I was a gun safety advocate. Then a mass shooting hit my school. |
On Dec. 13, the community that I love most was shattered. Attending class, eating meals, seeing friends ‒ nothing at Brown University will ever be the same.
As I sheltered in place from an active shooter, first in a grocery store and then in a friend’s off-campus house, hundreds of texts flew through my phone. I saw videos of students bleeding out on the ground, just steps from my dorm. Friends were barricaded in tiny rooms with no water, food or access to a bathroom.
With helicopters thundering overhead and sirens blaring throughout the neighborhood, all I could think about was the victims’ families, waiting nervously to hear about their loved ones, not knowing they were about to receive the worst possible news: The gunman killed two students and injured nine that Saturday.
I finally fell asleep at 4 a.m., still under a shelter-in-place order. I awoke, after a restless few minutes of sleep, to a 5:42 a.m. text from Brown’s emergency management system telling us that police had ended the shelter-in-place order for Brown’s campus but were still actively investigating and maintaining a perimeter around key buildings. This only fueled more confusion. Initially, we had been told a suspect was in custody, only to learn later that it was no longer the case.
Walking back to my dorm room that Sunday morning, streets empty and ground freshly coated with snow, was a surreal experience. Reporters........