On Saturday, Dec. 13, a mass shooting at Brown University resulted in two students dead and nine injured. The shooter opened fire in a classroom with about 60 students and fled. The suspect, 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, was found dead after committing suicide in New Hampshire five days after the shooting.
Between 2022 and 2025, 11 GDS alumni matriculated at Brown. The alumni interviewed by the Bit spoke about their experiences during the shooting and how their community came together in the face of tragedy.
“Brown is famous for being a place of real joy and happiness, so it felt so out of place on our campus to have this thing that was so devastating and traumatic happen to our community,” Brown senior Maya Stutman-Shaw ’22 said. Stutman-Shaw is one of Head of School Russell Shaw’s two daughters, both of whom currently attend Brown.
Shaw reflected on the shootings at Brown and Bondi Beach, Australia and on the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner in his email to parents. The shooting at Bondi Beach targeted a celebration of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. Shaw, who is Jewish, wrote about his younger daughter, Natalia Stutman-Shaw ’25, in his email. “‘Dad,’ my younger daughter said to me, ‘they’re coming for all my identities.’”
“We can’t solve the brokenness in the world or explain it away. But we can be grounded, steady presences in our children’s lives, accompanying them through joy and possibility as well as heartbreak and fear,” Shaw wrote.
Maya Stutman-Shaw said she was in her dorm suite when the shooting took place. “I heard a knock on my door, and it was my suitemate. It was pounding on my door, saying, ‘We have to leave. You have to come in my room right now. There’s a shooter on campus,’” Stutman-Shaw said.
“I spent the next 12, 16 hours in lockdown in the bathroom of my suite with the lights turned off, trying to get any sort of information I could from news outlets, from my friends [and] from Sidechat, the anonymous chat platform on campus,” Stutman-Shaw said.
Brown’s provost, Francis J. Doyle III, canceled all final exams and classes in a Dec. 14 email to the student body. Brown students could choose to leave campus for winter break after the lockdown, which ended on the morning of Dec. 14. Final exams were initially scheduled to end on Saturday, Dec. 20.
“People got up and moved their tickets and left as soon as they could. It was very rushed,” Stutman-Shaw said.
Brown freshman Jeremiah Farr ’25 was in his dorm room about half a mile away from the shooting when it occurred. Farr said that about seven or eight minutes after the shooting, his roommate texted him and their other roommates that there were gunshots near Barus and Holley, the building where the shooting occurred, and to take shelter wherever they could.
Farr said he was on the phone with his younger sister when he was informed about the shooting. He said he told his sister to give her iPad to his parents to speak with them.
“They were a lot more stressed than I was because it’s scary to not be there and see that it’s all happening,” Farr said. “I don’t want to say I wasn’t stressed. I was. I just felt mostly like comforting my family.”
Farr said he talked to the Brown freshmen who were in his GDS graduating class—Olivia Jin, Robert Orseck, Nora Sachse and Natalia Stutman-Shaw—and to numerous other Brown students during the lockdown to ask how they all were doing.
“Everybody’s texting; people are checking on me, I’m checking on all my friends because we didn’t really know what was happening.” Farr said Brown’s security team did not inform students of the shooting until 19 minutes afterwards, at 4:22 p.m.
For the first four or five hours of the lockdown, Farr said he quietly spoke to his friends and family on FaceTime. He added that his dorm lights were off for the entirety of the lockdown.
Farr said his roommates were not in their dorm when the lockdown began. He estimated that they returned around 5 or 6 a.m. “I didn’t see anybody for those 11 hours,” Farr said about his time during the lockdown.
Brown senior Yael Wellisch ’22 was at the airport leaving for winter break when she heard about the shooting.
“I started getting text messages that there was something happening from friends, and then I received the official communication from the university that there was an active shooter on campus,” Wellisch said. “My immediate reaction was just complete shock and disbelief and also sadness. I just froze in the middle of the airport.
“I would just really urge everyone to treat every single shooting that happens, and I include myself in this, as if it were their own,” Wellisch said. “If we don’t demonstrate compassion to the victims of these attacks, then we lose the battle of trying to confront this with the utmost urgency that it demands.”
“I’m sending so much love to the families who right now probably feel a sense of hopelessness,” Wellsish said. “Hopefully carrying a weight of responsibility for all of us that we need to do better moving forward so that [gun violence] does not keep leaving so many communities traumatized.”
GDS freshman Isabella Tamayo said she “was just completely shocked” when she found out about the shooting. “I have a family friend who’s a freshman at Brown, and I was scared for her,” Tamayo said.
During GDS’ Monday meeting on Dec. 15, Interim High School Principal Chris Levy addressed the Brown and Bondi Beach shootings. Levy said the shootings are devastating and that GDS students should feel welcome to reach out for support from GDS staff and the counseling department. Levy asked the audience to take a moment of silence.
“Nobody took it lightly,” Tamayo said about the student body during Levy’s remarks during the high school gathering. “They understood the gravity of the situation.”
During the assembly, Director of Student Community Programming Bobby Asher, dressed as Santa Claus, gifted two Nerf Guns to a student for the Christmas-themed Monday meeting.
“Everybody noticed [the toy guns] immediately,” GDS sophomore Asher Baer said. “They have to be more considerate, especially when it’s a very sensitive issue.”
“The Nerf Guns, that was completely at the wrong time,” Tamayo said. “There is a serious lack of sensitivity to give out that prize after that speech that Chris [Levy] did.”