‘Someone's Gotta Speak for That’: Craig Brown and his stand for UAlbany students
by Sia Patel | September 21, 2026
Craig Brown doesn't shy away from a question. Ask him why he ran for the Student Association Senate, and Craig Brown traces it back to his childhood, to an autistic twin brother who is nonverbal, to years of speaking on someone else's behalf before he even understood what advocacy meant.
"Everything I do that I love is some form of advocacy," he said. "Some form of representing somebody else."
Brown, a sophomore senator for the Social Sciences, started as the executive branch’s chief compliance officer, "essentially a fancy name for an intern," before winning a special election for Indigenous Quad. He spent eleven years in acting and fell in love with law through mock trials. Advocacy, he says, is the throughline.
On dining dollars, Brown is blunt. Last year's meal plans had a higher upfront cost but offered a 40 percent discount at checkout. This year, the sticker price dropped and the discount vanished, which Brown says shifts the burden from parents and financial aid directly onto students. "It's called the pain of payment," Brown said.
"Before, we didn't see the money leave. Now we're seeing it leave fast." He rejects the university's claim that prices reflect fair market value. "It's not $3 better, and it's not $3 bigger. It's just $3 more expensive," he said.
As a public institution, he argues, UAlbany shouldn't charge market rate at all. He's now digging into Aramark's contract with University Auxiliary Services to find pressure points.
On Title IX, Brown is working on what he calls a simple fix to a serious problem. Off-campus fraternities fall outside Title IX jurisdiction because the university doesn't own or control them. His proposal would expand the university's definition of "substantial control," potentially allowing Title IX jurisdiction to extend to incidents involving students and employees even when they occur off campus.
When students raised alarms about license-plate readers on campus, Brown investigated. A university official denied their existence. Brown drove around campus and found the cameras were Motorola, not Flock—a different brand.
"Our first thought is, okay, so they lawyered us," he said. He dug into UPD's LPR policy and found that personalized data requires a case number tied to a criminal investigation, with monthly audits. In a meeting with Chief Burlingame, he confirmed every detail and pushed for audits to be made public.
"Do I like the cameras? No," Brown said. "But is this the most responsible use of LPR cameras we're gonna see? I think it's pretty damn close."
Brown is blunt about the Student Association's reputation. A recent student survey found about 45 percent of students disapprove of the SA, while roughly 30 percent don't know what it does. "People either hate it or don't know what it does," he said. The SA's formal powers are limited to funding clubs, but Brown says 90 percent of his job is emailing and meeting with administrators, work any student could do. "Nobody cares if you can withdraw a bill without a motion," he said. "That doesn't affect anybody."
He's also working on a solution for student orgs barred from using Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App due to embezzlement risks. He's exploring a new app that would route fundraising proceeds directly into club UAS accounts, eliminating the need for handling cash and reducing risk of misuse.
As for his legacy, Brown doesn't want headlines. He wants students to notice something that helps them, a to-go box, a safer way to fundraise, a textbook scholarship, and think, "I think Craig did that." He campaigned on a $15,000 textbook scholarship and is fighting to ensure it reaches students' pockets. He loves to eat and joked, "it is an act of will not to take a second mortgage to go to Jamal's," and worries about freshmen navigating higher prices for the first time.
Before wrapping up, Brown made one final point: the best work in the SA isn't seen. "When it's announced, it's done," he said. He suggested Senator Kavalunas would be a good person to profile, a characteristic move, redirecting attention to someone else, to the advocacy that happens in the margins. More than anything, that appears to be the legacy Craig Brown hopes to leave behind.
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