The shocking violence that ripped through Brown University and spilled over to an MIT professor’s neighborhood exposed a dangerous truth: our campuses are softer targets than administrators admit. Law enforcement found the suspected shooter dead in a New Hampshire storage unit after a multi-day manhunt, and investigators recovered an arsenal that shows he was prepared to do worse.
Two people were killed and nine others wounded in the attack at Brown’s Barus & Holley building, and MIT lost one of its rising stars when Professor Nuno Loureiro was gunned down at his home — victims of a preventable horror. Families and students are left with grief and questions while university officials search through old records and offer condolences.
Federal agents who combed the storage unit reported finding multiple handguns, body armor, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and other gear consistent with someone who planned an extended confrontation, not a momentary lapse of judgment. That cache should make every parent and taxpayer ask why a man with that intent was able to move around and strike two renowned academic institutions.
Cornell law professor William Jacobson went on Fox & Friends Weekend to demand answers, and he’s right: this is not just a policing problem, it’s an institutional one. Universities must stop reflexively protecting their reputations and start protecting people, answering plainly how someone with ties to a program slipped through their nets and why emergency preparedness was so lacking.
Former Brown employees have already said the university failed to mandate basic emergency training for campus staff, a glaring lapse in a world where active-shooter drills are a grim necessity. When facilities supervisors couldn’t get the training they requested, the result was confusion and preventable delay — a bureaucratic failure that cost lives.
Hardworking Americans expect institutions that benefit from public goodwill and generous tuition dollars to prioritize safety over spin. It’s time for prosecutions where negligence is found, for boards and presidents to be held accountable, and for governors and federal officials to demand campus security audits — not more statements about being “shocked” or “saddened.”
