PROVIDENCE -- Three weeks after a mass shooting that killed two students, Brown University officials unveiled a campus recovery plan that includes expanded mental health support, security updates, and a new timeline to reopen the building where the attack took place.
On Monday, as the institution faces federal scrutiny, university president Christina H. Paxson said the initiative, dubbed Brown Ever True, seeks to help coordinate recovery efforts across campus ahead of students and faculty returning for the spring semester later this month.
“There is no playbook for what we have been through as a community. There is no single source of truth for how any of us should heal,” wrote Paxson in an email to students and employees Monday. “No ‘one path’ to begin again, or ‘right way’ to find peace, solace and joy.”
Paxson said Brown is planning a campus-wide service later this month to memorialize Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, two students killed in the Dec. 13 shooting. Nine other students were injured; they have all been released from the hospital, said Paxson.
The university regained control from the Providence Police Department of the Barus and Holley engineering and physics building on Dec. 19, the day after the shooter was found dead in New Hampshire. Since then, the university has been focused on securing the building, which will remain closed until Jan. 20, the day before spring semester classes are expected to begin.
The closed areas of the first floor of Barus and Holley, including access to lecture halls 166 and 168, where the shooting took place, will be sealed and secured behind new walls and emergency access doors. Classes scheduled in those rooms will be relocated.
“It’s the right thing to seal those [rooms] off,” said Kevin LoGiudice, a graduate student who worked in Barus and Holley and who is the president of the university’s Graduate Student Council. “But it’s going to also be strange having a constant reminder of what happened behind those walls.”
“I think the administrators are doing the best they can,” added LoGiudice.
None of the closed areas will be visible to occupants and users of adjacent spaces, and no one will be able or allowed to enter those spaces, said Provost Francis J. Doyle and Russell C. Carey, the executive vice president of planning and policy, in a Dec. 23 message to employees, post-docs, and graduate students of Brown’s School of Engineering and Department of Physics that was obtained by the Globe.
“Longer-term consideration and decisions regarding the future of that area of the building, including consideration of appropriate memorialization, will be made over time in consultation and conversation with the Brown community,” said Brown spokesman Brian Clark in an email to the Globe.
Closing off parts of Barus and Holley is the right decision, some faculty members said. “That’s about healing,” said Derek Stein, a professor emeritus of physics at Brown.
Stein recalled teaching introductory physics and hearing talks about exciting research in one of the lecture halls. “It was one of the happiest places on campus for me,” said Stein.
On Dec. 13, “Evil visited that room... and now all I can feel is sadness for the victims and their families.”
Brown will expand its counseling resources for employees and students. Over the administrative break, which ends Tuesday, an expanded employee assistance program offered faculty and staff an additional 12 mental health counseling sessions through the end of 2025. Human resources, Paxson said, is working with Brown’s provider to provide additional crisis counseling sessions in 2026. Students will continue to have access to in-person and tele-therapy services while they return to campus.
On Monday, Paxson reiterated that security upgrades have accelerated since the shooting, including installing additional security cameras, increasing the number of panic buttons and emergency blue light phones, and making all buildings accessible by ID card only.
“The solution proposed by [Paxson] is the best we could coexist up with to optimize need for our space and all other security and emotional issues,” said Vesna Mitrović, the chair of the physics department, in an email.
While Brown’s campus boasts roughly 1,200 cameras, the lack of security cameras in the older portion of the Barus and Holley building was a key focus of critics throughout the frantic, six-day manhunt to identify and find the shooter.
It’s unclear how many new cameras will be installed or the total cost of the expanded security measures. The scope of camera installations depends on the results of a campus safety and security assessment, which is now underway, said Clark.
The initiative was launched about two weeks after the Department of Education said it will examine whether the university violated the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act, which requires universities that receive federal financial aid maintain “certain campus safety and security-related requirements” and disclose campus crime statistics and security information.
The university has also hired an outside lawyer, former US attorney Zachary Cunha, to help it coordinate efforts with federal, state, and local law authorities.
It placed its police chief, Rodney Chatman, on leave and replaced him on an interim basis with retired Colonel Hugh T. Clements Jr., who served as chief of the Providence Police Department for 11 years and was appointed by then-President Joe Biden in 2024 to be the director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the US Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, Brown is preparing for students to return to a campus that some of them have described as ”shattered."
“We all should understand that real recovery is a gradual process,” wrote Paxson.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.