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Brown University Officials Give Update Following Shooting
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Brown University Officials Give Update Following Shooting

The tragedy at Brown University this past weekend is horrifying enough on its own — a gunman entered the engineering building, killed two students, injured at least eight more, and then vanished. But what’s making it worse, what’s turning heartbreak into full-blown outrage, is the absolute collapse of leadership and communication in the aftermath.

Let’s start with the basics — or rather, the lack of them. Who is the suspect? Unknown. How did they get into a campus building after hours? Unknown. Was there any security footage? Unknown. Was the university prepared for an active shooter situation? Not if “emergency system is active-shooter-dependent” is a real sentence that came out of someone’s mouth.


This is the level of confusion we’re dealing with. Days after a mass shooting at an Ivy League university, no one — not the police, not the mayor, not the university president — can give a coherent account of what happened. We’ve reached the “I don’t know” phase of public safety — and it’s intolerable.

University President Christina Paxson might as well have stayed off-camera. Her appearance was devoid of answers, direction, or even the semblance of institutional control. Meanwhile, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez seemed adrift, fumbling questions with hollow statements and shrugs. And Mayor Brett Smiley — exhausted, frustrated, and utterly ineffective — lamented about how tired he was. Yes, Mayor. We’re all tired. But the difference is, your job is to lead, not to collapse in front of the cameras during an active manhunt.

And now, enter the strange case of Mustapha Kharbouch — not a suspect, according to authorities, but somehow being erased from university records in real time. Mentions of him disappearing from Brown’s public systems. Why? Paxson has no idea. No one does. And when reporters dared to ask about it, Rhode Island AG Peter Neronha acted offended — as if pressing for clarity in the wake of a mass shooting is a breach of decorum.


It all smells wrong. The confusion. The selective silence. The open contradictions. Officials can’t explain why students weren’t alerted until long after shots were fired. They can't explain why the campus remained open for hours. And the fact that no basic surveillance imagery has been released — in an Ivy League university, in 2025 — is as suspicious as it is inexcusable.

Let’s state what everyone’s thinking but no one in authority seems willing to say: the public is losing trust, and fast. The “vibes,” as they say, are not good. Not because of online speculation, but because the people tasked with telling the truth can’t even tell us what they know — or worse, won’t.


Brown’s leadership and local officials are flailing in a crisis that demands focus, discipline, and clarity. Instead, we get fog. A fog of evasions, omissions, and platitudes. The result? Panic, suspicion, and a growing sense that something is being buried — whether by incompetence or design.

If the officials in Providence and at Brown University can’t answer even the most basic questions in the coming days, the calls for outside investigators — federal or otherwise — will only grow louder. Because when your emergency response looks this incoherent, defensive, and directionless, the only question the public is left with is: what are you hiding?

Written by Arthur Higgens - December 17, 2025