NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: NYC Council Member’s Bite Charge Dropped, New York State Responds to Trump’s DEI Threats in Schools and LIU-Brooklyn Roc Nation Scholarship Investigated

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Charges have been dropped against New York City Councilmember Susan Zhuang after she allegedly bit a police officer's arm at a protest last summer. Plus, the Trump Administration wants school districts to confirm that they aren't using diversity, equity or inclusion programs. And finally, Long Island University in Brooklyn partnered with Jay-Z’s entertainment company to form the Roc Nation School of Music, Sports and Entertainment. Its first class of students were awarded scholarships stating they would “graduate without debt.” But that wasn’t the case.

New York City Council members by charge dropped. New York State response to Trump's DEI threats in schools. And LIU Brooklyn's Rock Nation Scholarship investigated. From WMYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jenei Pierre. A judge is dismissing charges against New York City Council member Susan Zwen after she allegedly did a police officer's arm at a protest against a proposed homeless shelter last summer. Zwing said she will always represent her community.

I'm looking forward to work with YPD and the work of still fight for our community, no matter what happens. And no matter for me, I always fight for the community. According to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, the council member and police officer completed a restorative justice process based on the council member's willingness to make amends. The charges will not remain on her record. The Trump administration wants school districts to confirm that they're not using DEI programs. WMYC's Jessica Gould reports on New York State's response. Art, music, sports, tutoring, educators say these are among the programs at risk if federal funding is cut for states that don't sign off on anti-D-EI efforts. In letters sent out last week, the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funds to any state or district that doesn't sign a letter affirming DEI is now eliminated.

But New York state officials say there are no laws barring DEI, and the state won't be signing the letter. In New York City, federal funds make up about $2 billion of the roughly $40 billion education budget. Federal officials say the deadline to sign is April 24th. A school in Brooklyn, backed by Jay-Z, promised some scholarship students that they'd graduate debt-free. Now they're buried in it. More on that after the break. listening to NYC Now. In 2020, Long Island University in Brooklyn, partnered with Jay-Z's

entertainment company to form the Rock Nation School of Music, Sports, and Entertainment. And as it recruited its first class of students, it awarded some of them scholarships stating that they would graduate without debt. But WNYC's Ramsey-C-Ramsey-Colife reports, many of those now graduates are actually carrying a lot of debt. The first thing you notice when you walk into Jordan Drones storm room, in downtown Brooklyn, is that an entire wall has been turned into a collage. Much of it covered in Jay-Z quotes and album covers.

This is our inspo wall, so sort of like how some artists watch movies without the sound on when they're creating or when they're making a beat or whatever. We just take inspiration from this wall. Drone wants to be a professional rapper, so four years ago he left West Memphis, Arkansas, where he says his family struggled financially and moved to New York to enroll in Jay-Z's Rock Nation School of Music at Long Island University. Jay-Z is, well, especially in my community as an African-American male that grew up in, I guess, unfortunate, you know, living situations, I would say Jay-Z is, he is that bright hope. He is that shining star at the end of the tunnel that, you know, you can come from this environment, but you can have that corner office.

You can still be successful. The Rock Nation School says its curriculum can prepare people like drone for a music industry career. And when he was still in high school, it offered him, what Jay Z's company calls the Hope Scholarship for underprivileged students like Drone. WNYC reviewed the email offer he got from the school. It says the scholarship would allow him to, quote, graduate without debt.

Drone says his family in Arkansas was skeptical at first. They already was thinking like, okay, you're going to JZ schools. This sounds like a scam. It sounds like a school of rock, Donald Trump University shit. Well, they're like, okay, that doesn't happen in real life. That sounds like a fairy tale. Now, despite what he says he expects, In expected, Dron's financial records showed that he's had to borrow more than $39,000 to stay enrolled.

That's because the scholarship failed to cover student housing, university fees, and even tuition increases. I will say that it's been hard. It's been really hard. The Rock Nation School says 25% of the inaugural class received the Hope Scholarship. Long Island University wouldn't provide total enrollment numbers, but a former staff member who taught during the first year of the program says roughly 50 students were awarded the scholarship. And WNYC has found at least a dozen, including Drone, who awarded the same scholarship, but who are nonetheless saddled with thousands of dollars in debt. One student even received a text message directly from L.I.U. President Kimberly Klein

offering the scholarship. Drone feels like he was misled by the school. This is why I say it's predatory. It's going to be other 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds, in the same situation as we are. And they get told all these promises and all these things that they're going to achieve and do, and they get here and it's just not there. I don't want nobody else to go through that. That's painful.

In response to questions from WNYC, LSU said that the Hope Scholarship only covers tuition that does not cover housing and other university fees. But was that clear to students, most of whom were teenagers making a serious financial decision? Kevin Ladd is the head of scholarships.com. It's a company that not only connects students with scholarship opportunities,

but also vets those scholarships. And he says no, that language was not clear. When you say debt-free and the student doesn't graduate debt-free, you know, there has to be some language that explains that. There's probably some terms and conditions on the fine print. But what I think they're promising is that when you graduate from L.I.U, you should not owe them any money. So if these students can show that they were charged something by the school who assured them that we'd graduate debt-free, that's a problem. There are practices that institutions are using right now that are not in the best interests of students. Mary Beth Murphy is a higher education consultant who worked in financial aid offices at colleges for 40 years.

She says in general, universities have grown desperate to fill seats as enrollment declines nationwide. So she says school administrators started to market their programs and scholarships, much in the way products are advertised, making it hard for students to know what they're getting into. You know, students really are so enticed by the word free. And then as you dig a little deeper, you find out that, well, it's tuition only. At the Rock Nation School, that marketing included other offerings that students say didn't materialize. Like Sumante Hutchinson, another Hope scholar. I just felt like there's a lot of misleading things going on here at L.I.U.

In 2021, he also received an offer letter stating he could graduate without debt. He since borrowed $40,000, according to his financial records. In March of last year, he took me to a lounge on campus where he was squatting. But early in the morning, nobody's around here. Like, it's dead. Like, it'll literally be like 5 a.m. And I'll just be, like, crashed out right here sometimes. So you're sleeping on these couches?

Yeah, pretty much every night over here. Hutchinson could no longer afford to pay for a dorm room. He said he'd do anything to cut costs. I still have to cover food. I still have to cover everything else off campus. And so, like, I was still taking out the maximum loan amount just to cover, like, the basics, the bare necessities. But that wasn't the only issue he had with the school. At the time he was accepted, promotion materials sent to students advertised classroom visits from musicians like Rihanna

and guest lectures from the Jonas Brothers and DJ Khalid, all associated with Jay-Z's company. Hutchinson says many of the celebrities never appeared. Like, Megan the Stallion did show up here. She never did lecture here. but she did come here and hang out with the students for a while. Like, not everything about what they said was completely false, but there was just a lot of misleading claims. Students in the program told WNYC that even recording music at the music school was a difficult task.

Jordan Drone and at least six other students say it took LSU a full year to provide professional recording studios, which are essential for students like them to make music. They finally get those open, but they're like, they're, are not properly built, they're not actually soundproofed. A lot of the professors are complaining. A lot of the equipment stops working. Long Island University contests this claim. The school says it did provide studios that year

and that all of its studios have the proper sound treatment. It's also recently added a new state-of-the-art Dolby Atmos teaching studio. Before I left Drones dorm room, I asked him to play some of his music for me. I feel like that song, we all punch drunk, lost in the days, confused can I play, trapped in our ways, trapped in the maze. I feel like that song itself just speaks so many volumes about who I am personally and what I stand for in my own beliefs. Drone says he's making the most out of his education at the Rock Nation School. He views the unexpected debt he's had to take on is just one roadblock on his path in the music business.

It's sort of like wipeout, you got to jump to the other ball, to the next ball, boom, boom, boom. And I know that life will not always be like that. but there will always be obstacles. Since drone enrolled, the Rock Nation School has changed the language it uses to promote the Hope Scholarship. We're used to tell students that they would receive a debt-free education. An online archive shows that in 2023, it began promising students, quote, a tuition-free education. That's WMYC's Ramsey Caliphate.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.