deLint states the academy's creed to the outside: "seeing instead of being seen"

pivotal · 11 Nov YDAU

• When: afternoon, 11 Nov YDAU, in the Show-Court bleachers during the Hal-vs-Stice exhibition (Schtitt-ordered, relayed by Mary Esther Thode's Vespa)
• What: The academy's institutional self-understanding, articulated to visiting Moment profiler "Helen Steeply" (whom Tavis has barred from interviewing any student — "We've never had a kid here interviewed"). Prorector Aubrey deLint, chaperoning her under explicit orders to keep her in sight, lays out E.T.A.'s whole purpose: the academy is "carved out to protect talented kids from exactly the kind of activities you guys come in here to do." Its pedagogy is anti-fame: kids are "here to get lost in something bigger than them," to "forget themselves as objects of attention" — "this place is about seeing instead of being seen," and "Schtitt's thing is self-transcendence through pain." The goal is to inoculate the best against "the Show," so that when the crowds and profilers eventually "chew them up," the player will "never be slaves to the statue." deLint names the developmental hazard the school exists to counter — "Fucks with a junior's head, talent" — and holds up Schtitt as "a fucking genius." This is the mission statement of the institution as delivered to (and against) the press. See the Schtitt timeline, the Hal timeline. (The visit itself belongs to the Orin/U.S.O.U.S. surveillance thread — See the Marathe timeline and the U.S.O.U.S. thread.)