Brown University student faces disciplinary action after asking non-faculty staff what they do all day as tuition soars

A sophomore astatine Brown University is facing disciplinary enactment aft helium sent a DOGE-like email to non-faculty employees asking them what they bash each time to effort to fig retired wherefore the Ivy League’s tuition has gotten truthful expensive.

“Brown is charging maine for misrepresentation — for saying I americium affiliated with the Brown Spectator, which I am, due to the fact that the Brown Spectator is an autarkic non-profit and not a registered pupil group,” Alex Shieh told Fox News Digital in an emailed statement.

“Brown is besides charging maine for violating their IT policies for publishing Brown worker data, without specifying which provisions of the IT argumentation were violated,” Shieh added. 

He maintains, however, that helium did not interruption “any provisions of the IT policy.” 

During escaped weekends successful March, Shieh went to the communal country successful his dorm’s basement — a abstraction that floods erstwhile it rains and requires integrative tarps, contempt the school’s $90,000 yearly tuition — and utilized AI to effort to find what Brown employees did and wherefore the schoolhouse was truthful expensive.  

The sophomore then created a database of the 3,805 non-faculty employees who worked astatine Brown University and emailed them to ask, “What bash you bash each day?” 

In the inquiry, helium said that helium identified himself arsenic a writer for The Brown Spectator, a dormant on-campus libertarian diary that a radical of students is readying to relaunch.

He formatted his database to place 3 peculiar jobs: “DEI jobs, redundant jobs, and bulls–t jobs.” 

Shieh said helium wanted to analyse DEI due to the fact that of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, and his medication threatening to withhold national funds to universities with DEI policies. The extremity was to get arsenic overmuch information arsenic imaginable truthful that his probe could beryllium accurate. 

But lone 20 of the 3,805 radical emailed responded, and galore of the responses were profane and hostile. 

Shieh besides said that his Social Security fig was leaked. 

“Brown is retaliating against maine for exposing that the exorbitant tuition costs are going to a bloated bureaucracy, not educating students,” Shieh told Fox News Digital successful the email statement. 

“It is nary astonishment that the House Judiciary Committee has opened an probe into Brown and different Ivy League schools for price-fixing and different anticompetitive concern practices, specified arsenic requiring students to acquisition on-campus lodging and repast plans, which whitethorn run astatine a surplus successful bid to subsidize the administrative costs,” helium added. 

Shieh continued, “Because Brown can’t outright punish maine for calling retired their hypocrisy, they are alternatively accusing maine of committing obscure behaviour violations that are not applicable to my situation, successful bid to scare different students from speaking out.” 

In an April 23, 2025, station connected X, Elon Musk replied to Shieh’s station announcing the school’s disciplinary enactment with the word, “Unreal.”

 Brown administrators say Shieh’s lawsuit has thing to bash with free speech.

“In spite of what has been reported publically framing this arsenic a escaped code issue, it perfectly is not,” Brian Clark, vice president for quality and strategical field communications, said successful an email connection to Fox News Digital. 

“At the halfway of Brown’s reappraisal are questions focused connected whether improper usage of non-public Brown data, non-public information systems and/or targeting of idiosyncratic employees violated instrumentality oregon policy.” 

“Brown has elaborate procedures successful spot to analyse alleged behaviour codification violations, resoluteness them and instrumentality subject successful instances erstwhile students are recovered responsible, and these volition proceed to usher our actions,” Clark added. “Students person ample accidental to supply accusation and enactment straight successful that process to guarantee that each decisions are made with a implicit knowing of the circumstances.” 

Clark said that the schoolhouse “is proceeding successful this substance successful implicit accordance with escaped look guarantees and due procedural safeguards nether Brown policies and applicable law.” 

Shieh, however, said that helium is expanding his inaugural to look astatine different Ivy League institutions, including The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Cornell University “to exposure wasteful expenditures there, and released an online instrumentality to request that schools cease and desist DEI.”

He said that the database has been utilized already by members of the nationalist hundreds of times.