Some Thoughts on Providence

This weekend proved a rough time for more than a few people in Providence, Rhode Island. The Saturday mass shooting on the campus of Brown University upended what started as a relatively normal weekend only two weeks before Christmas. Shoppers were likely making their way to stores to make holiday purchases. Students at the several colleges and universities in the state’s capital city were doing a different sort of wrapping as they saw the Fall 2025 semester drawing to a close, finishing papers and projects while also studying for final exams and preparing to head to their respective homes for the holiday break.

Then, in the 4 o’clock hour, students at Brown University began receiving alerts of an active shooter on their campus. For most students, those alerts led to an hours-long shelter-in-place directive, which ended around 5:40 a.m. the next morning. For several students and their families, though, those alerts led to news that no family would want to receive as two students were fatally wounded and nine others injured.

Even though we hear such news reports nearly weekly as Americans, I hope that we are not yet completely numb to such news. It certainly is difficult to avoid such numbness. The news out of Providence hit a little differently in several Buffalo homes, including my own. Providence stands out as an important place to me for a number of reasons. I think my attraction to the city began in early 2000s as I traveled through the city and stayed there a few times while conducting research for my dissertation, which became my book. Then, during the summer of 2005, the city took on a new significance in my life when I lived on the Brown campus for several weeks as a participant in an NEH Summer Institute. During that summer, I made some lasting friendships with a wonderful group of scholars as we worked together at the John Carter Brown Library and fellowshipped together at the Graduate Center Bar. Perhaps even more significantly, we found out that summer on Brown’s campus (about two blocks away from the Barus & Holley building where the shooting occurred) that we were expecting a child.

That child is now a student in Providence. Saturday was not the first time that he was in relative close proximity (within two miles) to a mass shooting. He spends time at restaurants a few shorts blocks away from where the shooting occurred. He has friends who attend Brown University (all of them are safe, as are my friends who teach there and often research nearby). So, Saturday evening we trusted he was safe and working on final projects and studying for exams in safety. He was. But he might not have been. And, given the relative frequency of such events in American life, he might not always be. Furthermore, who knows what is going on inside his mind (and the minds of his friends at various schools in the city) as they attempt simply to live the college experience?

As I sat at home both watching news reports of the shooting in Providence (as well as the one that quickly followed it on the other side of the world in Australia) and reflecting on the wildly different worries and anxieties parents and students have today from the real ones of some thirty years ago when I was living the college experience, several relevant songs from the last few years came to mind. I thought I might share them here. You might see something of a theme. Make of that theme what you will. Then, labor for meaningful change—much like my son did earlier this semester when he worked with other students at his college not only to warn about the dangers of some organizations on their campus, but also to keep such organizations off their campus for the time being.

Thoughts and Prayers, Brittney Spencer featuring Brock Human

Thoughts and Prayers, Will Hoge

Thoughts and Prayers, Drive-By Truckers

Guns of Umpqua, Drive-By Truckers

Save the World, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Bang Bang, The Avett Brothers