$552,000 to Put the Wrong Two Letters on a Wall
Nova conferred an Ed.D. Tony branded a public building with a degree Nova never gave him.
TL;DR
Gregory Tony earned an Ed.D. from Nova Southeastern in June 2024, the same degree his cohort earned the same day. BSO then spent $552,000 branding the agency training center around him as “Dr. Tony, PhD,” a credential Nova did not confer. I am crowdsourcing two things: how Tony’s classmates label their own degree, and every instance of Tony or BSO writing “PhD” in public. The first proves what the degree is. The second proves what he claimed.
Two years on, Billy and Susie are out in the world putting “Ed.D.” after their names, because that is what they earned and that is what they paid for. Sheriff Gregory Tony is putting something else.
I think the degree got upgraded somewhere between the stage and the signage. I think Nova knows. I think the Broward Sheriff’s Office knows. And I think nobody wants to be the one to say it out loud, because you cannot issue a correction against the highest constitutional officer in Broward County without admitting you watched it happen and let it ride.
So, they protect the files. Fine. We go around the files.
Here is the project, and here is why I am calling you, Rudy, yes you Rudy, in to run it with me.
There is a published list of every person who graduated alongside Tony that morning. The 2024 graduate commencement program. Names, program, degree conferred, all of it printed and public. We take that list. We find those graduates. We look at how each one describes the degree on their own LinkedIn, their own firm bio, their own faculty page. We find one Susie Jones in Wichita listing her Doctor of Education, plain, no embroidery. Same program. Same day. Same diploma as the sheriff.
That is the control sample. That is the show-me.
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Because here is where it gets expensive. BSO spent $552,000 in public money branding the agency training center around the sheriff, and the wall renders him as “Dr. Tony, PhD.” Ph.D. Doctor of Philosophy. A degree Nova did not give him, on a building taxpayers already own, paid for out of a budget that runs short on the things the badge is supposed to buy.
The gap is the whole story. The cohort lists “Ed.D.” The wall says “PhD.” Susie in Wichita earned the same credential and labels it honestly for free. Tony relabeled his for half a million dollars of other people’s money.
A word on Nova, because the temptation is to swing at the wrong target. Nova did not hand this man a PhD. Nova conferred an Ed.D., a real degree, an earned degree, a degree that costs real students real years and real tuition. The relabeling happened on his surfaces, not theirs. The harm to Nova is not that they gave him the wrong parchment. The harm is that a high-profile graduate is publicly rebranding a Nova Ed.D. as a PhD on a taxpayer-funded wall, and Nova’s silence starts to read as permission. Every honest graduate of that program has a stake in this. The misrepresentation implies their degree was something it was not.
Now the part that writes itself. Tony walked on at Florida State as a freshman and never saw a dollar of NIL.
Then again, three carries for 10 yards? Come on man, that’s one hell of a career.
No doubt, Tony ain’t no Rudy.
The college athlete who never got paid. Took him twenty years and a badge, but he finally closed the deal. $552,000 in public money to put his own name on a gym wall. The walk-on finally got his endorsement. He just had to become the endorser, the brand, and the funding source all at once.
You and I? We just had to cough up a half-mill to appease his lack of something or other.
So, I am calling Car 54. There are cops reading this. There are people who work records for a living reading this. Who better to crack a records caper than the ones who run records every shift. If you sat in that room in June 2024, if you knew Tony’s cohort, if you can point me at a name on that program, reach out. Reach out to me or reach out to the people you already know are talking to me.
If you graduated alongside him or know someone who did, show me how that degree reads on their own profile.
Find anything, bring it to me behind the scenes. Plug into the thing already running.
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My wiring runs sideways. That is the ASD. It lets me see the angle nobody set up to defend, the rule read so literally it bites the hand that wrote it, the gap between the parchment and the wall. It also does not come with an off switch. I do not let things go. I cannot let things go. So I am going to keep coming, and I am going to keep coming sideways, from the direction nobody is watching. Most of the time I strike out. Most of the time I come up empty. Zoinks, dead end, nothing, next. Until I hit pay dirt.
Tony walked on at Florida State and never got the ball. I run a different position. I read the gap, I take the angle nobody’s covering, and I keep coming, snap after snap, sideways, from the blind side. Most plays go nowhere. Most plays I get stuffed at the line. Until one breaks open.
The walk-on is still on the field. Deion was out on the island. So am I.
Press play. Tick.
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Chaz Stevens is a First Amendment practitioner based in Deerfield Beach, Florida. His work has produced legislative rewrites, policy reversals, and one governor who had to put his own name on the reason he changed his own law. He drafts civil litigation pleadings for licensed attorneys at Sufficient to Show, engineers public records work product for law firms at the same practice, and is the founder of REVOLT Training.