Brown University Has Gone Weird: No GPA, No Clothes, No Problem!

 

Welcome to Brown, where genius meets madness: Students once voted for nuclear-war suicide pills, run naked with donuts, and graduate without GPAs. Yet employers still want them.

I have seen strange universities. I have heard strange college traditions. But Brown University operates in a neighborhood of weirdness where the street signs seem to have been removed on purpose.

This is an Ivy League university, mind you. Founded in 1764. Providence, Rhode Island. Serious professors. Serious research. Serious money. Serious students. Brown’s current admissions numbers are brutal: 47,944 people applied for the Class of 2030, only 2,688 were admitted, producing an acceptance rate of just 5.6%. An astonishing 97% of admitted students whose schools reported rankings were in the top 10% of their graduating classes.

These are not academic tourists. They are some of the brightest young people in America and around the world. Then they arrive at Brown. And Brown says, essentially, “Welcome. Now forget what you thought college was supposed to look like.”

That is where things get weird.

I am not using “weird” as an insult without evidence. Brown has spent decades manufacturing evidence.

Consider 1984.

America and the Soviet Union were staring at each other across a mountain of nuclear weapons. Ronald Reagan was president. The Cold War was hot enough to make people sweat without firing a missile. Nuclear annihilation was not some Hollywood fantasy. Millions genuinely feared that Washington and Moscow could eventually press the wrong buttons and turn civilization into radioactive toast.

Brown students decided to make a statement. Naturally, because this was Brown, an ordinary anti-nuclear rally apparently would not do. Students voted on whether the university health service should stock suicide pills for use after a nuclear attack.

Yes.

Suicide pills.

At an Ivy League university.

Brown University’s own historical archive confirms the episode. During student elections on October 11 and 12, 1984, a referendum called for University Health Service to stock suicide pills that would become available in the event of nuclear war. Only 35% of the student body voted, but the proposal passed 1,044 to 687. Students Jason Salzman and Chris Ferguson promoted the idea as a way of forcing people to confront nuclear war in terms of death and destruction rather than victory and survival.

The university refused to stock the pills.

Thank God somebody was still minding the pharmacy.

I understand the political theater. I understand symbolism. I understand young people trying to shock comfortable adults into thinking about nuclear annihilation.

But I also know weird when I see it.

Imagine the conversation.

“What did students at Harvard do?”

“They protested.”

“What about Yale?”

“They held a forum.”

“What about Brown?”

“They want cyanide.”

Case closed.

Except Brown was apparently just warming up.

Years later came another piece of College Hill folklore: the Naked Donut Run.

The name does not hide the merchandise. Students run naked through campus libraries distributing donuts.

Brown’s student newspaper reports that the tradition probably began in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Participants have run through places such as the Rockefeller Library and Sciences Library, removing their clothes and handing donuts to students preparing for exams. A 2022 account reported an order involving more than 1,000 donut holes.

I have questions.

Many questions.

But the biggest is simple: Who looked at final-exam stress and concluded that what the library desperately needed was naked people carrying pastries?

At most universities, somebody brings coffee.

At Brown, apparently, somebody brings buns while showing theirs.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Brown students and organizers have defended the tradition in terms of spontaneity, freedom and body positivity. Fair enough. Adults have the right to make unconventional choices within reasonable rules. I am not calling for the donut police.

I am simply saying that if naked students suddenly sprint through a library carrying Dunkin’ while you are studying organic chemistry, the English language has already supplied us with a perfectly good adjective.

Weird.

Then we arrive at Sex Power God.

Even the name sounds as if three philosophy majors and a bottle of tequila held a committee meeting.

Sex Power God was an annual Queer Alliance dance that became notorious well beyond Brown. In 2005, a Fox News producer entered the event and secretly recorded students, creating a national controversy. Brown students later criticized the filming as invasive and unethical. That criticism deserves to be taken seriously. People attending a closed event should not automatically expect themselves to become television entertainment simply because a journalist manages to get through the door.

But the event itself was hardly Sunday school.

Brown’s own student newspaper reported that 24 students required medical attention at the 2005 Sex Power God event. The following year, 14 students required medical attention. Organizers subsequently emphasized creating a “sober, sane, safe and consensual” environment.

Again, Brown is Brown.

The institution seems to possess an extraordinary ability to combine elite intellectual seriousness with behavior that sounds like material rejected from a college comedy because the screenwriter thought audiences would find it unrealistic.

And yet here is where my argument becomes uncomfortable.

Because underneath Brown’s carnival of eccentricity sits an educational idea that I cannot dismiss nearly as easily.

The Open Curriculum.

Brown formally created the foundation for what became its Open Curriculum after faculty approved major curricular reforms in 1969. More than 50 years later, the philosophy remains strikingly different from the traditional American university model.

Brown students do not face a traditional university-wide core curriculum. They are expected to complete at least 30 courses, complete at least one concentration, demonstrate writing competence and satisfy residency requirements. Beyond that framework, students have enormous freedom to construct their education. Brown offers nearly 80 concentrations, and students may even design independent concentrations.

Then comes the part that makes the professor in me twitch.

Students can choose satisfactory/no-credit grading for courses unless an instructor has designated otherwise. Brown does not calculate student GPAs.

No GPA?

At Brown?

The university that admits roughly 6 students out of every 100 applicants?

My first instinct is simple.

Come on.

The world does not operate on satisfactory/no credit.

Employers evaluate you. Customers evaluate you. Editors reject manuscripts. Banks reject loan applications. Voters throw politicians out. Universities deny tenure. Businesses fail. Athletes get cut. Professors receive student evaluations. Writers discover that readers have the brutal freedom not to buy their books.

Life keeps score.

Sometimes unfairly.

Sometimes viciously.

But it keeps score.

So I understand why Michigan’s coming experiment bothers me. Beginning tentatively in fall 2027, the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts plans to cover traditional grades for first-semester freshmen, showing pass/no-credit results on external transcripts while students still receive grades and feedback internally. The idea is to reduce academic pressure and encourage students to take intellectual risks.

I call that coddling.

At least initially.

Because if you are old enough to leave home, choose a university, borrow serious money, select a major and prepare for adulthood, perhaps you are old enough to discover that a C is a C.

But then Brown ruins my argument.

That weird place forces me to think.

Brown’s students have already competed ferociously just to enter the gate. For the Class of 2030, the middle 50% SAT range among admitted students who submitted scores was 1470–1550. The middle 50% ACT range was 34–36.

These kids know competition.

They have been marinating in it.

Many have spent high school collecting AP courses, extracurricular activities, leadership positions, volunteer hours, test scores and awards like soldiers collecting ammunition.

Perhaps Brown is asking an uncomfortable question: Once you have assembled some of the strongest students in the world, must you keep whipping them with the GPA stick every waking minute?

That question bothers me because I can apply it to myself.

I loved my education at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka (Nigeria), the University of Phoenix and Walden University. I studied Applied Statistics and Demography and later Finance. I knew what I wanted. I wanted the degrees. I wanted the credentials. I wanted to become a college professor.

So I pursued the target.

Bang.

Grade.

Bang.

Degree.

Bang.

Next qualification.

There is nothing wrong with that. Discipline matters. Standards matter. Grades matter.

But something else matters too.

Curiosity.

Perhaps I could have spent more time wandering intellectually. Perhaps I could have sat longer with people studying subjects completely outside my lane. Perhaps I could have taken more courses simply because the professor fascinated me. Perhaps I could have treated education occasionally as exploration rather than transportation.

That is Brown’s strongest defense.

The university is weird because it trusts exceptionally accomplished students with an unusual amount of freedom.

Sometimes that freedom produces intellectual exploration.

Sometimes it produces a Naked Donut Run.

Freedom is funny that way.

MIT offers another inconvenient piece of evidence. Its first-year students currently receive Pass or No Record grades during the fall and January Independent Activities Period. Professors still submit underlying letter grades for advising purposes. Standard A–F grading does not fully begin until sophomore year. MIT explicitly says the policy is designed to help students adjust to increased workloads and differences in academic preparation and teaching.

So Brown is not alone.

MIT is weird too.

Michigan wants to join the club.

Maybe elite American education is slowly developing a strange philosophy: We spent 12 years forcing brilliant children to compete for every decimal point, trophy, test score and résumé line. Perhaps when they finally arrive, we can occasionally allow them to learn something simply because they want to know it.

I still have reservations.

Grades provide information. Competition can build resilience. Failure teaches lessons that participation trophies cannot. Universities should be extremely careful about confusing emotional comfort with education. The purpose of college cannot become protecting adults from discovering that somebody performed better than they did.

But Brown’s academic weirdness is harder to ridicule than its naked pastries.

The results certainly do not look like academic collapse. Brown reports that 95% of its 2023 graduates were employed or attending graduate or professional school within 9 months of graduation. It also reports that 83% of its 2024 graduates who applied to law school were admitted and 81% of those applying to medical school were admitted.

Apparently, civilization survived the missing GPA.

That leaves me in an uncomfortable position.

I still think Brown University is weird.

Spectacularly weird.

Historically documented weird.

A university where students once voted for post-nuclear-war suicide pills, where naked runners have distributed donuts in libraries, where Sex Power God became campus folklore, where students can choose satisfactory/no-credit grading, and where the institution refuses even to calculate GPA has earned the adjective honestly.

But perhaps weirdness is not always stupidity.

Sometimes weird is simply an experiment whose logic is not immediately obvious.

Brown’s strangest lesson may therefore have nothing to do with naked runners, nuclear pills or provocative dances. It may be that highly accomplished students occasionally need permission to stop treating education like an Olympic event.

I still believe the real world grades us every day.

I still believe students need toughness.

I still believe universities can coddle young adults until reality eventually sends them an invoice.

But I also believe education should create curiosity, not merely transcripts.

So I will give Brown this much.

Keep the Open Curriculum.

Keep intellectual exploration.

Keep challenging the assembly-line model of higher education.

But please, Brown, I beg you.

When I am studying in the library, just put the donuts on the table.

 

As a side note for regular readers, I have also written many titles in my Brief Book Series, now available on Google Play Books. You can also read them  here on Google Play, or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.