Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20151213162620/@comment-26397825-20151216075251

Also, I'm fairly certain the Headmaster would have to sign some sort of paperwork while organising for their students to go on a trip to another Kingdom for a couple of weeks, which would include knowing just which teams are being sent over there. There's only 32 teams (worked out because there's 8 finalists, which means 16 teams for the doubles round, which means 32  teams for the team round), which if we assume there would be an equal number from each as it is meant to be a show of cooperation and equality and friendliness between Kingdoms, there would only be 8 teams from Haven.

The Headmaster doesn't have to know all the students in his school; he just has to sign the paperwork authorising for those students to go across. In order for the teams to qualify, they would have to have teachers comments on why they were chosen over others, and all that sort of logistic stuff.

Which means that either Cinder switched her team with another team who was approved and the Headmaster of Haven never approved for her team to go across, which means he wouldn't know them from a bar of soap which should raise questions since he had to organise flights and accomodation, or Cinder slipped her team in before the Headmaster of Haven signed off on them, which means she had to make all those notes from the teachers as well that said why her team was being sent in place of another team.

The logistics of it technically would get her caught, since then another teacher (say, one of the sparring teachers if Haven even has multiple sparring teachers, unlike Beacon which seems to only have Glynda Goodwitch) should look at them and say "Oh, I don't think they were in my class." Then they just have to go to another teacher, indulge in a bit of gossip (which teachers do, again, I am friends with multiple high school teachers. They gossip between each other, and about current students to former students. Teachers are horrible gossips), and it would come out that none of the teachers at Haven remember seeing Cinder's team go through their class.

Then they'd be able to look through the school records, find that Mercury, Neo and Emerald aren't even students, or if they are that they haven't submitted a single assignment in class which would automatically disqualify them from being eligible for the tournament if it's based on grades, which I think it would be.

Cinder can't be too much older than the girls, since it was stated that she was only a few years only than RWBY. If she's old enough to be an allumni of Haven, then she's at least 21 and she's more than four years older than RWBY, which is more than a couple.