The Big Buddy System — Tavis's mentoring-and-surveillance structure

texture · standing (Tavis administration)

• When: standing since Tavis instituted it; the YDAU groups dramatized 3 Nov
• What: Each 18-and-Under keeps "his more experienced wing over" four-to-six 14-and-Unders — "Charles Tavis instituted the practice and calls it the Big Buddy System in the literature he sends new kids' parents," so parents feel their kid isn't "getting lost in the institutional shuffle." A Big Buddy is "somewhere between an R.A. and a prorector": confidant, rope-shower, and quiet informant, "requested to keep the prorectors generally informed about who among their charges seems shaky" so C.T. (via administrative assistant Lateral Alice Moore) can forecast attrition and set Admissions' incoming-slot count. The twice-weekly powwows are where E.T.A. pedagogy and lore get transmitted — and subverted: Pemulis runs his as a drug colloquium (a muscimole lecture, 022). See Charles Tavis's timeline (event 15); Pemulis's timeline (event 8).