They got DOGE-d. A sophomore at Brown University is facing investigation after he took a page from the Department of Government Efficiency and sent an email to nearly 4,000 administrators asking what they’ve accomplished in their jobs.The student, Alex Shieh, emailed 3,805 administrators, telling them he’s working on a project for the conservative student newspaper, the Brown Spectator, which has been inactive for more than a decade. Two days after he sent his email, Mr. Shieh received a notice from the university that it was reviewing his email because it had “emotionally harmed” some employees. The university also claimed he accessed “confidential information” and demanded that he return it.A website titled Bloat@Brown was set up that was supposed to provide a database detailing the “overstaffing” at the Ivy League university. “The American Dream will soon set Brown students back a whopping $93,064 per year,” a post on the website says. It warns that “the 2027–2028 school year at Brown will be the first to come with a six-figure price tag. Yet even while charging each student the price of a luxury car, this fiscal year, Brown is on track to operate at a $46 million budget deficit — dipping into the endowment to stay afloat.”In light of the soaring cost of tuition, Mr. Shieh said, “Despite budget shortfalls that leave dorms flooding when it rains, Brown currently boasts 3,805 non-instructional full-time staff members on payroll — a staggering number considering Brown currently has 7,229 undergraduate students.”Mr. Shieh also explained that he used an AI algorithm and searched on job pages and LinkedIn to “analyze each administrator’s impact on the university.” He categorized the jobs into “three domains, legality, redundancy, and bullshit jobs.”In a post on X, Mr. Shieh wrote, “Yesterday, I emailed every administrator at [Brown University], asking them to justify their jobs. We exposed 3,805 bureaucrats (1 for every 2 students) and a $46M budget deficit.”The associate dean and director of student conduct and community standards, Kirsten Wolfe, told Mr. Shieh he could face disciplinary action for “failure to comply” if he did not hand over the confidential information he allegedly accessed. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FIRE, said that Ms. Wolfe “demanded Shieh keep even the existence of this investigation private.”Mr. Shieh has denied that he accessed confidential information.A spokesman for Brown, Brian Clark, told the Sun, “In the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 18, emails were sent to approximately 3,800 Brown staff members noting the launch of a website that appeared to improperly use data accessed through a University technology platform to target individual employees by name and position description.”He said Bloat@Brown “included derogatory descriptions of job functions.” Additionally, he said that while Mr. Shieh’s question was posed as a “journalist inquiry,” no news article was published. “Due to federal law protecting student privacy, the University cannot provide additional details, even to refute the inaccuracies and mischaracterizations that have been made public. We are treating this matter with the utmost seriousness,” Mr. Clark said. Mr. Shieh did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.
