Metro
Audit of R.I. Executive Office of Housing reveals federal grant mismanagement, lack of oversight
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | October 22The audit identified $202,710 in undrawn federal grant funding.
Tommy Leggat-Barr
Contributing Writer
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: Brown students, with this year’s looming midterms, it’s time for us to organize
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | April 20It is wildly uncommon for a president to have approval ratings this low in the first two years of the presidency. The second Trump administration’s baseless foreign wars, the corresponding economic impact and failing message discipline have severely diminished his party’s prospects for the 2026 ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: The right has co-opted patriotism. Democrats need to reclaim it.
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | April 10Since the onset of the Trump administration, the relationship between universities like Brown and the federal government has been adversarial. Characterized by funding fights, illegal campus encroachments and canceled programs, the past year has given many students on campuses across the country and ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: The violence of nostalgia in Providence
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | March 11We’ve all done some selective remembering — convincing ourselves a time in our life or an experience was all sunshine and rainbows and forgetting the storm clouds. Painting an idealized picture of the past helps us escape from the reality of the present. I often find myself yearning for what I remember ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: Hannah Pingree ’98 charts a new path on health insurance. Brown can too.
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | February 27This fall, I heard Hannah Pingree ’98 speak at the University Club in Providence during a fundraising stop on her Maine gubernatorial campaign. One of the points Pingree discussed and has highlighted throughout her campaign is a bold new framework for health policy. In the face of ever-increasing ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: Brown should rescue the Superman building
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | February 12Rising above the Providence skyline sits a familiar beacon, visible from College Hill night after night: the Superman building. Once one of the nation’s most prominent office towers, the skyscraper has sat mostly vacant since Bank of America relocated its headquarters in 2013, 85 years after the building’s ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: Ella Cook ’28 was taken from a world that needed her lessons
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | January 26Stepping out of my dorm on Dec. 14, I was met by five of my friends gathered outside the room of Ella Cook ’28. Flowers lay next to the door and tears streamed down our faces. We stood together in silence — gutted by the tragedy that lay before us and unable to comprehend what we had lost the day ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: It’s our fault our politics lack principles
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | December 2“Have you heard about the new Marjorie Taylor Greene?” resounds across the Thanksgiving table. Immediately capturing my attention, I looked up from a filled plate and the conversation that I had been half-listening to beside me. My well-meaning aunt continued on explaining Greene’s reconciliatory ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: Political hobbyism has no place at Brown
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | November 12Nov. 4 wins in New Jersey, New York City and Virginia, as well as staggering blue margins across the country, have given the Democrats a gift that we have yearned for since the beginning of the Trump administration: a rebuke to the president’s cruel agenda that gives reason for the Republican caucus ...
Opinions
Leggat-Barr ’28: Brown has something to learn from rural America
By Tommy Leggat-Barr | October 27Halfway through my first semester at Brown, one of my closest friends on campus told me she loved the person I was becoming. She said I seemed more “Brown” and sophisticated, or less “Maine” than when I first arrived. What she meant as a compliment felt instead like a quiet blow to my sense ...
