5 min ago
Students at RISD say the school did not do enough to notify them of the shooting at nearby Brown University
From CNN’s Chris Boyette and Toni Odejimi
When shots rang out during a deadly attack at Brown University, students at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) — an affiliated college with a campus adjacent to Brown’s — were warned of the incident through RISD’s emergency notification systems. However, the alerts came late and lacked crucial information, according to a petition calling for the college to merge its emergency alerts with Brown’s.
“Given the geographical overlap between both campuses, coordinated communication is essential so that students receive timely and consistent safety information,”
the petition said.
The petition, launched Sunday, had garnered more than 2,800 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.
One person who signed the petition said they work at both schools and received both sets of notifications.
RISD’s first alert, which university officials confirmed was sent at 4:28 p.m., did not refer to the incident as an active shooter, according to the signatory.
“Brown sent out a detailed alert about the active shooter at 4:22 p.m. RISD’s alert system described the incident as ‘Police activity reported’ until over an hour later,” they said.
RISD sent an alert at 5:30 p.m. notifying the community that the incident at Brown was an active shooter, the school confirmed.
RISD officials said their focus is keeping the community informed, with safety and well-being as their top priority.
“As much as this event was unthinkable for all of us, it is something we must learn from. In the days ahead, RISD will assess our emergency response plans and evolve as appropriate,” said Jaime Marland, a university spokesperson.
Brown’s campus safety system has also faced criticism.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha
said yesterday that the shooting took place at the very edge of Brown University, in an older part of a building that has “fewer, if any” cameras.
“There certainly needs to be more cameras,” Talib Reddick, president of Brown University’s Undergraduate Council of Students,
told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
But Reddick also said Brown’s notifications were helpful.
“They’ve been reassuring us. They’ve been doing as best as they can. Brown has been sending out a lot of reports and updates to us,” Reddick said.
1 hr 12 min ago
Grad student who was in the building during Brown University attack describes “hushed panic” for the exits
From CNN's Brian Todd and Rebekah Riess
A “hushed panic” for the exits ensued as shots began to ring out inside the Barus & Holley building on Brown University’s campus Saturday, says Ref Bari, a 22-year-old physics master’s student who was inside the building at the time.
As Bari wrapped up a meeting with one of his satellite team members and began walking down a small set of stairs from the building’s physics section into an engineering common area lobby, he heard an initial round of gunshots.
“A pop, pop, pop sound rings out behind me,” he remembers. “The moment I hear those pops, I glance behind me into the physics lobby, and the physics lobby is empty … so the first thing that comes to my mind is, this is not a gunshot, obviously.”
But after a few seconds, the pops start again. “I don’t look back. I sprint as fast as I can for the exits,” Bari tells CNN.
A group of around 100 students in the common area, Bari says, then realized something was wrong and began a scramble for the exits. “It’s almost silent. There’s like a shriek, there’s like a yelp, there’s gasps. But nobody is yelling. Nobody is shouting. People are kind of like in a hushed panic for the exits,” he told CNN.
Once out of the building and across the street, Bari began alerting others to the attack, screaming ‘Active shooter! Active shooter, run!’ He also started a FaceTime call with his parents back home.
“I kept running. And as I kept running, I FaceTimed my parents,” Bari told CNN. “I just pulled out my phone, and they just watched me. I started screaming, ‘Dad, there’s a shooting! There’s a shooting!’ And my parents just watched, helplessly, from New York … in real time.”
Bari ended up running alongside another student, whom he did not know, trying to escape the gunshot sounds. They hid inside that student’s apartment bathroom for the next few hours.
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