Question Where'd everybody go?

Way back in Ayla and the Birthday Brawl, Ayla and Mrs. Carson had a discussion about the growing mutant population. Ayla commented about there being 20 to 30 new freshmen every year and Mrs. Carson agreed about the growth. At the time there were 600+ students at Whateley.

Birthday Brawl Ch 5 wrote: I nodded, “I know, it looks that way. But we both know the numbers of new mutants are increasing every year, and the numbers of LGBT mutants are increasing faster than that, and the numbers of potential Hawthorne cases may be increasing at least as rapidly as that. I’ve been looking at numbers of students for the past six years. You’re getting roughly an increase of twenty to thirty new freshmen every year over the previous year. You might possibly break two hundred froshes for next fall, and you could be up close to two-thirty the fall after that. At the current rate of change, Whateley’s going to need to expand in just two years.”

Fast forward 10 years and during the Assembly that Ms. Claire has for the students where they meet the new Headmaster and Assistant Headmaster, there is a mention of over seven hundred students.

IDTWIKA wrote: "Okay, can everyone please take a seat?" Elaine asked, looking around at the milling students, some seated and chatting, some still in the aisles. "Please be seated, everyone," she repeated, and slowly, the throng settled into their chairs as the background roar of over seven hundred students muted.

Even at 20 students a years
2007 +20
2008 +40 (20 from 2007)
2009 +60 (see above)
2010 +80
2011 +100
2012 +120
2013 +140
2014 +160
2015 +180
2016 +200

So in 2016 there would be an additional 200 Freshmen, an additional 180 Sophomores, an additional 160 Juniors, and an additional 140 Seniors. That is a total of 680 additional students, instead there are only an additional 1-200? Are the rest skipping the meeting?

With the 5 traditional dorms now holding about 200 and Hawthorne about 100, and Melville about doubling, that is housing for about 1500 students, but there is only 700+? Something odd seems to be going on.

Has the MCO just started the wholesale slaughtering of teenage mutants? Is there a Whateley West? Germany is mentioned as not having a school, the UK has two small schools, Did Brazil win the Powerball and build an alternative Mutant school? Does Ayla now run a different private mutant academy, Ayla's School for Gifted Children, Chaka's Sweeeeeeeeet School for Mutant Children, Jade's Chaos Institute, Lancer's Military Academy, Tennyo's Anime Cram School?

These numbers are NOT exact and do not scale. 2017 sees a tremendous influx of freshmen, then there is a lull where numbers drop substantially for several years, then an uptick again. Why is anyone's guess.

E. E. Nalley wrote: These numbers are NOT exact and do not scale. 2017 sees a tremendous influx of freshmen, then there is a lull where numbers drop substantially for several years, then an uptick again. Why is anyone's guess.

I blame comets... and drinking water... and depletion of the ozone layer.

Mutants don't come out of thin air (usually). Most of them started as a baby , and babies have to be made, usually by a man and a woman. But sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don't.

Actually, DanZilla's theory about "depletion of the ozone layer" makes some sense. Follow me:
- the Gen1 characters were for the most part born in the early Nineties (circa 1992 for the Class of 2010 i.e. the Kimbas and such). That is, about peak Ozone Layer Depletion rate when they were conceived. Also, Chernobyl was still pretty recent.
- However, the rate of depletion fell during the nineties and by the early 2000s (roughly when the Gen2 characters were being born) it had stabilized, and since then it has been recovering.
- The fallout from Chernobyl has been decaying too.
- Other environmental mutagenics have also faced stricter controls since then.

So, ASSUMING that background radiation at conception/birth plays some sort of role in the rate of mutant manifestation, it's not unreasonable that manifestations had been climbing in the early 2000's, but the curve flattened somewhat afterwards. It didn't actually fall -- it just rose slower than would be expected if you went by the early-2000s projections. Like, instead of the number of manifesting teens (and therefore students) having doubled in ten years, they rose "just..." I don't know, 30%? 50%? How many students are there in Gen2, anyway? Less than 1200, I'm pretty sure.