Aftermath
What follows after a school shooting.
I first fell in love with Brown in my junior year of high school. The promise of free intellectual exploration, an ambitious yet creative student body, and a welcoming, loving community were what drew me in. I found all that and more throughout my two years here.
On my tours, I like to say that our campus is the definition of picturesque and idyllic. I joke that coming out of the yellow, fluorescent-lit, Salomon Center onto the Main Green can feel like stepping into a movie set scene.
As I walked back to my dorm at 5 a.m. on that Sunday, I witnessed that very beauty, watching the first snow of the year sway with the wind before settling on the grass. But this was not a blissful beauty, the one that I had experienced during the first snow of my freshman year, nor like the one I tell stories about to visitors or friends. Instead, there was a sharp somberness to it, a sort of prick that comes when you dig your nails into your palms. The wind was not enough to clear the stillness of our campus that night. It’s whistling rush was not enough to pierce the silence. There was still something suffocating about the air.
If you asked me to capture the Brown spirit in a word, I’d likely characterize us as idealistic. Bess Kalb’s words stuck out to me:
Brown is the best kind of cult: Bright teenagers who want to do something creative about the world in a place that indulges and guides them in equal measure.
Exactly a week ago today, our sanctuary was irrevocably shattered. I took a piece of it home as I caught a last minute flight Monday evening, only to realize that its jagged edges didn’t fit in back home. My friends and family couldn’t match its edges and bumps. Only my Brown community could, the very ones who took their own pieces, their own grief and anxiety.
That Saturday, I barricaded myself in a library classroom with about a dozen other students. We sat in the dark, listening to police scanners with one headphone in, one headphone out; checking in with our friends, “Are you safe?”; and refreshing the “New” section of Sidechat for any updates we can get. SWAT found us 2 hours later. We raised our hands above our heads as they told us to stay against the walls, before leading us up to the admin offices in the back of the first floor. My friends and I hid in the cubicle of someone named Jill Wood.
Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov came to Brown with the intention to understand the world, maybe even change it. When my class, and the Class of ‘29 walks through the Van Wickle Gates for the second time, we’ll feel the acute, empty presence where two of our classmates should’ve occupied. The color and vibrancy of our campus has dulled and muted, having left with their deaths. Our farewells went from, “See you later,” to a, “Stay safe.”
I feel like I’m simultaneously trapped in stasis, and not. The world continues to turn, and my home continues to bustle with livelihood, yet I’m still there. Very early on in science class, I learned that static electricity builds and builds, especially in the dryness of winter. I hope that the spark that comes with the spring will turn the silence over our campus into quietude, the grief into remembrance.
Ella and Mukhammad, may you rest in peace.
Ever true.