Posted by Alumni from The Atlantic
December 14, 2025
Nothing encapsulates the failures of our society more than what just happened to Mia Tretta. When she was 15, she was shot in the stomach by a classmate at her high school in California. Yesterday, she survived the second school shooting of her short life: A person opened fire at Brown University, where Tretta is a junior. Students were studying for finals when a shooter walked into an economics classroom and started firing, killing two students, injuring nine, and inflicting terror on not just a campus but an entire city. No suspect has been named yet, but authorities have detained a 'person of interest.' I left Brooklyn to attend Brown in 1995, when New York City had yet to shake its rough-and-tumble reputation. Of all the amenities that the Ivy League campus provided'bountiful libraries, a full-service gym'the most luxurious to me was a sense of safety. I'd walk around campus at all hours of the night; just the other day, my freshman roommate and I reminisced about keeping our... learn more