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Elite University Targets Student For Trying To Uncover Where Millions In Federal Funds Are Going
The Daily Caller ^ | April 1, 2025 | Jaryn Crouson

Posted on 04/02/2025 8:25:52 AM PDT by Twotone

Brown University has opened an investigation into a student for sending emails to administrators asking them what they do in a day.

The 20-year-old sophomore at the university, Alex Shieh, sent emails to all 3,805 administrators at Brown asking them to “Describe what tasks you performed in the past week.” Now the school is investigating him for inflicting “Emotional/Psychological Harm” on the staff, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

School officials accuse Shieh of obtaining confidential information and are requiring him to send proof he has deleted the content, essentially requiring the student to incriminate himself, something that Brown’s policies are supposed to protect him from. Shieh denies he obtained any confidential information.

Brown quickly attempted to silence Shieh. The student says the site he created to log the information that he captured in his investigation, titled Bloat@Brown, was hacked by someone with a university IP address not long after he sent the emails to administrators. Shieh also received an anonymous email threatening him with his own Social Security number.

“I expected some level of engagement, but only 20 people got back, one of whom only replied with a ‘fuck you,’ and another of whom suggested I ‘stick an entire cactus up [my] ass,'” Shieh wrote in Pirate Wires. “Immediately after the business day started, Brown sent a memo to employees ordering them not to respond. Someone leaked my Social Security number (only those in the registrar’s office should have access to it); someone else from a Brown IP address hacked the site; and there was a coordinated effort to flood my inbox with every porn newsletter on the internet.”

Shieh was attempting to uncover not only redundant or unnecessary jobs, but any diversity, equity and inclusion positions that would now be in violation of federal directives.

“The motivation is that Brown — and ivy leagues in general — the price is going through the roof,” Shieh told the DCNF. Brown charges students $93,064 per year in tuition alone, making it the second-most expensive in the nation.

The university also raked in approximately $254 million in federal funding in 2024 alone and has pushed for courts to block the Trump administration from cutting indirect research funds from universities.

“I’m trying to help Brown, to sort of expose these things so that they can remove them themselves and be compliant and raise awareness to that,” Shieh told the DCNF. “It’s certainly not my goal to have Brown lose its federal funding. I would like it to be compliant and keep its federal funding and also just to remove all these other administrative positions that might not be legally questionable, per se, but are just not necessary and also are bloating the bottom line.”

Brown is already on the federal government’s radar, with the Department of Education currently investigating the school for alleged noncompliance with civil rights laws and allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from discrimination.

In a letter sent to Shieh notifying him of the investigation, Brown also accuses the student of “Invasion of Privacy” and “Violation of Operational Rules” for sending the email. The school also said he misrepresented himself as a reporter for the Brown Spectator, a libertarian paper that the school no longer recognizes.

“It seems like retaliation that I investigated the bureaucracy, and they decided to investigate me back,” Shieh said. “I think it seems retaliatory because it might be beneficial for students if we lower the cost of education, but it’s an existential threat to this whole entire administrative class. And so, in that sense, I guess it makes sense that they’re freaking out about this.”

A Brown representative confirmed the investigation to the DCNF but declined to give additional information.

“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. The website included derogatory descriptions of job functions of named individuals at every job level,” a Brown spokesman told the DCNF. “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.”

The “derogatory descriptions” presumably refer to Shieh describing what he said were unnecessary and redundant positions as “bullshit jobs.”

“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,” the university spokesman said. “We are treating this matter with the utmost seriousness.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: brownuniversity; coverup; cowardice; dei; education; emotionalharm; foia; retaliation; rico; transparency
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1 posted on 04/02/2025 8:25:52 AM PDT by Twotone
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To: Twotone
ent emails to all 3,805 administrators at Brown

There's your first clue...

and the second clue is that they're punishing him for simply asking...

2 posted on 04/02/2025 8:27:17 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: Twotone

Why can’t they put the name of the university in the title? Is it a secret?


3 posted on 04/02/2025 8:27:48 AM PDT by subterfuge (I'm a pure-blood!)
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To: Teacher317

(Brown University’s student body in the fall of 2022 consisted of 11,189 students)


4 posted on 04/02/2025 8:28:01 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: Teacher317

Tuition set currently at $68k a year.

If you laid off half the 3.8k administrators....you could probably bring tuition down to $45.


5 posted on 04/02/2025 8:33:43 AM PDT by pepsionice
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To: Twotone

3,805 administrators?

Too many chiefs and not enough Indians................


6 posted on 04/02/2025 8:35:40 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Teacher317

Yep and yep.


7 posted on 04/02/2025 8:36:28 AM PDT by Skooz (Gabba Gabba accept you we accept you one of us Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us )
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To: pepsionice

University staff happens to be the farm teams of the Beltway bureaucrats. Clinton started filling the college campuses with former loyalists put out to pasture with a purpose. Their presence inside university administrations all but guaranteed a steady supply of freshmen government agency bureaucrats before the best Marxists get a gig in the private sector. 73% of Yale, Harvard, Brown, university graduates move into government or government funded NGO jobs. It is their duty to maintain that cycle.


8 posted on 04/02/2025 8:40:22 AM PDT by blackdog ((Z28.310) Be careful what you say. Your refrigerator may be listening & reporting you.)
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To: pepsionice

Back of the envelope estimate:

3,805 / 2 Administrators = 1,902.5 = 1,902 (50% layoff)

Cost per Administrator = $50,000 * 1.3 (accounting for benefits) = $65,000

1,902 * $65,000 = $123,630,000

$123,630,000 / 11,189 Students = $11,049.24 per Student savings


9 posted on 04/02/2025 8:43:30 AM PDT by HombreSecreto (The life of a repo man is always intense)
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To: Twotone

Now the school is investigating him for inflicting “Emotional/Psychological Harm” on the staff

~~~

If asking people who are getting paid to describe what they actually do for their paycheck/salary is considered “emotional harm”, we truly are screwed in this country.


10 posted on 04/02/2025 8:44:23 AM PDT by z3n (Kakistocracy)
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To: Teacher317

The sophomore is pursuing classic Alinsky tactics—with commentary from this website...

https://sliwainsights.com/saul-alinskys-12-rules-for-radicals/

Rule 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty.

RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.


11 posted on 04/02/2025 8:51:43 AM PDT by cgbg (It was not us. It was them--all along.)
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To: pepsionice

According to the article, it’s a lot more than that.

*** Brown charges students $93,064 per year in tuition alone, making it the second-most expensive in the nation.***

Someone is wrong, but having said that, both are too much.


12 posted on 04/02/2025 8:55:06 AM PDT by FamiliarFace (I got my own way of livin' But everything gets done With a southern accent Where I come from. TPetty)
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To: cgbg

(RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy.)

Hehehe......


13 posted on 04/02/2025 8:55:06 AM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: Twotone

BTTT


14 posted on 04/02/2025 8:56:35 AM PDT by nopardons
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To: Twotone

3,805 administrators is a reason to look deeper


15 posted on 04/02/2025 8:57:48 AM PDT by ronnie raygun
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To: Twotone
Alex Shieh, sent emails to all 3,805 administrators at Brown

According to Wikipedia, Brown has 10,737 students and an academic staff of 848. So either the numbers are incorrect or Brown has an awfully big staff of administrators, probably most of them are DEI hires.

16 posted on 04/02/2025 8:59:20 AM PDT by libertylover (Our biggest problem, by far, is that almost all of big media is AGENDA-DRIVEN, not-truth driven.)
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To: Twotone

My brother once stepped on a bees nest and it was awful for him.


17 posted on 04/02/2025 9:00:26 AM PDT by Raycpa
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To: Twotone
he school is investigating him for inflicting “Emotional/Psychological Harm” on the staff

Holy guacamole. When did we become such a nation of whining cupcakes?

18 posted on 04/02/2025 9:00:51 AM PDT by LouAvul (1 John 2:22: Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist)
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To: Twotone

Maybe Brown University should get a subtle hint from the Trump administration. It would be just as easy to cut federal funds to Brown as it was to Columbia.


19 posted on 04/02/2025 9:02:25 AM PDT by Paleo Conservative
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To: Twotone

Don’t mess with the gravy train.


20 posted on 04/02/2025 9:08:58 AM PDT by glorgau
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