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Harrison College
Motto: Lux Lucentis in Deserto: “A Light Shining in the Wilderness”
Introduction History The College Today Extracurricular Designer's Notes
Departments
Introduction
  Harrison is a medium-sized private liberal arts college located in Kingston, North Carolina.  One point about the college that should soon be obvious is that it is firmly rooted in the past.  Almost everything about the school, from its architecture to its programs, seem to look back to yesteryear.  While this is fine for antiquarians, it earns the school a reputation for being "behind the times" and outdated.  Its massive collections include strange artifacts and crumbling tomes of rare power; ghosts and spirits benign, malevolent or indifferent can be found in abundance there.  All in all, Harrison makes an excellent locale for occultists of all stripes to go for research and adventure.  
History
  The college was founded in 1799 under the name Kingston College by Thomas Harrison, a wealthy plantation aristocrat who wished to "civilize" the Carolina Piedmont.  The original school building, made of logs, was home and school for perhaps a dozen students, and occupied a hill half a mile or so from the town of Kingston.  The school, which taught a classical curriculum (such as dead languages and philosophy), was considered by many to be of little worth in a land where Indians and wolves were still a threat
  As the land became more settled, interest in -- and enrollment of -- Kingston College grew.  Tobacco and cotton funded the education of students throughout the region.  By the 1850's the single small building had become nine, and endowments and land grants had left the college in excellent financial shape.  Had history not taken a nasty turn, Kingston may have become the equal of any of school in the Ivy League.
  KingstonCollege officially closed in 1861, and most of the students and faculty joined the War of Southern Independence.  It is fortunate that the remaining staff hid many documents and books as the tides of war drew near.  Secret tunnels were excavated beneath the campus to hide books, food, slaves, furniture, and, more than once, the staff and remaining faculty.
  The college sustained considerable damage during the Civil War, but the telling blows were landed after the Surrender: lands were confiscated, and finances were in shambles.  Most of its students and many of its faculty were dead.  The chancellor, Jasper Morrell, stubbornly refused to close the school permanently, going to great lengths to find the support and faculty to reopen the college. Kingston College held classes in 1867, in two of the buildings that were still serviceable. Renovations weren't made until the early 1870's.  Wealthy industrialist Nathaniel Harrison, the great-grandson of Thomas Harrison, endowed the school with the funds necessary to modernize and expand the facilities during the period of 1880-1901.  According to his wishes, the university was renamed in his ancestor's honor in 1894.
   Harrison College reached its zenith in the 1920's.  From Mongolia to Sumatra, Africa to South America, expeditions famous and obscure were likely to include faculty or students from Harrison.  The notes, artifacts and samples the intrepid explorers brought back now make up the incredible collections the college is famous for.
  The Great Depression hit the school hard, as enrollment dropped and funding sources dried up.  A series of unrelated accidents, both on campus and in the field, cost Harrison several valuable faculty and staff members.  Enrollment predictably dropped in the 1940's, but was slow in returning to pre-war levels.  Times changed, but the school did not, and though tradition-bound prominent families continued sending their young men to Harrison, more and more were drawn away to prestigious universities (some jokesters said that whereas Oxford had ivy-covered halls, Harrison was the only college that could boast ivy-covered professors).
  Harrison college was on the verge of foundering in the late 60's, when an anonymous donor(s) poured money into the coffers, allowing the school to be modernized.  Once the school improved, enrollment picked up.  Of the few (publicly known) stipulations that came with the money, the most radical was that the school become co-educational.
The College Today
  Harrison College is a private, accredited 4 year college on an attractive 200 acre campus on the banks of the Little River. The school has an undergraduate enrollment of roughly 6100 (52:48 Male:Female) and a graduate enrollment of 500 (32:68 Male:Female).  Half of all students come from Virginia, Tennessee, or the Carolinas; 10% are foreign, and the rest are scattered across the US.  The student:faculty  ratio is 15:1.  While the majority of students are “traditional,” there is a healthy number of night classes.  There is also an elder hostel program for senior citizens to take courses.
  The college has six masters programs: Architecture, Literature, Library Science, Museum Science, Celtic Studies, and Theology, and the Trustees hope to add another one or two in the next five years.
  Harrison College  has a non-traditional admissions policy in that standardized tests such as the SAT are not used.  Rather, the staff looks for exemplary grades in a wide range of coursework, as well as activities and interests.  Although controversial, the school stands by its legacy policy; having alumni for parents carries a great deal of weight with the admissions board.
  Another somewhat controversial practice is the tendency for the college to hire its own graduates as faculty.  Roughly half of its full-time faculty are also alumni.  Detractors say this sort of inbreeding is a disadvantage for students wishing to earn an up-to-date education by the latest in teaching techniques.  Harrison backs its policy by saying that if you produce the best, why not hire them? Besides, the most effective teaching methods are time-tested.
Collections
  While its curriculum is certainly up to snuff, Harrison is better known for it's collections.  While the amassed libraries and specimens donated by former faculty alone would be impressive, the spoils of numerous "treasure-hunting" expeditions have made Harrison the envy of many larger universities.  
  The jewel of the many collections is the library system, which boasts over a million volumes, 20,000 electronic titles, 500,000 microforms and 6,000 active periodicals. Besides the usual texts, one can find the diaries of the great, the mean, and the mad; bestiaries written five hundred years ago; literary first editions worth thousands of dollars if they could be had at all. The rare books collection includes official documents; books bound in the skin of birds, reptiles, humans, and even unknown creatures; Religious texts and books on magic and demonology.
  Other archives include a dozen history and natural history collections which are the dreams of much larger institutions; in fact, visiting faculty and graduate students are quite common on the campus.  Some students complain that they must pay tuition for researchers across the nation to come to Harrison.
Architectural Styles
  While the oldest buildings were built in the Georgian or Greek Revival fashion, the dominant style of architecture is Gothic Revival, with elements of neoclassical and Victorian Second Empire thrown in.  This sets the tone; by day, the ponderous edifices lend an air of authority, history and tradition to the school.  By night, the campus takes on the eeriness of any gothic horror novel.  Frequent fog from the river adds to the effect.
  One of the striking elements of the campus is often referred to as the Walk of Ages.  Running down the hill from Morrell Hall to the river, it contains the names of every individual who has graduated from the institution. 
Extracurricular Activities
Periodicals: The Harrison Sentinel is the campus newspaper. The Old Oak is a quarterly literary magazine.
Yearbook: "The Beacon"
Radio Stations: Two radio stations operate on campus.  WHAR is run and programmed by students. WKNC is a National Public Radio affiliate.
Athletics: Harrison features the classical sports such as fencing, wrestling, gymnastics, track, crew, field hockey, equestrian. There is no official football team, and the baseball team is historically a poor performer.  The official mascot of Harrison College is the wolfhound, and its colors are crimson and old gold.
Organizations: There are over 100 campus clubs and organizations at Harrison, including academic clubs, honor societies, music groups, fraternities and sororities, religious fellowships, and service organizations.
   Fraternal Organizations: Fraternities and sororities exist, and are similar to those at larger universities.  While being elitist in nature, they are actually more egalitarian than what one finds elsewhere, in that social class is less of a factor in membership.  Hazing is tolerated within limits.  Some of the orders have no chapters outside Harrison; conversely, there are relatively few national fraternities represented here.
Housing: There are several dormitories on campus, including Reed, Milton, Webber, and Hess; the first two are men's dorms, the second pair are women only.  Alternative housing includes Greek and program houses (the latter being considered a "perk" for students of a particular program; the Department of Forestry owns several cabins for students, for example).  There are also apartment complexes in the Kingston area.  Additionally, many Kingstonians rent rooms or garage apartments to students.  Freshmen are "encouraged" to live on campus.
Designer's Notes
Atmosphere
  The electronic beeps of computers, the hum of florescent lights, and the bonejarring rap and goth/punk rhythms cannot eradicate the "old fashioned" feel of the college.  Many who spend time there, especially alone, admit to experiencing the disorienting (or comforting, depending on the individual) feeling of having slipped backwards in time. Those sensitive to such things feel the weight of history upon them; hints of lives past are everywhere – faded pictures of the fencing team of '03 in a trophy case, a plaque set in the Grand Quad by the class of 1879, a name carved on a table with a pen knife a century ago.  Here you will find professors seemingly forgotten by time and the trustees, puttering through their esoteric research.  Here too are ghosts of alumni and faculty, and spirits of the times, unwilling or unable to leave the old buildings and gardens.
Setting Uses
   Harrison should be easy enough to slip into any reality-based setting (i.e. where places like North Carolina exist).  As a storehouse of arcane knowledge, it can easily be adapted for anything from Call of Cthulhu to Ghostbusters. The institution is also old enough to be used as a locale (a turn-of-the-century game) or as background flavor (Civil War captain who interrupted schooling at Harrison to go to war). The setting is generic enough that the college can be relocated as suits your needs.  
Inspirations
  I took the University of Georgia, mixed it with several universities and colleges (incl. Universities of Tennessee and Arkansas), and laced the concoction with Miskatonic.  While many of the facilities are a product of recent modernization, the feel of the place is still the private school of the Victorian era to the first half of the 20th century.  Dead Poet's Society evokes the mood somewhat; Young Sherlock Holmes also has some useful elements (overlooking the Egyptian death cults, of course).
Except as otherwise indicated, all original material © 2000-2006 Forrest B. Marchinton.  All rights reserved.  Reproduction of any of the material contained herein without express permission is prohibited.