn't seem very practical or reasonable.
Which brings us neatly to the topic of said mind control wards! They actually serve a very important function: three, in my opinion. One, they keep the students focused on what I want them to be learning. Two, they help avoid the rejection of strangeness from disbelief. And three, they keep the students cooperative experimental subjects. (It is a genetics experiment too, remember.)
However, I am not especially convinced that they are designed as well as they could be. I have a suspicion that they were designed more... ideologically than practically. Now, I don't know for sure that this is how they work, but the strong impression is that they repress questioning of Ellehemaei society/law/attending Addergoole, along with accepting them as necessary/inescapable/"the way things are". This seems an unnecessary and slightly over-the-top element designed to instill a more thoroughly Ellehemaei worldview and culture into the students. Quite frankly, if they live long enough around other Ellehemaei, they'll pick up all of that eventually anyway. It isn't a crucial part of their initial education at all. They need to learn how to work with, in, and around the Law, how to use magic, how their heritage affects their lives, and the rest of their schoolwork.
To that end, I would work a suppression of disbelief into the wards instead. On the surface it seems like a simple flavor variance, but it's much more significant a change than that. The difference between accepting and believing is absolutely crucial. We want them to learn these things and to not reject them as impossible. But acceptance is a tricky thing, tricky and abusable and far too much like brainwashing to my taste. Besides, who would really want to make a bunch of near-immortal teenagers accept that high school is the proper status quo for the rest of their lives? It's bad enough for normal humans without brainwashing.
The need to trigger students to Change is another reason why having a "threat" is an important part of the school structure. To the best of our knowledge, the two most effective ways to trigger a Change in an immature (halfbreed?) Ellehemaei are a) proximity to other Ellehemaei and magic (a.k.a. the "bag of bananas" effect) and b) external stressors.
Method A is easy enough to accomplish, as that is essentially what the school is by its very nature. Add in all of the magical wards laid all over the school to twist the Laws into applying to baby faeries and you've got yourself a nice big bag of bananas.
But some students are closer to Faded than others, and will need a bit more of a kick in the pants. Again, this brings up the issue of keeping things from going too far, and has precisely the same problems as with abuses of the Law.
Fortunately I just went over this fairly thoroughly, so I don't really need to do it again here. YAY! The point does remain that this is additional weight on and reasons for allowing, nay, instituting a sort of controlled amount of unpleasantries.
I feel that having students elected/volunteer for those roles and operating within certain rules may very well be the best way of handling the situation. Then you know who the threats are and how, you have the trapping and predation as dangers for those who learn by experience, but you don't have as much of a slippery-slope or snowball effect risk to worry about. How exactly one would go about setting up such a program is a significantly more complex issue, and one that would need to be developed and modified around the specific students available.
I feel like I expected there to be more of the logistics and structure outside of the three main points than I can actually think of at this point, but we'll see where this goes.
Beyond those three main purposes for the school, there is of course the general logistics and rules of conduct that would be necessary for the smooth running of the school and education. Most everything else I think are quite acceptable as-is; the class size, structure, magic class rotation, etc. I would have the information about choosing a Mentor provided in the initial course materials along with the syllabus, however. The deadline would be a week after the Reveal (at which point the additional point of considering a Mentor who matches your Word strengths and weaknesses is also given), and it would give some pointers on how to select a Mentor.
I feel like the Mentor and cy'ree are extremely valuable assets to the students and to the school, but are sadly swept aside by the unprecedented and excellent idea of a specific school for Ellehemaei. They are a perfect resource for teaching about Ellehemaei culture, about the Law, and for asking any questions about, well, anything Ellehemaei-related at all, really.
It should be impressed upon the teachers that making sure their cy'ree* is properly educated in the Law and culture and proper Shenera Endraae ethics is of great importance. I would subject all teachers to regular reviews to make sure they are doing that aspect of their job as well. Would this step outside of the traditional structure/hierarchy of a Mentor and Students? Of course it would. The whole blasted school is a flagrant flaunting of tradition, and I'll be damned if I let such a perfect tool for such a crucial aspect of the project to be wasted because I wouldn't take that one extra step. And if the teachers didn't like it? Well, they're there in the first place, so I'm sure they'd come around.
*(I think this is a proper term for the group of students a Mentor has from the PoV of the Mentor as well as of one of the cy'ree members, but am not 100% certain)
There is also the question of how much violence/fighting to allow in the halls. Not much, of course. I'd probably have that work much the same as it does in canon Addergoole (poor Luke).
I... believe that about covers things. If you think I've forgotten something or have done something wrong/right or wish to tell me how incrediblystupid brilliant I am, comment away~!
aldersprig's web serial, Addergoole. It's a sort of... well, it's a dark fantasy set in a semi-dystopian mini-society in the context of a specialized boarding school for teenagers who don't know they're not human.Anyway! A lot of bad things happen there, partly because Year 1 was full of shitheads, partly because of the way the school is designed. The latter leads to a lot of anti-administration feelings on both the parts of the students and the fans of the story.
Now the thing is, I think the entire project is fascinating. In fact, I wrote up a whole post/thread thing on it on the Addergoole forums (you need to have an account to view that thread, though) and my take on and understanding of Regine's ultimate plans and design goals when putting together Addergoole. At the bottom of my first post, I said: " Looking at it with those goals in mind, Addergoole is actually pretty well-designed."
Now, the key to this post there is pretty well-designed. Not well-designed. I personally think it could have been better if done somewhat differently. Possibly because I am less naive than Regine. Possibly just because I am a different person! But. Anyway.
That's the intro. Now I shall move on to the fun part: if I were designing Addergoole, the school, what would I have done? To that end, I've divided up the post into four sections: one for each of what I judge to be the three main goals of the institution (which I think are, for the most part, laudable goals), and one for general rules/structure.
Breeding
There are two sides to the matter of breeding. One: the Ellehemaei's population has been dwindling in number and power, becoming increasingly dilute in humanity. Especially in the Shenera Endraae, who are less resistant to interbreeding with humans than the Nedetakaei. Since we are for all intents and purposes supporters of the former - who are in conflict with the latter - we would definitely want to maintain a numerical advantage. (There is also evidence Regine suspects a greater conflict to come; let us assume for the time being that I would as well.)
And two: science. How can you get purebloods from halfbreeds? Which bloodlines are the strongest? Which halfbreed characteristics breed true? Which sorts of crosses can provide what kinds of advantages in power or focus? And, of course, the simple fact of understanding how the genetics of halfbreeds work.
The one thing that both of these points share is a need for numbers. The second also benefits from a variety of combinations. What this means is that the school needs to encourage students to procreate, and to do so with as many different partners as possible. To that end, Regine's plan of school design, the birth control, encouraging promiscuity etc. are quite reasonable. The requirement of two children per student is also reasonable, as it means the girls won't be pregnant the entire time and will be able to continue their studies, while also having a reasonable minimum output equaling input.
I have toyed with requiring that each of a student's two required children have a different other-parent, but while that is reasonable on the surface in terms of wanting variety, seeing how different two children with identical parentage may end up being in terms of powers and Changes is highly valuable information as well. As such, I would leave that as-is.
Now, obviously, I would have little control over the output from the initial breeding program which was to provide the student body in terms of things such as gender and personality. However! I would also attempt to make the gender distribution per cohort as even as possible. More females is, for obvious reasons, better than more males. However, uneven male/female distribution between cohorts could lead to some years leaving the school sparse in females. This is not only unfortunate for the females, being in higher demand, but reduces the procreative potential substantially. There can only be as many children born each year as there are female students (with the unlikely but possible exceptions of twins+) and the setup requires an average of one cohort's worth of babies being born every year. e.g. there are as many newborns as new students.
Continuing on the subject of females-to-offspring ratio, this leads to what I consider a highly important point. Specifically, the time of pregnancy. This brings up a bit of a dilemma. I want to make sure there are plenty of babies born. However, I also want to provide the students with a high-quality education: intellectual, physical, and magical. I want them to be able to focus on their education and training.
The state of pregnancy is not conducive to this.
The obvious (to me) solution to this is simply for the conceptions to occur in the winter. The spring semester would be during the early stages of pregnancy, which are arguably less physically (although probably not emotionally) demanding. Ideally the third trimester would occur in the summer, with the birth occurring before the next year begins. Students would be encouraged to stay in the school or the Village for this period of time so they can receive the excellent medical support that the administration is able to provide.
The most obvious step to improve those statistics, in my opinion, is through the provided birth control. At the beginning of the year, provide the female students with actual birth control pills. Then around December or January, either stop providing them or switch them out for the ones that are actually used at AG. The difficulty with the latter is that students would probably know, as by that point most secrets would be out. That could be one of the geasa given to the upperclassmen, however.
However, while obvious, it is not very effective. It wouldn't work for any of the upperclassmen, for example, and it wouldn't work for any Kept who are not allowed to obtain birth control or who are too ashamed to see the doctor anyway. I have not yet thought of any truly effective solutions for this problem, other than possibly offering some sort of academic (or related) incentive. So while I think this issue is important, there is regrettably little that can be done about it.
(On a related note, I am still unsure as to the actual benefits of keeping the new students in the dark about the required two children. It seems as though informing the students that they are required to have children as soon as they are thoroughly settled and liable to get pregnant is a good way to make it happen; especially if you neglect to tell them how many, so they don't just wait as long as possible.)
The Laws
There are, much like with breeding, two main points for this. One, providing the students with a thorough and practical understanding of how the Laws work. And two, educating the students on the dangers of abusing (and abusers of) the Law.
This is one area in which my methods would differ significantly. There are three ways of learning things: explanation, demonstration, and experience. I gave them in that order for a reason; I think those are the order in which they should be attempted. First you explain. If an explanation is not sufficient, you demonstrate. If a demonstration is not possible or is insufficient, they make a mistake and learn from experience. e.g. In order to teach a child that the stove is hot, you tell them that it is hot and will burn, and then possibly mimic being burned. If they still don't learn, one day the child will touch the stove and be burned and thus learn that stoves are hot. Taking it the other direction means you just leave the stove on and let the child reach out and put their hand on it without trying to stop them, so they learn from the experience.
This strikes me as silly, and a rather lazy approach to education. I am not really much of a fan of hands-off education, myself, which may simply be a difference in ideology between myself and the AG administration, but it is a rather significant one.
Now then. Letting the students get settled for a couple of weeks before starting to fling things at them like "oh by the way we're all magical faerie people and so are you"? This is a good idea. Introducing the information to them relatively gradually is a good idea. However, this does have the obvious flaw of leaving all the new students prone to leaning on a hot stove without even the courtesy of a warning that it might burn them. However! There is a very simple solution to that, which is quite simply to add a clause to the upperclassmen's end-of-year oaths which prevent them from Owning any new students before the Reveal. Things such as promises, oaths etc. would still be doable, so it isn't a complete safety blanket, but that's fine.
After the Reveal, roughly contemporaneous to beginning magic classes (or possibly in the first magic class, that depends on specific class structures etc.) there would be a short lecture/overview of the Law and the binding nature of oaths and promises. There would not, per se, be a warning about Keeping. The goal there is to make the students aware that they should watch what they say, and an opening of the door to let them see there is a whole world of possibilities and dangers that they are just dipping into. Using the stove analogy again, it is saying "be careful, the stove can be dangerous". You don't know how or why or what you need to do exactly to not be hurt (or to be hurt), but you know that there is Something Going On.
That largely handles the first stage education. The other two, demonstration and experience, require the other students. This is where the benefit of having students playing the roles of "good guys" and "bad guys" comes into play. I would want to have "bad guy" students; there needs to be some sort of a threat, a mistake with actual consequences for students to learn from. The stove, so to speak, needs to be turned on. The school rules would therefore allow, as Regine currently has them set up, a certain amount of... well, mistreatment of other students. (There are other reasons for this, too, which are covered in the next section.)
Doing this now, from the PoV of an outsider who has read (most of) what's been written in Addergoole but writing as if I didn't puts me in a difficult position. I know, now, having seen it, just how bad things can get. But, if I hadn't seen all of these things and the outcomes, how far would I expect students to go? How many safeties would I feel necessary to put in?
The solution to that dilemma is to just look at a typical highschool. People are bullied, beaten, driven to suicide in regular highschools. It would be safe to assume that the same sort of things would happen. And the point of this school is that, while they can make mistakes that have real consequences, they aren't that serious. At least they aren't supposed to be. They're supposed to be recoverable and act as more of a "look at what kind of shit can happen if you're not careful". So how to find that balance?
There is the monitoring, of course, but that has limits due to Sanctity. It's still a very good idea. But that leaves us, again, with needing to rely on the students. If they notice something seems to be wrong with someone else, or with a friend, they need to somehow be convinced that if they tell a teacher or their Mentor, it will be effective.
Sadly, there is no reliable way to build that into the system. Not unless I worked it into the mind control wards, and that doesn't seem very practical or reasonable.
Which brings us neatly to the topic of said mind control wards! They actually serve a very important function: three, in my opinion. One, they keep the students focused on what I want them to be learning. Two, they help avoid the rejection of strangeness from disbelief. And three, they keep the students cooperative experimental subjects. (It is a genetics experiment too, remember.)
However, I am not especially convinced that they are designed as well as they could be. I have a suspicion that they were designed more... ideologically than practically. Now, I don't know for sure that this is how they work, but the strong impression is that they repress questioning of Ellehemaei society/law/attending Addergoole, along with accepting them as necessary/inescapable/"the way things are". This seems an unnecessary and slightly over-the-top element designed to instill a more thoroughly Ellehemaei worldview and culture into the students. Quite frankly, if they live long enough around other Ellehemaei, they'll pick up all of that eventually anyway. It isn't a crucial part of their initial education at all. They need to learn how to work with, in, and around the Law, how to use magic, how their heritage affects their lives, and the rest of their schoolwork.
To that end, I would work a suppression of disbelief into the wards instead. On the surface it seems like a simple flavor variance, but it's much more significant a change than that. The difference between accepting and believing is absolutely crucial. We want them to learn these things and to not reject them as impossible. But acceptance is a tricky thing, tricky and abusable and far too much like brainwashing to my taste. Besides, who would really want to make a bunch of near-immortal teenagers accept that high school is the proper status quo for the rest of their lives? It's bad enough for normal humans without brainwashing.
Changing
The need to trigger students to Change is another reason why having a "threat" is an important part of the school structure. To the best of our knowledge, the two most effective ways to trigger a Change in an immature (halfbreed?) Ellehemaei are a) proximity to other Ellehemaei and magic (a.k.a. the "bag of bananas" effect) and b) external stressors.
Method A is easy enough to accomplish, as that is essentially what the school is by its very nature. Add in all of the magical wards laid all over the school to twist the Laws into applying to baby faeries and you've got yourself a nice big bag of bananas.
But some students are closer to Faded than others, and will need a bit more of a kick in the pants. Again, this brings up the issue of keeping things from going too far, and has precisely the same problems as with abuses of the Law.
Fortunately I just went over this fairly thoroughly, so I don't really need to do it again here. YAY! The point does remain that this is additional weight on and reasons for allowing, nay, instituting a sort of controlled amount of unpleasantries.
I feel that having students elected/volunteer for those roles and operating within certain rules may very well be the best way of handling the situation. Then you know who the threats are and how, you have the trapping and predation as dangers for those who learn by experience, but you don't have as much of a slippery-slope or snowball effect risk to worry about. How exactly one would go about setting up such a program is a significantly more complex issue, and one that would need to be developed and modified around the specific students available.
Logistics and Education
I feel like I expected there to be more of the logistics and structure outside of the three main points than I can actually think of at this point, but we'll see where this goes.
Beyond those three main purposes for the school, there is of course the general logistics and rules of conduct that would be necessary for the smooth running of the school and education. Most everything else I think are quite acceptable as-is; the class size, structure, magic class rotation, etc. I would have the information about choosing a Mentor provided in the initial course materials along with the syllabus, however. The deadline would be a week after the Reveal (at which point the additional point of considering a Mentor who matches your Word strengths and weaknesses is also given), and it would give some pointers on how to select a Mentor.
I feel like the Mentor and cy'ree are extremely valuable assets to the students and to the school, but are sadly swept aside by the unprecedented and excellent idea of a specific school for Ellehemaei. They are a perfect resource for teaching about Ellehemaei culture, about the Law, and for asking any questions about, well, anything Ellehemaei-related at all, really.
It should be impressed upon the teachers that making sure their cy'ree* is properly educated in the Law and culture and proper Shenera Endraae ethics is of great importance. I would subject all teachers to regular reviews to make sure they are doing that aspect of their job as well. Would this step outside of the traditional structure/hierarchy of a Mentor and Students? Of course it would. The whole blasted school is a flagrant flaunting of tradition, and I'll be damned if I let such a perfect tool for such a crucial aspect of the project to be wasted because I wouldn't take that one extra step. And if the teachers didn't like it? Well, they're there in the first place, so I'm sure they'd come around.
*(I think this is a proper term for the group of students a Mentor has from the PoV of the Mentor as well as of one of the cy'ree members, but am not 100% certain)
There is also the question of how much violence/fighting to allow in the halls. Not much, of course. I'd probably have that work much the same as it does in canon Addergoole (poor Luke).
I... believe that about covers things. If you think I've forgotten something or have done something wrong/right or wish to tell me how incredibly