One of my goals as The Eye’s opinion editor is to help readers make sense of the city. But, this week, after a mass shooting at Brown University left two students dead and nine injured, that feels impossible.
What sense is there in a late-semester study session on College Hill being interrupted by gunfire?
What sense is there in two bright young folks coming to Providence for school and paying with their lives?
What sense is there in students and staffers cowering in fear, barricading themselves in rooms, and running for cover?
What sense is there in helicopters droning over the East Side; in Thayer Street turning into a militarized police staging area; in our little city becoming, briefly, the focus of the country’s white-hot attention?
It makes no sense.
As with so many of the mass shootings that afflict our country, there is no good reason why this happened. There is no explanation that will bring closure. There is no way to make this right.
Instead, we’re left with pain and fear and grief. And we’re left with memories of the day our picturesque local campus became a crime scene.
But even if I can’t make sense of what happened on Saturday, we can, at least, share our thoughts. Because another, more humble, goal of The Eye is to simply share what it feels like to live in Providence.
And so I will – and I encourage you to do the same.
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I’ll start by sharing my proximity to Saturday’s events. Brown’s Barus and Holley building is about a mile from the two houses where I [a] grew up and [b] live now. It’s two blocks from where I went to high school, at the Wheeler School. (The school is closed this week due to the shooting.) In October, I went on a walk and posted a photo of a sign in a parking lot abutting Barus and Holley that read “RESERVED PARKING NOBEL LAUREATE.”
On Saturday afternoon, I was helping my partner prepare for an event at International House of Rhode Island, a local community organization a few blocks away, on Stimson Ave. That event was cancelled. Instead, I and a few other friends who came early to help, sheltered in place. For the next few hours, we followed updates on our phones and TV. We looked nervously out the windows. Eventually, around 10:30 p.m., we were able to drive home.
What I’ve felt in the days since is not necessarily linear or coherent. Why would it be? Such a violent and unexpected event does not inspire perfectly-formed thoughts.
I have felt a surge of fondness for Brown. As I wrote on social media, I have a number of ties to the school: personal and professional, past and present. It felt like a close friend had experienced a profound tragedy. It felt like a local landmark had been stained with blood.
I also experienced the phenomenon of being proximate to a mass shooting in our age of smartphones and social media. In the hours after the event unfolded, I got texts, direct messages, and calls from people in Maine, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia, Canada, Portugal. “I am fine…it’s so awful” was my general response.
I have felt a sense of horror at just how much pain the perpetrator of this attack was able to cause. In a matter of seconds, the attacker sowed injury, death, and trauma in that classroom. They terrorized Brown’s campus and traumatized our entire city. It was a grim reminder of how easy it is to spread pain. It’s much harder, and slower, to spread love. This is unfair. This whole event is unfair.
In the days since the Brown attack, I have felt a renewed sense of anger that our elected “leaders” refuse to pass meaningful gun laws. The mass shooting at Brown took place three years after Uvalde, 13 years after Newtown, 18 years after Virginia Tech, and 26 years after Columbine. And yet, our officials have done little to prevent the next one. The phrase “Thoughts and Prayers” has become so hollow that it’s inspired a haunting protest song.
There is little reason to think policies will change after our local tragedy. That is infuriating and shameful.
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At this moment, when my beloved city is hurting, when members of the Brown community are grappling with fresh grief and horror, I wish my words could act as a salve. But words feel small right now.
What I can promise, as a lifelong Providence resident, is that this town will remember. If you walk through the city’s streets, as I love to do, you will see plaques and statues and memorials. And I’m quite sure that we’ll remember this latest horror. The all-too-brief lives of Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov will not be forgotten here. This is woefully insufficient. But it’s something.
As a student of local history, I can also say that this city has endured nightmares before. Hurricanes. Blizzards. Pandemics. Riots. Fires. Murders.
Providence is one of the oldest cities in the country. We’re a few years shy of our 400th birthday, and our indigenous communities lived here way before that time. This place has been through a lot. And yet so much of what makes it special – the people, the food, the beauty, the creativity, the diversity, the quirkiness, the genuine and abiding sense of neighborliness – remains intact. I expect us to weather this storm, too.
But, make no mistake, these are dark days for Providence.
And, in this sorrowful moment, I want to hear what others are thinking and feeling.
The aim of The Providence Eye’s Readers’ Voices section is to provide a place to speak, listen, think, and feel together. This feels more important than ever.
So if you have thoughts on this tragedy you’d like to share with The Eye and our readers, feel free to share them with [email protected].
I love you, Providence.
Philip Eil is a freelance journalist and author who lives on the East Side of Providence. He is a member of the Providence Eye’s Board of Directors. And he is the Eye’s inaugural Readers’ Voices editor. You can contact him at [email protected].
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