Dining halls will now give an option to tip, CPax announced on Monday. “This is an innovative new program to offset budget deficits and expected losses due to federal impacts in FY26. We actually took inspiration from Trump’s tariff plan, because it was such a great idea to have consumers make up for increased costs,” she said in a Today@Brown post.
Now, after you swipe into the Ratty, workers are mandated to turn an iPad screen around and display options for a 20%, 67%, or 200% tip. Students will have the option to select “no tip,” but it’ll make the screen bright red like in Kahoot, so everyone knows you’re a horrible person. Entrances to dining halls have also installed passive-aggressive signs reading “Tips appreciated but never expected :).”
Proceeds from tip collection will go directly towards the most essential university expenses: increasing the measly $7 billion endowment, buying more property in the Jewelry District that Brown doesn’t have to pay property taxes on, and replacing turf in the Nelson’s free weight section. “We know it might be confusing that tips in dining halls don’t actually go towards the dining staff or making campus food options more edible, but we thought this would be the best way to trick students into giving us more money,” Max Profit, Assistant Vice Dean of Skullduggery and Student Giving, told the Rib.
Depending on the success of this program, students can expect to see other fundraising efforts around campus, such as paying for tampons in the bathrooms again, receiving Venmo requests from CPax directly, and the installation of those funnels that make the coins spin around really fast like they have at zoos.