Valentina Fuentes, Story Editor
In November of 2025, the NCHS Model UN delegation traveled to Brown University for a three day conference. From November 14-16, delegates became part of a larger community of hundreds of high school students from across the world, all gathered on campus with one common goal: a weekend of academic rigor, negotiation, and most importantly, community.
In comparison to other conferences, where we usually conglomerated in hotel conference rooms, Brown was incredibly open and allowed us to debate in their actual buildings. Delegates had the freedom to move through real ivy league academic areas, such as Friedman Hall, Salomon Hall, Faunce House, and Barus and Holley.
Photo contributed by Ms. Arastu.
And in that same building, just one month after our visit to Brown, a gunman opened fire inside the Barus and Holley engineering building during a final exam review session. Devastatingly, two students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, were killed, and nine others were injured. The once lively and beautiful campus we had walked through just a few months before was put under lockdown for hours, with 200 students reported hiding “inside a single room and others hiding alone in bathrooms,” according to NBC News. Reunification buses arrived way later into the night, at around 7:30 p.m, leaving students stranded in terror.
Joseph Oduro, a teaching assistant who was participating in a review session inside Barus and Holley at the time of the shooting, described the moment in an interview with CNN: “We heard what sounded like gunshots outside, but my mind didn’t necessarily go to gunshots right away because we are at Brown University, an Ivy League institution,” Oduro recalled. He then described the moment the gunman entered the room: “He just started shooting… we pretty much made direct eye contact.”
Another Brown student, Zoe Weissman, a sophomore and also a Parkland shooting survivor, said, “I’m numb but I’m also really angry. This feels exactly how I felt in 2018,” in an interview with the New York Times. Along with her, Mia Tretta, a Saugus High School shooting survivor, where three individuals were killed, including her best friend Dominic Blackwell, stated, “I am forced to confront a reality no student should ever have to face: this is the second school shooting I have lived through.”
This ricochet of terror spread throughout the entirety of Brown campus, and then immediately throughout the US through news outlets and social media. But this time, out of the hundreds of headlines that occur every year, the location on the headline hit me particularly hard.
Photo contributed by Ms. Arastu.
It was at that building where our Model UN delegation had walked through during the conference just weeks earlier. I would walk across that building on my way to Thayer Street to get lunch, and I would lean against its walls waiting for my friend to leave her committee. But the shooting exposed the fragility of everything I had thought as safe, especially universities and schools, where the sole purpose is to learn and thrive. No one ever expects it to happen, yet moments like these force us to realize the vulnerability of every place we think is safe.
But unfortunately, what happened at Brown University is not an anomaly. The history of school shootings in the United States reveals a pattern of devastating continuum.
Although shootings have occurred for many decades, the Columbine High School massacre, on April 20, 1999, marked a turning point for American society. On that day, 13 students and one teacher were brutally murdered.
Since Columbine, more than 390,000 students in the US have experienced gun violence at school, as reported by the Sandy Hook Promise. The organization also states that 12 children die every single day in the United States from gun violence and another 32 are shot and injured daily. I can’t help but think of the lunchboxes left unopened, texts left unanswered and goodbyes that were never said. Every single loss carries an unbearable weight of pain, and a ripple of grief across society that is never able to truly leave.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the United States, surpassing vehicular accidents in the earliest few years. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, about 57 percent of American teenagers say they somewhat worry about the possibility of a shooting at their school, with nearly one in four saying they worry “a lot.” Before this, I would have placed myself in the category of worrying only a little. I would now classify myself as worrying a lot.
This should not be something we come to expect.
In my continuation with Model UN, I find that I can no longer go a moment without thinking about how fragile any place can be, and how quickly everything can change, especially in areas where we are meant to feel secure.
But it shouldn’t take a personal connection for this kind of tragedy to feel real. History has shown us, time and time again, that such terror can occur anywhere.
After the Sandy Hook shooting on December 12th, 2012, where 20 elementary school students and 6 adults were murdered, our nation said “Never again.” Since then, 3,865 school shootings have occurred across the country.
That number continues to grow, and the terrible fear that comes with it continues to seep into every facet of life for students, parents, teachers, and every individual throughout the US. That is not normal. It should never feel normal to walk into a school or a campus and wonder about your safety, or whether the exit is close enough. Children shouldn’t have to grow up practicing lockdown drills since preschool, and parents should not feel fear when dropping their kids off in the morning.
