Two Brown University students, Mia Tretta and Zoe Weissman, have each experienced school shootings as children, and both were on campus during a recent shooting at the university. Mia Tretta, a junior, was shot in the abdomen during a 2019 shooting at Saugus High School in California, where two students were killed. She was in her dormitory studying for exams when she learned about the Brown shooting and had intended to study in the building where the incident occurred but decided against it due to fatigue.
Zoe Weissman, a sophomore, was 12 years old when she witnessed the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, from her middle school next door, an event that led to her developing post-traumatic stress disorder. She was in her dorm room at Brown when the recent shooting happened, and a friend alerted her to the incident.
Both students expressed feelings of disbelief and anger that they had experienced such events twice, with Weissman stating, "What I’ve been feeling most is just, like, how dare this country allow this to happen to someone like me twice?" They both noted that the incidents have shattered their sense of security, which was built on the belief that experiencing one school shooting made a repeat unlikely. Tretta had specifically chosen Brown for its perceived safety after the trauma of the Saugus shooting, only for tragedy to strike her community again.