SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD VOLUME CLXI, ISSUE 8
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
FRIDAY, MARCH 13
On Dec. 13, a gunman opened fire on campus. Dining workers say they weren’t prepared. Workers described confusion in the Ratty and Andrews on Dec. 13 BY JAMES LIBRESCO SENIOR STAFF WRITER Content warning: This article includes discussion of the Dec. 13 mass shooting at Brown University. Almost 90 minutes had passed since a gunman stormed into a Brown lecture hall and opened fire around 4 p.m. The shooter was still at large. Two and a half blocks from where the shooting took place, more than 100 students and employees were sheltering in the Sharpe Refectory’s main dining room. Around 5:30 p.m, students and staff moved downstairs to hide in the building’s basement at the suggestion of an Andrews Commons cook who phoned a colleague working in the Ratty. The scenes in the Ratty and Andrews that day have raised questions among Dining Services employees about Brown’s level of
preparedness for campus violence. In interviews with The Herald, 13 Dining Services employees said they were not trained on building-specific response plans for an active shooter incident on campus. Some of the employees were granted anonymity for fear of retaliation. Eleven of the employees — some of whom have worked at Brown for decades — said they did not receive intruder training of any kind leading up to the Dec. 13 shooting that killed Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov ’29 and Ella Cook ’28. Two employees said they participated in general trainings — one said he was trained at a mandatory onboarding session and the other said he received training at a workshop for dining workers. Experts told The Herald it is ideal to prepare employees for their roles in intruder situations — though communicating overarching safety plans with too many people could create a security risk. In a February interview with The Herald, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 said the University has “a really
well-developed protocol for management of emergencies writ large.” Active shooter trainings were not mandatory for employees and took place when requested by specific departments, she said. University spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald that training has been available “for many years.” Additional optional hostile intruder training for staff, faculty and students will also be available beginning next week. Other guardrails have also been implemented since the shooting, employees told The Herald, including panic buttons at Andrews, security guards at each dining hall and restricted swipe access to buildings. George Barboza, the vice president of Dining Services, declined interview and comment requests and referred The Herald to the University’s communications office. When a student rushed into the Ratty’s front entrance shortly after 4 p.m. on Dec. 13 and said there was an active shooter on campus, cashier Rosa Gonzalez first thought it was a “terrible joke,” she recalled. She had
TRAVEL
University strongly recommends deferring Brown-related travel to Middle East The travel recommendation applies to over a dozen countries in the Middle East BY EMILY FEIL METRO AND UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR The University has issued guidance recommending that students, faculty and staff defer all Brown-related travel to over a dozen countries in the Middle East, according to a Tuesday Today@Brown message. The recommendation, which the University has followed, was made by Brown’s Global Travel Risk Assessment Committee in consultation with the Office of Global Travel Operations, Risk and Resilience.
The University is “closely monitoring the evolving security situation that began in Iran,” the message reads. The travel deference recommendation applies to Brown-related travel to Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, according to the message. The “strong recommendation” was issued “out of an abundance of caution, and in light of the dynamic and uncertain security environment,” the message reads. The guidance will remain in place until further notice. Students traveling to any high-risk area for Brown-related purposes must submit a safety plan for GTRAC to review before receiving University travel support.
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Fact Check: Pomodoro
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not yet received an emergency alert from the University. Across campus at Andrews, workers had just reopened for dinner when a student came over “panicking,” an employee recalled. When Brown sent out an emergency alert about the shooting at 4:22 p.m., “everyone scattered,” the Andrews employee recalled. “There was nothing set. Nobody told us, ‘Okay, this is what you need to do.’” The Andrews staff locked the kitchen’s sliding gate and retreated with students to a hiding spot. For safety reasons, The Herald has refrained from describing the specifics of lockdown areas that are not publicly accessible. “Was there a better place for us to go?” the Andrews worker said. “I think there should have been a better place, but there was nothing set up because nobody expected this to happen.” Dan Dusseau, a law enforcement veteran and campus public safety consultant, said in a February interview with The Herald that it
is “best practice” to provide location-based guidance and training on emergency situation protocols, but it is an “unachievable goal” to do so in every building. Back in the Ratty, a group of students took cover in the center of the dining room. Most remained seated at their tables. For several minutes, Latin music still played from the speakers. Eventually, students in the alcove areas were told by employees to move away from the windows, toward the middle of the building. There in the dining room, they waited. The room’s approximately a dozen doors were locked, but they were not barricaded. The scene prompted concern for one worker, who said he saw Telma Ramos, the supervisor on duty, “distraught, sitting over in the corner texting someone.” The worker approached Ramos and asked what the University’s protocol for the situation was. “She told me that we didn’t have any protocol,” he recalled, other than “to
SEE SHOOTING PAGE 3
TRAINING
Brown to offer hostile intruder training for students, faculty, employees Prior to the mass shooting in December, training was not typically offered to students BY JAMES LIBRESCO SENIOR STAFF WRITER Brown will offer optional hostile intruder training to students, faculty and employees beginning next week, according to a Monday Today@Brown message. Students, faculty and employees can register online to attend the newly designed in-person or live virtual training sessions, which will be held between March 17 and April 9. All sessions will be led by FBI-trained instructors, Brown Police Chief Hugh Clements and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Sarah Latham wrote in the message.
post- Magazine
Prior to the Dec. 13 mass shooting, the University had “not done active shooter training with students” unless a department requested a training session that included students, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 previously told The Herald. Training for faculty and employees was offered but not mandatory, Paxson said. After Dec. 13, “we know that building a sense of preparedness for such events can help contribute to an individual sense of safety and well-being,” the message reads. “At the same time, we understand that each person’s readiness to participate will vary.” The upcoming sessions were “designed with sensitivity and a trauma-informed framework,” and will not include loud noises or graphic images, Clements and Latham wrote. They added that each
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