Last month, a mass shooter at Brown University killed two students and injured nine others. In the wake of the tragedy, students across the country are being forced to grapple with the everyday realities of gun violence.
At Brown, the first shots were fired during an optional review session for an economics final exam. When the shooter entered the room, he fired 40 rounds, and the campus was sent almost immediately into a school-wide lockdown. An anonymous Brown student who recently graduated from a local DC school said they were “in [their] friend’s room on lockdown for 16 hours, sleeping three people to a twin XL bed.”
School Without Walls Class of 2025 graduate and current Brown first-year Maia Riggs said she had a similar experience—spending four hours on lockdown in a library before taking buses “to an athletic center that was heavily guarded and set up for hundreds of kids to shelter in.”
When the shooting occurred, Brown used its official campus alert system to send updates to all students and faculty members. There seemed to be a pretty rapid response to what was going on,” Riggs told The Beacon, “and we were kept more or less in the loop.”
Jackson-Reed Class of 2024 graduate and current Brown sophomore Zach Bensky was in his dorm when he first heard about the shooting. “I looked out the window of my dorm and saw two people lying on the ground, surrounded by about 10 bystanders who were caring for them,” Bensky said. He said the shooting hit close to home because he had been in the classroom where the shooting occurred less than 12 hours earlier.
While the Brown shooting received nationwide media attention, it was hardly the only mass shooting in recent years.
According to CNN, in 2025, there were at least 77 school shootings – at both K-12 schools and universities – with 32 people killed and 121 injured. In December, a shooting at Kentucky State University left one student dead and another critically injured. Last April, another shooting at Florida State University led to two students dead and six wounded.
The anonymous Brown student told The Beacon that “after other shootings, I remember hearing students say ‘we always hear it happening to others, but we never thought it would happen to us’ but it’s getting to the point where someone can’t make that assumption anymore.”
In reaction to the shooting, Brown and other schools in the area enhanced security across campus, adding security staff, requiring key card access to all buildings, and expanding security cameras and panic buttons in critical locations.
Bensky said he hopes that “all schools conduct drills and training to prepare students in case something like this ever happens again” as schools need to “prepare for any eventuality.” He believes that these new protocols “should be standard practice.”
Riggs agreed, saying “colleges and schools should absolutely up their security, get more cameras, and improve their response systems,” But she also emphasized that “the root of this problem is much deeper, and that alone can not solve the problem.”
At Jackson-Reed, there are periodic active shooter drills and shelter in place drills to prepare students in case of an active shooter at or around the premises. “I hope students will take these drills seriously and take this knowledge with them wherever they go,” Social Studies teacher Robert Geremia said.
Bensky credited those skills with helping shape his response. He said that he’s talked with other students “who also relied on their lockdown training.” Riggs also said the drills helped her know how to respond. But, she added, “nothing can quite prepare you for the visceral fear you feel when something so unimaginable is actively happening to you.”
Student reactions at JR reflected the uncertainty and fear that gun violence imposes on students around the country.
Junior Paulina Afronsky said that “you can’t be so confident it won’t happen at your own school.” Senior Isaak Greiff agreed, saying, “at this point a lot of people are desensitized to the information which makes everything a little more alarming.”
While many community members have been impacted by gun violence outside of school, school shootings remain a lingering distraction for all that prevents students from feeling safe and secure in their learning environment.
”Gun violence might not directly impact my daily life,” Afronsky said, “but it’s always in the background lurking.” Greiff echoed that, “it shifts school from a place where I’m only learning into a place where I’m also expected to be prepared for a possible shooting,” he said. •
