Brown University students returned to classes for the first time on Wednesday since a Dec. 13 shooting that killed two students and injured nine. For many, going back to school posed a complicated mix of emotions: grief, anxiety, gratitude, and hope.
Jaren Friesen, a first-year Ph.D. student, crossed the street in front of Barus & Holley, the physics and engineering building where the shooting took place, on Tuesday. Behind him, bouquets of flowers lined the icy sidewalk.
“Today was my first time back in the building,” he said.
Friesen was inside his office in the Barus & Holley building when the shooting happened. He heard the gunshots and sheltered for about an hour until the police arrived and relocated him to a different office to shelter in, he said. He didn’t leave the building until late in the evening. Authorities instructed him to leave his belongings behind.
Friesen said he came back to Brown a few days before classes began in order to ease himself onto campus. He knows that despite the tragedy, he’ll need to do work in the building in order to complete his physics doctorate.
“It feels a bit like a memorial still, and will probably for a while,” Feisen said. “But it is also going to be the place that I work for a while. So I have to kind of put those two things together in my head.”
He said he appreciated the changes the university made to make the building a little different. He noticed that the walls had been painted and some carpeting had been changed.
In the weeks after the shooting, Brown University President Christina Paxson announced an initiative to help students cope with the shooting. The program, which includes counseling, community events, and increased security, is named “Brown Ever True,” after the school’s fight song.
At Barus & Holley, the administration announced that classes would take place in less sensitive areas of the building and that the area where the attack took place would be closed off.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the fear that I felt, but ... I don’t feel particularly unsafe right now,” said Friesen.
Aaron Hacker, a tall graduate student from Hamburg, Germany, initially felt nervous to return to campus after break. In the days after the shooting, he said College Hill felt like a “ghost town.”
Hacker was friends with Ella Baker, one of the two students who were killed in the shooting.
He and Ella would spend time together at Catholic community events – and Jewish events as well. Hacker and Ella were Christian, but a mutual friend who was Jewish would bring them along to gatherings.
“(Ella) was super kind, never judging,” Hacker said. “It was nice to be there together.”
The Sunday after the shooting, Hacker and other students gathered with the university’s Catholic community for mass.
“Because everybody in the Catholic Center knew Ella,” he said, “it felt like you weren’t alone.”
On Tuesday, he felt cheered by the blue sky and sunshine on the snowy campus.
“It’s definitely not forgotten,” he added, “but I think it’s good to be back.”
Tiger Li, a sophomore, also felt grateful for their Brown community following the shooting. Li was also in the Barus & Holley building during the shooting. After sheltering for hours, Li had to go back to a friend’s dorm, since he had left the key to his own dorm as he fled. He remembered about 20 people piling into a single dorm room for the night.
“I guess you could call it ‘trauma bonding’ a little bit, but you just sat there together in silence,” Li said. “Sharing a very surreal experience together definitely brings you closer.”
After the shooting, he said that he felt sensitive to sudden sounds and that he still felt some paranoia. But he felt grateful for University efforts to help students cope with the tragedy. Talking about what happened has helped him the most, he said.
“I still really love Brown,” Li said. “If anything, it brought us much closer.”
