By Samantha Berkhead
Managing Editor
It’s 12:30 p.m. on a Wednesday in the Hickey Dining Hall. A moderate din of lunchtime chatter permeates the air. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, until…
“HA HA HA HA!”
These short, uproarious barks of laughter boom across the entire dining space, demanding to be heard. Throughout the years, the laugh has become as Bonaventure as beer and basketball.
The distinctive guffaw belongs to none other than Chris Brown, coordinator for residential education and housing.
Brown, who coworkers, RAs, students and faculty alike affectionately refer to as “Brownie,” said he’s laughed like this for as long as he can remember.
“I’ve had this laugh forever,” he said. “One of the things that is always embarrassing is at freshman orientation, when the dining hall is full of incoming students. An orientation leader or one of my friends and colleagues will do whatever they can to try to make me laugh. One of the orientation leaders this year had a goal to do whatever was in his power to make sure I went full-out, full-blown laughter. It was embarrassing, but it was also like, ‘Get used to it, you’re going to be hearing this for the next four years of your life.’”
At last year’s Spring Into Bona’s event, prospective freshmen embarked on a scavenger hunt with a task that would befuddle anyone outside the Bonaventure community.
“Prospective students had to find out what Father Dan Riley and I had in common, so what they were looking for was our laughter,” he said.
When Brown isn’t on campus, he cites the oeuvre of actor Christopher Guest as some of his go-to comedies.
“(I love movies) like ‘For Your Consideration,’ ‘Best In Show’ and ‘A Mighty Wind,’” Brown said. “There aren’t many movies that I can watch multiple times and still laugh at, but no matter how many times I’ve seen those ones I’m cracking up the entire way through.”
While there are approximately 2,000 students living on-campus at Bonaventure, it seems as though Brown can recognize any one of them by his or her name. He said his knack for putting names to faces developed during his time as a residence director in Shay/Loughlen Hall.
“I used to do this competition where students could come up to me at any point in time and say ‘Say my name, Brown,’” he said. “If you walked up to me and said ‘Say my name, Brown,’ I would have to tell you what your name is. If I got it wrong or if I couldn’t do it, then you and your floor would get a point. There would be some sort of award for the floor with the most points by the end of the competition.”
For Brown, getting to know students is one of his favorite parts of working at St. Bonaventure.
“Whenever I can and do have contact with students, it’s very refreshing,” he said. “The fact that I work in student life helps motivate me through the difficult parts.”
Brown said the Monday-Wednesday-Friday lunch hour at the Hickey has become a sort of sacred time for him, during which he can relax from the stresses of his job.
“I absolutely love that lunch hour,” he said. “It’s a time to connect socially with a lot of my friends and colleagues, who are a combination of University Ministries, admissions and ResEd. Usually, that group of people is letting their hair down and taking that hour-long break of the day from being officials and university representatives.”
So the next time you hear the infamous Brownie laugh, you can thank the small community of university administrators who more than likely incited it.
“I think most of us have made a tight connection outside the office, and some of that connection shines through when we’re at lunch together,” Brown said. “We stop talking about business and start talking about life.”
Brown expressed that he wouldn’t want to work anywhere else but at Bonaventure because of its infectious atmosphere.
“I love this school, and when I first came here I never thought I would be saying that,” he said. “I’ve fallen in love with the culture, the ethos, the community and what Bonaventure is and stands for. The people that I work with on a regular basis are my friends and are people that I cherish.”
