Rachel Friedberg, a Brown University economics professor, said Saturday’s mass shooting at the school happened at a review session for the final exam of her Principles of Economics course.
Friedberg said she was not present during the shooting. The session was led by her teaching assistants, she said, one of whom alerted her.
Friedberg then raced to Rhode Island Hospital, where an Ocean State Media reporter spoke with her. Friedberg said she heard the following account from the teaching assistant, who she said was not shot but visited the hospital to support several of their injured students.
“The room has stadium seating with doors that enter at the top,” Friedberg said. “He said that the shooter came in the doors, yelled something — he couldn’t remember what he yelled — and started shooting.”
“Students started to scramble to try to get away from the shooter, trying to get lower down in the stadium seating, and people got shot,” Friedberg said the teaching assistant told her. “I don’t know if they’re the only ones who got shot or not.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson confirmed at a press briefing later on Saturday night that at least 10 of the 11 people shot were students, though she said she did not know what the students were doing in the building.
Friedberg said she still does not know the names of the two people that university officials say were killed in the shooting.
“I don’t know if they were my students. It’s really surreal to think about,” Friedberg said. “Just horrible.”
Friedberg declined to identify her teaching assistant by name, out of concern for his privacy. He could not be reached immediately for comment.
Friedberg is a teaching professor of economics at Brown and a faculty associate in the program for Judaic Studies. Her Principles of Economics course is the most heavily attended class at Brown, taken by half of all undergraduates, according to her online biographical notes.
