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At approximately 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, a gunman enters Room 166 of the Barus and Holley Building at Brown University, where economics students are preparing for final exams. Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, are killed and nine others wounded. The screams, texts, and sirens carry a single message: The university is under attack.

With little communication from authorities as they search for the gunman, students across campus realize their lives depend on their fellow classmates. They organize themselves, sometimes breaking into sharp debates over whether to run or hide. They block doors, shelter in basements, and grab broomsticks for weapons. From behind barricades, they try to piece together what is happening outside and wait to be rescued.

Oren Van Allen is in a second-floor lab space at Barus and Holley prepping for his senior-year engineering exams. A graduate student runs in and asks, “Do you know what’s going on? Everyone is running out of the building.” Van Allen checks the Sidechat app, where someone has posted that people are bleeding outside the building. “At first, I’m not 100 percent sure that this is true because these are just things students are saying,” he says later. He calls campus police, which confirms there is an active shooter. “I was behind several doors because it was a lab space,” Van Allen continues. “So I didn’t actually hear any gunshots.”

Cole........

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