12-19-25 - 9am - How Brown University Was a Soft Target

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mike or Michael.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Hey, I hope you get this for tomorrow Morning show.
One time I was southbound on I twenty five in
the number two lane, somewhere around Centennial, going about seventy
five miles an hour, and a lady in a beamer
came by me with a baby in her arms, breastfeeding,
and she motored by me like I was standing still.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Wait, wait a minute.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
You you, sir, were at the twenty five in Centennial,
which is like right over here if you were doing
seventy five. Which I shouldn't say anything, because I I
left a meeting yesterday and was going down twenty five
headed to home so we could go to dinner, and

(00:49):
I helped to look down and during it was amazing.
During rush hour, it was all moving around seventy five
miles an.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hour in this feedlnit over there sixty five, I.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
Don't even know if it's sixty five, I'd be fifty
five right over there.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
I'm not sure that a fifty five because you're talking
the curves, but I think you get further south. Yeah,
pops up to seventy five.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
But that's that's a perfect talk back because it encompasses
everything that you and I as teenagers, enjoy one. It's
it's it's a BMW, so we know the joke about
you know, porcupying pricks and we and then it's a
woman breastfeeding in a BMW at more than seventy five

(01:33):
miles an hour a long eye twenty five And of.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Course our listeners are observing and watching.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
And have to come back twenty four hours after we
talk about something.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Because they can't let it go. Speaking, you can't let
it go.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
I have in my I don't know whether I've used
this term over here yet or not, but I have
every day I have a POS. It's a pile of stuff,
so that's right. I have a pliless stuff. And in
my POS today is and and Gina just finished the
news story about it, about Excel, and I saw it

(02:10):
coming in today. On the overhead signs something about be
prepared for blackouts and then something about be sure and
treat a dark intersection as a four way stop. And
I'm thinking two things. Can you guess the two things
I'm thinking up? One that first line just should should

(02:31):
have just said be prepared for blackouts, should just said
we are California.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
And then the second line said did.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
You ever take driver's head, because I was thought that
you always treat a four way you know, a intersection
with lights and the lights are out, you treat it
as a four way stop. And by the way, let
me remind everybody, the person on the right has the
right of way, and if you both arrive at the
same time, the person on the right has the right

(03:01):
of way. And don't be that one jack wagon that
sits there and then tries to get you to go
ahead and move when it's their right away.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Drives me nuts.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
I mean, what they're trying to be polite, and they're.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
Trying to be polite to what they're doing, and by
trying to be polite, they're screwing up the whole way
it's supposed to work.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Oh, it drives me not Oh just oh just go ahead,
go ahead, No, it's your right away.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
Oh and so then you look, you know, I give
them that, you know, as if they can even see
my eyes, I just give them that look like.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Angry eyes.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
But I'm not going to talk about it, Excel until
maybe later in the program. Did little research yesterday? Uh
oh yeah, because because you know the talk back that
you know said, hey, you want to take back anything
you said about you know, fires and blah blah blah.
I did a little research oh on. But as you

(04:04):
may or may not know. If you don't know, you
really ain't paying attention. They they captured, they found the
body of the shooter from Brown University, and of course
the news can't let it go because now, oh, what's
the motive and you know, what's going on in Portugal
and what was the relationship between this guy and his

(04:25):
fellow student when they were in studying in Portugal? And
you know, and you know, there was a two hour
press conference last night, which I guess was a real cluster,
you know what, and everybody, you know, everybody's all around that.
I think we might be missing something important about Brown University.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
On December thirteenth.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Brown University became the latest elite campus, an IVY League
school to learn a brutal lesson, and that is that
your governing philosophies don't stop bullets. Two students were killed
were wounded inside the shooting in that engineering building I
think it's called Barrison Holly Hall or something. Investigators say

(05:08):
that the government who killed himself, or they say killed
himself yesterday. But I don't know how they know that
unless they've got some sort of medical examiner report. Anyway,
they found him dead in a story shit. He fled
the campus on foot into the surrounding neighborhood. In the
day's after the shooting, the cops leaned heavily on off
campus residential and business footage because there were so few

(05:33):
surveillance cameras in and around the classroom building where the
shooting occurred. While the Providence Police Department Brown was obviously
located in Providence, Rhode Island, and the FBI continued the
manhunt manhunt and the broader investigation, the spotlight really started
to swing toward something that universities hate. What exactly was

(05:59):
Brown University prioritizing in the name of campus safety. I
think it's appropriate that now we talk about this. I
don't want to talk about the shooter. Don't want to
talk about his motive. They'll find out that somehow, and
everybody's like, oh, what's the motive? What's the movie? Will
you will? Okay, Well, hang around, you'll soon find out.
But how about the choices that Brown University made and

(06:21):
that those choices were in played site for years at
an elite Ivy League school and that now look like
what it would I would describe it as a blueprint
race off target. Here's some deeps you need to know.
The top campus safety official at Brown University is a

(06:42):
Yahoo by the name of Rodney Chapman. He's the university's
vice president for Public Safety and Emergency Management, and he's
the head of Brown's public safety department. Now, when the
university first announced his apployment as the first vice president
for campus Safety, which happened in July twenty twenty one,

(07:03):
the university truly actually framed the role not only as
operational policing, but as a oh these words just make
my heart flutter, as a community facing project. And that
community facing project, remember this is July twenty twenty one,

(07:26):
just after George Floyd all that, you know, the mostly
peaceful summer of July twenty twenty. You know, a year later,
in July twenty twenty one, they have a community facing
project and in the announcement they emphasize that this new
Goober not not goober. This new Yahoo brought a community

(07:49):
focused approach, community focused approach, transparency and accountability, and a
track record of quote building strong relationships with campus community members,
including and especially those from underrepresented groups.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
What like dead students? Is that who you're representing? Or shooters?
I mean, who.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
Exactly are the underrepresented groups that you're all concerned about.
The announcement also said that he has forthright views on
the need to address the issues of bias in law enforcement. Wow,
I think he's really focused on safety right now. The
heart of the argument the Chapman was in effect a

(08:35):
values first selection because Brown did not merely hire a
police executive.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
It hired a public safety leader.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
Whose role was, to quote, according to Brown University itself,
to sustain a community in which students, faculty, and staff
are treated with respect and provided equal access to employment
and educational resources in a setting to find by a
commitment to well being, safety and security. What a load

(09:07):
of crap, What an absolute load of crap. Now, if
you believe that the primary failure mode of campus police
is community distrust, I think the framework I just described
might just be responsible for that. If you believe the
primary failure Brown is physical vulnerability because they had uncontrolled access,

(09:29):
they had blind camera coverage, they had lagging alerts, then
Brown looks like a university wide experiment that kind of
pushed out very basic security something that oh, I don't know,
maybe even the under Secretary of Homeland Security might be
awareof to understand why this feels like some kind of

(09:52):
reckoning or should be a reckoning, but the cabal will
probably keep it from being that. Let's go back to
twenty sixteen. That year is when Brown released its Diversity
and Inclusion Action Plan. Oh, the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan,
that's a campus wide strategy. It was buried and buried

(10:14):
in the plan's institutional commitments was a direct reference to
the Department of Public Safety. They wanted to expand the
Department of Public Safety, Law Enforcement, campus security. What was
their main focus to expand diversity and inclusion training for
public safety that's identified as part of the plan's main
action items. In other words, the DEI framework didn't just

(10:40):
live over in the academic departments. It didn't live over
there in student life. It its tentacles went all the
way into campus policing, and it didn't stop there. No,
Because DEI is like some sort of it's like pancreatic,
it's it's it's truly at sizing cancer. Brown's very own

(11:03):
public safety and Emergency Management materials highlight that it's diversity
diversity oriented. That's one of the commitments that's core to
the department's identity and practice, including a formal commitment to
a diversity Commitment value statement. So they ran student listening sessions.
Oh yes, Oh I love listening sessions because they wanted

(11:27):
to tie police, community relations, and campus safety programming to
their DEI program. So they invited students to learn about
the safety plan and to provide feedback. Now you kind
of cobble all those pieces together and you get an
institutional posture that's pretty clear. Since twenty sixteen, Brown University

(11:48):
has treated campus security not as deterrence and when needed,
rapid response, but as a singular domain for DEI aligned governance,
which include training, messaging, community partnership structures all meant to
shape how the policing is perceived, not necessarily well, and

(12:11):
I guess I could say how it's experienced. Also, So
what did the shooting reveal. Let's start with surveillance.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
There were.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
There were very few cameras in the engineering building where
the attack occurred, despite the campus actually having extensive camera
coverage overall. I guess they just don't care about engineers.
Or if they maybe they just ran out of money
because they were paying everybody else to you know too
highest salaries. Man, we don't have any money. We just
won't put any cameras over there because they're the engineers.

(12:45):
Nobody cares about the engineers. Now, if you know, if
there was a law school, you know, the lawyers wouldn't
kill all the lawyers first. You know, well, we'll we'll.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Not put the cameras there. No, they don't do anything.
They're out.

Speaker 4 (12:58):
They had an outdoor siren system, or some people like
to say a siren. They had a siren system. It
was designed to warn the campus community and life threatening emergencies,
and it was you know, you hear the siren, that
was your signal to shelter in place. But Brown's president
said the siren system would not be activated. Listen closely.

(13:22):
They would not activate it for an active shooter situation
because that might send people rushing toward the danger zone. Now,
if you know anything about Brown University, it's like a
little postage stamp inside the middle of a very wealthy community.
So if you hear a siren go off on the campus,
are you going to run toward the middle of the

(13:43):
campus or are you gonna run? Because I've heard many
people describe I've been on Brown maybe once or twice
in my entire life, that you could probably cross the
entire campus in ten minutes or less. So if the
sirens go off, are you gonna run onto the campus
or you're gonna run away from the campus. Yeah, But
the president of Brown University says, oh, we you know,

(14:04):
we don't want to use the siren in an ACTU
shooter situation because well, people might you know, react the
wrong way and run toward the danger. I thought cops
were supposed to run toward the danger. Now, I know
you can disagree about the sirens. I don't care, but
if you get kind of where I'm going before I
take a break here, Notice what all this implies at

(14:28):
the moment that there was a maximum need for honest
to goodness safety and security. Brown's emergency signaling tools were
either not used or they saw them as ill suited
for the scenario they appear on paper to address.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
So let's don't sound an alarm, Let's.

Speaker 4 (14:50):
Don't you know, let's don't worry about you know, we
got cameras, except we got blind spots and all of that.
So that leads to an awful lot of operationtional questions, coverage, access,
the alerting doctrine, and I guarante an to you none
of that's gonna get sold by calling the students together,

(15:12):
calling the community together, and having.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
A listening session.

Speaker 4 (15:17):
Yes, our little listening session will continue after this.

Speaker 5 (15:22):
So is today the last day of the year for
the Brownie and Dragon Show? Are you coming back? January second?
January fifth? Give us all the details please.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
I don't know it'd be lucky if they invite us
back at all.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
I know, Uh, yeah, it'll be January fifth.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
First of all, my vacation is through the thirty first.
That's New Year's Eve, which I think is a company holiday.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
I know. New Year's Day is why we're not gonna
come back and just work that Friday.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, but then you have to use a vacation in
the new year, so you've already starting off the new
year with a vacation day spent.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Okay, I don't know whether it's say anything publicly about
this or not, but I went into correct because I
didn't realize that that Friday was in there. I mean
that I had not included that Friday. So I went
in there and included that Friday, and the system took
it out of this years.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
Don't say anything? What don't say? Well, I can tell
you is.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
It too late for me to do that? I mean,
because I didn't want to use one for next year
on just one day that that first Friday. It's like
it's a Friday. I don't really remember, so I just
figured i'd come in work. But if it's taken off
this year now, well.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
And again I don't know because I know that you know,
I've got that little deal, so I don't know whether
it's miscalculating or what it was doing.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
But yeah, computers in math, you really trust it.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
Well, it's the.

Speaker 4 (17:08):
Yeah, this is one of the few times I've actually
taken two weeks off. I'm pretty excited about it because
that means I don't have to see Yahoo back there.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
That's great.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
We got what two and a half hours ago, and
then we don't have to see each other for two weeks.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
I know.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Glorious.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
I'm already in a good mood, actually happy to see
my family. I can't say, my family is going to
be happy to see me. I'm going to be happy
to see them, so you know that's a win for me.
Back to Brown University last fall the fault. This just
past fall, two campus police unions issued votes and no

(17:48):
confidence and Vice President Chapman, And in fact the no
confidence votes were about the entire department leadership. They were
citing serious concerns about leadership direction, public safety, and then
earlier this year there are also complaints from officers themselves
about how the leadership handled threats and safety operations. Now,

(18:09):
those votes don't prove that anyone policy caused this shooting.
I'm not trying to say that. But what I am
saying is that well before the shooting this week December thirteen,
there were internal stakeholders warning that the department's direction was
simply unacceptable. I know that most universities, as by Frank,

(18:32):
I think even many businesses treat those kinds of warnings
as just labor noise. Maybe after this week, that kind
of posture looks less like prudence and more like sticking
your head in the sand. So if Brown wants to
persuade anybody that it has learned anything from this, it

(18:53):
really should stop treating physical security as some kind of
an embarrassment or some kind of cover for DEI program
and start treating it as a duty that a campus
has to the people that pay the tuition or that
that you know, they pay salaries to to teach the
students that pay the tuition, or for visitors, or for

(19:15):
that matter, the community that surrounds Brown University in the campus.
It requires acknowledging something that I think campus administrators avoid
saying out loud. A police department exists to deter violence
and respond to and investigate violence. A police department is

(19:37):
not there to market itself as being, Oh, we're non threatening, Yeah,
we're you know, we're just we're just here to you know,
we're here for show and tell. Brown's own public communications
show that it was deliberate when it embedded DEI priorities
into campus policing starting back in twenty sixteen and and

(20:00):
elevated a safety leader in twenty twenty one whose appointment
was announced and explicitly framed in terms of community engagement,
underrepresented group relationship building, and bias oriented policing reform.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
That is DEI personified.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
Now, whether that model contributed to under investment in cameras,
access control and emergency doctrine, and independent review should answer.
But after December thirteenth, I think one thing is already clear.
An institution can spend an entire decade perfecting the language

(20:44):
is safety and still failed miserably at the mechanics of safety.
And I think what we see here is not just
applicable to Brown University, but it's one more example of
the dangers of of diversity, equity and inclusion. There's always

(21:05):
going to be racism, and our job as people who
abhor racism is to call it out when we see it.
But to perpetuate racism by saying that you know we're
going to do this or we're not going to do
this is absolutely insane. Now I've not and there's some

(21:26):
danger in this, except it comes from Alexa. So I'll
take some trust in this. But here is a university student.
This is supposed to buy somebody. I follow also on
ex Eric Doherty Brown University student Alex Say previously. If
this rayed the school's administrators for having a forty six

(21:48):
million dollar deficit despite surging costs for students they paid
ninety thousand plus per year, let's just listen to what
he has to say.

Speaker 6 (21:58):
ERSTI one of the most exclusive institutions in the world.

Speaker 7 (22:02):
But I'm not here to glorify the Ivy League.

Speaker 6 (22:04):
I'm here to warn you and the promise of American
higher education of opportunity through meritocracy is under attack.

Speaker 7 (22:11):
I'm a legacy student at Brown. I went to a
prep school that fees to the Ivy League, and my.

Speaker 6 (22:16):
Parents are doctors who can afford the ninety three thousand
dollars a year sticker price. In other words, I'm exactly
who the Ivy League was built for.

Speaker 7 (22:24):
But what about the kids who weren't born on third base?

Speaker 6 (22:27):
Statistically speaking, for a smart kid from a poor family,
an Ivy League degree can power their assents to the
upper income brackets better than anything else. That's the American dream.
But today that dream is now a luxury good. According
to The New York Times, at Brown, the median student's
family makes over two hundred thousand dollars a year. Half
the student body comes from the top five percent of earners,

(22:49):
and research by Brown's own professor John Friedman shows that
even equally qualified, low income students are vastly underrepresented at
this very moment. The American people are tightening their belts,
and Brown is raising tuition to beyond ninety thousand dollars
a year, and even while charging students the price of
a luxury car.

Speaker 7 (23:08):
Brown is on track to run a forty six million
dollar deficit this year.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Maybe they're spending too much money on DEI programs. Maybe
instead of hiring a vice president to run your safety department,
maybe I ought to hire a cop to run your
campus police department. Maybe that's what you want to do.

Speaker 7 (23:27):
I'll tell you where it's going.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
It's going into an empire of administrative bloat and bureaucracy.

Speaker 4 (23:33):
Oh so Brown University is like any other public education somewhere.
It just happens to be a private university. Yeah, they're
squandering their money on bloat, on administrative overhead.

Speaker 6 (23:46):
Brown employees three eight hundred and five full time non
instructional staff for just two hundred and twenty nine hundergrads.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
Wow, so for every two undergrads you've got an administrator.
That's pretty good ratio, don't you think. I wonder how
many cops they have per what it was that seven
thousand students. I wonder how many cops say out for.

Speaker 6 (24:08):
Those to one administrator for every two students.

Speaker 7 (24:11):
This isn't education.

Speaker 6 (24:13):
This is bloat paid for on the backs of students
and families who are mortgaging their futures for a shot
at a better life. Meanwhile, Grace Calhoun, Brown's athletic director,
earns over one million dollars. A household assistant on payroll
tends to the university president, Christina Paxson, and when budget
cuts are made, these expenses stay while the student experience deteriorates.

(24:34):
My dorm floods when it rains, and the burger patties
in our dining hall have been replaced by an unappetizing
beef mushroom blend. The idea that Brown's administration can be
streamlined is in conjecture. We didn't used to have these
many administrators. Across the nation, the number of university administrators
has risen by one hundred and sixty two percent in
recent decades, and it's no coincidence that correspondingly, the cost

(24:55):
of education has risen one hundred and eighty one percent
inflation adjusted dollars since the nineties. Across the pond, a
world class education on Oxford or Cambridge can cost but
half as much as an Ivy League degree in parts
due to a much lower administrative burden.

Speaker 4 (25:09):
And that's true, I think everywhere. And then you throw
into that mix, into that blender DEI programs, the bloat
becomes even worse. And then when when, I mean, I
want you to think for yourself. When, because we've got
the holidays coming up, and we've got the shooter dead,
so I know everybody's focused on the motive. When will

(25:32):
the cabal, if ever, start asking questions what were you
doing with DEI versus what were you doing with actual
campus security?

Speaker 3 (25:43):
I'll be right back right.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
You may be taking two weeks off, but I guarantee
you if you're gonna.

Speaker 5 (25:49):
Hear my laugh in your head down whole vacation.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
Sad but true, I know, sad but true. Every time
It's true.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
Every time I see an eighteen, whether I just I
kind of like, you know, I should just lie and say,
you know, I actually drive a twenty sixteen Kia. It's
a it's a brown, rusted out twenty sixteen Kia, and
it's got a it's got a little dent on the

(26:23):
on the Let's see what he'd be driving in the
left lane, Because he's driving seventy five miles an hour
down twenty five. So I'll be in the middle lane
trying to pudd along. By the way, the exhaust just
flares out. You know, it's just blue smoke flowing everywhere.
So look for that. That'll be me. Don't look for
a white BMWM sport.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Don't look. Don't look for that. Won't see me, because
it really is.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
It is sad when you look at every truck and
you think, oh my god, is that him? Because I
you know, you you you start pulling over as far
as you can over into the you know, far right
side or you full our left side. Kid, you the
truck's just weaving and everything, you know, and there's you know,
rappers blowing out of the you know he wrote down
the window and how you know the superiend start getting

(27:10):
tossed out. Yeah, stuff tossed out. You know it's him.
You know it's him.

Speaker 5 (27:15):
You know.

Speaker 4 (27:15):
Here's the thing. I don't ever want to meet him
because I have I have the perfect picture in my
mind what he looks like, how he acts, how he
smells everything, and I know what that runs.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
I know what he may keep it like. Right now,
he may be kind.

Speaker 4 (27:35):
Of like you know, a little sport coat, you know,
and a really nice ref shirt and clean crisp jeans,
and you know, a really nice, shiny new pair of
work boots or something.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
And that's just going to ruin my entire image.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Maybe a little bit like Gilbert Godfried and have that
voice as a fake voice.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Yes, he may have like a real radio voice.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
Some rent probably doesn't smoke, drink, do anything, you know,
But somehow I think that's not true.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
I think it's true. I think what we get is
what we get. Text messages.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
Uh Juber number eighty seven thirty, Please, for the love
of Santa Claus, record a new Michael Brown minute over
on Freedom while you're away at the North Pole. I
can't take the same MSG. We don't use MSG in
our food here. We don't use delicious though I know
it makes it much more delicious.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Occasionally gets you a headache, but you're right, it's worth
it's worth it.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
I can't take the same MSG over and over for
weeks on end. Also, you have a guest host for
the weekend program. No, it doesn't mean it'll be live either,
but oh yeah, I can't let out that can't let
out that radio secret.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Can you Oh, nothing's ever recorded on a station.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Do you want to hear what you're gonna hear for
the next two weeks? You want to record it right now?

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Dragging a Holy A, Gonna give you one second.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
You want to record it live on air right now.
We don't. It's not we don't have time to do it.
We'll do Yeah, we'll do it during the break.