Notes. Sat Dec 13, 7:53 PM

By Riley Londraville

During the week of December 8, the NERLab team met to wrap up end-of-semester projects, including a blog post on the Ward 14 Student Housing Task Force and proposed policies to regulate off-campus undergraduate housing. That work paused abruptly after the shooting at Brown University on Saturday, December 13. Providence College canceled in-person finals, and students soon left campus for Winter Break.

As the tragedy unfolded just ten minutes away, Riley Londraville, a NERLab Research Fellow, began to write.

This essay was originally published in The Providence Eye on December 24, 2025, and is republished here with permission.

Photo from the author's bedroom window. 📷: Riley Londraville

“A suspect is still outstanding and it’s unclear whether there is only one suspect.”

There’s a birdseye view and the cameras from helicopters circle a building of a campus only five minutes from me and my roommates while we sit and watch the news.

Now I sit anxiously listening to Mayor Smiley’s voice on the TV. For a second I think it’s a new update but then I look up and see his mannerisms, familiar from twenty minutes ago, along with the same faces of those who stand behind him, unchanged. They keep replaying the same information and a part of me wants to turn off the TV. Ignorance is bliss, but I can’t be ignorant when it’s so close.

We found out about the shooting right before we left our apartment for dinner. My friend Charlie texted me and by the time I got up to tell my roommates they had already heard. As we walked to the dining hall we checked the news outlets and waited for our school to say something. But we also shared stories from our days and joked around like usual.

We were in the dining hall when we learned they had a suspect in custody. Ten minutes later that story had changed.

We were eating by the time I learned my friend was in lockdown at a cafe on Brown’s campus. She said she was okay, but that she wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

By this time, it had been confirmed that the suspect was still on the loose.

I ate dinner with my roommates and we talked about our plans for the night, how we would blast music, and do karaoke or just dance. But once we headed back out into the cold, on our way back to our apartment, the air had shifted. Our laughs were muffled and the cold absorbed them. We could see the city in the distance: the tops of buildings were lit up for the holidays, red and green lights blinking and shining. We knew that red and blue lights blared on the streets below.

Once in the comfort of our apartment, with the doors locked, our ideas of a fun Saturday night abandoned like our shoes by the door, we turned on the news.

I had opened my laptop to add to my analysis of my composition for my final in Prose Poetry. It’s a collection of five poems titled, “Navigating Identity in Today’s Political Climate,” where I write extensively about school shootings, ICE, genocide, and more horrors of today’s world. I intended to write an excerpt about how necessary political poetry and artwork is during times of crisis, such as now.

What I hadn’t intended was for a wave of anxiety to rush over me moving my fingertips across my keyboard as my dinner moved around in my stomach. I feel nauseous. I don’t know what to do and so I write.

My boyfriend is out at a UMass Amherst party and he texts to check in. Usually I hate to be longwinded, especially when he’s out, but I can’t help myself now. I tell him how we’re watching the news and how cops have surrounded one building, but they don’t even know if the shooter is inside and everyone is still in lockdown and they have been for nearly four hours. I tell him how my friend is still in the cafe and how I’m anxious and I thought that turning on the news and being with roommates would help, but somehow I’m feeling worse. My chest feels heavy. My hands don’t feel like my own. My computer feels further away.

People blast music and scream next door; it sounds like they’re still having fun. Maybe they don’t have the news on, but they’ve got to know what’s going on. They’ve got to know now’s not the time to party.

But we’re desensitized. That’s why we had still planned on doing karaoke and flailing our limbs to old 2000s songs when we had known there was a shooting in our own city. Sure we didn’t know that anyone had passed, but our best guesses could have told us the tragedies that were to follow. We’ve seen it play out time and time before, and it will play out time and time again.

Just because we’re desensitized it doesn’t mean it’s normal. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we should accept it.

Soon we learn two are dead and nine are wounded.

“Ten total casualties, and they say it’s possible that number will fluctuate due to the fluidity of this situation.”

On campus, rumors spread that the numbers are higher.

I begin getting calls from family members at home. Friends I haven’t heard from in years send me texts asking if I’m okay. I feel guilty for my anxiousness as those at Brown are in fear for their lives.

A few minutes ago my roommate Gio had turned to me and Katie and said “Tomorrow is the anniversary of Sandy Hook.”

It’s been 13 years.

At 8:09 p.m., President Trump is on my screen calling the situation a tragedy, asking for prayers.

But prayers can’t unload the barrel. Prayers can’t unfire the gun. Prayers can’t bring lives back. Trump calls for prayers yet he shut down the Office of Gun Violence Prevention this January, and pulled resources from the White House’s website.

This feels surreal.

I’m writing these notes at the moment but the urgency of the moment causes my thoughts to jump around. And as I do, I worry about my validity: if I’m portraying this story correctly, and with respect to all of those involved. But the fact of the matter—the one I really care to get right—is that tomorrow marks 13 years since the tragedy of Sandy Hook, and yet somehow nothing’s changed.

It’s gotten worse.

More prayers needed.

By 11 p.m. my friend in lockdown was finally allowed to leave the cafe she had been in since 4. Police swept the area and she returned to her dorm.

“Such a scary experience and I cannot imagine how the people more directly affected feel right now. Praying for them. Thank you all so much for checking in on me, it means a lot.”

It’s the 347th day of the year and there’s already been 389 mass shootings in America.

It’s finals week and those students at Brown were merely studying. In a lecture hall, focused on their academics, they were easy targets. Sitting ducks in a space designated for education and growth, now stained with hindrance and violence.

It’s twelve days until Christmas and two students will not be going home to their families. Thoughts and prayers feel useless at this point.

I lay down in bed expecting snow in the morning. It will be a winter wonderland, the first of the season for Providence. I love this city in the snow, as I know we all do.

But the snow will fall faster this time, heavy with grief. And instead, this white blanket will serve as a reminder that this tragedy will soon collect with the others, melting away, becoming just another mass shooting.

But Providence won’t forget the two lives lost, the nine wounded, and infinite hurt by this shooting.

I will not forget.

Riley Londraville is an undergraduate student in the Class of 2027 at Providence College, double-majoring in Creative Writing and Public and Community Service Studies, with a minor in Political Science. She is a Research Fellow in the Neighborly Engagement Research Lab (NERLab) at Providence College.