‘A catalyst for change’: How the Brown shooting has shaped the campus
Distracted by a conversation with a friendly campus security guard, Bryson Boone let his sign hang down to the ground. The words "Free Hugs" turned toward him, only made visible by gusts of cold wind.
Instead of students avoiding eye contact with Boone or politely declining — as they had in previous months — a Brown University student approached Boone to see if he was still offering hugs. Even a photojournalist took him up on his offer.
"I think that was kind of the moment I knew — it's different right now. The emotional status of this campus is different. People are needing support," Boone recounted to MassLive.
It was the beginning of Boone's hug "shift" from 9 to 11 a.m. on Jan. 21, the first day of the new semester at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, after a mass shooting on Dec. 13, 2025.
That day, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national, burst into an auditorium in the Barus and Holley building on Brown's campus and opened fire. He killed two students and injured nine others .
Two days later, Neves Valente shot and killed Nuno Loureiro, a Nuclear Science and Engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the foyer of his Brookline apartment building.
Returning from winter break in mid-January, Boone said fear and pain are still part of the campus community, but it has also become stronger.
"I think people think a shooting adds a period at the end of a sentence — everything stops after that. But we haven't stopped," Boone said on Friday. "It was a semicolon or a comma. We're still growing, we're growing stronger."
What it feels like to be back at Brown
The campus at Brown was quiet on Friday morning until a stream of students walked out of their buildings after classes, carefully avoiding the patches of ice, often covered by a slick, thin layer of snow.
Security officers in neon yellow vests sat at some building entrances, while others required ID card scans to enter. Additional blue emergency lights coated the campus, peeking out from the snow mounds of a recent storm.
Andie Whitlow counts herself lucky she wasn't in the building when shots were fired. The building has become her second home; it's where she spends almost every hour as a master's student.
"I live in this building, especially during the semester, 24-7," Whitlow said.
The building feels different since the shooting, both because of the deaths that happened inside it and the hall being blocked off.
"It feels slightly weird. There's just a thing looming over the building a little bit," said Whitlow, a thick tan scarf wrapped around her head. "An uneasy feeling."
Photos of the two students who died sat outside the building where the shooting occurred, sunken into the snow. Bouquets surrounded them with flowers drained of color and plastic wraps whistling in the wind.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
The Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
The Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
The Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Andie Whitlow at the Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
ICE protest at Brown University on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Tito Edjua at the Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Brown University campus on Jan. 30, 2026.
Students, including Bryson Boone (right), holding up a Free Hugs sign on the first day of classes at Brown University.
Zoe Weissman is a student at Brown University.
Bryson Boone and Chloe Burton at Brown University on Jan. 30.
Tito Edjua was in a classroom next door to the auditorium where the shooting happened.
The loud noises sounded atypical — not like the common sounds of a heavy object falling to the ground or stomping. When a rush of students passed Edjua's lab door, he knew something was wrong.
He ran out of his lab and toward his dorm, leaving behind his laptop, coat and wallet.
"I've never heard a gun," said Edjua, a junior from London, looking down toward the snow on the sidewalk. "It's not something I expect."
After learning that the loud noises were gunshots, he began to feel an influx of community support headed his way.
"Everyone was offering people to come stay at their house if they were alone, everyone was checking in with everyone else," Edjua said. "I feel like the campus really has come together."
'A catalyst for change'
The free hug initiative, which Boone participated in on the first day of classes after winter break, is one of many initiatives students and administrators have created to provide support.
"I think people are trying to figure out how we create community again from something like that," Boone said. "How do we restore community?"
Brown's student mental health awareness and suicide prevention group, No Empty Seats, spearheaded the free hug initiative with the engineering department at the building where the gunman entered. They wanted students to try to associate the building with support and love, not hate, Boone said.
"A shooting will not end your story," Boone said. "It will simply be a catalyst for change."
Local businesses also stepped up for Brown in the wake of the shooting, offering free food to Brown students, said Chloe Burton, a sophomore who has also taken part in the "Free Hugs" initiative. Some businesses have signs in their windows with a red heart between the words "Providence" and "Brown."
"I think that honestly, one of the most important parts of building community right now is just making sure that you're there for the people around you," Burton said. "If everybody checks in on someone, then we can cover all of campus and make sure everybody's okay."
Living through two school shootings
The Brown community has also come together in ways that aren't related to the shooting. On Friday afternoon, hundreds of students walked out against ICE. Many then joined a march in Providence that drew thousands, according to media reports.
"The people, united, will never be defeated," the students chanted, filling a street.
To sophomore Zoe Weissman, the shootings of people such as Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse, by immigration officers and the mass shooting at Brown are all tied to a general gun control issue in the country.
The shooting at Brown was Weissman's second mass shooting experience. Her first occurred when she was 12 years old at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It left her with PTSD, and many people didn't understand what she lived through.
"The fact that it can happen there (at Brown) means it can happen to anyone. I think that's the really important thing. I don't want it to have to happen to someone for them to start caring," Weissman said.
The Brown shooting reinvigorated Weissman's activism, she said.
"I'm really proud of the work that I've done, but at the same time, I shouldn't have to be the one doing this. It shouldn't be up to my generation. This should have already been solved," she said.
Moving forward from Brown's shooting
In the aftermath of the shooting, as students and neighbors were frantically leaving the area, Reverend Delphain Demosthenes, associate chaplain of the university for the Protestant community, arrived to help.
What felt like thousands of students crowded a university gymnasium as Demosthenes saw new and familiar faces pass by him.
"It was all hands on deck," he said. "The whole focus was taking care of the immediate need in front of us."
He directed students to different areas of the gymnasium, and when he had a moment, he checked in on how students were feeling emotionally.
One student, speaking with a sense of calmness, said they hid in their classroom and turned off all the lights after hearing gunshots. The student said prayer helped them in that moment.
"There was a sense of shock," Demosthenes said.
A few weeks after the shooting, Demosthenes, on a flight back to Rhode Island from Europe, saw lightning outside the plane window and what looked like fire. It took the flight attendants several minutes before they told passengers that the plane wasn't damaged.
During those minutes, Demosthenes thought of what the student had told him and began praying. There is very little control that exists in day-to-day life, he said.
In the face of danger or even death, people have to find a grounding within, Demosthenes said.
"We're all in this," he said.
Brown University Shooting, Dec. 13, 2025
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