The Tavis innovations — Big Buddy System, the Fundraiser, the tripled manual, the powdered milk

texture · standing (his administration)

• When: standing across his headmastership (YTSDB-YDAU)
• What: Tavis's administrative fingerprints are everywhere. He "instituted the practice and calls it the Big Buddy System" (upperclassmen minding littler kids, so parents feel no kid gets lost), and has Lateral Alice Moore ferret psychic data on littler kids to forecast burnouts (scene 034). "The whole Fundraiser is a Charles Tavis innovation" — the mid-November semipublic exhibition and gala, flying in a hapless foreign junior squad for patriotic flavor, "possibly the climax of C.T.'s whole administrative year"; he is "far better at public relations and pump-priming than was Himself" (scene 165). Under him the Honor-Code manual "almost tripled in length" and E.T.A. phones were kept non-video by decision (165). Since he "assumed the helm four years back" the dining hall's skim milk has been secretly pre-mixed powdered milk, poured into real-milk bags for placebo effect, on his order to halve the kids' animal-fat (scene 122). He hosts the I.-Day film "by Charles Tavis's festive fiat" (081).