On the night of December 13, 2025, the students at Brown University hid fearful under their desks and inside their closets, texting their parents about the possible threat of an active shooter on campus. Yik Yak, Snapchat, and other messaging software were bombarded by students texting their friends claiming they heard gunshots, saw SWAT teams, or saw people running out of buildings.

According to students, the school’s response to letting students know what was happening was not immediate, which heightened the sense of fear on campus and prevented the implementation of immediate safety protocols. This information gap was not a system glitch, but a glimpse into the terrifying reality of campus safety and security.

The Brown shooting occurred around 4 p.m. on the second day of final examination week for the fall semester. The suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, was a former graduate student of the university. He entered the building, Barus and Holley, and made his way to a room where a teaching assistant was holding an optional econ review session. There, he shot and killed two students, leaving nine others with gunshot-inflicted injuries. While Valente’s method of entrance is unknown, the doors were unlocked, and the area where he entered has limited camera coverage. Valente exited campus before the police arrived and was found deceased two days later, on December 15, as a result of suicide.

Henry Hurd, a current freshman on Brown University’s football team and an AHS alum from the class of 2025, originally intended to attend the econ review session in Barus and Holley. Hurd was in a dorm room with about 15 fellow members of the football team doing homework when they started receiving unofficial alerts that there was a mass shooting. According to Hurd, the school’s lack of direct communication made it difficult for students to fully grasp the gravity of the situation.

“We didn’t really take it seriously at first. We kind of thought it was like ‘oh, maybe some homeless guy or something,’ like it was a one-off thing. Then we started getting more and more texts about it and stuff from people saying it was a mass shooting,” Hurd said.

Approximately 20 minutes after shots were fired, the school sent out an official notice.

Hurd and his teammates were in the dorm room for about ten hours until they caught a glimpse of FBI agents outside the building through a window. They called out to the agents, who then made their way up to escort each person back to their own dorm safely. As Hurd was being escorted back, he recalls how the atmosphere on campus had completely shifted. He noted it was dead silent, and what was supposed to be a lively Saturday night ended up feeling sinister.

“It ended up actually being the first snowfall of the year that night, and usually that’s supposed to be a happy thing for Brown. But it was just so ruined by everything that happened, and there was just such an eerie feeling on campus,” Hurd said. “The next morning, it was kind of the same way– a lot of people were packing up and just leaving as fast as they could.”

The issue of campus safety extends beyond the shooting that happened on Brown’s campus. In 2025 alone, there were 43 shootings on college campuses. According to Brown Students, a critical problem regarding how shooters find out about specific details, such as the times and locations of classes or events, is the fact that many colleges and universities in the US have public websites that anyone can view without a login. This enables the public who may be looking for information to access it easily, and it can be harder to trace the identity of a shooter back to a specific person.

Camron LaPointe, another AHS graduate and freshman at Brown, was on the fourth floor of the library when he noticed the entire street outside fill with police lights. He then rushed to a bathroom and remained there with about 20 other students. After two hours, SWAT came, banged down the door, and relocated everyone to the basement of the library. LaPointe recalls how everyone tried to keep each other’s hopes up, yet the intensity of the moment outweighed any promising emotions.

“You hear about events like this all the time on the news, but sitting there, watching the army of officers outside and the lights turn everything a red-purple color, was nothing I could have expected,” LaPointe said. “This, paired with the fact that most of our info was coming from people inside the Econ conference at this point, everything felt really real and tense.”

Furthermore, many schools have open-campus policies, which makes it easy for non-students to enter buildings. Since the shooting on Brown’s campus, the school has started implementing new safety measures to protect students and staff.

“They have increased patrol and safety officer presence on campus, and every building now has swipe access, and most [have] an additional security guard inside to prevent people from entering by holding the door,” LaPointe said. “They have completely walled off the area of Barus and Holley that has significant security blind spots, and I’m assuming [they] are renovating it.”

According to LaPointe, while there was a slight tension going back to school after the incident, he feels as if everyone at Brown has a newfound connection with one another, which makes him feel more confident going back.

“I was amazed at how empathetic, caring, and supportive everyone was. I also think everyone is aware of what happened to a level that they can be truly empathetic to others here, and seeing it has made me love this community even more,” LaPointe said.

This story was originally published on The Skier Scribbler on February 6, 2026.