Chapter 12 - The Fallout at Meridian UniversityBack at Meridian University, the shockwaves hit the administrative offices like a seismic tremor.
Jordan was sitting in the campus library, knee-deep in complex algorithmic code for his junior-year computer science thesis, when his phone began blowing up with notifications. Dozens of classmates, friends, and even professors were tagging him in breaking news alerts.
“MERIDIAN FOUNDATION BOARD UNDER INVESTIGATION: New Emails Reveal Systemic Discrimination.”
Dr. Sterling, who had long since retired following the initial scandal, released a public statement expressing utter shock, claiming he had been completely kept in the dark by the inner executive circle. But the public wasn't buying apologies this time. Student-led protests flooded the campus quad, demanding the immediate resignation of the entire board of trustees and an independent audit of every scholarship awarded over the past decade.
Maya Chen, now interning full-time at a cybersecurity firm in San Francisco, FaceTimed Jordan immediately.
"Are you seeing this?" Maya asked, her eyes wide with disbelief as she stared at her multi-monitor setup. "Those emails weren't just hidden—they were scrubbed using a military-grade deletion script. Whoever wrote that script made one fatal error: they left the local SMTP headers intact."
May you like
"Which means..." Jordan said, his heart pounding.
"Which means I can trace the exact IP address of the board member who tried to bury you three years ago," Maya grinned fiercely. "Game on."
Related Stories
