In our endorsement interview with Susie Brubaker-Cole, we immediately became wary of the vice provost’s Main Quad Zoom background.

“This is going to be one of those Zoom calls, isn’t it?” wrote one of our staffers into our collective Google Doc.

Brubaker-Cole, fixated on something on her screen, didn’t notice that all four of us were on the Zoom call until after some time. Then, someone coughed.

“Oh, you’re here!” she exclaimed. “It always brings me great joy to talk to students.” Her voice climbed through a few registers of pitch.

“Well, we’re happy you took our invitation,” we said. We told her we had a few prepared questions, but we began with our most open-ended question first to break the ice.

“So why are you running for Senate, Susie?” we asked.

We could tell she was on the edge of her seat as soon as we uttered the word: why.

“Well, I saw The Daily’s community survey results, and when I found out how low my approval rating was, I knew I had to do more student outreach,” she said. “You don’t understand how important it is that students trust me. I’m the vice provost for Student Affairs, damn it. If students don’t trust me, then what is my job.”

One of our staffers looked around before receiving the green light from the rest of our editorial board.

“Alright, Susie. I’m going to stop you there,” they said. “You’re telling us how important trust is to you, but recent inflammatory statements by the FoHo called you a liar with regard to your promise of amnesty toward students.”

The vibe in the Zoom call immediately turned tense. As her eyes glanced to her left, you could tell she was crafting the perfect response to this hardball. 

“Well, the FoHo also said my pants were on fire, and they’re obviously not, so let’s look at this with some nuance, why don’t we?” she quipped. Our staffer typed, “Oh, she’s good,” into the Zoom chat, and we couldn’t help but agree.

“Yes, I never should have promised amnesty, but the fact of the matter is that no students so far have yet to be implicated by the University’s public safety department, and it will stay that way,” she said.

Another staffer asked her how she could be so sure.

“Don’t ask about it,” she replied. “Ask me about my platform instead.”

“Alright then,” we said. “Tell us about your plans to tackle issues of racial inequities and racial violence on campus.”

The glare in her glasses revealed her swiftly scrolling down her own document.

“It’s simple,” she said. “I’m going to hack hate.”

“Students keep asking me to provide more opportunities for community education about racism in our country and on our campus, so we’re going to hack it and find all those bugs,” she added.

She went on to explain her other platform planks: an increased snack budget for the FLI office, two new reams of paper for BEAM, and the continuance of her vlogs to increase accountability. She seems confident this is a winning message.

After we thanked her for her time, she ended the call almost immediately. Our staffers immediately followed up with us to reflect on what we had just heard.

“We’re obviously endorsing her, right?” we all said at once. Indeed, we did.

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only. Article format inspired by John Paul Brammer’s “In Conversation with the Murder Hornet.”

Contact Richard Coca at rich ‘at’ stanford.edu.