Yep, there's no denying that Alabaster's a bit of a prison, where there are lots of expressed rules and even more unspoken ones. The feeling of being watched generated by the panoptical nature of the boarding school institution was enough to keep most of the students obeying the rules without the need for any serious levels of surveillance.
And however fancypants it might be, it's really eerily similar to the panopticon, when it comes to atmosphere: Though it is a highly selective (and expensive) boarding school, Alabaster also happens to carry quite a bit of rules with it. The panopticon would create a sense of paranoia so pervasive that its inhabitants became practically self-governing. Veryone in the panopticon knew they could be watched at all times, so in the end, only minimal watching actually needed to happen. Even though Alabaster is a beautifully lush campus, it's no coincidence that Frankie compares it to the original panopticon, which was a design for a hypothetical prison:
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