Alex Shieh, a sophomore at Brown University, sent school staff an email in the style of those from the Department of Government Efficiency in an effort to determine why tuition has risen.
Shieh spent his free weekends in the basement of his dormitory compiling a database of 3,800 employees at the elite school, then sent an email asking them “what do you do all day.” The student identified himself as a writer with The Brown Spectator, a libertarian journal on campus.