Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-25266931-20161112032800/@comment-14138255-20161113212548

Because then we wouldn't have a story or Penny. Ironwood made a dumb mistake, but that is only in retrospect (hindsight is always 20/20 after all). At the time, it was a good way to test Penny's capabilities and generate good PR by having a "student" win the Vytal Festival Tournement. And that all has nothing to do with Penny's own desire to be normal (that is: attend Beacon and have friends like Ruby), which is something you can't really get in a Top Secret Military Base cut off from the rest of the world.