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The theory:



President Nixon secretly made a ton of cheap magnet schools/honeypots for smart but poor disenfranchised students (America won the space race because of systematically disenfranchised black women who were great at math and computer programming. The Russians got ahead early on because they had a larger pool of geniuses to choose from). They make the students think they’re going to an awful school, but they’re really going to an incredibly advanced school on par with (if not surpassing) the Ivy Leagues.

Evidence:

Ivy Leagues racist and anti-semitic admissions policies



Not only does Backupsmore have multiple geniuses attending, but enough students to support and maintain classes in fifth dimensional calculus, applied quantum phase theory, etc.



geniuses attending, but enough students to support and maintain classes in fifth dimensional calculus, applied quantum phase theory, etc. The fact that they had a PhD program at all.



Possible Fourth Amendment violations (is the phrase “mostly bug free dorms” a double entendre?)



Heavy government involvement in school projects (the mind control tie was, after all, taken by the government despite the fact that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t run for president for years).



Introduction: Alarming Trends and Coincidences

Picture this: Young Stanford Pines is a prodigy amongst prodigies. Being gifted is one thing, but possessing the capability and ingenuity to create a physics-defying perpetual motion machine (at 17 no less!) is quite another. Ending up in Backupsmore instead of any Ivy League was nothing more than a tragedy—this genius of the future was left in an unassuming mostly-bug-free dorm, instead of a place where his skills could have been better cultivated.

Right?

Enter Fiddleford Hadron McGucket. This Backupsmore student is also years ahead of his time—decades even. Portable computer technology was a pipe dream in the 60’s and 70’s, but dream it he did, even completing a successful prototype in his thirties (given he and Ford are the same age, approximately). His specialty is robotic mechs unattainable even with today’s technology. He possesses a wealth of knowledge so vast that he was able to construct a polydimensional metavortex thousands of years before mankind had that kind of technology, And, despite all odds, he ended up in the same college as Stanford. Not just the same college, but the same dorm-room, even.

That’s no longer a coincidence. Two geniuses, leagues ahead of the world they live in, in the same dorm? One prodigy is an anomaly. But two? That’s a trend.

Why Backupsmore? Where are the Ivy Leagues?

One could make the argument that both Stanford and Fiddleford are poor, too poor to afford Ivy League colleges on scholarships that (at least Ford) wouldn’t get due to not being valedictorian or even likely in the top ten percent of his class.

But, since Ford is from New Jersey and Fiddlefordd from Tennessee, at least one of them has to be paying Backupsmore out of state tuition.

Plus, college overall was cheaper then, and the system at the time was designed to funnel white students through the system while poorer and less white students were conscripted and shipped off to Vietnam. And if not Ivy League, surely a less prestigious but more qualified school would have accepted either Ford or Fiddleford into their ranks? Perfect grades do not a college student make, after all.

I find it hard to believe that neither of them applied to another school and that neither had been accepted by a school other than Backupsmore.

However… Stanford Pines isn’t white (particularly not by 1960s standards). Stanford Pines is, after all, Jewish.

The Ivy Leagues? The Ivy Leagues are predominately Protestant. Their students come from old money families who would pull their kids out of school in a skinny minute if their “good protestant children” have to spend too much time surrounded by people who aren’t just like them.

On top of this, the Ivy Leagues (Harvard, Yale, etc) have a noted history of antisemitic admissions policies (whether official or not).

Come to think of it, this could also be why West Coast Tech was so quick to dismiss him. Stanford Pines is a very Jewish name, they likely made their decision before even meeting him. (The representatives were from California, not New Jersey, their attitude can’t be explained by the general culture of the Garden State).

Why is Backupsmore being used as a Magnet School though?

Consider: The year is most likely 1969. We know Ford came to Gravity Falls in 1975 so we can assume he spent most, if not all, of Nixon’s presidency in college.

From 1969 to 1972, there were six manned US moon landings, securing an American victory in the Space Race (and, arguably, the Cold War itself).

And who is responsible for the Apollo 11 moon landing?

None other than Katherine Johnson, a systematically disenfranchised black woman.

Now, consider Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president. Nixon was a paranoid, lying, scheming man who disenfranchised the anti-war hippie movement and the black power movement in one fell swoop (the effects of which we’re still feeling today), with his aide, John Ehrlichman, quoted as saying:

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Nixon also ended the draft with the specific intention of stopping the anti-war movement.

But consider what value Katherine Johnson and others like her presented to the Nixon administration, what pawns disenfranchised geniuses could be to the Nixon administration.

Consider that, by allowing the poor, by allowing people of color, allowing hippies, and Jewish people and Catholics (who were, at the time, considered outsiders, Jewish people much more so than Catholics but still) to get a quality education while thinking they’re receiving a poor one, all while doing the government’s dirty work, America could keep their newfound leg up on Soviet competition.

After all, why fight in a war with only a fraction of your people working with you?

Events of Note

“MOSTLY bug-free dorms” seems like an odd choice of words off the bat— and the tone of voice the speaker (the dean, I believe) says it in makes it sound like a positive thing. However, it’s well known that all college dorms are only mostly bug free. So why bring it up?



Well, if it is Nixon who’s making these magnet schools, and the government is heavily involved in the curriculum, why wouldn’t the dorms be bugged ?

?

This is, of course, a violation of the fourth amendment, but since when has Richard Nixon cared about that ?

? The “government-funded” mind control tie experiment sounds like something straight from a declassified CIA file.



Backupsmore has suspiciously advanced classes, for a “sub-par” school. Colleges rely on tuition payments to pay faculty members. And if a student underperforms/fails a class, they’re removed from campus.



Backupsmore University, therefore, must not only have enough students to justify hiring professors to teach their advanced classes (again: Applied Quantum Phase Theory and Fifth Dimensional Calculus! Not to mention Ford’s cryptography classes), but have enough students consistently passing these classes as well!

Conclusion

Gravity Falls Richard Nixon created at least one honeypot college for poor or otherwise disenfranchised students, so that he could use their work to further American agendas at home and abroad, all while refusing to actually work for social change, and none of these students actually received a leg up or any social leverage for their trouble.