When Brown University junior Mia Tretta’s phone began buzzing with an emergency alert during finals week, she tried to convince herself it couldn’t be happening again.
In 2019, Tretta had been shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Two students were killed, and she was among the injured. On Saturday, while studying at Brown, the first alert arrived, warning of an emergency at the university’s engineering building.
As more alerts continued, it became clear that a shooting had occurred. By the end of the day, two people were dead and nine others injured in the incident that overshadowed a once-safe campus.
“No one should ever have to go through one shooting, let alone two,” Tretta said during a phone interview. “As someone who was shot at my high school when I was 15 years old, I never thought that this was something I’d have to go through again.”
Tretta’s experience highlights the tragic reality for many students today: growing up rehearsing lockdowns and active-shooter drills, only to face the same violence on college campuses.
In recent years, groups of students have experienced multiple mass shootings, including survivors of the 2018 Parkland shooting who later faced a deadly shooting at Florida State University in April.
Another Brown student, Zoe Weissman, shared her reflections on social media, recalling her experience attending middle school next to the Parkland high school during its tragedy.
Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg confirmed his son, a junior at Brown, was safe after barricading himself with furniture during the shooting.
Tretta, a public affairs and education major, noted that she had been writing a paper on the educational journeys of shooting survivors, a topic shaped by her personal experiences. “I chose Brown because it felt like somewhere I could finally be safe,” she expressed, adding, “and it’s happened again. It didn’t have to.”
