Brown University Top Questions

I feel bad for people who don't go to this school.

here is one memory that i have of brown that is simple, but continues to stay with me: the guy living next door to me, leo, was in the hallway one day when i was walking to my room. when i passed him he was conversing with the janitor who cleans our dorm. i thought this was strange at first since i've never heard our janitor speak english; i wondered how they could be having a conversation. as i passed by i was pleasantly surprised to hear leo grappling with the janitors language while the janitor was grappling with english. it would have been so easy to just walk by and send a quick smile to each other and move on with our day, but leo took the time and energy to try and have a conversation with a man who probably is not afforded that simple opportunity. the willingness to learn and share experiences with one another is characteristic of the brown experience in general.

Brown is the BEST.. I can't see myself beeing anywhere else.

Concerning administrative deficiencies, they largely spring from similar tenets of liberalism and laissez-faire. Security at Brown is a joke; you can get in to any dorm without presenting any ID, and there is no shortage of horror stories concerning cases of violence, sexual harassment, and vandalism in which the administration essentially did little in the way of punishment. Students who expect that, since they pay 40k a year and worked hard throughout high school to get here, Brown will protect them by enforcing the more important rules with greater gravity should steer clear. Brown is fond of enforcing policies strictly only when it is convenient to them and forgetting about them when they would require more effort. One student I know was given a room which she was evicted from well into the semester because the office of student life had made a clerical error. They had given her a room promised to a transfer student. One might think that, in a closed system, since either would end up with a room either way, they would have just given the other room to the transfer student and not hassled my friend. Instead, they evicted her on a Friday and neglected to give her a place to stay over the weekend. In the meantime, she had gone to several deans in an attempt at appeal and was met with one of the most wildly dissatisfying rounds of buck passing in recent history. One dean looked her in the eyes and said, "Look, you really should go find somebody who cares." Also, due to the hyper-liberalism of many of the students, in a string of recent crimes, Brown Department of Public Safety (DPS) had its hands tied in a way that became problematic. What happened was that a crime was committed in the area by culprits who matched the description of young, male, and black. DPS officers found two who matched the description in the area and asked them to present ID. Deciding that Brown's rule which states that all students must present ID when asked by any staff member, did not apply to him, one of the students decided to become belligerent and got himself arrested. The next day the campus was a-roar with allegations of police profiling and brutality (the student was so belligerent he had to be physically restrained). Students walked around with bandages over one eye in protest. Several weeks later, however, when two muggings, one of which turned very violent were perpetrated by groups of five people, DPS was seemingly ineffective because they were going to be hassled for enforcing the rules they were hired to.

Brown doesn't really have the greatest resources for all its students. Really engineers and comp sci majors get all the perks and everyone gets the short end of the stick. It's like...you do comp sci, you are guaranteed a job. If you are an engineer you are guaranteed a job. If you are anything else, good luck with networking!

Again, let me reiterate the fact that anyone and everyone fits in at Brown. If you're party people, you can always find somewhere to dance and drink *drinking in Brown is honestly not that hard, we have very very lenient Brown police who will not do much more than tell you to put away whatever alcohol that you have or stop a unregistered party once in while*- every single night. If you're more a studious person, the Science Library is the perfect place - open 24/7 with zones limiting noise. The dorms are not the best thing in the world in Freshman year, but they get better every year with the housing lottery. Frats are not very big. A small 8{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} or so are involved at frats throughout Brown, but their parties and events are not completely exclusive. you can find friendship and brotherhood in different ways, but you can always turn to frats if you really feel the need to connect on that level - I have a friend who is having the time of his life right now since he has joined a Jewish fraternity, and others who are struggling to fit in with the crowds that they have to deal with. WHatever it is that you want to do at Brown, you can do it.

I love Brown, and I am grateful every day for the freedom I have as a student here.

Oftentimes I feel like I hate college because I have really stupid work to do or I hate the social scene (everybody drinks!) but I'm a crazy art student who didn't want to go to college in the first place and honestly, I WOULD NOT SURVIVE ANYWHERE ELSE. This is by far the best college I could have asked for.

Brown is best school everrrrrrr!

Brown is amazing. If it wasn't for the weather, it'd be the number 1 school. You should come.