On Saturday, December 13, 2025, a masked gunman stormed the Barus & Holley engineering building at Brown University, turning a routine final-exam study session into a scene of carnage that left two students dead and nine wounded. The attack happened just as professors and TAs were wrapping up a review, a horrific reminder that no campus is immune from violence in today’s lawless climate.
A teaching assistant, identified as Joseph Oduro, told reporters he locked eyes with the shooter as the attacker entered the lecture hall and began firing, an image that will haunt survivors and families for years. Students scrambled down the stadium seating, hid under desks, and tended to bleeding friends while authorities worked to secure the scene.
Providence police later announced they had detained a person of interest at a hotel in Coventry and said they were not currently searching for anyone else, signaling at least a temporary measure of law-and-order response after a brutal, chaotic night. That detention came only after a massive manhunt and frantic hours of campus lockdown — the kind of mobilization that should never be routine in our towns and colleges.
Students described sheltering in the dark for hours, barricading doors and praying while police and university officials coordinated an evacuation that many said should have come sooner; one student even noted how easily building doors are propped open during class hours. This is not an accident — it is the predictable result of institutional complacency about security and a culture that prizes openness over basic protection for its most vulnerable.
Let’s be blunt: the ideological reflex that greets every mass shooting with only calls for more restrictions on lawful gun owners has failed to keep our kids safe. We also have to look honestly at universities that leave doors unlocked, understaff public safety, and cultivate environments where warnings and concerns are dismissed until it’s too late. Americans who send their children away for education deserve campuses that prioritize safety above fashionable policy signals.
If we care about preventing the next headline, we must demand stronger, common-sense security measures now — beefed-up campus police with real authority, better access control for academic buildings, funded mental-health intervention programs that actually intervene, and prosecutors who pursue violent offenders without political softness. Law-abiding Americans and their children should never be punished for the failures of systems that refuse to confront violent behavior and its causes head-on.
To the families grieving tonight, and to every student locked down in fear, patriotic Americans stand with you and demand answers. Hold university leaders accountable, push local officials to secure campuses, and don’t accept platitudes while our children are at risk; safety is not partisan, it is the most basic responsibility of government and institutions alike.
