During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) spoke to Alex Shieh, student at Brown University, about his efforts to expose ‘bloated bureaucracy’ at the institution.
00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think one of the points Mr. Shea was trying to make was that these universities shouldn't be so expensive in the first place.
00:08None of us want to take away Pell grants and loan support, et cetera, financial aid for anyone that needs it.
00:16Our point is it shouldn't cost this much in the first place to the point that we need $400,000, whether it's subsidized or not, to pay for these degrees.
00:26I'm curious, Mr. Shea, when you started asking all these questions and making noise at Brown University, what was their response to you?
00:35They were not very happy. The Brown administration told people not to respond to our emails, and then they hit us with a disciplinary investigation,
00:43charging me personally for bizarre things such as emotional slash psychological harm.
00:48Apparently that's a real student code of conduct violation, but I was found not responsible for anything.
00:52But they also dragged in the entire board of the Brown Spectator and charged all of us, and luckily we were cleared.
00:59But I think this shows that there's rot, and they're trying to cover it up.
01:02Isn't that interesting that they had a problem with your free speech and the work you were doing,
01:08but they didn't have a problem with the pro-Palestinian encampments and all the anti-Semitism?
01:13Isn't that just wildly ironic that they would go after little old you, just a student that's banging the drum and kicking and screaming about high cost,
01:23and that pissed them off so much that they started an investigation and came after you,
01:29but they didn't have a problem with the anti-Semitism all over their campus?
01:34This is certainly a double standard.
01:36In 2023, we saw that a large group of protesters were actually arrested for trespassing.
01:42They invaded one of the buildings, and they were asked to leave.
01:44They didn't leave.
01:45They were arrested, and Brown told the prosecutor to drop the charges.
01:49They weren't disciplined at all.
01:51I think there is a clear double standard here.
01:53Well, I hope you'll keep after it.
01:55The fact that the Democrats on this committee are going after you, not hard, I'll give them credit,
02:04but trying to nail you down on a Pell Grant question that really doesn't have anything to do with the point we're trying to make here.
02:10The point is, if college wasn't so expensive, we wouldn't even need all this financial aid
02:15because it wouldn't cost a fortune to go to college.
02:19It shouldn't cost $400,000, and kids that can't afford it wouldn't need the aid that they get
02:25because they would have aid, but we would need $400,000 of it.
02:29And so I hope that every child, every student in America can go to whatever college they want,
02:35but they're not going to as long as class sizes are limited and the price tags keep going up.
02:41Another interesting tidbit that I have found in all of this is all these endowments.
02:46One of my colleagues on the other side said taxpayer money was meant to go towards funding this.
02:55If an Ivy League institution has billions of dollars in their endowments,
03:04then I'm wondering how much needs to be given to this university with extra taxpayer dollars.
03:12Dr. Cooper, will you comment on that?
03:13Absolutely. Some of these Ivy League universities have endowments in the tens of billions.
03:19Harvard is an endowment north of $50 billion.
03:21And these institutions actually are less likely to provide institutional financial aid
03:26than other private colleges with fewer resources.
03:28And yet my colleague over here seems to just be outraged that we would want Harvard or Brown
03:33or name your university to use their endowment billions to educate the masses
03:39rather than to use taxpayer dollars to further their cost escalations and their price increases.
03:46Am I missing something, Dr. Cooper?
03:48I think you're right.
03:49Harvard and other Ivy League institutions could certainly be doing a lot more
03:52with the tremendous resources they have available to make college more affordable for their students
03:56and to expand to more talented students.
03:58Well, I praise your work.
04:01I'm sorry on behalf of my colleagues on the left that seem to be so angry with your exposing
04:08of the corruption and the collusion and the exorbitant cost increases of Ivy League educations.
04:14I can't hear one peep out of them with respect to the anti-Semitism in these same Ivy League institutions.
04:22They're all mad at President Trump for actually standing up against this anti-Semitism that we're seeing.
04:28They're mad at President Trump for trying to bring down the cost and saying to these Ivy League institutions,
04:34we're not going to keep sending you money of U.S. taxpayer dollars
04:37as long as you're helping to propagate this anti-Semitism.
04:44They're doing nothing about this.
04:45And Democrats are so mad at the president for standing up for the students
04:49and for standing up for the taxpayers that they instead are wasting your time going after you.
04:55So keep it up, Mr. Shea, Dr. Cooper, Mr. Martin, I appreciate your work
04:59and I encourage you to keep the pressure on Brown, especially Mr. Shea.
05:03Don't be discouraged and know that the American people,
05:07the vast majority of the American people, support your efforts
05:10and we stand with you and we share your views.
05:13Gentleman yields back.
05:15We have a couple of unanimous consent requests.