Academia

Mortal

“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.”
Nassim Taleb
“But it’s not about you or us, or the tests or the system, it’s what they expect of themselves. I mean, every single one of them know they’re headed back to the corners. Their brothers and sisters, shit, their parents, they came through these same classrooms, didn’t they? We pretended to teach them, they pretended to learn, where’d they end up? Same damn corners. They’re not fools, these kids. They don’t know our world, but they know their own. I mean, Jesus, they see right through us.”
Bunny Colvin, The Wire
“A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Overview

Knowledge is power. Everyone knows that, or at the least has heard that. Academia is a fairly straightforward grouping that covers all aspects of academic life. Contacts and Allies can be found in teachers, professors, deans, students, and sororities and fraternities.

K-12 Education

Louisiana has one of the lowest literacy and graduation rates in the United States. New Orleans’ public school system was long considered to be in shambles and was almost entirely privatized into for-profit charter schools after Hurricane Katrina. The results were disastrous: old schools that had been long-time community centers shuttered their doors. Graduation rates remain abysmally low. Fraud and mismanagement are commonplace. Many teachers in the majority-black schools are white, inexperienced, and strangers to the communities in which they teach. Metal detectors and armed police officers are a common sight on campuses.

Anyone in New Orleans who can afford it sends their children to private schools. Education is a world apart at these selective institutions, where graduation and college acceptance rates can be as high as 100%. Yearly tuition costs run from a little over $4,000 to as much as $20,000. Although the city’s most prestigious schools are stereotyped as being exclusive to old money families who can trace their genealogies back to the Antebellum, many middle-class parents will suck up the cost when attendance increases their child’s odds of qualifying for a money-saving scholarship at a good college. Still, families who only financially contribute to the schools through tuition aren’t the ones who get their names put on buildings.

Kindred, for the most part, have minimal interest in K-12 education. There’s more money and prestige to be found among universities. And when it comes to feeding, even monsters can still have standards.

Background Dots	Level of Influence
•	Teaching assistant
••	Teacher
•••	Senior teacher
••••	Principal
•••••	School superintendent

Higher Education

New Orleans’ higher education complex comprises 12 public and private colleges and universities. Most of the problems facing primary and secondary education in the city are nonexistent here. However, vampires—especially young ones—are far more attracted to college campuses and fraternity rows. Universities are a fountain of fresh-faced souls stepping out into the world for the first time; melodramatic young minds easily misled and in over their heads make easy targets. To the monsters it’s like shooting fish (out-of-water) in a barrel. Students are so needy. Can’t make a college payment? Lost a boyfriend to a rival classmate (or worse, a professor)? Love getting blackout-drunk at the dive bar down the block from the school? Vampires have so much to offer—and, when they get tired of making offers, they can just feed with little fear of repercussion. No one thinks anything of a student who shows up to class pasty-faced and tired—or disappears altogether. Student populations are so transient, after all.

Other, older vampires find themselves attracted more to the halls of academia than to the student body. The architecture, the pomp and circumstance, the storied campuses and educational methods that have barely changed since the adoption of the Greek model… all of this brings a certain creature comfort to that type of vampire, to say nothing of the considerable resources that universities can bring to bear for scholarly-minded Kindred. The Tremere and Ordo Dracul are particularly known for cultivating influence among institutions of higher education.

Background Dots	Level of Influence
•	Adjunct professor
••	Non-tenured professor
•••	Tenured professor
••••	Department chair
•••••	University president

Tulane University

Non sibi sed suis
(“Not for oneself, but for one’s own”)
Tulane school motto

Tulane University (officially The Tulane University of Louisiana or simply TU) is a private, nonsectarian research university located in Riverbend. It is considered the top university and the most selective institution of higher education in the state of Louisiana. The nearly 14,000-student school is known to attract a geographically diverse student body, with 85% of undergraduate students coming from over 300 miles away.

Founded as a public medical college in 1834, the school grew into a comprehensive university in 1847 and was eventually privatized under the endowments of Paul Tulane and Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1884. Tulane is a member of the Association of American Universities and the colloquial Southern Ivy League.

Tulane’s primary campus is located in Uptown New Orleans on St. Charles Avenue, directly opposite of Audubon Park, and extends north to South Claiborne Avenue through Freret and Willow Street. The campus is known colloquially as the Uptown or St. Charles campus. It was established in the 1890s and occupies more than 110 acres of land. The campus is known both for its large live oak trees as well as its architecturally historic buildings.

The Board of Tulane

The Board of Tulane is Tulane’s highest governing body. It consists of 40 members and 39 emeritus members who have little involvement with the school’s day-to-day administration.

Senior Leadership

Tulane’s day-to-day administration is overseen by around 100 associate provosts, vice presidents, deans, and C-level executives. The most senior of these are the provost, president, and senior vice president.

Academia Influence •••••

Edward McGregor

Born: 1946
Status: Tulane University •••••
Edward McGregor is the 13th and current president of Tulane University, having held the position since 1999. McGregor is a Princeton graduate, former economics professor, and prolific author who has written more than a hundred peer-reviewed articles and five books. He was widely panned for chartering a private helicopter flight to Houston on Tulane’s dime after Katrina hit the city, and for using the university’s subsequent rebuilding and academic reorganization to push through a number of pet initiatives, including the dismissal of numerous tenured faculty and the elimination and merger of the quasi-independent Newcomb College women’s college into Tulane’s larger body. Increased tuition, reliance upon adjunct professors, and perceived tone-deafness towards campus sexual assaults have led to repeated calls by the student body and younger faculty members for him to step down, though he shows little inclination to do so. When not on campus, McGregor makes his personal residence in an Audubon Place mansion built by Samuel “Sam the Banana Man” Zemurray, the founder of Chiquita Banana, who willed the home to Tulane’s presidents.

Academia Influence ••••

Harrison Abel

Born: 1943
Family: The Abels
Status: Tulane University ••••
The dean of Tulane Law School, Harrison Abel is the 72-year-old former hippie anti-war protester who stubbornly refuses to resign or die despite the terminal cancer and three months to live diagnosis he’s battled for the last eight months. A brilliant legal mind and fierce liberal, Harrison’s great shame is that his son refused to follow in his footsteps and instead became another mindless cog in the United States’ war machine. He decried greed throughout his life and spent most of his years teaching, living relatively modestly. This has come back to haunt him in his old age as his treatment costs have eaten away at his meager savings and forced him, without his knowledge, to rely on his son’s “ill-gotten” wealth. Despite his terrible physical state, Harrison retains a wry sense of humor, and though the chemo sucks at his strength he continues to carry out his duties as best he can.

Faculty & Staff

Tulane has over 4,600 full-time personnel and is the largest private employer in New Orleans.

Academia Influence ••••

Isaiah Wellington

Born: 1954
Status: Tulane University ••••
Professor at Tulane Law School. Isaiah is an old man in his 60s with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law who largely seems to view his Tulane professorship as a form of “retirement.” It’s unclear in what capacity he practiced law when he was younger: he’s fairly terse on the subject, but popular gossip among the student body holds that he was a former judge or federal prosecutor who was involved in government corruption or organized crime cases, leading to multiple death threats against him in his former job. He is enrolled in Louisiana’s Address Confidentiality Program, meaning his personal address and telephone number are not a matter of public record. Between this fact and his dislike of communicating through email, he is one of Tulane Law’s harder professors to get ahold of (much to the frustration of the student body), though he maintains strict office hours. He walks with a pronounced limp on his right side and is never seen without his silver-tipped cane, which he jabs with to make points during class lectures. Student rumor holds the limp is due to a failed attempt on his life by the same parties that threatened him. Isaiah hasn’t confirmed or denied anything, but there is very little at Tulane that seems to rattle or impress him. Since Harrison Abel’s cancer, his name has been floated as a potential replacement dean.

Academia Influence •••

Philémon Delacroix

Born: 1961
Family: The Delacroixes
Status: Tulane University •••
Bayou-born environmental activist and associate professor of economics. Specializes in ecological economics and social accounting. Brother to Clarice Delacroix, father to Lena Merinelli and Emmett Delacroix, and on non-speaking terms with his son.

Tanya Delacroix

(née Landreneau)
Born: 1955
Family: The Delacroixes, the Landreneaus
Status: Tulane University •••
Former Civil Rights activist and sociology professor. Half-sister to Ronnie Landreneau, mother to Lena Merinelli and Emmett Delacroix, and on non-speaking terms with her son.

Academia Influence ••

Hannah Cahn

Born: 1984
Family: The Cahns
Status: Tulane University •••
Assistant art professor. Described by Alice Guillot as “mousy and awkward, knocks stuff over all the time, but nice.” In a relationship with Megan Garrett, who she works together with on floats for Southern Decadence and other parades.

Graduate Students

Tulane has around 4,000 postgraduate and professional students.

Academia Influence ••

David Flores

Born: 1993
Family: The Flores
Older son of Maxen and Diana Flores. Recently returned from college at Liberty University in Virginia, he’s enrolled at Tulane Law School pursuant to following his father’s career into politics. Interns for his father’s congressional office when not attending school. While David strives to be the model son, he’s suffered from anxiety disorder since childhood that his father always believed he needed to “get over” and dreads nothing more than a panic attack hitting him at an inconvenient moment.

Edward Cherry

Born: 1987
Family: The Cherrys
Wheelchair-bound son of Noelle and Francis Cherry, older brother to Hillary Cherry, and now-TA seeking his master’s degree at Tulane, Edward joined the Marines out of college and commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was sent to Afghanistan, where he was maimed by an IED and discharged after less than a year. He tries to keep upbeat and focused on his future without letting his disability impede him, but he’d always been athletic and is privately enraged by his newfound physical weakness. He’s now fiercely anti-war and a strong advocate of withdrawal from forward deployment by U.S. forces, though that cause has lost political traction over the years. He has a strong influence on his mother’s politics with regards to foreign policy and eventually hopes to go into politics himself, perhaps from a policymaking perspective. He’s missing his left leg below the knee but is much more impeded by the spinal damage he suffered.

Academia Influence •

Rebecca “Becca” Flynn

Born: 1991
Family: The Flynns
Tulane Law senior struggling to keep her head afloat financially. Born to working-class parents, Becca’s rebellious youth (and coming out) estranged her from her deeply religious parents and stuck her out on her own. She’s made her way working mostly service-industry jobs and occasionally moonlighting as an escort, but more recently has worked in the Corner Club as a bartender. She supplements her income by keeping an eye on Westley Malveaux when he visits the club (which is often), but desperately wants to just finish her degree and get a “real” job. Secretly visits with her mother every other week, and tries to visit her brother Malcolm at least once a month. Wants to go into criminal law as a defense attorney, and contends he got a raw deal.

Undergraduate Students

Tulane has around 8,000 undergraduate students. 85% of students come to Tulane from over 300 miles away, with the average student traveling more than 900 miles. Approximately 26% of alumni remain in New Orleans after graduation.

Academia Influence ••

Angela Greer

Born: 1993
Family: The Greers
Dorm supervisor at Josephine Louise House. Philosophy major and active participant in a number of student organizations, including the Tulane Philosophy Club, Queer Student Alliance, and SAPHE (Sexual Aggression Peer Hotline & Education). Angela comes from an upper-middle class family—a lawyer father and artist mother with a home in Uptown. Older sister of the more trouble-prone Summer Greer, who her parents insisted she share a dorm room with to “look after” (much to Summer’s resentment). Member of the semi-secret society Pi Alpha Kappa.

Miranda “f0xx[DR]” Lewis

Born: 1994
Family: The Lewises
Conspiracy-spouting gray hat hacker who seemingly never attends class or leaves her dorm room. How she’s made it through Tulane (or managed to stay in the dorms past her first year) is a question of some curiosity to her dormmates, who regard her room as a black hole on the floor that nothing sentient enters or leaves—including light.

Seamus Miller

Bisexual political science major active in the school’s College Democrats as the chapter’s vice president, Seamus comes from both a religious and military family, and enjoys bucking the trend with them (despite relatively good relations still) at every turn. Something of a tramp on campus in the three years he’s been there, and well-known for his active social life. Paints recreationally, especially massive wall-sized landscapes in his (or his most recent paramour’s) bedroom, much to the annoyance of the college which has to paint over it in campus housing. Quietly has a black belt in both karate and taekwondo, and wrestled in high school at the insistence of his parents. Highly confident and sure of himself, and capable of selling even somewhat obscure hobbies and interests as perfectly normal.

Academia Influence •

Beth Hudson

Beth is the classic case of “so close” being “not close enough.” She comes from a lower-middle class background and her scholarship to Tulane was enough to cover most of her tuition, but not quite enough. Her family initially helped cover the difference, but two years in she realized what a strain it was putting on them, and on their marriage, when they nearly lost their house. She couldn’t bear to continue taking their money after wiping out their savings, but also couldn’t find a legitimate job that paid enough to support her and her tuition. She was on the verge of dropping out when Elysian presented itself as an option that would allow her to keep her dream. All it cost was her self-respect and (as she perceived it) integrity when she’d intended to wait until marriage before having sex, but it was a path to help her parents get out from under the debt they’d landed in. Even for a good Christian girl, and perhaps especially for one, it wasn’t something she could pass up.

Chastity Pierce

Born: 1995
Family: The Pierces
Chastity is a twenty-year-old pursuing a degree in engineering that happens to work on the side as a second-generation prostitute. Dusky-skinned, long-limbed, well-proportioned and professional, she’s worked for Christina Roberts for very near on two years, having been introduced to the business right out of high school by her sister Charity. Their mother was a hooker until she was strangled and dumped in the Mississippi when Chastity was nine years old, landing her and her older sister in the foster care system where both were molested both multiple foster families right up until Charity turned 18, moved into her own apartment, and was able to adopt then-15-year-old Chastity with the money she made working for Roberts. Insisting on a future for her outside of the “family” business, she held Chastity’s feet to the fire and forced her to focus on her academics, the result of which was her scholarship to Tulane. Not particularly religious and very busy between her job and schooling. Very intelligent, but somewhat awkward among her peers: she’s never been on a non-work related date.

Eddie Tremain

Born: 1994
Senior at Tulane majoring in chemistry, with an eye towards pharmaceutical research. Quite talented, with the ear of much of the chemistry faculty and keys to most of the labs. Deeply closeted to all but his closest friends, and terrified his deeply religious family will find out. Often builds rockets in his spare time and experiments with various means of chemical propulsion.

Emma McCarthy

Desk coordinator at Tulane’s Josephine Louise House majoring in geology.

Jacob “Jake” Kingsley

Boyfriend of Maria Matranga, platonic friend of Alice Guillot’s, and employee at her mother’s bookstore. Jake is considered a slacker by his often frustrated family and has an attitude towards his job that could generously be described as “laid back” due to his proclivity for smoking weed while working—though he’s still prudent enough not to do so around his less understanding boss Michelle, who he considers a hardass.

Jessica Moran

Jessica is an art history student with a dark secret. When she was still in high school she left her best friend to die when he overdosed at a party, choosing to flee rather than seek treatment for him. The event has haunted her ever since. She’s never confessed it to anyone, and her deeply religious parents living out of Athens, Georgia have no idea that their “perfect little angel” has embarked on an increasingly self-destructive path while away at school, dabbling in drugs, drinking heavily, and putting herself in compromising circumstances. It’s also influenced her studies. Once a political science major, she’s increasingly shifted her focus to more esoteric classes, quietly changing her major to art history and focusing on macabre topics and dark visuals, somewhat to the dismay of many of her religiously-inclined teachers.

Jillian Spell

Jillian is a voluptuous blonde with a friendly and outgoing personality. She was bullied as a preteen for experiencing early-onset puberty and the associated acne and large breasts that came with it, and still hasn’t gotten over the self-esteem problems she developed as a result. She views her current occupation as a way to express how she’s ‘overcome’ her body image issues while validating her looks. She also finds it easier to have “relationships” with partners who have already made their interest in her expressly clear. The fact it pays the bills too is a bonus. Jillian enjoys rich meals and deserts, and works out compulsively to offset her guilt over her eating habits.

Kelsey Hazard

Kelsey doesn’t actually need the money or potential influence brought on by her employment at the Elsyian escort agency. She comes from an upper-middle class family, but enjoys acting out against her family and considers working as a call girl a safer way to indulge that desire. Kelsey is a glasses-wearing redhead who attends Tulane by day but has no idea what she wants out of life, or what to do at school. She takes courses largely without purpose and has no major in mind. She is picky in her assignments at Elysian, much to the annoyance of Audrey Morrow. The former prostitute-turned-madame puts up with it mostly because Kelsey checks so many boxes for those clients she does have—including more than one work associate of her father’s who enjoys the sight of Kelsey on her knees.

Kyra Black

Kyra comes from the Ninth Ward’s most squalid slums, and all her looks and smarts weren’t enough to get her out of them on her own. Instead that golden ticket away from her alcoholic mother and deadbeat father cost her something else: her integrity and self-respect. Though she bills herself as a model to her friends, Kyra is a cam-girl and occasional porn star, flying out to California for “amateur” shoots when money gets tight (usually when tuition comes due). Now a sophomore at Tulane, Kyra lives in dread that someday someone will recognize her, and that the carefully crafted life she’s built in Riverbend will come crashing down. Until then she dreams of a life after college in which she isn’t forced to expose herself for money. Double majoring in Finance and Organizational Communication and maintains an active social life, trying to not only maintain the appearance of normalcy, but cling to the life that she has paid so much to have in the first place.

Logan Flores

Born: 1997
Family: The Flores
Younger son of Maxen and Diana Flores. Currently attending college at Tulane University. With his older brother “beating him” into entering politics through the time-honored path of law, as well as attending a more respectable college in Maxen’s eyes (Logan’s application to Liberty University was rejected), he’s hoped to win his father’s approval by commissioning in the Army through its ROTC program. So far his efforts seem to be only partly working: while Maxen considers his younger son’s intended career path an estimable one, he has expressed disappointment that Logan didn’t get into West Point if he was “really serious” about the idea of serving his country, and has chided him for not deciding that was something he wanted to do in high school. Frustrated, Logan has struggled to keep up with coursework, and the physical fights he’s gotten into with other students might eventually get him booted from the ROTC even with his father’s influence.

Maria Matranga

Born: 1997
Family: The Matrangas
Younger daughter of Silver Penny Sal, consigliere for the New Orleans Mafia. Freshman and biology major who intends to go to med school. Girlfriend to Jacob “Jake” Kingsley and platonic friend to Alice Guillot, who she walked home with over the Companion App after the latter got out from a recent evening class.

Megan Bevanns

A would-be actress and theater major, Megan is a petite young woman with dark hair that she frequently dyes multiple colors. Emotionally damaged by abuse as a child and her father’s subsequent suicide, she came to treat physical intimacy casually and proved an ideal candidate for recruitment into both Elysian and Caroline Malveaux-Devillers’ herd. She attends community college, taking a few credits every semester, with the stated goal of working on a degree that she’d like to transfer to a four-year school “someday.” In the interim, she’s worked a number of dead-end jobs in fast food, restaurants, and even amusement parks and fairs. She throws herself into relationships that almost always spectacularly explode when partners (who are usually attracted by her easy approach to sex and not looking for emotional intimacy) realize how needy she really is, which only further reinforces the cycle.

Moonshadow

Nancy Lou Sweeney came to New Orleans for a bachelorette party and decided to stay. She flew home long enough to give the speech at her sister’s wedding and pack her stuff. Now enrolled at LSU, Nancy Lou is a poetry major that has a habit of taking “whatever seems interesting.” Likes to LARP, play trading card games, and participate in other nerdy hobbies in her spare time; what she lacks in skill she makes up for in enthusiasm. Somewhat maligned for not being a “real nerd girl” and going to raves. Prefers to go by her online handle of “Moonshadow” even in real life, and refuses to answer to any other name. She also claims to be a witch and capable of casting magical spells.

Natalia Garcia

Born: 1997
Family: The Garcias
Daughter of Colombian immigrants and first generation in her family to attend college. Junior on a scholarship with dreams of pursuing her MD. Seven months pregnant at present with the child of Jake Abel, but is determined not to let it get in the way of her dreams. From a large Latino family that embraced her pregnancy and Jake as their new son, despite his fears. Slight frame that makes her pregnancy all the more obvious.

Natalie Andrews

Born: 1992
Family: The Andrews
The only daughter of an established and influential family with a history that goes back to the 19th century, Natalie is a senior at Tulane and regular attendee at the New Orleans Dance Academy. Lithe, graceful, and with a poetry to her motion that makes her a treat to watch, her instructors all believe she has great potential. Classically trained since she was seven, Natalie, now 23, dreams of making it big in New York City, but her family have resisted at every turn. For them, her dancing is a hobby, something to round her out as a person and a prospect. It’s been a mark of pride for them, but little more, with the expectation that once she finishes college at Tulane she’ll relegate it to a hobby. Naturally quiet and reserved, she remains too timid to go against their wishes for now, however much the prospect of putting her dreams on hold hurts her. Works as a part-time receptionist at Flawless Spa.

Nathaniel Hite

Born: 1997
Deceased: 2016 (19 years old)
Chemistry major facing potential expulsion after placing his dorm room up for rent on Airbnb and moving back in with his parents to help pay for tuition. Recently deceased.

Scott Allen

A mechanical and electrical engineering student with a talent for computers, Allen comes off to many as awkward and weird, particularly with women. He’s far more comfortable on online communities, but despite his awkwardness he’s generous at heart. Set a quarterly challenge for himself to raise $2,500 a semester towards charity in his freshman year, and has met that goal by building computers out of his own money and raffling them off. Scott isn’t religious, though occasionally jokes that his religion is “Jedi.” Slightly overweight, though it hides the muscle on his frame (he enjoys lifting but not cardio).

Summer Greer

Born: 1997
Family: The Greers
Younger sister to Angela Greer, Summer has had a turbulent freshman year at Tulane so far, with two arrests for underage drinking and public intoxication. Dorms in the Josephine Louise House with her big sister and is forbidden from attending parties without her. The daughter of an affair with the housekeeper during a separation between her father and stepmother, Summer has always lived in her sister’s shadow.

Trenton Nowak

Born: 1993
Deceased: 2015 (22 years old)
Former political science student with aspirations of becoming a community organizer. Fan of Metropolis and other old movies. Transgender and estranged from his family. Deceased following his suicide.

Trevor Nguyen

Computer science student. Member of the hacktivist group Mirror_Mirror and friend of Alice Guillot’s, who he enjoys teasing for watching girl-on-girl porn.

The McGehee School for Girls

“For decades McGehee has been the institution by which the elite in New Orleans shield their young women from the blacks, the Jews, the poor, and the different, protecting them from ideas and associations that might lure them from their manifest destiny.”
Eli S. Evans, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South
“It’s the best school in the city. Maybe the best in the state. I once read an article that described it as ’ the debutante West Point.’ Everyone at McGehee succeeds. It’s a matter of pride. I know it is, certainly, to my aunt."
Caroline Malveaux-Devillers to Amelie Savard

The Louise S. McGehee School for Girls is an all-girls private, nondenominational independent school located in the Garden District. It was founded by its namesake in 1912 and remains one of the two premier schools in New Orleans (alongside the Catholic-run Ursuline Academy) for wealthy families to send their daughters. Tuition runs approximately $20,000 a year.

The Board of Trustees

McGehee is overseen by a 31-member board of trustees, many of whom are school alumni, parents of current or former students, or both. Five of these members sit on the executive committee.

Several of the Board’s known members include Abélia Devillers, Lyman Whitney, and Vera Malveaux.