By: Daiyu Tang
Lucian Draevus arrived at the Hathian Performing Arts Centre (‘HPAC’) in a car. Now, that’s not unusual for Hathian. But perhaps it was the type of car that made most people stop and gawp at it. It probably also made anyone who saw it come through to the University think ‘target‘ but it probably has armour or something. A Maybach. I don’t know what model, but Google tells me they start at ‘$$$’ and only go upwards.
What was further impressive, at least from the perspective of someone used to looking over her shoulder whether on campus or in Hathian was that he had no entourage. I was kind of expecting the theatrical wall of suits that sometimes accompanies the rare celebrity we get in Hathian. But instead all he was packing was the sort of composure that suggested confidence combined with breeding. Now, from my perspective as your long-standing (suffering) editor, this could also have been a dangerous underestimation of local parking-lot culture and wallet snatching students… In another city this car and this apparent lack of security might simply read as wealth. Here, wealth is never just wealth. It is opportunity, suspicion, bait, leverage, and occasionally productive. We’ll have to hope that Mr. Draevus manages the latter, even if the sins of Hathian weigh towards the former.
Getting Down To Business
Still, Columtreal University is not quite Hathian proper. Yes, there are rumours that a certain long-legged person is seen around a bit. We’ve had a Hopper Professor or two and we’ve had the terrorists from Hathain visit to demolish the last building. I might (politely) suggest that the way Lucian might phrase it is that ‘Hathian keeps putting its muddy boots on the furniture and occasionally robbing the coat room‘.
The campus is trying, genuinely I think, to become something with a different texture. There’s more money, old money… And yes, for some of you that probably means sugar-daddies. I’ll leave that to Jizzy to ponder on sometime. It does also mean there is less immediate blood on the pavement and a little more relationship drama and class gossip. There are also actual classes between the scandals. Hathian, and Columtreal is still sharp (I’m there for a start), but there is a difference between a knife on Bourbon Street and a knife wrapped in a silk napkin at a faculty mixer and Columtreal seems to be trying very hard to move away from ‘old asylum vibes’ to ‘ivy league’. Whether the students move with the times or not, is an open question however.
So into that effort steps Lucian Draevus, with the title of ‘Executive Vice President of Draevus Holdings’ and also in residence at Columtreal as the face of business teaching and also the face attached to a rather large family-backed commitment ($$$$) to the university’s business future.
He gave me a snippet from a trade publication and naturally, use of that particular language of business optimism is apparent. Every road is a corridor (without many potholes), every warehouse is opportunity, and every slightly (have you seen Laveau?) damaged local port dreams of becoming a freeport in the style of Singapore. I do not say that cruelly, I live and love here, but business vision has oft required a certain quarrel with what the street currently looks like. Especially the street that e.g. Charlie Bundy stands on.
‘Friendly’ Competition
Draevus told the Observer that his family’s company operates in logistics, transportation and business intelligence, with roots in maritime commerce and distribution networks across the East Coast. His grandfather, he said, had a passion for the maritime business, while his father expanded the warehouse and distribution side. Lucian now wants to take the company further across the United States, with the Gulf Coast as a strategic base. I’d not have picked Hathian, but perhaps that’s why I’m a low paid editor and he’s driving a Maybach (if you strike through the illegitimate business angle…)
“The region is plagued by problems,” he told me, “but has the resources to be extremely competitive in logistics.”
Now, logistics is one of those words that sounds clean. You know this dear readers. You’ve seen the trucks that go round here. Some are filled with goods, a few are filled with people. Rarely, one is filled with a car bomb (thank you Hopper PD for your work in that regard). And so, in Hathian the language of business usually means warehouses, freight, ports, business meetings, fuel, docks, transport links. It can also, from our archives, mean broken piers, damaged infrastructure, trucks that may or may not arrive with what they were supposed to have, and ‘manufacturing strengths’. Mmhh. Let’s not talk to the inventive named products that spill out from Hathian… usually in syringes, pills or so on.
Draevus is not the first person with money to look at the port, the warehouses and the surrounding region and see a place where business might be done. The Lions Group with their Lions Logistics Warehouse business are perhaps the obvious local comparison. Bowen and Ashley had their fingers in import, export, warehousing, events, charity and the black-tie circuit. I have written before about that strange club of local wealth where helping the city and owning chunks of it can sometimes look very similar from a distance. Hathian’s port has seen investigations, contamination concerns, denials, rumours and the kind of official (HPD raids for sure) interest that tends to make corporate lawyers smile about their fee income. So when a polished Draevus tells me the region is a good place for logistics, I do not laugh. He is not wrong on a map, but maps do not show who controls a street after midnight, which pier has been patched badly, who has cousins in which gang, or how fast a legitimate truck has to go to outrun the HPD who just want to ‘INSPECT THE CONTENTS’ (take the contents).
To his credit, Draevus did not try to sell me a fairy tale version of the city. When I asked why serious money would choose this area, with Laveau two hours in one direction, Hathian twenty minutes in the other, terrorism in recent campus memory, hurricane season approaching and the local criminal economy chugging along at pace, he did not tell me the risk was imaginary. He told me that risk is part of business. Not the way I’d prefer it to be talked to, but I get it.
“No place is perfect,” he said, “all have risks you have to assess and account for. Hathian is unusual for the United States, but anyone who’s had experience dealing with Latin American governments and corporations wouldn’t bat an eyelash about doing business here, they’d just take it into account. We have.”
This was a polished answer and, annoyingly, not a stupid one. It is also the kind of answer that makes me want to ask whether his risk assessment includes all the various Columtreal ‘noise’. I did not put all of that history into words, but I did advise him not to keep his watch collection in the staff room. I have grown as a person.
$10m For Bricks. $2m For Minds.
Draevus says his company has made a $10 million donation to Columtreal University to create a proper School of Business, alongside a $2 million grant for merit-based scholarships aimed at people who want a way out of whatever cycle they were born, pushed, seduced or dragged into. This is Hathian, a city where people are one bad bill, one bad boyfriend, one gang favour or one Carter interaction away from ruining the next five years of their life, that is a kind investment that might help.
His own role on campus is currently practical. He is acting as executive-in-residence, offering lectures on subjects including Supply Chain Fundamentals, Negotiation and Corporate Psychology, while also holding office hours for students who want advice, discussion or perhaps simply to see whether rich people blink under fluorescent lighting (haha Zuckerberg).
“The relation between faculty and students needs work,” he said. “My opinion thus far is that students have trouble with the idea of authority in general, and… suboptimal authority figures have made that problem worse.”
‘Suboptimal‘ is doing enough work there to deserve tenure. Christ, you’ve seen who we’ve had represent the school before with ‘Slut U’ an unflattering (but sometime accurate) reflection of ‘BIMBO science‘ (the last investment the university attracted).
The Observer’s Thoughts
That is the attractive version of the story. The less romantic version is that Hathian eats clean plans for breakfast and uses the ‘Hathian Business Review’ as a mug coaster.
Draevus may be entirely legitimate. I have not found evidence otherwise, and I am not going to manufacture scandal merely because his cufflinks looked very expensive. He may be exactly what he says he is but he may also be walking into a city that sees wealth as invitation, target, meal ticket and challenge.
The truth? It’s probably all of the above and I, and the Observer, will be watching. Politely of course. Mostly. And in time we will see whether he is a benefactor, a strategist, a target, or simply the best-dressed gamble CU has taken in some.
In any case, I look forward to seeing the advertising/spin/marketing when the next ‘sex-death-murder-basement‘ is found. Hopefully not under his warehouses.
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