Post by GnRmod on Sept 11, 2010 15:38:06 GMT -4
An acceptance letter has arrived to Monroe University - an academic achievement and the key to a thousand doors, but maybe, just maybe a mixed blessing worth thinking over...
Situated in Northern California, just slightly inland from a long row of pristine beach land, lies one of the country's most prestigious universities: Monroe University. Founded by descendants of President James Monroe, the university has everything from its own private stretch of beach to world wide reputation for academic excellence. Monroe University is as elite and competitive as one might imagine it to be and stands among the most prestigious Ivy League Institutions.
On the surface, Monroe looks perfect: All the history of the East Coast Ivy League with the endless summers of West Coast paradise. Prestigious buildings, decorated professors, and the white sanded shores of Northern California sounds too good to be true, right?
T H A T S B E C A U S E I T I S
Delve a little further into the exclusive, glamorous world of Monroe and a trail of mystery emerges, centered around the elusive Graves and Roses, the most elite and powerful secret society on this particular coast. Everyone who's anyone is a member, but then again they'd never tell you. Freshmen are just dying to get in... literally.
Last year, tragedy struck Monroe when alleged Graves and Roses member Aaron Teegarden was killed in a car accident. Although nothing was ever made official, rumors circulated the campus that there was more to his death than was ever made public. His little brother joining the Graves and Roses quelled rumors momentarily, but Aaron's devastated girlfriend, ex-campus sweetheart, doesn't seem to sleep anymore and his best friend, a journalism major, keeps digging and not too quietly.
The latest death, the supposed overdose of hardworking scholarship student, Charlotte LeBeck, must be a coincidence, right?
Across campus, at the Sigma Pi Fraternity House, a freshman scholarship student named Anna Tate was found naked and unconscious after a raucous social mixer. Supposedly, she reported to the police that the fraternity president and three of the high ranking members had raped her. It would have been a matter of he said, she said if not for her blood work revealing an incriminating mixture of drugs. Strangely, a week later all charges were dropped. Did old money change hands?
The idea of class action needs redefining when one considers the rumors that a tenured professor has had indiscretions with more than one of his nubile Freshman students. No one ever seems to give the incoming Freshmen a word of warning. Tenure, after all, means untouchable.
Silence is golden in and out of the classroom. The Graves and Roses are so quiet members are hard to identify beyond the obviously wealthy suspects. The fraternities and sororities know how to draw ranks faster than a military formation. There's no such thing as free press either with the University newspaper having faculty on staff. Rumors, gossip, and, of course, overheard whispers are the most reliable forms of truth.
Believe the campus myths if you choose to or else take Monroe at face value, the playground of the privileged where bright young things party, study and above all, cause scandal.