What do you think?

I just had another thought about the use of academic settings. Because academic settings are so large and include so many people, the author is able to introduce several characters into the story in order to make it more complex. With so many people in the story, the reader could easily be tricked into thinking that a certain person is the culprit when in reality it is somebody else all along. This heightens both suspense and irony. Also, there are more people to give false testimony and perhaps witness an event but retell a completely different story than another person who claimed to witness the exact same event. This in itself adds another element to the story.