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tangent101 · 4 years

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Corruption at Blackwell Academy

Nothing does better to help point out the corruption at the root of Arcadia Bay than their pride and joy, Blackwell Academy. This private high school has, according to Max, one of the best art programs in the country and in many ways works more like a private college than a high school (including having dorms). But there is a dark heart beating in Blackwell, and that is the Prescott family. This heart has tainted the academy and the surrounding community.

When Max ventures forth into Arcadia Bay itself, she mentions that a lot of businesses have shut down. It used to have a thriving fishing industry but that has collapsed, while businesses supporting fishing have also dried up until there’s only a few areas which still bring in business - and these businesses naturally have Sean Prescott’s strings attached to them, such as the gated community he’s trying to have built.

Further, it seems the Prescott Manor is located at the heart of Arcadia Bay, even as Blackwell is at the “head” (the high point) of the community. While I’m a bit surprised it’s not oceanfront property, thematically it makes sense for Prescott Manor to be where it is - a hidden property we never see, but which ultimately touches everything around it.

Seeing that Blackwell itself plays a prominent role for the game (with over half of the game set at the school), it makes sense that we’d see the worse of Arcadia Bay’s corruption (and the Prescott influence over it) at the school, and we easily do so with Principal Raymond Wells himself.

On the surface, Wells seems to be a typical administrator. He’s one of the few black characters in the game, and the only one in a position of authority. But with Max’s first encounter with him, we get our first taste of how far Prescott corruption has taken hold with Wells accusing Max of “having something to hide” off of the most flimsy of reasons... and while on the surface he takes her claims of Nathan having a gun seriously, he never bothers to send his head of security to search Nathan’s room.

Seriously. If David Madsen had searched Nathan’s room, he’d have found information on Nathan’s gun (if not the gun itself), the photograph of Chloe in a compromised position, and more. The game would have gone far far differently in that case. And it would have been a reasonable precaution. If Max was lying or mistaken about the gun? Then Wells would have been in a position to force Max to formally apologize to Nathan for her words! Meanwhile he’d have looked effective at his job! Instead he pulls Nathan in for a quick verbal warning and that leads Nathan to assaulting Max in the parking lot.

We also learn from Chloe that Wells is a drunk. Now Chloe isn’t exactly the best person to talk to about these things. She refers to the school as Blackhell and got expelled, so she may be prejudiced about this. But we actually get to see Wells drinking whiskey at the end of Chapter 1. Further, in Chapter 3 when Max and Chloe search his office, you find he has several bottles of liquor hidden away. And trust me, if you tried drinking on the job or even just at the job after you were out for the night, and weren’t working at a bar... then you’re going to get written up at the very least.

Drugs and alcohol are quite evident in Blackwell, both among the administration and the student body. We can find a known drug dealer’s RV parked in the Blackwell Academy parking lot at one point. We learn that Rachel Amber (beloved icon and the lost Lenore of Life is Strange) was a drug mule for said drug dealer. We learn that Nathan Prescott also deals and distributes drugs at Blackwell (and Chloe accuses him of that when we first encounter Chloe and Nathan in the Blackwell bathroom).

Several students end up drugged by date rape drugs that were acquired from Frank Bowers (who never thought to consider their possible use for sexual assault apparently). One student admits to getting high before class, and at the End of the World event, the Vortex Club is full of students drinking alcohol and getting high off of various drugs (many of which Nathan provided). In fact it seems clear that Nathan’s popularity among the jocks is due to his being the middleman between Frank and their own drug habits.

David Madsen is another sign of the corruption at Blackwell. He is not a wise choice to have as chief of security for a school of rich teenagers. When we first meet him, he yells at Max for not leaving the school promptly when she leaves the bathroom. Excuse me? What is it women do in bathrooms? If you were in the middle of something when a fire alarm went off, would you just pull up your underwear, fix your clothes, and leave? No. You’d clean up first. And that takes a minute or two. If David were given any actual training, he’d have just treated her decently and told her to evacuate with the rest of the students and faculty.

(That’s another thing. There is a set procedure in place for fire alarms. Students and faculty are to line up outside so that the fire department knows everyone is safe and no one is trapped in the building. This was not done. Sure, part of this is to get the game moving rather than show boring realistic details and it could be claimed it happened “after hours” but you still should have seen the remaining students lining up with teachers. The laxity of Blackwell (suggesting that the fire alarms are misused frequently) is just another sign that Blackwell is corrupt and Wells an inept administrator.)

We see additional evidence that David is one of the worse choices for head of security at Blackwell at his accosting Kate Marsh and accusing her of being involved in something (later on we learn he’s blaming her for drugs at Blackwell showing once more he is a tool and an utter idiot). The girl is hysterical, there is a write-up in her file from the nurse that David should have known about, and he confronts her and baselessly accuses her of something. There is a legitimate reason why Max can accuse David of being responsible for Kate being on the rooftop of the dorms at the end of Chapter 2. He helped drive her there.

On a related note, additional corruption in Arcadia Bay can be found in its police force. At one point in Chapter 3, Max can talk to a police officer at Two Whales Diner, Anderson Berry. Berry admits outright to being on the take. More specifically, Sean Prescott did Berry’s family a favor and that he can’t get out of it. Nathan goes on further to state his father owns the police... and seeing that in LiS2 with the Sacrifice Chloe end that David is worried about Nathan getting out of jail three years after killing Chloe... he’s probably right. (Minimum sentence for involuntary manslaughter is 10 years, no parole. Boy’s getting out on appeal. Fortunately, Save Chloe is a valid option and has Jefferson locked away.)

No discussion about the corruption of Blackwell Academy would be complete without talking about Mark Jefferson. This predator has a couple dozen folders filled with photos of women in compromising positions, having most likely been drugged and then photographed while semi-conscious. While the fine folk at Dontnod have stated that Jefferson did not touch his victims sexually... it is clear that this was a metaphor for rape. You have a date rape drug used on two girls (Kate and Chloe). Both girls are messed up as a result of the drugging and subsequent encounters. Kate is suicidal and being blamed by society for what happened to her. Chloe is adversarial and confrontational and even states she would happily see Arcadia Bay turned to glass (one thing that some victims of sexual assault say sometimes is that they hate the world.) You even have the Dark Room and its vinyl-lined extra-large sofa. Yes, that is not at all suspicious.

Mark Jefferson is a popular and attractive white male teacher in a position of authority over students. He has taken one student (Nathan) under his wing and is coaching him in his ways (do note that Chloe is assaulted by Nathan using the same tools Jefferson uses on his own victims). There are rumors going around the school that a missing student, Rachel Prescott, was sleeping with Jefferson and this is not considered a bad thing. There’s no investigation of these rumors (half a year after Rachel disappeared). There’s no official denial of those rumors or any word at all. If a teacher in any decent school had that sort of accusation against them, I don’t care how popular the teacher was, there’d be an official investigation and the rumor mill would mention that.

It’s clear that Jefferson has done this to several students at the very least. If we assume that Jefferson was teaching at Blackwell for the past three years then he’s been preying on teenage girls for that entire time. The write-up for Jefferson shows that in the late 2000s he taught in several schools before settling down in his hometown of Arcadia Bay. (It’s odd how many characters in LiS were born in Arcadia Bay. The only two students whose records we have who were not were (amusingly enough) Nathan and Victoria. Go figure.) So it’s possible Jefferson was preying on students for four or five years, and may even have been at Blackwell Academy when Max’s family had to leave.

Getting back to Nathan, there are multiple examples of the corruption of Blackwell in regards to Nathan. We already know of how he’s dealing drugs at the school, providing various drugs for the jocks, alcohol for the Vortex Club, and the like. His school file shows he’s assaulted students and teachers, and it is strongly implied that Max’s English teacher is out because of Nathan. (Oh, hey, more corruption! Most schools require students to be in class even when the teacher is out sick and provide substitute teachers. When there is no substitute available, the principal or vice principal will fill in as the substitute teacher.) Nathan’s files however are sealed and his official student report shows him to be a “good student” without any problems. Suspicious? Suspicious.

When I first started writing about the Corruption of Blackwell, I was thinking along the lines of the $5,000 in cash found in the desk drawer of Principal Wells. It was just the tip of the iceberg, but it still smells fishier than Arcadia Bay’s docks. Yes, the money is marked as “handicapped fund” but legitimate businesses will use checks to finance construction. That includes schools. If there is a bake sale or the like to raise funds? Those funds are put in a bank account. You don’t go paying cash for business unless it’s under the table - at least, not when you’re a legitimate and popular private school.

Amusingly enough, the money for the Handicapped Fund gets used to put in a handicapped ramp at the school. But the ramp is being built for the Prescott Dormitory. (Oh, hey, the Prescott family again!) Do note, Blackwell Academy is built on a hill. To reach the school from the street, students have to walk up a couple flights of stairs. If you go to the parking lot, you have to climb a flight of stairs in a narrow enclosure to reach the school - if you use a wheelchair you cannot access the school at all.

David Madsen’s map of Blackwell Academy (for placement of security cameras) shows no means of reaching the dormitories from the parking lot. In fact, the parking lots are placed poorly and students checking into Blackwell have to trudge across the entire school with their belongings, up a flight of stairs and down another flight of stairs. It is poorly designed and I can hear the griping of every student and parent on moving day about how it’s messed up that you can’t just park the car next to the dorms.

In short? Putting a handicap ramp at the dormitories makes absolutely no sense. Students in wheelchairs cannot reach the ramp because when they get off from the street in front of Blackwell they have to climb a flight of stairs. If they park in the handicapped spaces in the parking lot, they have to climb a flight of stairs. They cannot get into the school itself because of more stairs, so installing a handicap ramp at the dormitories makes absolutely no sense at all. (If Blackwell was interested in becoming ADA-compliant, the first ramp would be at the parking lot, followed by the school itself.)

Let’s look at this further. We know that Sean Prescott has a construction company (Prescott Development) seeing he’s pushing a housing development, Pan Estates, a gated community that will be built in the “deep forests” near Blackwell. He’s run into some problems with local protests and the like keeping him from just building everything he wants. So Principal Raymond Wells gets $5,000 in cash to build a pointless and useless handicap ramp that workers at Prescott Development can use for a quick job. Further, cash is often used to pay undocumented workers. Prescott is spending some money for a fluff job to keep his undocumented workers paid and busy.

If Max and Chloe take the money, there is no investigation. There was a break-in at the school. The police could easily lift Chloe’s fingerprints from the scene and arrest her for the theft. They most likely have her fingerprints on file seeing she has been arrested in the past for various minor crimes (such as vandalism). So why would there be no investigation unless there was a reason to keep the money hushed up?

As I said, the corruption at Blackwell and Arcadia Bay goes deep. The Prescott family is at the heart of it... but at its head is Blackwell Academy. I truly feel for Max in this. She really wanted to go to Blackwell. A favored photographer of hers was teaching there, her best friend lived in the town, it was her childhood home! And she goes there and finds skeletons in the closet, bodies in the junkyard, and signs of corruption everyway she turns. Talk about a coming of age story... maybe Chloe was right. Turning the town to glass? It may have been for the best. It allows Max and Chloe to leave and make a life for themselves. It would be a better life than what they had back in Arcadia Bay.

#life is strange #lis #blackwell academy #arcadia bay #raymond wells #david madsen #sean prescott #nathan prescott #mark jefferson #anderson berry #frank bowers #chloe price #max caulfield #my posts

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