Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-4830106-20130810030606/@comment-24891101-20140606190010

Zolnir, BenRG:

He may be head of Beacon, which is certainly quite prestigious, but it's certainly not the only very prestigious university specialized for combat education. Consider our world. If Remnant, and Vytal, more to the point, have populations comparable to modernity (even before the relatively recent population explosion), coupled with modern (future) technology, then there are almost certainly a nontrivial number of comparable academies.

Having said this, I too have gotten the impression that Ozpin is an academic of high standing. He may, in addition to being a university head, be also a theorist known in certain poltical circles. What political power he may have likely comes from that, not so much his headship of Beacon, though being a Hunter in good standing may help, depending on how Hunters interact with the government and military. He may also have pull in the Hunter per se community, since presumably he is well respected and some look up to him as a mentor, depending on his age. He may not actually be the one sending the teams into combat (it has been theorized that Ruby may have urged the teams (via heartfelt, inspiring speech?) to go rogue to counter Cinder's growing threat). Or it could be that he is illegally waging a private war, trading on his students' esteem for him.

I wasn't even actually considering that the last bit of the opening narration was part of a lecture podcast, but I appreciate the idea. I saw it more in the vein of exactly how it was presented, which was an opening narration to a story, though. (I've spoken elsewhere of Volume I's resemblance to a storybook, in some ways, only heightened by RWBY's motif.)