Brown investigating disruptive students

PROVIDENCE – Brown University will investigate and may penalize students who disrupted a speech by New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly last month, forcing the school to cancel the event, Bloomberg News reported this month.
Christina Paxson, Brown’s president, will appoint a faculty and student committee to recommend how to improve planning for such events. After the review is complete, the school will determine whether individuals or organizations violated a code of conduct by shouting down the police commissioner to protest the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.
“Not only was Commissioner Kelly denied the opportunity to speak, but members of our community were denied the opportunity to challenge him,” Paxson said in the letter addressed to university alumni and friends.
Kelly, the outgoing police chief, was set to deliver a 20-minute speech on Oct. 29 entitled “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City,” followed by 40 minutes of questions and answers. Instead the campus auditorium was cleared after almost a half hour of shouting and interruptions that made it impossible for the lecture to take place. •