>> This was a good comment. It had me thinking all thorough dinner about this poem. <<
Woohoo!
>> There's so much we don't know here. <<
There's still a lot I don't know, too.
>> We get a very brief reference to people getting sick--this party was not a private event. It was a "wild party", so there were a lot of people there, both fraternity brothers and others. <<
Correct. It is wild in the way that fraternity parties often are, and why some colleges are vexed with them -- that environment invites trouble, and makes it difficult to determine what went wrong after trouble has in fact occurred.
>> The others were likely nearly all women students at the college. <<
There was a liberal mix of students, but it likely did lean toward sorority girls. That sort of fraternity likes a target-rich environment, but they also like having other guy buddies around. Aside from being their idea of fun, it muddles the search for culprits if multiple fraternities are represented.
>>Lots of people got sick, so presumably that includes a lot of the women too, not just fraternity brothers. Some of the people never regained their health.<<
Correct.
>> The aftermath of the party would have been very public indeed, with police and doctors involved in trying to figure out who spiked the punch and what with. <<
Ohhh, yeah. Much fuss and hubbub was made. But with zetetic materials, it's extremely difficult to pin down anything even if you have a pure sample rather than whatever is in the bodies of the people getting sick. Pinning it down to the party was easy with so many people there. Pinning it down to the punch bowl was only a little harder. Beyond that, they managed "Someone dropped a metagen in the bowl" and not much more.
Figuring out who might have done so generated a vast list of possibilities -- anyone at the party could, theoretically, have done it. But it's more likely to be a host than a guest; they'd have the opportunity to spike the punch before it was served. If they thought they were using a harmless aphrodisiac that would just put everyone in a horny mood, then they wouldn't mind dosing their brothers or even themselves, much the same as when punch is spiked with alcohol. The times you see controlled aim with things like roofies, it goes in something that only the target group will consume; jello shots are popular for targeting girls because many boys think they're too girly to touch.
So then you have to look at context. We've got a fraternity with a reputation for questionable behavior, which makes its members more likely suspects. The people responsible for planning the party and its beverages would be the leading suspects; possibly also the party monitor if they had one, but they're often unaffiliated and thus less implicated, and they can't be everywhere at once. Logically the university would've whittled their list down to the boys with the most responsibility for the event, whose records also indicated they made a habit of misbehavior in keeping with this example. Anyone with a clean record and/or little to do with the event would be implicated only by association (i.e. may have helped but not known all about it, or may have heard about it but not said anything). Without the hard evidence to make a court case worth pursuing, the college used the tools available on its own turf: academics.
I expect that the parents of other students likely sued the college for failure to maintain a safe environment. This is all fairly similar to what happens when punch is spiked with ordinary drugs or alcohol and someone(s) gets hurt.
>> How many other people developed super powers? <<
Probably two or three. The exact number may not be known if not everyone had a conspicuous ability, or if someone left the school. A big frat party like this can have several hundred people moving through it over the 6-8 hours of its activity, most or all of whom would indulge in free food and drinks. If you figure 1:100 people who drank the spiked punch later developed superpowers, that's a typical strength. Stuff with a higher manifestation rate tends to have worse side effects. Here, some people had permanent health damage but nobody died. That group is probably same size as or slightly larger than the ones who developed superpowers.
Something else we can tell from current information: whatever it was, didn't happen fast, at least in terms of dramatic effects. If it had, people would've noticed and the party would've been shut down, thus greatly reducing the number of affected individuals. They might have just thought they were extra buzzed that night, or unusually hungover the next morning, until things got worse. But once the first handful of students showed up at the campus health center with the same symptoms, it would quickly come out that they were at the same party, and then the college would try to contact everyone who went there in case it was contagious or toxic.
>> How many non-students snuck in? <<
Probably at least a few dozen. If they were fraternity alumni, they wouldn't have to sneak; graduated members are supposed to be a "responsible influence." (Consider that Sam is a legacy member; I wouldn't call his father responsible, but that's the theory.) Also, it depends on the house location and the campus parameters whether a frat house is considered part of campus or private property, which influences what rules apply; often they're not limited to student guests. Many colleges have fraternity houses either completely separate or offset, which is why Greek parties tend to be wilder and more popular.
>> I'm betting that at least one person asserted that the fraternity was innocent, that some supervillain snuck in and spiked the punch.<<
Well, yeah, anytime something is at a party that shouldn't be, the host insists that someone else must have brought it. This is often true. They can't search people, after all, that would be an invasion of privacy and thus illegal. Lots of people smuggle things into parties, but it's usually for personal use, or occasionally for sale. The hosts can't do anything about that unless they see it, in which case they can eject the culprit or in more extreme cases call the police. Think about it, if Heron caught someone doing that, he'd go apeshit. But if he thought it was zetetic, he'd be more likely to call SPOON than the cops.
Here's where the pattern of behavior comes in. If the fraternity has had problem after problem, nobody's likely to believe them that this time it was somebody else's fault. If the nerd party at the Foreign Languages department gets spiked, that's much more likely an outside attack, because they aren't in the habit of throwing parties that wild.
Thoughts
Woohoo!
>> There's so much we don't know here. <<
There's still a lot I don't know, too.
>> We get a very brief reference to people getting sick--this party was not a private event. It was a "wild party", so there were a lot of people there, both fraternity brothers and others. <<
Correct. It is wild in the way that fraternity parties often are, and why some colleges are vexed with them -- that environment invites trouble, and makes it difficult to determine what went wrong after trouble has in fact occurred.
>> The others were likely nearly all women students at the college. <<
There was a liberal mix of students, but it likely did lean toward sorority girls. That sort of fraternity likes a target-rich environment, but they also like having other guy buddies around. Aside from being their idea of fun, it muddles the search for culprits if multiple fraternities are represented.
>>Lots of people got sick, so presumably that includes a lot of the women too, not just fraternity brothers. Some of the people never regained their health.<<
Correct.
>> The aftermath of the party would have been very public indeed, with police and doctors involved in trying to figure out who spiked the punch and what with. <<
Ohhh, yeah. Much fuss and hubbub was made. But with zetetic materials, it's extremely difficult to pin down anything even if you have a pure sample rather than whatever is in the bodies of the people getting sick. Pinning it down to the party was easy with so many people there. Pinning it down to the punch bowl was only a little harder. Beyond that, they managed "Someone dropped a metagen in the bowl" and not much more.
Figuring out who might have done so generated a vast list of possibilities -- anyone at the party could, theoretically, have done it. But it's more likely to be a host than a guest; they'd have the opportunity to spike the punch before it was served. If they thought they were using a harmless aphrodisiac that would just put everyone in a horny mood, then they wouldn't mind dosing their brothers or even themselves, much the same as when punch is spiked with alcohol. The times you see controlled aim with things like roofies, it goes in something that only the target group will consume; jello shots are popular for targeting girls because many boys think they're too girly to touch.
So then you have to look at context. We've got a fraternity with a reputation for questionable behavior, which makes its members more likely suspects. The people responsible for planning the party and its beverages would be the leading suspects; possibly also the party monitor if they had one, but they're often unaffiliated and thus less implicated, and they can't be everywhere at once. Logically the university would've whittled their list down to the boys with the most responsibility for the event, whose records also indicated they made a habit of misbehavior in keeping with this example. Anyone with a clean record and/or little to do with the event would be implicated only by association (i.e. may have helped but not known all about it, or may have heard about it but not said anything). Without the hard evidence to make a court case worth pursuing, the college used the tools available on its own turf: academics.
I expect that the parents of other students likely sued the college for failure to maintain a safe environment. This is all fairly similar to what happens when punch is spiked with ordinary drugs or alcohol and someone(s) gets hurt.
>> How many other people developed super powers? <<
Probably two or three. The exact number may not be known if not everyone had a conspicuous ability, or if someone left the school. A big frat party like this can have several hundred people moving through it over the 6-8 hours of its activity, most or all of whom would indulge in free food and drinks. If you figure 1:100 people who drank the spiked punch later developed superpowers, that's a typical strength. Stuff with a higher manifestation rate tends to have worse side effects. Here, some people had permanent health damage but nobody died. That group is probably same size as or slightly larger than the ones who developed superpowers.
Something else we can tell from current information: whatever it was, didn't happen fast, at least in terms of dramatic effects. If it had, people would've noticed and the party would've been shut down, thus greatly reducing the number of affected individuals. They might have just thought they were extra buzzed that night, or unusually hungover the next morning, until things got worse. But once the first handful of students showed up at the campus health center with the same symptoms, it would quickly come out that they were at the same party, and then the college would try to contact everyone who went there in case it was contagious or toxic.
>> How many non-students snuck in? <<
Probably at least a few dozen. If they were fraternity alumni, they wouldn't have to sneak; graduated members are supposed to be a "responsible influence." (Consider that Sam is a legacy member; I wouldn't call his father responsible, but that's the theory.) Also, it depends on the house location and the campus parameters whether a frat house is considered part of campus or private property, which influences what rules apply; often they're not limited to student guests. Many colleges have fraternity houses either completely separate or offset, which is why Greek parties tend to be wilder and more popular.
>> I'm betting that at least one person asserted that the fraternity was innocent, that some supervillain snuck in and spiked the punch.<<
Well, yeah, anytime something is at a party that shouldn't be, the host insists that someone else must have brought it. This is often true. They can't search people, after all, that would be an invasion of privacy and thus illegal. Lots of people smuggle things into parties, but it's usually for personal use, or occasionally for sale. The hosts can't do anything about that unless they see it, in which case they can eject the culprit or in more extreme cases call the police. Think about it, if Heron caught someone doing that, he'd go apeshit. But if he thought it was zetetic, he'd be more likely to call SPOON than the cops.
Here's where the pattern of behavior comes in. If the fraternity has had problem after problem, nobody's likely to believe them that this time it was somebody else's fault. If the nerd party at the Foreign Languages department gets spiked, that's much more likely an outside attack, because they aren't in the habit of throwing parties that wild.