A brief exchange during a press conference triggered a fresh row over Brown University’s response to a deadly campus shooting that killed 2 innocent students last week.The university’s president made a questionable comment on the school’s own emergency guidance system. Brown University president Christina Paxson was asked why the emergency siren did not sound during the December 13 shooting. Paxson said that the system is not optimal during an active shooting, as it would create panic among students and would have made students go towards the shooter in the building instead of away from him.Paxson told reporters: “That’s not a system we would ever use in the case of an active shooter.” When a reporter pointed out that the university website lists the siren as an alert for such incidents, Paxson said, “It depends on the circumstances.”She added, “In the case of an active shooter, activating that system could have caused people to rush into [the building, e.g., Barus and Holley]. So that is not a system we would ever use in the case of an active shooter.”Paxson explained that the sirens are meant for large-scale emergencies where people should immediately shelter indoors, like an earthquake. In an indoor active shooter situation, the noise could unintentionally send people towards danger. Instead, the university relied on text and email alerts, which were sent to around 20,000 people within minutes of the incident. The first email alert went out at 4.22 pm. The shooter fired his first shots at around 4.05 pm. The shooting left two students dead and nine injured. Safety protocols of the university raised numerous questions as some said the president’s comments clash with information previously published on the university’s website, which caused confusion and delay.The campus surveillance system and security footage did not provide useful information as well. Ther were more than 800 cameras, yet investigators have confirmed there is no usable footage showing the shooter’s face. The building where the attack occurred is an older structure with limited CCTV coverage.The FBI is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information that could help identify, arrest and convict the person responsible. The suspect still remains at large.The Brown University shooting killed 19-year-old Ella Cook, a sophomore and College Republicans vice president, and 18-year-old Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an Uzbek national and freshman studying biochemistry and neuroscience. Both were inside the Barus and Holley building when the attack occurred. There is still no evidence as to what led the shooter target these two particular individuals.
