Brown College has been dismissing safety points for years — ignoring warnings from college students, employees and even police, The Publish has discovered.
The revelation comes after two college students have been killed and 9 others harm in a mass capturing on the Ivy League faculty that has seen critics slam the establishment for prioritizing picture over security.
The engineering constructing the place the capturing happened didn’t have a swipe-card mechanism and could possibly be accessed by anybody via the public-facing espresso store, college students mentioned. It didn’t have safety officer posted on the entrance both, like another buildings do, faculty officers have mentioned.
On the day of the capturing, there was a 17-minute hole between the 911 name and the college sending out its first alert to college students, in keeping with a timeline revealed within the pupil newspaper.
Even the Rhode Island faculty’s personal safety employees has complained in regards to the lax perspective.
In 2023, a college administrator allegedly refused to cancel a deliberate youngsters’s studying after a college security officer warned there was a reputable capturing risk, in keeping with an expose within the pupil newspaper.
On the time, police in Bristol, Conn. warned the Windfall, RI college that its ex-assistant soccer coach — Dennis “DJ” Hernandez, the older brother of notorious NFL participant and killer Aaron Hernandez — was planning a mass capturing.
Hernandez was displaying “very erratic habits,” and instructed somebody near him he had visited the college’s campus to map out his supposed spree, in keeping with Bristol Police’s arrest report.
“After I go, I’m taking down every little thing. And don’t give a f–okay who will get caught within the crossfire. I’ve died for years now and now it’s different individuals’s flip,” Hernandez wrote on Fb Messenger, in keeping with a federal felony grievance.
“Not all shootings are dangerous I’m realizing. Some are essential for change to occur.”
However Brown’s division of public security dismissed the risk, calling it “not primarily based . . . on credible intelligence.”
The kids’s studying — “Storytime with Elvy,” a part of a summer time sequence with the Windfall Public Library that attracts dozens of native Ok-12 youngsters — went forward as deliberate. Elvy, the college’s division of public security’s “consolation canine,” didn’t make it after his handler cancelled in response to the threats.
As a substitute Brown posted that “Elvy has a battle” however the who should go on.
Bristol cops arrested Hernandez and he was charged by the US Legal professional’s Workplace and sentenced in February to 18 months of time served and three years of supervised launch.
In 2021, Brown College allegedly refused to name Windfall police after a caller claimed to have positioned bombs all through campus and was carrying an AR-15 gun, in keeping with the Brown Every day Herald.
The native Ok-9 unit was lastly known as an hour later — after the college’s public security officers spoke up, in keeping with the paper.
However it took Brown one other hour to ship out an alert to college students.
One of many officers later claimed the college went so far as altering its officer’s report of the incident to take away point out of his issues, and references to the delay.
Michael Greco, a 17-year faculty security officer at Brown, was identified with put up traumatic stress dysfunction months after the bomb risk and sued the college, courtroom information confirmed.
“Officers of this division, myself included, fear that Brown’s need to guard its fame, in any respect prices, results in a willingness to gamble with our lives,” he wrote in an e mail to the administration, in keeping with the scholar paper.
To this point in 2025, safety officers have issued two votes of no confidence towards the college’s police chief Rodney Chatman and the college’s division of public security.
A scathing October editorial within the Brown Every day Herald known as the issues with the college’s safety was a “risk to public security” and the college was “failing in its obligation” to maintain college students protected.
Brown College didn’t return The Publish’s request for remark, however earlier this week President Christina Paxon mentioned she was “deeply saddened” to see individuals questioning the college’s dedication to security.
