The Night Fear Gripped Brown: NJ Students Recall Campus Chaos

It was a Sunday evening in early December, you know, the kind where campus life usually hums along with a gentle rhythm of studying, maybe a late-night snack run, or just unwinding before the week truly begins. But for students at Brown University, December 1, 2025, didn't end with that familiar calm. Instead, it spiraled into a harrowing ninety minutes of sheer terror, confusion, and an overwhelming sense of vulnerability, as a mass shooting incident unfolded chillingly close to their Providence, Rhode Island, campus.

For New Jersey natives like Ethan Resnick, a senior from Warren, the first alerts were almost surreal. He was just in his off-campus apartment when the messages started flooding in – texts, emails, urgent campus-wide notifications instructing everyone to shelter in place. "It was just a sudden shift, you know? From normal Sunday night to absolute dread," Resnick recalled later, describing how he instinctively went to hide, clutching his phone and desperately texting his mom back home. The world outside his window, usually a bustling student neighborhood, had gone silent, save for the distant wail of sirens.

Across campus, freshman Natalie Margulies from Livingston was experiencing a similar wave of panic in her dorm room. The thought of a shooter loose, so close, was absolutely terrifying. You can only imagine the fear that grips you in such a moment. She immediately reached out to her parents, then to her brother, Ben Margulies, who is also a student at Brown. He was in a library at the time, and by his own admission, "pretty shook" by the unfolding events. It’s that shared anxiety, that collective holding of breath, that really defined those tense minutes.

The incident, as police later confirmed, involved a shooting stemming from a pursuit that ended near the university grounds. While the victim, thankfully stable and not a student, the proximity and the sheer unknown plunged the entire community into a lockdown. It wasn’t just an abstract news story; it was happening right outside their dorms, their classrooms, their homes away from home. The university’s alerts, while crucial, only amplified the gravity of the situation, leaving students to wonder, to worry, to wait.

Once the 'all clear' finally came, a collective sigh of relief swept through Brown, but the experience left an undeniable mark. Campus security was immediately bolstered, and counseling services were made available, acknowledging the emotional toll such an event can take. For students like Ethan, Natalie, and Ben, the memory of that December night serves as a stark, sobering reminder of the world's harsh realities, even within the supposed sanctuary of a university campus. It's a memory, they say, that makes you appreciate safety in a way you never thought you would.