SAN ANDREAS UNIVERSITY IN LOS SANTOS, SAN ANDREAS
ORIGIN
The San Andreas University was founded as the San Fierro Jewish Academy by the San Fierro Jewish American Foundation in 1919.
The San Fierro Jewish Academy was founded by 16 Jewish elites of San Fierro who had a long history with the San Fierro Jewish American Foundation. 12 out of the 16 were born and raised in the city but were educated at Ivy League American universities such as Yale, Harvard and Cornell. The remaining 4 were educated at universities in Romania, the Ukraine, Austria and The Netherlands. At the time of its founding, the 16 men who founded the university were middle aged and individually averaged around 25 years as students and professors of American and European academia.
The San Fierro Jewish Academy was originally located in the San Fierro district of King's, a traditionally Jewish American enclave located in the central part of the city. For the first 38 years of its existence, the academy was only open to Jewish Americans of at least one Jewish parent. The elitist academy specialized in Judaic religious studies with secondary emphasis on the arts, language, medicine, engineering as well as the political and social sciences.
In 1958, the San Andreas governor at the time, a long-time Democratic Party member, Joseph R. Hererra, decided to fund the academy through state government means in agreement with the San Fierro Jewish American Foundation. The school was then re-named to the San Fierro State University in 1960 and lifted its restrictions on non-Jews. The first non-Jewish students and professors were admitted to the university in 1962.
During the 1960s, the San Fierro district of King's began seeing drastic demographic shifts which saw some of the historic Jewish population leave for better off parts of the city. Lower income African Americans and Latinos began migrating to the district in search of improved living conditions and better economic opportunities. Quality of life and the standard of living was reduced for many Jewish residents as violent drug crime became widely proliferated. The widespread sale of marijuana, LSD and heroin in the district eventually became problematic on the university campus. In response to the alarming rise in crime, and the distribution of narcotics on campus by local criminals, the San Fierro State University relocated to the Downtown core in 1967. The original campus in King’s was converted into a museum in 1978 and remains open to the public to this day.
Additionally in the 1960s, the San Fierro State University was a focal point for the New Left in San Andreas. Feminism, Sexual Liberation, Civil Rights and anti-war advocacy for the Vietnam conflict largely originated in San Andreas from the San Fierro State University. In 1969, the Homosexual Students Association was founded in the school. Between 1969 and 1975, other permanent student associations for feminists, women, blacks and Latinos were created. All of these student associations are still enduring in the current year.
In 1979, due to large increases in students entering the university, the decision was made to split the campus between San Fierro and Los Santos. The Los Santos facilities for the university began construction in the same year, centered in the Commerce district of the city. An outlying facility, a laboratory, was erected in Vinewood. The Los Santos campus completed construction in 1981 and commenced operation the following year. In 1984, after two years of operation in Los Santos, the San Fierro State University was renamed to the San Andreas University. Due to the splitting of the campuses and facilities, the average student population throughout the 1980s increased from 3,000 to 8,500 in a span of just six years.
In 1987, in accordance with the expansion of the campuses and accompanying facilities, the San Andreas University began offering education to convicts within the San Andreas penal system. This educational program, known as the Inmate Education Initiative, aimed to educate incarcerated persons in order to aide with their reintegration back into society after being in prison. This program ceased operation in 1991 after Charles Marsden, a linguistics professor, was nearly stabbed to death while teaching at the San Quentin State Prison in San Fierro. His attempted killer, Darnell Boyd, stabbed him with a rudimentary weapon a total of 8 times before being subdued by correctional officers. The stabbing happened within a classroom, and despite miraculously making a nearly full physical recovery in the months following, Professor Marsden suffered from severe PTSD after the incident. Due to deteriorating mental health, Professor Marsden was forced to retire from teaching in 2002. The incident caused controversy about security in San Andreas state prisons, and called the University of San Andreas’s program into question. In 1993, Darnell Boyd, originally serving a 3 year sentence for car theft, was re-sentenced to life in prison without parole for Professor Marsden’s attempted murder.
MODERN DAY
During the 1990s and much of the 2000s, the university continued to professionalize as an institution. With the ending of the Inmate Education Initiative in 1991, largely due to political reasons, the U.S. ROTC (United States Reserve Officer’s Training Corps) was brought to the university in 1997. In 2003, the university began accepting exchange students from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. These changes brought about the largest student enrollment increase in the university’s history: between 1997 and 2005, the university averaged 9,000 students every year.
In recent years, the San Andreas University has seen a decrease in student enrollment as a consequence of the Great Recession, drastically increased tuition fees, burdening student debt and a general rise in the cost of living in both San Fierro and Los Santos. Nowadays, the university averages a average student enrollment rate of a mere 5,000, which is thousands less than it was several dozen years ago. The culture of the university has drastically changed since the late 2000s; social justice movements and identitarianism have flourished in recent years, which has drawn criticism from political commentators and conservative students. Additionally, the university has been the site of student led protests, raising public awareness towards the cost of tuition, student debt and the runaway cost of living.
Regardless of the fragile social and cultural status quo at the San Andreas University, it remains the premier higher educational institution in San Andreas. Plans to expand the university campus will likely be underway in the early 2020s, especially in regards to student housing. An expansion of the San Andreas University to Las Venturas and adjoining satellite campuses to Bayside and Fort Carson is planned for 2026. The university additionally intends on extending scholarship opportunities for academics and athletics towards impoverished women and minorities in Los Santos, starting in 2022.
LOCATION
1618 Artesia Avenue, Downtown Los Santos,
Los Santos 206, San Andreas
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
This faction is completely dedicated to furthering people's characters before entering adult life and starting their careers as professionals.
The leaders of this faction are allowed, at their own discretion, to disallow or deny anyone from entering or roleplaying with it on the grounds that their characters are not up to par with the standards that we are trying to set. Players who are trying to join should be aware of this from the get-go.
Please do the proper research on what does and does not go on in an American college / university before joining. Anyone who is seen breaking the environment will be kicked and this gives us the right to do so upon joining.
Treating a tuition like it is a non-issue in order to perform a severe degree of certain crimes (violent, gang and organized crime related, etc) is unrealistic and won't be allowed. If we find out that your character has a lengthy or otherwise severe criminal record, you will not be allowed to continue roleplaying with our university.
If for any reason you are kicked from our faction because of OOC reasons, your character's involvement with said campus will be wiped from your character's history. You give us the right to do so during the application process; effectively making it a "Faction PK" of sorts if you are kicked from the faction under such circumstances.
The San Andreas University campus is a crime free safezone, and upon joining, you are to respect the rules that come with that.
Please read our college roleplay guide if you are not sure on how to approach the roleplay.
Permission to post screenshots on this thread are to be obtained from the upper administration of the faction after being accepted. You are not allowed to post without permission. Screenshots that get posted to this thread without the required permissions will simply be removed.
Any questions should be directed to the University of San Andreas forum account.
Credits go to Scarlett_Newman and Sureno Vida for the concept and story.