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…