Latest news with #Bloat@Brown
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Brown student exposing Ivy League bloat gives House testimony, urges Congress to ‘mandate transparency'
EXCLUSIVE - Brown University student Alex Shieh, who was recently cleared of wrongdoing after he sent campus employees a DOGE-like email, is testifying Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee on rising costs at elite universities. "Brown University, like many of its Ivy League peers, presents itself as a selective meritocratic institution," reads Shieh's testimony, obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital. "But according to data from The New York Times, the median family income of Brown students is over $200,000 — the highest among Ivy League universities," his prepared statement continues. "Forty-seven percent of the student body comes from the top 5% of earners in the U.S. A study by Brown University economist John Friedman confirms that low and middle-income students remain significantly underrepresented at selective colleges including Brown, even after controlling for academic qualifications." Brown University In Gop Crosshairs After Student's Doge-like Email Kicks Off Frenzy Shieh, a rising junior who was cleared of wrongdoing by the university on May 14, had previously angered school officials by sending a DOGE-like email to non-faculty employees identifying himself as a journalist for The Brown Spectator and asking them what they do all day to try to determine why the school's tuition has gotten so expensive. The Brown Spectator, a right-leaning publication which has a board of three people, including Shieh, was revived this year after it ceased publication in 2014. Read On The Fox News App The board members faced a disciplinary hearing on May 7 over allegations that they violated Brown University's name, licensing and trademark policies. Shieh and the Spectator faced scrutiny from the university after Shieh began investigating positions he deemed redundant after reviewing 3,805 non-faculty employees who worked at Brown and emailing them to ask, "What do you do all day?" "As an investigative reporter for The Brown Spectator, I launched Bloat@Brown, a website that used AI to analyze administrative staff roles and necessity, and a website that performed similar analysis on Columbia University, Cornell University, and the University of Pennsylvania," Shieh said in his prepared remarks. "I emailed each administrator at Brown with a request for comment," Shieh added. "Only 20 responded. One… replied with 'F--k off.' Soon after, the university instructed employees not to respond, and the site was hacked. My social security number was leaked. Associate Dean Kirsten Wolfe initiated a disciplinary process against me, first under charges of 'emotional/psychological harm,' 'misrepresentation,' 'invasion of privacy,' and later for alleged technology policy and alleged trademark policy violations." Shieh sent a follow-up email to Brown administrators on May 27, which Shieh previously told Fox News Digital was "one last opportunity to justify their roles." Ivy League Student Accused Of Causing 'Emotional Harm' To Non-faculty Staff For Sending Doge-like Email In his prepared remarks, Shieh said that tuition and fees at the Ivy League have exceeded $90,000 per year, and that the school is "projected to run a $46 million deficit for the current fiscal year." "According to Brown's own disclosures, the university employs 3,805 full-time non-instructional staff," Shieh will say in his testimony. "With 7,229 undergraduate students, this translates to one non-teaching staff member for every 1.9 undergraduates. These staff do not include faculty members, but rather administrators, consultants, and support staff, many in roles of unclear necessity." Shieh is urging the House Judiciary Committee to look into why his school has become so expensive. His recommendations include subpoenaing Brown University President Christina Paxson "for testimony and documents related to administrative growth, financial aid coordination, and retaliation." He also calls for student journalists and whistleblowers to be protected from "institutional retaliation," a review of financial aid methodology used by Ivy League schools, transparency in "administrative-to-student staffing ratios and compensation for nonprofit universities receiving federal funds," and for higher learning institutions that have large tuition and spending increases to be audited. Click Here For More Coverage Of Media And Culture "Thank you for your attention to these matters," Shieh will say in his prepared remarks. "I respectfully urge this Subcommittee to act in defense of students, families, and the American Dream." A Browkn spokesperson defended university practices in a statement to Fox News Digital. "As Brown has grown over recent decades in both the number of students we teach and the volume and impact of its research, our staff has expanded to support these important goals. In the last 15 years, we have worked responsibly to build a staff infrastructure that enables us to generate medical treatments and scientific breakthroughs that lead to real solutions for real patients and real people. We also added staffing to prepare students for successful lives and careers, which is important to students and families. Brown's staff members are vital — behind every research breakthrough and student success story, non-faculty staff are a quiet force making those accomplishments possible," the spokesperson said. "We continue to see a false 'one administrator for every two students at Brown' claim that misrepresents the university, its mission and its student body. A total of 11,232 students were enrolled at Brown in the academic year that just ended — 7,226 of those students were undergraduates. We take no issue with the 3,800 staff number. However, the false "one administrator for every two students" claim ignores the presence of our approximately 4,000 graduate and medical students. These students make up more than one third of our student body, and the staffing to support their advanced education and research is significant. Our staffing numbers should be understood in the context of the fact that Brown is a major research university that supports both undergraduate and graduate education and research. We're not an undergraduate college." They added that Brown has one of the most robust financial aid programs in the nation, and that "claims that administrative staff growth has not supported the academic experience for students" were article source: Brown student exposing Ivy League bloat gives House testimony, urges Congress to 'mandate transparency'
Fox News
3 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Brown student exposing Ivy League bloat gives House testimony, urges Congress to ‘mandate transparency'
EXCLUSIVE - Brown University student Alex Shieh, who was recently cleared of wrongdoing after he sent campus employees a DOGE-like email, is testifying Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee on rising costs at elite universities. "Brown University, like many of its Ivy League peers, presents itself as a selective meritocratic institution," reads Shieh's testimony, obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital. "But according to data from The New York Times, the median family income of Brown students is over $200,000 — the highest among Ivy League universities," his prepared statement continues. "Forty-seven percent of the student body comes from the top 5% of earners in the U.S. A study by Brown University economist John Friedman confirms that low and middle-income students remain significantly underrepresented at selective colleges including Brown, even after controlling for academic qualifications." Shieh, a rising junior who was cleared of wrongdoing by the university on May 14, had previously angered school officials by sending a DOGE-like email to non-faculty employees identifying himself as a journalist for The Brown Spectator and asking them what they do all day to try to determine why the school's tuition has gotten so expensive. The Brown Spectator, a right-leaning publication which has a board of three people, including Shieh, was revived this year after it ceased publication in 2014. The board members faced a disciplinary hearing on May 7 over allegations that they violated Brown University's name, licensing and trademark policies. Shieh and the Spectator faced scrutiny from the university after Shieh began investigating positions he deemed redundant after reviewing 3,805 non-faculty employees who worked at Brown and emailing them to ask, "What do you do all day?" "As an investigative reporter for The Brown Spectator, I launched Bloat@Brown, a website that used AI to analyze administrative staff roles and necessity, and a website that performed similar analysis on Columbia University, Cornell University, and the University of Pennsylvania," Shieh said in his prepared remarks. "I emailed each administrator at Brown with a request for comment," Shieh added. "Only 20 responded. One… replied with 'F--k off.' Soon after, the university instructed employees not to respond, and the site was hacked. My social security number was leaked. Associate Dean Kirsten Wolfe initiated a disciplinary process against me, first under charges of 'emotional/psychological harm,' 'misrepresentation,' 'invasion of privacy,' and later for alleged technology policy and alleged trademark policy violations." Shieh sent a follow-up email to Brown administrators on May 27, which Shieh previously told Fox News Digital was "one last opportunity to justify their roles." In his prepared remarks, Shieh said that tuition and fees at the Ivy League have exceeded $90,000 per year, and that the school is "projected to run a $46 million deficit for the current fiscal year." "According to Brown's own disclosures, the university employs 3,805 full-time non-instructional staff," Shieh will say in his testimony. "With 7,229 undergraduate students, this translates to one non-teaching staff member for every 1.9 undergraduates. These staff do not include faculty members, but rather administrators, consultants, and support staff, many in roles of unclear necessity." Shieh is urging the House Judiciary Committee to look into why his school has become so expensive. His recommendations include subpoenaing Brown University President Christina Paxson "for testimony and documents related to administrative growth, financial aid coordination, and retaliation." He also calls for student journalists and whistleblowers to be protected from "institutional retaliation," a review of financial aid methodology used by Ivy League schools, transparency in "administrative-to-student staffing ratios and compensation for nonprofit universities receiving federal funds," and for higher learning institutions that have large tuition and spending increases to be audited. "Thank you for your attention to these matters," Shieh will say in his prepared remarks. "I respectfully urge this Subcommittee to act in defense of students, families, and the American Dream." A Browkn spokesperson defended university practices in a statement to Fox News Digital. "As Brown has grown over recent decades in both the number of students we teach and the volume and impact of its research, our staff has expanded to support these important goals. In the last 15 years, we have worked responsibly to build a staff infrastructure that enables us to generate medical treatments and scientific breakthroughs that lead to real solutions for real patients and real people. We also added staffing to prepare students for successful lives and careers, which is important to students and families. Brown's staff members are vital — behind every research breakthrough and student success story, non-faculty staff are a quiet force making those accomplishments possible," the spokesperson said. "We continue to see a false 'one administrator for every two students at Brown' claim that misrepresents the university, its mission and its student body. A total of 11,232 students were enrolled at Brown in the academic year that just ended — 7,226 of those students were undergraduates. We take no issue with the 3,800 staff number. However, the false "one administrator for every two students" claim ignores the presence of our approximately 4,000 graduate and medical students. These students make up more than one third of our student body, and the staffing to support their advanced education and research is significant. Our staffing numbers should be understood in the context of the fact that Brown is a major research university that supports both undergraduate and graduate education and research. We're not an undergraduate college."
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ivy League student accused of causing 'emotional harm' to non-faculty staff for sending DOGE-like email
A student at Brown University is being accused by the university of causing "emotional harm" because he asked the school's non-faculty employees what they do all day. "It costs $93,064 to attend Brown University," student Alex Shieh wrote in an op-ed in Pirate Wires published Tuesday. "The annual budget deficit is $46 million. I wanted to know where the hell all the money was going." With the help of AI, Shieh created a database of the 3,805 non-faculty employees of Brown University. He also emailed them asking them, "What do you do all day?" Doge Slashes Over $100M In Dei Funding At Education Department: 'Win For Every Student' To organize his information and rank the roles of the non-faculty employees, he created a website, Bloat@Brown, which Shieh said was similar to DOGE and Mark Zuckerberg's college project of scrapping student ID photos to rank who was hotter. Shieh wrote about how he used publicly available information on LinkedIn, the student newspaper, and job boards to compile all the information he could about each employee and fed that information into a GPT-4o mini, an AI app, to rank the non-faculty employees. Read On The Fox News App Shieh, a sophomore at Brown University, said he did this work from a common room in his dorm's basement that floods whenever it rains, thus making plastic tarps for the shared work and leisure space a necessity for a school that charges students $93,064 a year. He formatted his site to identify three particular jobs: "DEI jobs, redundant jobs, and bulls--t jobs." According to Shieh, DEI was important to look into because of President Donald Trump's executive orders and his administration threatening to withhold federal funds to universities with DEI policies. Department Of Education Doled Out Over $200M To Universities To Inject Dei Into Counseling Courses: Report In fiscal year 2024, Brown University, which has an Office of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, reportedly received "more than $254 million" in federal funding. "After doing some digging, I discovered that much of the money is being thrown into a pit of bureaucracy," Shieh wrote. "The small army of 3,805 non-faculty administrators is more than double the faculty headcount, and makes for roughly one administrator for every two undergrads." In addition to the information Shieh found, he also sent a mass email to the 3,805 non-faculty employees asking about their duties. "This was purposefully done in the dead of night, just in case Brown's IT team felt inclined to block emails from my domain," Shieh said, adding that he said he was a journalist for The Brown Spectator, an inactive libertarian journal that is attempting to restart. Shieh said that only 20 of the 3,805 people emailed responded, with some replies allegedly saying, "f--k you," and another directing Shieh to "stick an entire cactus up [his] a--." The following day, after sending the email, the university reportedly told staff not to respond to Shieh's email. In addition, Shieh claimed his social security number was leaked, and his email was spammed with "every porn newsletter on the internet." "Less than 48 hours later, as has previously been reported, an associate dean my model warned could be redundant (her role overlapped with other deans on the discipline team and she was the only one without a JD) informed me I was under review for 'emotional/psychological harm,' 'misrepresentation,' 'invasion of privacy,' and 'violation of operational rules,'" Shieh wrote. Shieh, who is being represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said the associate dean also told him give back all the confidential information he had, which he says was "scraped from the public internet." "If college administrators are this scared of a sophomore with a laptop, they should be terrified of what's coming next," Shieh wrote. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Brian Clark, vice president for news and strategic campus communications at Brown University said, "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. Clark added that "The website included derogatory descriptions of job functions of named individuals at every job level. While the emails were framed as a journalistic inquiry, the supposed news organization identified in the email has had no active status at Brown for more than a decade, and no news article resulted. We advised employees, many of whom expressed concerns, not to respond, and evaluated the situation from a policy standpoint. That review has informed the steps we've taken since. 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."Original article source: Ivy League student accused of causing 'emotional harm' to non-faculty staff for sending DOGE-like email
Fox News
02-04-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Ivy League student accused of causing 'emotional harm' to non-faculty staff for sending DOGE-like email
A student at Brown University is being accused by the university of causing "emotional harm" because he asked the school's non-faculty employees what they do all day. "It costs $93,064 to attend Brown University," student Alex Shieh wrote in an op-ed in Pirate Wires published Tuesday. "The annual budget deficit is $46 million. I wanted to know where the hell all the money was going." With the help of AI, Shieh created a database of the 3,805 non-faculty employees of Brown University. He also emailed them asking them, "What do you do all day?" To organize his information and rank the roles of the non-faculty employees, he created a website, Bloat@Brown, which Shieh said was similar to DOGE and Mark Zuckerber's college project of scrapping student ID photos to rank who was hotter. Shieh wrote about how he used publicly available information on LinkedIn, the student newspaper, and job boards to compile all the information he could about each employee and fed that information into a GPT-4o mini, an AI app, to rank the non-faculty employees. Shieh, a sophomore at Brown University, said he did this work from a common room in his dorm's basement that floods whenever it rains, thus making plastic tarps for the shared work and leisure space a necessity for a school that charges students $93,064 a year. He formatted his site to identify three particular jobs: "DEI jobs, redundant jobs, and bulls--t jobs." According to Shieh, DEI was important to look into because of President Donald Trump's executive orders and his administration threatening to withhold federal funds to universities with DEI policies. In fiscal year 2024, Brown University, which has an Office of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, reportedly received "more than $254 million" in federal funding. "After doing some digging, I discovered that much of the money is being thrown into a pit of bureaucracy," Shieh wrote. "The small army of 3,805 non-faculty administrators is more than double the faculty headcount, and makes for roughly one administrator for every two undergrads." In addition to the information Shieh found, he also sent a mass email to the 3,805 non-faculty employees asking about their duties. "This was purposefully done in the dead of night, just in case Brown's IT team felt inclined to block emails from my domain," Shieh said, adding that he said he was a journalist for The Brown Spectator, an inactive libertarian journal that is attempting to restart. Shieh said that only 20 of the 3,805 people emailed responded, with some replies allegedly saying, "f--k you," and another directing Shieh to "stick an entire cactus up [his] a--." The following day, after sending the email, the university reportedly told staff not to respond to Shieh's email. In addition, Shieh claimed his social security number was leaked, and his email was spammed with "every porn newsletter on the internet." "Less than 48 hours later, as has previously been reported, an associate dean my model warned could be redundant (her role overlapped with other deans on the discipline team and she was the only one without a JD) informed me I was under review for 'emotional/psychological harm,' 'misrepresentation,' 'invasion of privacy,' and 'violation of operational rules,'" Shieh wrote. Shieh, who is being represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said the associate dean also told him give back all the confidential information he had, which he says was "scraped from the public internet." "If college administrators are this scared of a sophomore with a laptop, they should be terrified of what's coming next," Shieh wrote. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Brian Clark, vice president for news and strategic campus communications at Brown University said, "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. Clark added that "The website included derogatory descriptions of job functions of named individuals at every job level. While the emails were framed as a journalistic inquiry, the supposed news organization identified in the email has had no active status at Brown for more than a decade, and no news article resulted. We advised employees, many of whom expressed concerns, not to respond, and evaluated the situation from a policy standpoint. That review has informed the steps we've taken since. 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."
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Brown University Targets Student Journalist for Emailing Administrators
Alex Shieh, a student reporter for The Brown Spectator, is being investigated by Brown University. His alleged crime? Asking administrators about their jobs. On March 18, Shieh emailed each of Brown's 3,805 non-instructional full-time staff members, asking them to describe the tasks they performed in the past week. The university began its investigation two days later. With Brown running on a $46 million deficit and annual tuition and fees set to increase to a combined $93,064 this July, Shieh launched the site Bloat@Brown (which is hosted by The Brown Spectator) on March 18. Inspired by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Shieh strives to determine "whether tuition dollars are funding mission-critical functions" and "to expose the bureaucracy to which all 3,805 administrators belong." He would assign each administrator a rating of "low risk," "ambiguous," or "suspect" based on publicly available data used to determine "legality," "redundancy," and "bullshit job" subscores. The full methodology may be accessed here. Kirsten Wolfe, Brown University associate dean and associate director of student conduct and community standards, notified Shieh that a preliminary investigation had been launched into his activities associated with Bloat@Brown two days following its publication. The notice was shared with Reason by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which is advocating for Shieh. Wolfe accuses Shieh of "accessing a proprietary University data system," causing "emotional distress for several University employees," and misrepresenting himself "as a reporter for the Brown Spectator," in the notice. These alleged behaviors violate the university code of conduct's prohibitions on emotional or psychological harm, invasion of privacy, misrepresentation, and violation of operational rules, according to Wolfe. Wolfe also accuses Shieh of accessing a data system that contains "confidential human resources, financial, and student information," but does not specify the system she's referring to. Bloat@Brown only published the names and positions of administrators (both publicly available via the staff directory) alongside a subjective valuation of their value to the college. The directory is provided "solely for the information of the Brown University community and those who have a specific interest in reaching a specific individual," according to its acceptable use policy. Shieh is a member of the Brown community and plainly stated his interest in contacting each administrator. Dominic Coletti, a program officer at FIRE, says, "It's hard to imagine how…that information could be confidential if it's also public." Shieh did not even publish the email addresses—also publicly available—of the administrators and went so far as to censor the recipient of one email he shared on X. Brown guarantees students the freedom "of political activity inside and outside the University," including "the right to petition the authorities, the public and the University," per its code of conduct. Brown claims that Shieh misrepresented himself by identifying as a reporter for The Brown Spectator. But Shieh is a staff member of The Brown Spectator; he is its publisher and a reporter. While the publication is not officially recognized by the university, its staff has been working on its revival with The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) Student Journalism Association since the summer of 2024. Shieh tells Reason they are "just trying to figure [out] the printing situation" but "have a bunch of other articles ready to go." Ryan Wolfe (unrelated to Kirsten Wolfe), the director of the Center for Excellence in Journalism at TFAS, confirms this. Bryan Clark, Brown's vice president for news and strategic campus communications, tells Reason that Bloat@Brown "appeared to improperly use data accessed through a University technology platform to target individual employees by name and position description" but could not provide additional details about the allegations against Shieh "due to federal law protecting student privacy." Kirsten Wolfe did not respond to Reason's request for comment. Coletti says that the university "needs to actually provide the allegations—it can't use the threat of possible punishment down the line as a sword of Damocles to impose a chill on any student's ability to, one, do journalism and report on the university and, two, talk about the investigation itself." Bloat@Brown's interactive map of administrators was disabled by hackers on the day the site launched. Shieh tells Reason that the hackers bragged about their exploits on Sidechat, an anonymous social media app that sorts users by college community, meaning that the hackers must have " emails. Shieh says he and the team at The Brown Spectator are working to get the information back up. Universities are supposed to be bastions of free speech. Brown's code of conduct reflects this ideal by requiring the university to notify students of charges made against them, affording students the opportunity to review the evidence against them, and recognizing students' right against self-incrimination. By withholding whatever evidence it may have against Shieh while threatening him with an ill-defined preliminary investigation for publishing publicly available information in a critical manner, Brown's behavior belies its values. The post Brown University Targets Student Journalist for Emailing Administrators appeared first on
