SPOILER!!: madame president

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cassirin

The food was a thoughtful touch, although Cassandra preferred just taking a cup of tea from the kettle Carter had prepared. Still, she gave Althea a solemn nod of the head before turning her attention specifically to the woman's question.

"Not very practical, I imagine. Feel free to take up that question with the Headmistress and report back to us. I should think that in particular, we don't want to limit access to areas that the students must enter and exit. They must eat and sleep, so those turnstiles obviously must go. In general, I don't like them, but Headmistress Truebridge must have some feeling of autonomy for this working relationship to last," Cassandra responded thoughtfully. She figured Althea was perfectly capable of speaking with Annie on behalf of the governors.

Corin got a brief blink. What was that referring to? Details other than which, exactly. She sipped her tea and considered the broader question before finally responding, "I'm not sure what details are already known. Perhaps a recap is in order, and then you can clarify. I think the main fact I'd like to impart is that none of the actions done thus far have been Board sanctioned or planned, but we want to appear unified with the Headmistress. You all must absolutely NOT speak to the media about this without vetting it through the Board first."

Anything in particular? What wasn't of concern at this point? Cassandra sniffed a bit, but it wasn't mean-spirited. Mostly. Just impatient. "I think we should be concerned about a great many things, but let us take this one step at a time."

As if laying out a battle plan, Cassandra ticked out the main points. Her tea was forgotten as she counted points on her fingers. "Point one, we're flat broke. Not through any fault of our own, but we've been robbed. It's a fund that is generally very flush, and we were foolish enough to be keeping it all in one vault... well. Lessons learned. We don't have liquid assets at this time. Points two, in order to simply fund the castle staying open at this time, they've had to set up several means of cutting expenses and raising funds. In cutting expenses, I believe they've sold off the china and cutlery, among other things." Which made Cassandra a bit livid.

"If we could have someone volunteer to scour the shops for it, let's see if we can't buy it back and hold it until the school can reimburse us. I'll pay for it, but I need someone to do the foot work. In terms of raising funds, they've put in turnstiles in the common areas and Great Hall, and students must pay each time they access those areas." She'd already made her opinion on that known.

"Point three... the house elves have all resigned, aside from one small elf that cannot hope to keep up. The students are cooking and cleaning for themselves, which is not an appropriate use of their time. They are here to learn, not to do elf work. If anyone is able to donate the services of a personal house elf, that might help alleviate the workload. I have one I can offer immediately."

Now then... those were the salient points? "Any questions so far? I know we want to brainstorm, but let's stick to understanding the facts as they stand now."

Feel free? So essentially Cassandra here was passing on taking point on that and dropping it on Althea? She raised one eyebrow. "I'm sure I could chat with her about it. Is she planning on dropping in on this meeting?"

Autonomy was important but so was communication. They might have been able to avoid a lot of the current issues as they impacted the children had there been a little of that before the term actually began.

She continued to listen. "Do we have a media statement prepared? I believe we need to get on that sooner rather than later, and today so that we are all on the same page." She wasn't going to volunteer to buy back the china by the way. Someone else could do that.

"I want to know what else was taken. There was more of value than just money in the vault. Do we have an official inventory? Additionally, I'd like to know if Magical Law Enforcement have been brought in yet or if are we hoping to address this autonomously. I'd also like to know if the goblins been questioned and if we have records of the last visits to the vault before it was discovered empty. And as for the house elves, were they not technically chattel and not free to actually resign, so the use of that word seems odd. Were they also taken?" Yes, she had a lot of questions.

Althea took a sandwich from the tray and looked around at the others. "I think there are two main areas of concern: firstly what are we going to do going forward so that the students are not inconvenienced any further, and secondly, what are we going to do to find what is missing and get back what belongs to Hogwarts? Neither aspect can be easily swept under the carpet and we need to be proactive both here at Hogwarts and within the Wizarding community to restore things to how they should be."