Buena Vista College

Buena Vista College is the semi-official university of New Dunston. While it's not the only way to get an education—many people attend schools in Pittsburgh or simply learn what they need to from their faction, it is the only place in the area to get a well-rounded education about the Praetermundus.

Internal Structure

The college's faculty generally pursue their research with a great deal of independence. The school is too small to justify separate departments, and there isn't enough interest to define specific majors or degrees. Classes generally come about when a combination of pressure from students and finances convinces a professor to teach something.

People interested in obtaining an actual degree generally enroll at the University of Pittsburgh and take a few key classes at the College. (The school has an agreement with Pitt allowing classes to count for credit, and more than one person has stumbled through the cracks while trying to take an obscure class they located in Pitt's course catalog.) The remainder of the school's "students" are just people who've decided to enroll in a particular class.

The only administrators are the President, the Dean of Students, and, when the College has a seat on the Chamber of Commons, the Dean of Public Affairs, all of who are elected by the faculty from their number.

Relationships with Others

The College is deeply connected with Gaslight Hospital, and the two have at times essentially shared a seat in the Chamber of Commons. This is the situation right now—due to economic troubles, the Hospital is currently unrepresented, but is paying the College a small fee to obtain some help from their representative.

The College has a long rivalry with the factions that maintain the library, which the College has tried to gain control of in the past. Otherwise, the College's relationships tend to rise and fall based on the preferences of the current President; this does not, as one might expect, mean that the College is always friendly with the President's original faction. More than one President joined the College in part to escape from his home faction.

Children born to faculty may remain members until age sixteen, at which point they must join another faction. Most join one of the more technically minded mercantile factions, although any house except Donnelly will adopt the children of former members who left to become faculty.

History

The history of Buena Vista College begins with the history Gaslight Guild, one of the early mercantile factions in the city and a founding member of the Trade Union. The Gaslight Guild specialized in transporting explosive substances, making them the primary (and later, sole) supplier of lamp oil and gunpowder, from which they derived most of their profit.

In 1841, the resident expert in fireworks wanted to retire to pursue experiments on the impact of various knacks on gunpowder. Initially, the Gaslight Guild was reluctant to support the project, but agreed in exchange for a commitment to teaching young members of the Guild. Three years later, the Guild expanded access to members of other factions in exchange for a fee (to the Guild, which then paid his salary).

The project was stepped up in 1855, when the research finally paid off, producing a safer method of importing oil. Given the recent research success—and flush with money from the recent fighting--the Guild located a building on newly built Buena Vista Street and invited interested parties from several other factions to become faculty at the new college. Other factions objected to the Gaslight Guild having too much influence over the new school, and threatened not to participate, forcing the Guild to grant the college a fair amount of independence (and to drop the original name, Gaslight College).

Officially, the College remained under Gaslight jurisdiction, although it exercised almost complete administrative independence, and more than half its faculty were "on loan" from other factions.

The next few decades were devastating to the Gaslight Guild. In the 1870's, it was ruled that the Guild's monopoly on gunpowder importation did not extend to the cartridges that were rapidly becoming standard, cutting off one of their two main incomes. Buena Vista College was made an independent faction as part of the Tripartite Agreement, and the extension of electricity dealt a death blow to the faction—the Guild officially dissolved in 1924.

Meanwhile, Buena Vista took advantage of its new independence, and the peace that followed the Tripartite Agreement, to significantly expand, adding several more buildings the North Side. Independence from the Gaslight Guild brought about private licensing agreements with other factions, and by the 1920's, almost every researcher in the city worked for the college, the old practice of keeping in-house researchers having become completely uneconomical.

Over the next few decades, interest in supernatural physiology increased to the point that it merited opening a whole new wing in the Hill District (which was then undergoing renovation), and Gaslight Hospital opened in 1955. In 1961, the College successfully petitioned to be split into two factions, granting them the ability to buy a second seat on the Chamber of Commons.

Since then, the College and Hospital have remained close. On several occasions, when faced with financial downturns, the two have worked out an agreement to split a seat on Commons.