With the annual price of attending Brown University approaching six figures, sophomore Alex Shieh wanted to know where all that money was going. In particular, he wanted to know what the school’s thousands of non-faculty employees were doing each day. So, he sent them a DOGE-style email asking that exact question.
Now, he’s facing disciplinary action.
“The inspiration for this is the rising cost of tuition,” Shieh told Fox News in a story published April 4. “Next year, it’s set to be $93,064 to go to Brown.”
This figure reflects the direct costs associated with attending Brown for one year, as shown on the school’s website, including tuition, fees and allowances for food and housing. First-time students are billed an extra $100. Brown’s undergraduate enrollment stands at 7,272.
To illustrate what he saw as administrative bloat, Shieh compiled a database of 3,805 non-faculty employees, according to Fox News. In an email similar to those sent by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to federal workers, he asked them: “What do you do all day?”
Shieh says only 20 people responded — some with profane replies — and soon after the university moved to discipline him.
“Brown is charging me for misrepresentation — for saying I am affiliated with The Brown Spectator,” Shieh said in a follow-up story published by Fox News on April 30. In his emails, Shieh identified himself as a journalist for The Spectator — a long-inactive student journal that Shieh claims he and other students are trying to bring back.
“Brown is also charging me for violating their IT policies for publishing Brown employee data,” Shieh said. A website was created identifying what was deemed to be wasteful spending at Brown, and the names and titles of employees were published. Shieh insisted to the Brown Daily Herald all of the information was publicly available.
Brown University, however, expressed a different view.
“In spite of what has been reported publicly framing this as a free speech issue, it absolutely is not,” a university spokesperson told Fox News. “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.”
