Dear Members of the Brown Community,

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. No “one path” to begin again, or “right way” to find peace, solace and joy.

But we are Brown — the enduring strength of our caring and supportive community has long been a hallmark of who we are. Ever true.

This is the core tenet of a new campus-wide healing and recovery effort I am announcing today. Called Brown Ever True, this joint project of repair for our campus brings together resources, programming and services focused on mental health, psychological wellness and ensuring a sense of physical security for our full community.

As we prepare for the start of the spring semester, I am deeply committed to the healing we will do together. I am committed to ensuring that students, faculty and staff have the resources and support you need to help us move forward. While the path to repair and recovery is different for everyone, no matter your unique path, it will be supported in a secure, inclusive and compassionate community.

At the same time, our recovery includes planning remembrances for Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. The outpouring of love and support for their families from the Brown and Providence communities has been deeply moving, and we continue to hold them in our hearts. As we process our grief for Ella and Mukhammad, we will memorialize them, as well as the experiences of the nine injured students, in a campus-wide service being planned for late January. While all the injured students now have been released from the hospital, they and so many others continue to navigate through very real challenges of coping with tragedy.

In this letter, I will share how Brown Ever True:

• Is a community-wide effort, bringing together the ideas and contributions of academic and administrative units and student organizations to help ensure that the initiative reflects what our community needs to heal and move forward.
• Increases systems of support, building upon the coordinated response from offices across campus that mobilized to provide services in the immediate hours, days and weeks after the devastating Dec. 13 attack on our campus.
• Complements our commitment to safety and security, intersecting with plans for the multi-pronged approach to enhancing campus safety and security that we announced last month, to be informed by community feedback.

I invite you to visit the new Brown Ever True website to learn more about the initiative.

A Campus-Wide “Roadmap to Recovery”

Brown Ever True will coordinate the work of the entire campus via a “Roadmap to Recovery” that offers a timeline of programming and activities. Recognizing that community healing takes time, and looks different for each individual, the initiative will focus on both short- and long-term recovery efforts, informed by medical and public health experts and scholars who specialize in trauma. It is modeled on approaches that have been effective on other campuses that have experienced similar tragedies.

Our whole-campus effort for Brown will involve numerous academic and administrative units, including but not limited to the Division of Campus Life, University Human Resources, the College, and the School of Public Health and other academic units. It will also welcome ideas and activities from student organizations. The initiative will coordinate existing resources and allocate new investments in a surge of support for our community in the coming weeks and months. This includes planning and overseeing both broad and targeted community-building efforts and communicating about these efforts to the entire campus.

The work of Brown Ever True is being coordinated by an operational team led by Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl, working in close collaboration with partners across campus. The Brown University Community Council (BUCC) is serving as the designated advisory body for the initiative. In its established role as the representative forum for issues of community interest (with membership that includes students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni), the BUCC will convene regularly to discuss the Brown Ever True initiative and advise the operational team on the needs of the community.

Building on Expanded Systems of Support

Brown Ever True builds upon, rather than replaces, existing systems of support. It encourages community members to access a wide range of existing and new services that mobilized Dec. 13 and expanded to support members of our community over the Winter Break.

For students, Campus Life has led an extensive coordinated response, reaching students through trusted connections and expanded services across mental health, residential life, affinity centers, chaplaincy and student support services.  Over the break, students remained in close contact with student support deans and continued to rely on resources such as TimelyCare Teletherapy and BetterHelp to access mental health services from anywhere in the world. As students return to campus, familiar clinicians and staff from Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and across Campus Life will be here to welcome them back and support their transition. As the Brown Ever True effort moves forward, support will shift from acute response to recovery, with a focus on healing, restoring a sense of security, and sustaining a strong sense of community for all students, faculty and staff.

I want to take this moment to thank the many amazing Brown alumni and families who have supported our students in informal gatherings and activities around the world during their time away from campus, expanding our community of support in so many ways. Our extended Brown family of alumni and parents and families will play an essential role in our path toward healing.

At the same time, University Human Resources is building on its expansion of resources in the Employee Assistance Program. Over the break, the program expanded to provide all faculty and staff an additional 12 mental health counseling sessions through the end of 2025. UHR is now working with Brown’s provider, Spring Health, to provide additional crisis counseling sessions for the 2026 calendar year. Resource and support tables and confidential on-site counseling sessions for faculty, staff and postdocs are available this week in a few critical locations. More information is available on the Brown Ever True website, and these will expand across campus as we approach the start of classes.

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion, partnering with faculty in the Warren Alpert Medical School, will continue to organize sessions like the “Resiliency, After" educational sessions held for staff and faculty before the break and the multiple, faculty-led "Together Now" sessions held for the full community. Brown Ever True will serve as a portal to access various community-driven efforts like these while also sponsoring broader campus activities and programming informed by public health best practices.

Security as Part of Recovery (including plans for Barus & Holley)

Brown is committed to building a stronger, resilient and sophisticated campus safety and security infrastructure. The safety and security of our community is not only a priority, but a responsibility aligned with Brown’s core institutional values.

Our values affirm that the University “holds itself responsible for generating the conditions necessary for every individual member of its community to thrive.” We recognize that a secure campus is a necessary condition for fulfilling our mission of education and research, and for all members of our community to feel a sense of security and belonging as they pursue knowledge in service to society.

A key step in the path to recovery is to engage faculty, staff and students and the local community in discussions about what it means to fulfill this responsibility for maintaining a secure campus, and Brown Ever True will help steward this work. We will provide meaningful opportunities for members of the campus community to share their experiences, perspectives and feedback about security infrastructure, staffing, and approaches, both in the context of safety and Brown’s values as a teaching and learning community.

I encourage all members of our community to read my Dec. 22 message to the community and the Dec. 30 letter providing an update on safety actions shared by Interim Vice President for Public Safety Hugh Clements. They provide important details about ongoing campus safety and security assessments, as well as the security actions and priority projects that have been accelerated for completion prior to the start of the Spring 2026 semester. These include transition to card access for the remaining buildings currently requiring keys for entry; installation of additional security cameras in key areas, including at Barus & Holley, pending the findings of the campus safety assessment; and expansion of panic buttons in critical areas, among other priority projects.

We know that resuming operations in Barus & Holley is particularly sensitive, and extensive work has taken place over the Winter Break to alter operations. This includes relocating a number of classes to alternate locations as well as expanding class schedules while we close portions of the building — some lecture halls, classrooms, hallways and adjacent spaces — by sealing and securing them behind new walls and emergency access doors. Most of the building remains generally closed while this work is ongoing.

Faculty, staff, postdocs and graduate students in the School of Engineering and the Department of Physics received a communication Dec. 23 outlining expectations and a timeline with regard to Barus & Holley, the Lassonde Innovation and Design Hub, and the Engineering Research Center.  The University has been in touch directly with the limited number of colleagues who will resume research in these spaces this week, sharing access to community support and related trauma-informed resources. General access to the buildings will resume Jan. 20.

Looking Ahead

We all should understand that real recovery is a gradual process. The effects of Dec. 13 may surface in uncertain ways. And “recovery” will at times seem elusive. At the same time, there is no question about the amazing resilience of our community.

In the face of unthinkable tragedy and loss, I have been inspired by our students, faculty, staff and alumni. The name of the Brown Ever True initiative was inspired by the ways many of you naturally invoked this phrase as a clarion call in the days after the tragedy. In countless emails, calls and letters I have received, members of our community have insisted that we must declare loudly to the world all that “we are.”

We are caring and we are steadfast. We are thoughtful and determined and strong. We have suffered loss, but our strength is the special character of our community. We are Brown.

And we are ever true.

Sincerely,

Christina H. Paxson
President