Before the break:
College administrators are the top of the occupational hierarchy. For public universities, the government’s involvement is mostly financial. They include the president, vice president, provosts, deans, and department heads according to Northeastern University. Faculty are the professors, instructors and assistant professors. Evergreen also has a board of trustees elected by the governor and partially by the students who initiate policy and delegate to the president according to Evergreen’s website. Admin and faculty work together to run a college.
A president represents the college, sets the overall academic goals, and deals with policies. Vice presidents or provosts’ job is to assess student learning and success, faculty management, budgeting, enrollment, and program development. As described by the University of Washington, deans are responsible for recruitment, appointment, training and management of other administrators. They are also responsible for the facilitation and management of educational programs, finances, and faculty. The main responsibility for faculty is to decide their curriculum and work with students to ensure they finish the class with more knowledge, experience, and skills than they started with. Faculty manage their own courses with influence from admin. They are in charge of creating the learning environment they want and figuring out how to encourage students.
Since then:
Towards the end of the day with the admin offices closed, administrators have gone home and are fully off campus. After settling in at home, some notice a strange phenomenon in the sky. There is a brief pause before they are simultaneously hit with a massive shockwave. Lights in buildings and streets flicker and some go out entirely. For the moment, power seems to be operational but unreliable. Now panicked and terrified by this unknown disaster, they scramble to find safety as the ground shakes. Being back in the main city of Olympia, they are at the mercy of the cataclysm and the ability of the city officials to react to the chaos. 9-1-1 calls flood the network of emergency response operators as the phone lines have remained intact. First responders start to comb the destroyed streets. Frantic calls are made, the TVs in homes with power are all on, tuning in to the news for an explanation. A few administrators have discovered that radio signals are still working. Some of the administrators choose to stay home, not knowing if it is safe to leave. Others venture out, hoping that the first responders or anyone will know more. Some time passes before a few administrators attempt to call their colleagues. Some respond, others are silent. No one knows what to do, no one was prepared for this. Soon, news gets out about the devastation, and the looming mist that has created a barrier between them and the college. After securing themselves and their loved ones, they become concerned for the students and faculty still on campus who, to their knowledge, are caught inside the mist. They begin to attempt to contact the college. Will they succeed?
Faculty who stayed on campus are equally shocked by the catastrophe. Many try to call emergency services to no avail. Panic sets in as the realization hits that communication is disabled. When the shaking ceases, they take a moment to gather themselves and those around them, processing the current situation. Without a currently apparent threat to their safety, they start to leave their rooms and search for a cause to this phenomenon and get a better understanding of what is happening. They are startled by the sudden appearance of the mist which now surrounds them. Faculty struggle to understand why this is happening while trying to help the students who have been trapped in the mist with them.