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

A sophomore at Brown University is facing disciplinary action after he sent a DOGE-like email to non-faculty employees asking them what they do all day to try to figure out why the Ivy League’s tuition has gotten so expensive.“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,” Alex Shieh told Fox News Digital in an emailed statement.“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. He maintains, however, that he did not violate “any provisions of the IT policy.” During free weekends in March, Shieh went to the common room in his dorm’s basement — a space that floods when it rains and requires plastic tarps, despite the school’s $90,000 yearly tuition — and used AI to try to determine what Brown employees did and why the school was so expensive.  The sophomore then created a database of the 3,805 non-faculty employees who worked at Brown University and emailed them to ask, “What do you do all day?” In the inquiry, he said that he identified himself as a journalist for the Brown Spectator, a dormant on-campus libertarian journal that a group of students is planning to relaunch.He formatted his database to identify three particular jobs: “DEI jobs, redundant jobs, and bulls–t jobs.” Shieh said he wanted to investigate DEI because of President Trump’s executive orders, and his administration threatening to withhold federal funds to universities with DEI policies.The goal was to get as much data as possible so that his research could be accurate. But only 20 of the 3,805 people emailed responded, and many of the responses were profane and hostile. Shieh also said that his Social Security number was leaked. “Brown is retaliating against ...