Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3

Subject: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 8:22 am

Please clic me for PDF map

English website : http://www.u-bordeaux3.fr/en/index.html

University of Bordeaux 3 Michel de Montaigne (guy on the picture) is the languages, arts, humanities and "medieval history major, not being able to find a job" university. Philosophy, dreadlocks, visual kei, chinese exchange students, anthropology and else...

Bordeaux 3's campus is fairly simple to understand : there are four main buildings ; the one in front of the tramway is scolarity (where people go and register). Right behind it is the big one with the face of Montaigne is the administrative building (where the dean works, accountants and internal mail goes, no student ever goes there). On both sides are two fairly long buildings, divided and labelled A to G on the left, and H to L on the right. Students know that when they have class in A201, it means they have to go in the A building, on the second floor.
Montaigne's owners weren't very original when assigning departments to the buildings ; A is for Anglais (English), I is for Spanish and Italian (Iberic studies), G is for Geography, H is for History...

Behind the administrative building is a big apmhiteater, the A700 (amphi of 700 seats) ; The whole thing faces several parkings, and behind the parkings are the doctorate reunion rooms, and the very, very ugly Arts House ( http://unef.fr/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/maison-des-arts-glauque.jpeg and http://www.letudiant.fr/image/articleetu/bordeaux3maison-des-arts_article.jpg). The archeology house, the "global south countries" building and others are fairly unknown to most people, apart from those concerned by those studies (starting master degrees)

At around 8pm, Duncan arrives to bunch of students (a good hundred of them at least) gathered in between the four main buildings, smoking, discussing, and wearing far left pancarts. It seems they've finished the manifestation and have just gathered to talk about the day.
The security guys walking around the buildings are making sure all windows and doors are chained and closed for the night, and nobody seem to care about each other ; eveyone seems fairly pacifist.

By the Sirtaki Restaurant, in between Amphi 700 (see the PDF, it's a blue arrow saying "point de rencontre", aka, "meeting point"), Duncan will be able to spot Franz without even needing to talk to him.

He's discussing with a syndicalist, probably about the blocus of the campus, but he seems to be finishing the discussion by the time Duncan spots him, and the mortal goes back to his comrades.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:47 am

Duncan follows the tram line all the way to Pessac's main campus, Bordeaux 3. He drives past the administration building and parks in a lot very close to the center of campus. Then he takes off the helmet and takes his laptop case in hand.

Before he can dial Franz's number, the young Brujah sees the elder talking to someone near the blockade of striking students. The strike seems to be winding down for the day... can't let it interfere with the nightlife, after all. Duncan is prepared to wait a while until Franz is free, but the man he's talking to leaves and rejoins his friends. So Duncan walks toward him, and raises a hand in greeting.

Good evening! I see we have France's national sport in progress. You didn't organize this strike just for my visit, I hope.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:05 am

The Brujah raises a hand in salute as well, and smiles.
(Franz) Fucking Hippies, right.. Nope, I've got nothing to do with it, but if they can block more some of the Language students and teachers instead.. Oh maybe extend it to Bordeaux 4.

Seemingly he intends to try and benefit from it somehow, but he probably didn't initiate any of it. He indicates the entrance to the A building and walks towards it as he browses for keys.
(Franz) Let's go there so you can have access. You'll just need one of those Internet cables, I'll log you in and stuff.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:34 am

Duncan nods, confident he can find an Ethernet cable to borrow, if he doesn't have one. He follows Franz to the building in question, and watches as the elder Brujah opens the door.

You going to the circus later, at the Theatre? Duncan sighs. My presence is required, as a witness I suppose. Don't know if Kersten will be there too; he seems to be busy with something. I wonder if they'll have the gargoyle there? He was also in the church during the attack.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:59 am

Franz obviously has way too many keys for a normal person, but he knows them all perfectly.
The building dates from the 70's and it shows ; everything could use some freshening up. At least the heat is on, letting students study inside in better conditions (and since it's isolated very badly it probably costs a lot. The Brujah is very careful not to be noticed by anyone who could want inside, and closes the door behind them.
(Franz) I don't know if I'll go, depends on how things turn up around here I guess... I don't envy you.

He's still indecisive. He walks his clan brother through the corridors, upstairs two floors, before they end up in the D building, and opens a more secured door ; looks like the desk of a teacher, with a desktop and way too many files and exams to be graded. The Brujah pushes aside most papers, making sure piles are kept as is.
(Franz) I'm not really the courts type, anyway, and I think being curious about the Gargoyle is a bad plan. You want to use this one or pull the cable?

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 1:52 pm

Duncan nods, and sets his laptop case on the desk.

I'm not really curious about the gargoyle; I've met him. I merely wondered how he would fare in Elysium, if the Prince demanded his presence. I don't think Rufus is the social type.

This is fine. I'll see what I can do with the desktop, before I try mine. You can log in and I'll start looking around. I'll be careful. It's nothing that should raise any red flags; I'm just searching for links between the drowned and missing students. Did they have any classes, or teachers, or student activities in common? The same counselor? Scholarships from the same source? That sort of thing. I doubt the student database has government-level security... as long as I don't try to change their grades or anything, I shouldn't trip any alarms, or alert the IT people. I've done this sort of thing before. In fact, that's sort of my specialty-- looking for trends or hidden data in databases.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 2:19 pm

As Duncan speaks, once he stated he'd try the desktop, Franz turns it in waits for it to boot, and logs in. He's obviously not very used to computers, but he's not totally lost either.
(Franz) It's okay, servers clean themselves every night anyway, so we're fairly safe. the databases are fairly easy to access...

He opens up all internal management links, and indicates the research boxes on all of them.
(Franz) Okay this is the pedagogic window, you'll see to what they were inscribed, including non mandatory classes.. Here is to see their status to the libraries, if they borrowed books or so.. Here is the teacher and worker's white pages, by name, phonenumber, building, area of studies..

He shows the option where you can choose whether you want to find someone from the informatics department, the printing department, the english languages, the adult teachings, etc.
(Franz) Here's the link to schedules ; type in the name of the student, the name of a teacher, the name of the course, or the general promotion's schedule.

He shows again how one can search the whole schedule for all third year students of Philosophy are, with some classes taking place at the same time as the whole promotion is divided by groups to enter classes ; some have literature discussion on monday, some on wednesday, by the same teacher, because the students in third year are too numerous to be held in one classroom. Obvious planning is very obvious. It's dummy proof, even for Brujah.
(Franz) You can check their first semester grades right here as well. As well as their exam schedule, if it's of any use.

Exams were in January, and the ones in May aren't up yet.
(Franz) Some of them add in their own appointments to their personnal agenda, but that's through their virtual desktop and there's no way to access it without each student's password... But with the inscriptions, here, you can see to which virtual groups they belong, to share docs between each other.

Most groups are teacher-created, one per class, so the teacher puts them online some docs related to class, but some groups are created by students for association, class assignment in groups so they can work together... Nothing far too original.
(Franz) There are many other internal links, which are listed about everywhere from this website here. You seem to know your stuff so I'll let you browse as you need.

Indeed just with observing what Franz shows, Duncan can see access to internal discussions about departments, issues, and "contact us" back office to see who has asked for what. It seems Franz's log have a fairly open access, that or the university is very badly protected from piracy.

Franz stands to let his place to Duncan, grabs a book on one of the shelves and sits on a chair, waiting for Duncan to finish his browsing, seemingly not very curious and at least, not on his back.

How long will Duncan stay and search to datamine ?

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Wed Dec 18, 2013 5:28 pm

Thank you.
Duncan sits down at the chair vacated by Franz. Then he goes to work.

ST:

Once his data retrieval is done, Duncan stands up and stretches... more out of habit than necessity. He turns to face Franz, and speaks.

I guess that's all I can do for now. I still need to go through the data. I'll send you a copy when I go through it... both my findings and the raw data, if you want it.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Thu Dec 19, 2013 11:07 am

Saving the data is fairly easy, even if it's just copy pasting to excel or taking some screenshots (or "printing as PDF").
At first glance there isn't much in common apart from the fact that they were all students from the university and that they had fairly okay grades. They also all happened to be in the first cycle (in their first three years of studies), but the vast majority of students are in Licence anyway.

It takes him roughly one hour to pop up all pages concerning each student, and save them all in a flashdrive to browse later on, as nothing was obvious. A proof of network security is that every single data is on different pages with different accesses, so people who only have access to the grades do not know if the student is on scholarship, and the informatics department only know if the student uses the school's computer. It's fairly well separated to the general user.

Cleaning up takes just to erase the savec documents, clear history, and trick the server into believing there was no access that night ; Duncan could easily check from internal links that indeed, servers clean themselves each night and so, what computer had access to what was not logged in. Either way the desk he is using seems to have all required access.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:13 pm

As Duncan puts the USB flash drive back into his laptop case, he glances up at Franz.

Thanks for letting me do this. I believe I covered my tracks pretty well. I'll go through the data and see what I can find about your missing students.

Any message you want me to take to Elysium? I know it will break your heart, not being there.
Duncan smiles slightly... Franz already displayed his indifference toward what happens tonight at the Theatre.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:33 pm

The Brujah seems to have enjoyed his book quite well, even if he has not finished it.
(Franz) Not a problem.

He shrugs when asked, he thinks about it a moment seriously, but puts his hand to his heart to mimic than indeed, he regrets not going, as a fairly strong sarcasm. He stands and puts the book back to its place.
(Franz) Nothing that I can think of but as far as I've noticed, Theo's good at passing along a message. If you can land a fist on Griffin's face I'd appreciate it...

He's not asking, he knows it probably won't happen, but just in case, if the situation should present itself...
(Franz) Just be careful and don't fall for the Tremere tricks, OK? Theo's let himself go, sadly. Try not to go down that path.

He seems sincere in his warning, but he's half pissed at Theodore's selling out as he states, probably part of the Brujah temper showing up. He walks out and waits for Duncan to be out to close the door, and guides him back to outside as he did when they entered first.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Thu Dec 19, 2013 3:26 pm

Duncan laughs at Franz's request; a brief, sarcastic bark.

Yeah, right. If I see Griffin blindfolded, with no witnesses, I'll see what I can do.

That new guy, William, seems okay for a Tremere -- He's too young to have been involved with all that bullshit when Tarcisus was around. Still, he's got secrets, too. We all do, I guess; but they take it to extremes. Horsman's an asshole, though... I hope he leaves Bordeaux soon, and rejoins his boss.

The younger Brujah follows Franz, as the elder locks up behind them. When they reach the place where they met, Duncan stops and turns to Franz.

Okay, well I've got a few things to take care of before I have to be at the Theatre. When I weed through this information, I'll make you a copy. I hope there's something here that tells us what's happening. Somehow I doubt it's just drunken students falling in the river. I mean, not that many.

Farewell.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Thu Dec 19, 2013 7:03 pm

Duncan's comments on Griffin being blindfolded makes Franz cringe a little but he just shakes his head and lets it go.
(Franz) I think they're all rotten to the core, who knows what the hell they do to their newborns.. For their loyalty. I mean older members still tend to have this despicable habit of bonding their offspring a with blood.. Including us. Ask Marc for instance. So they probably still do it, considering they have a hard time renewing their population. Horsman's a stuck up bastard so yeah the sooner he leaves..

He makes a slight wave.
(Franz) I'll wait for your report then. I'm not too much into students circles so when I looked I didn't find much myself. Fucking hippies, they're maybe partying too much and be easy preys...

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Thu Dec 19, 2013 10:19 pm

Duncan notices Franz's reaction to the joke about Griffin, and hears the comments about blood bonds, and he stops smiling.

Sorry. I just meant I don't think I can take him, so any fist to Griffin's face is not likely to happen.

I'll keep you informed. Have a good evening.

With that, Duncan gives a final wave and walks back to his motorcycle. If there are any strikers still hanging around, he avoids them. Once the computer is secure and the helmet is on, he starts the engine and drives off.

Subject: Re: Pessac's Campus ; Bordeaux 3 Fri Dec 20, 2013 1:35 pm

Franz shrugs visibly when Duncan mentions Griffin. He words out another way what he meant.
(Franz) Worst thing, actually, is that Griffin's got a tiny bit more of my respect than others. I was joking, of course, but you should for sure be suspicious of them as a clan. Don't give them the benefit of the doubt just because they're young. Have fun.

He waves Duncan off when he mounts his bike and seemingly leaves as well.
Strikers are gone.

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