Brown, America

Brown is the best kind of cult: Bright teenagers who want to do something creative about the world in a place that indulges and guides them in equal measure. A handful of them are Greek shipping heirs or a movie star’s kid but most are just the best people I have ever met. It’s just a giant carton of good eggs.

To say my heart is broken for the students in Rachel Friedberg’s classroom today falls short of the feeling. My heart is there. Every alum feels this. Our hearts are there.

Right now, we are all cramming at the Sci Li at 5pm on a Friday during finals week, existing on Nutrigrain bars and anxiety. Friedberg’s Principles of Economics course is the introductory Econ class for all undergraduates, and that class is almost entirely freshmen. My husband took her course. Half of my friends did, too. These kids there today, most in their first semester away from home, had all decided that maybe they should know a thing or two about how the world functions so they can understand and possibly change it. It is a tragedy that the world delivered such a violent, American lesson.

It is a reminder of what we already know. That even this place — this iron-gated utopian bastion — gets scattered with bodies and covered in blood. That none of us are safe, no matter what, so long as the most powerful American cult is the gun.

I am thinking about the students and faculty sheltering in place on and off campus tonight, and praying our collective outrage does something. All of our lives so clearly depend on it.