Brown University student sends DOGE-like email to investigate sky-high tuition. Now the school is retaliating

Brown University sophomore Alex Shieh is looking down the barrel of disciplinary action after he sent a pointed email to 3,805 non-faculty employees.

Inspired by the rising cost of tuition, Shieh fired off a DOGE-like email to the non-faculty employees asking them what they do all day in an effort to figure out why he’s paying so much for his education. He also worked to create a database of information that categorized particular school positions into “DEI jobs, redundant jobs, and bulls**t jobs.”

For this, he says the institution is targeting him:

“Brown is charging me for misrepresentation — for saying I am affiliated with the Brown Spectator, which I am, because the Brown Spectator is an independent non-profit and not a registered student group,” he wrote in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“Brown is also charging me for violating their IT policies for publishing Brown employee data, without specifying which provisions of the IT policy were violated,” Shieh added, denying the claim that he has violated “any provisions of the IT policy.”

It all started when he used his weekends in March to travel to his dorm’s basement, “a space that floods when it rains and requires plastic tarps, despite the school’s $90,000 yearly tuition,” Fox News wrote, and tried to use artificial intelligence to determine exactly what his tuition money is going to.

It was then that he sent the 3,805 workers a simple email asking, “What did you do all day?” and identified himself as a Brown Spectator journalist. Apparently, being questioned by one of the people paying their bills angered them. Only 20 of the people responded, and many of the messages reportedly contained profanity.

Now, the Brown student is saying his Social Security Number has been leaked.

“Brown is retaliating against me for exposing that the exorbitant tuition costs are going to a bloated bureaucracy, not educating students,” Shieh explained in his statement. “It is no surprise that the House Judiciary Committee has opened an investigation into Brown and other Ivy League schools for price-fixing and other anticompetitive business practices, such as requiring students to purchase on-campus housing and meal plans, which may operate at a surplus in order to subsidize the administrative costs.”

“Because Brown can’t outright punish me for calling out their hypocrisy, they are instead accusing me of committing obscure conduct violations that are not applicable to my situation, in order to scare other students from speaking out.”

Brown officials are denying claims that they are retaliating on the basis of free speech.

“In spite of what has been reported publicly framing this as a free speech issue, it absolutely is not,” said Brian Clark, vice president for news and strategic campus communications. “At the center of Brown’s review are questions focused on whether improper use of non-public Brown data, non-public data systems and/or targeting of individual employees violated law or policy.”

“Brown has detailed procedures in place to investigate alleged conduct code violations, resolve them and implement discipline in instances when students are found responsible, and these will continue to guide our actions,” his statement continues. “Students have ample opportunity to provide information and participate directly in that process to ensure that all decisions are made with a complete understanding of the circumstances.”

Clark assured that Brown University “is proceeding in this matter in complete accordance with free expression guarantees and appropriate procedural safeguards under Brown policies and applicable law.”

Writer/Columnist

Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to BizPac Review.

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