The news ripped through the Brown University campus Sunday night, a chilling echo of a trauma Sachi Gandhi already knew too well. A second-year biotech master’s student, she found herself reliving the terror of another campus shooting, this time closer to home.
Gandhi was safe in her off-campus home when the gunfire erupted, but the sound instantly transported her back to the University of North Carolina last year. She remembered the eight agonizing hours spent locked inside a lab, a prisoner of fear while a professor was tragically killed nearby.
The similarities were unsettling – the initial confusion, the frantic spread of misinformation, the overwhelming sense of dread. Though the Brown shooting involved multiple victims, a “mass casualty” as she described it, the emotional weight felt eerily familiar.
A collective sigh of relief swept across the campus when police announced a suspect was in custody. But that relief was brutally short-lived. Less than a day later, the individual was released, plunging the community back into panic and uncertainty.
“It was really, really scary,” Gandhi recounted, her voice reflecting the raw fear that gripped her and her peers. Friends began to leave, and her parents immediately started a drive from Georgia, desperate to bring her home.
The swift release of the suspect left students feeling vulnerable and exposed, questioning the very security they believed existed. Gandhi wondered aloud where resources were being allocated if a potential perpetrator could be apprehended and then set free so quickly.
Despite her frustration, Gandhi spoke highly of Brown University itself, praising its extensive security camera network. Her concern wasn’t with the institution, but with a process that seemed to offer a false sense of security, only to snatch it away.
Both shootings, she observed, were defined by a disorienting fog of fear, confusion, and unreliable information. “No one knew what was real,” she said, echoing the experience at UNC, where rumors ran rampant during the lockdown.
Amidst the fear, Gandhi witnessed a powerful display of community spirit. Students rallied to support one another, mirroring the resilience she’d seen at UNC in the aftermath of their tragedy. A comforting reminder of shared humanity in the face of unimaginable horror.
But for many, the fear proved too overwhelming. Gandhi’s friends were among those who packed their belongings and left, unable to shake the feeling of unsafety that now permeated the campus. The sense of security had been irrevocably broken.
